Building or Buying a Home
As everyone knows, the real estate market in the North Bay Area has been booming, and the competition for home ownership has taken on new heights. With multiple offers on limited inventory, buyers have been finding themselves in a perpetual cycle of offer, counter offer and repeat, with the lucky few moving forward into escrow.
Discouraged with the hamster wheel of buying resale homes, more and more buyers are looking at building or buying a new home as a viable option. Or, perhaps a buyer has looked for a new home for months, but has been unable to find a home that checks all of the boxes. Buying a home under construction could be the answer.
New Home Reservations
Over the last several years, approximately half of our new homes have sold before they have been finished! An in some cases, before the homes have broken ground!
Here are some things we’d love home buyers to know about our new homes.
- You don’t have to let the market dictate. In choosing to build a home rather than buy an existing home, you don’t have to compete with other offers or worry about getting outbid. All of the costs are laid out, known and agreed upon prior to breaking ground, so there are no surprises.
- Building – it’s not as hard as you think. As an all-inclusive builder everything we need to build you a home is in one place – here. We have suppliers and vendors lined up ready to go, so our clients don’t have to run all over town to find a faucet, or pick out a front door, or find a roofer…. Et cetera.
- Buying a new home means you get to pick. You’re not stuck with someone else’s kitchen counters that were the height of style 30 years ago, or that weird exterior paint color. Our Design Center is stocked full, and contains a huge variety of style choices, from modern to transitional to Spanish – you name it.
- We move fast. Because our processes have been honed over decades, it takes us roughly seven months to build a home from foundation pour to handing over the keys. When you stop to think about how long it takes to find a home, get an offer accepted and close escrow, the timing is quite comparable.
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Gold chandelier brings a focal point to the dining area
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12' ceilings and lineal fireplace in great room
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Soft Gray Hues accent the stainless appliances
Scenario #1 – You choose a new a completed new home.
Great news – all new homes built by Christopherson Builders come with a Christopherson-backed warranty as well as our in-house service! Your will have been built with high quality design finishes and with building practices that make a solid, lasting home. Also, all new California homes have a higher standard for energy efficiency. So you will enjoy a home that has been built according to CALGreen specifications, and provides you with a much lower energy consumption that you would typically find in older resale homes. This way is clearly the speediest way to start enjoying life in your new home.
Scenario #2 – You are interested in a home that is partially completed.
Circling back on the above, about half of Christopherson-built new homes receive an offer before they officially go on the market. Buying a home before it is completed basically means that there will be a long escrow, as escrow can’t close until the home build is signed, sealed and delivered by the building inspector. Making an offer on a home under construction also means that the team at Christopherson has ready found a great lot, found or designed a great plan and had gone through the preconstruction process through to permitting – taking much of the work of getting into a new home off of your shoulders.
If you are interested in a home under construction, odds are good that there will be some amount of personalization available. The exterior style of the home plus the structural engineering will be set. However, you might still be able to pick your cabinets, light fixtures, appliances, bath tub, tile, flooring and so on. Certain items like windows need to be ordered very early on. Other items such as light fixtures are one of the final pieces of the puzzle. So in terms of choice, timing is everything. Christopherson Properties is the best place to view upcoming homes!
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Modern Farmhouse Rendering
Scenario #3 – You are interested in a future Christopherson home.
If you have patience, and a little extra time on your hands to get things just right, you could explore the notion of reserving a home before we break ground. In this path to new home ownership, we will have done all of the preconstruction work for you, AND you get to personalize the home to your heart’s content. There might even be room for light architectural changes to suit your lifestyle. Odds are good that you would also be able to make some home exterior choices, if the local jurisdiction or HOA (if any) allows it. In terms of timing, it takes Team Christopherson about 9-11 months to build the average 3,000ish square foot home, from the time we break ground to the time we hand over keys to the front door.
Scenario #4 – You really want your new home to be 100% you.
Building a new home does not have to be scary – we make your experience streamlined, and even fun! If you need help finding a lot, we can help. If you found a property that you are interested in but need help determining if it is right for you, we can help. If you need help designing a home or finding a smartly pre-engineered home design, we can help. Building a new home comes with more questions to be sure, and they can not all be answered right away. It is a process! However, Christopherson Builders has done this many times over, so no matter the question, we can help guide to to the answer.
When building a new home from the ground up, all the choices are yours. You can consider if a single level home is right for you for future ease of living, or if you prefer the greater separation between living and bedrooms that a two-story home provides. You might also decide if you prefer a Farmhouse or Ranch style home that rambles, or if you would rather opt for a cool Contemporary concept with high ceilings and dramatic lines. Perhaps you really need three bedroom plus an office, or perhaps you really need a separate Guest Suite. Would you like a dining table and huge eat-in island in the great room, or do you prefer a more formal dining room? Do you need room for a pool? All of these things and more can be completely tailored to your personal preference when building a new home.
No matter your preferred path to being a Christopherson homeowner, we can help make a Christopherson built house your new home.
