Have you bought a newly built home?

I have done both.

1st House: 10 years old when we bought in 1993
2nd House: built new, picked finishes
3rd house: 6 years old, lived in by builder who sold to us
4th house: 83 years old when bought in 2005

Yes, I miss the convenience of a new(er) home with no issues due to wear and tear and upgraded technology. However, in general you cannot buy the character of an old home in an established neighborhood. The cost to try and build new in an old established neighborhood is way out of my budget. All of our other houses were in the suburbs, I like living near the core of the city with everything I need within walking distance. Plus I just like old things.

My current house was a new build 37 years ago when we bought it. After having been in an old, falling-apart house for a couple of years after we got married, I was thrilled to get into something new. It’s been relatively easy over the years to keep up with the maintenance and fixes.

Older houses can be beautiful and charming, and I will admit to fantasizing about living in one again ... but lordy, it’s nice to have up-to-date electricity and plumbing, windows that don’t leak, etc.

We bought our main house as a new build, 15 years ago. My advice is to get an inspection, even though the house is new. Our inspection revealed that the flexible tubing that is used for the HVAC system was resting on the ground in our crawlspace, due to "material" in the tubing. When I asked what the "material" was, the inspector said it was most likely human waste. We had the tubing replaced and inspected again, to make sure it was fixed. Grossness.

Also, when you do your final walk-through, be picky. You are paying dearly for new construction, so make sure everything meets your standards. I found scratches in cabinets, doors that didn't close properly, and spots where the carpet was not installed properly.

We found out that our new home did not come with window screens, which is ridiculous. My brother owns a construction company and he said that all windows come with screens; large construction companies don't want to deal with them, so they don't install them. Our first purchase was custom made screens for all the windows and the sliding glass door.

I've lived in both an older home and a new one we watched be built from the ground up. 
For the new, what is negotiable depends on the builder and the home's community set up. Ours was a designed community which meant there was no negotiation on exterior or wall placement inside. Flooring, interior paint, interior doors and cabinetry was negotiable. It came with blinds that matched the rest of the community.  Landscaping and lawns were also part of the package which we did not control and didn't have to deal with. Other new builds leave landscaping up to you. So you need to ask what is negotiable. 

I didn't find it particularly stressful, like a remodel, since very little was a choice for me to make. It was just a matter of waiting.  What choices I did make was from a rather limited source the builder worked with so it wasn't wide open. I loved our new house. Hard to believe it is almost 20 years old now. 

How stressful it will be depends on how much you control. The more you control and have choice about the higher the stress. If you are using a neighborhood with model homes there are fewer things in your control so the stress goes down.

We had our house built and moved in new.
One thing all the builders screwed everybody in this area on was packing the dirt so lots of people have space under their concrete (driveway, paths, porch, patios) that will probably crack and need fixed in the future.
We had ours filled withing 6 months of living here, but others didn't and now they are experiencing issues.

Also blinds or something to cover windows before you move in. You can get paper blinds that you stick on, but you dont want to spend the first day also having to install curtain rods and curtains or blinds in your bedroom/bathrooms (others can wait).

See if you can add outlets/canned lights/light switches. Even though we added, now we wish we had done some more.

Know that you will probably need to do yard, fence, sprinkler system.

Measure well for your fridge and make sure you order in time for it to be installed when you need it.

Our first house was a hundred years old and had some cute features, but it was tiny and had no storage and needed a ton of upgrading (including building a garage because all it came with was a small falling down shed).

Our current house was built in the early 80’s and is a huge improvement. Much of the main floor and some of the second story was updated in 2000 the original owners added to expand the house and garage.

We ended up rebuilding our lake cabin basically from the ground up last winter. We had to choose virtually everything because we worked with a draftsman to design the entire build to fit the existing footprint of the original cabin, only to find out later that much of what was already there that we planned to build on top of ended up having to be torn down too. As a result of that, a lot of it was changed several times.

For us it was not enjoyable at all because we had to spend another $50k we hadn’t planned on spending, so from that point on it was all about finding ways to cut our costs and do anything we could do ourselves that we would have preferred to pay someone to do. We also had to choose cheaper things than we would have liked because the budget for everything was either slashed or non-existent. I’m just thankful that it was only a lake home and not our permanent residence, because that would have been even more stressful.

At one point, I think DH and I both got to the place of decision overload and we were just totally sick of making decisions. What kind of cabinets? What type of flooring? Tile color and pattern? Paint colors, what type of light fixtures and where should they go? Where did we want the outlets and switches? Windows or a patio door in the master? How big should the deck be and what material? Where did we want the outdoor lights, and what type? Ugggh, endless decisions! It got SO old. DH is very lucky that I’m kind of thrifty, that I’m a very good bargain hunter and not very picky. I was able to find some smoking hot deals on certain things we needed that ended up working out perfectly.

