The new home versus used home dilemma
MY 75-year-old-father has a plaque on his wall that says “old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance”. The US playwright David Mamet is generally held responsible for that old chestnut. The plaque has been there for years and only lately have we wondered what age he was when he put it up. When it comes to house buying, I’m middle aged and have bought both old and new houses, experiencing both the unexpected treachery a used property can inflict on you, as well as the innocent exuberance that comes with buying absolutely brand new. Choosing between new and second hand has always been a dilemma and remains so today. As a first-time buyer in the 90s, I acquired a run-down, second-hand mid terrace. I was unusual because most first timers bought a new home at a time when they accounted for around one third of all properties sold. Today new homes are scarcer in the available housing stock overall, but tend to have more to offer than they did even 10 years ago when it comes to quality of build. I did up my 1940s terrace over years, stripping layers of wallpaper, plastering, painting and so on. It threw plenty of unexpected curveballs at me. When it was finally finished, I traded up to a new three-bed semi in an estate and I’ve since stayed put. The latter presented its own unexpected problems — stage payments, snag lists fought over and what essentially amounted to living on a building site for two years — no point in having that new cream carpet if there’s no road surface outside and oiled mud makes a daily entrance underfoot! So between both what did I learn? Well first off second-hand homes of all ages share one thing in common: they have been lived in and altered by someone else — to suit someone else. Unless you have been lucky enough to find the house designed/decorated by your mental twin (it does happen sometimes) there will be plenty you will want to change and lots you’ll just have to put up with in a used property. While your surveyor will pick up structural faults, it’s the myriad small ones they won’t find that will annoy and cost you most (mine had an uninsulated extension). From the garden tap that doesn’t work, to the slates on the roof that slip to the mould that you can’t get rid of in the bathroom. Worse again, you should know the improvements you put in will rarely pay you back when it comes to resale. In return you usually get character, particularly in period properties built in times when craft workmanship counted. In contrast, the new home buyer gets everything shiny spanking virgin fresh — a big attraction. Except perhaps with the white goods that you must buy yourself — standards have fallen and that 10-year-old cooker left in a second-hand property could outlast the new version bought today for a new home. Generally the motivation in buying a second-hand home is location. They’ve been built earlier and usually that means they’re more central. This can mean saving five hours a week in traffic — no small deal over a lifetime. It also means all the services and functions you are used to are already in place locally. The same might not be said for a remoter green field new-home scheme far from a school or from shops. Second-hand homes have an already settled community around them of which you have not been a part. So no matter how friendly you are, it will take you and yours some time to shrug off that “blow in” tag and gain acceptance. Conversely on the new home front, there’s a huge advantage in moving to a just-starting neighbourhood where everyone else is new too. You all begin together. This will likely be the start of a years’ long (or a lifetime) involvement in a great new community. Your children will all be the same age and will make friends for life — the sort of friends who don’t remember when they didn’t know one another. The long-settled nature of a second -hand neighbourhood means values are unlikely to shift much over a short period. In contrast, a new home estate will need to find its future value range as a second hand estate. A new scheme which is initially popular with landlords can sometimes see future values slip or stall if the transient student/rental population ends up high. That’s just the way it is. So owner occupiers should only pick new schemes that are designed to appeal to owner occupiers. Second-hand homes tend to give more garden and expansion space for your money. For some reason it almost corresponds foot-for-year by age, so a 100-year-old home might have a 100-foot garden, a 60-year-old home a 60-foot garden and so on. Standard new homes have tend to have about 30 ft and often a shared frontal forecourt. The older home will more likely have rear and side access as well as more room to extend with site surplus and convertible attics. Often the biggest downside for new buyers is location. City couples who deem an hour’s drive each way to be “manageable” should remember that five years on they might also be dragging children to and from the creche, before and after making that big commute. But a big improvement in building standards since the crash means new homes today benefit from cutting edge energy saving technology — insulation, solar and heat exchange systems. Compared to Tiger era homes that’s likely to save between €1,500 to €2,500 per annum. And fuel costs will only hike going forward. Ultimately it’s a life choice and one you’ll have to live with.