And then once it was mostly done, it started all over again because our existing furniture and window coverings weren’t going to work at all so we have to make some changes with that stuff too (that we’re still in the process of).

I'd love to live in a home that was a new build, but it's the landscaping costs that would concern me. Around here, that's not part of the home purchase. Our home was less than ten years old. The lawn wasn't in great condition, but it was better than starting from scratch. Still, we added a fence and sprinkler system.

Our first home was 75 years old. Our second home was 5 years old, but had only been lived in for 2 by a single woman. Our current (forever) home was about 20 years old when we bought it. It's the sweet spot for me... old enough to have established trees (we actually live in the woods, surrounded by mature trees) but still new enough to not need structural repairs... all of our renovations have been ones we wanted to do, not ones we needed to do.

Personally, I really hate neighborhoods where every third house is the same. I would only consider a new build if it was a custom home, where I bought property and had my own architect/house plans, and it wasn't part of a subdivision.

We bought new 22 years ago. My husband had connections with the construction manager and he gave us a list of the top 10 upgrades we should get, like crown molding in rooms or painting the spindles white instead of going with the stain. The price of the upgrades were ridiculous so we chose to do those after the fact and saved a ton of money. Only upgrade things that can't be upgraded later (for example we had the option to raise our basement ceiling an extra foot).

We have only ever built new. All subdivision builds, nothing custom. And we've loved them all.

First house we were newlyweds and took a "paint credit" - we painted the entire house ourselves and got money taken off the cost of the house. Never again.

Second house we tweaked a couple things but nothing major.

Third house we did several upgrades (door into the basement from outside for my future cake kitchen, upgraded shingles, a few extra lights and switches, that kind of thing). We are still in this home and will be until we can no longer take care of it ourselves.

I loved being able to pick every finish in each house. We did have to start from scratch on the exterior of each house though. Grass is included, but paved driveway was only included as an upgrade on the second house So we've had to do driveways, fences & decks ourselves, plus any landscaping. This particular house didn't have a front porch (the front door is set in about 5 feet so there is a bit of one, but we still have the builder concrete stair forms and patio stones) so this coming spring we are finally getting the front landscaping done. New concrete stairs the full width of the porch, plus a platform in concrete across the front so we have more of a porch a few steps down from the door, some rocks and a proper path.

And while it has taken 10 years, we kind of do a project every couple of years. Deck was the first big project, and we are lucky that DH is handy enough to do it all himself. Then we did fence - athough one side was already done by the neighbours (DH did the work in exchange for them buying the wood) and the back was done by the builder with chain link (we back onto a greenspace). So the trade off for brand new, exactly as we want on the interior, is a blank slate on the exterior that we  had to finish on our own.

I liked the idea of new, never lived in. And slowly we've done decor/paint in each room and are down to only one room (open living/dining area) that has way high ceilings so I have to pay to have it painted because I'm not getting up that high! We've made this our own bit by bit and would do it again.

I will also add that who the builder is makes a HUGE difference too. The guy who built our cabin came highly recommended by neighbors and we knew he was good because he had a two year long waitlist. When he had a surprise opening come up late last fall, we jumped at it in a hot minute. He would have been worth the wait and was definitely worth every penny. He did meticulous work.

The former contractor who worked on the cabin previously cut a lot of corners and did a lot of things just flat out wrong. The ultimate result was tens of thousands of dollars of hidden water damage, so it’s imperative to check references. Some problems won’t surface until years or even decades later and at that point you may not have any (or very limited) recourse.

We just closed and moved into a newly built home from a developer. We chose the lot, the model, elevation, exterior paint color scheme and all the interior options such as cabinets, flooring, carpet, etc...Of course these were from options that the developer offers you. In other words you can't choose something else they dont' have and ask them to include in the build process...For the options we either didn't like or thought were too expensive, we just went with the "builder grade", which is basically the ones the builder includes with the price of the home. For us that was all of the faucets as we didn't like the builder's options and since both my dh & I are pretty handy we've changed them out with ones we liked better and for a lot less $$. Where we upgraded with the builder was the cabinetry, flooring and carpets in addition to adding extra outlets, flush mounted LED lighting in certain rooms, french doors on the home office, surround sound speakers in the ceiling in the family room and pre-plumbing in the garage for a utility sink. Those were things we didn't want to have to deal with after close.

All in all we enjoyed the process although there were some frustrating moments and I would do it again.

The builders have designers in their design centers to help you with making design choices to achieve the look your like, keeping your budget in mind.