In this video, I go over some of the things buyers should know and understand before they buy a home. I talk about someone who paid $493,000 for a home that was built in 1996 by US Homes. They either did not know the type of builder US Homes was or they did not care. Well, US Homes was an entrance (low end) level, builder. I do not understand why someone would spend a 1/2 million dollars on a low end built home? You will be paying an upper-end price for a product that uses lower end material.

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Tampa bay realtor Lance Mohr and in this video, I want to talk about understanding what you are buying because I see every now and then a lot of buyers getting bamboozled because they don’t really understand the quality of construction and different type of builders. Neither do the real estate agents or even the appraiser. I’m going to go over what’s important about this and what you need to understand and know before you buy a home or for that matter even write a contract on a home.

I had a client send me a property the other day. It already sold. He wanted me to use as a comparable for his so I started looking at it and I noticed it is an about twenty-five hundred something square feet and it sold four-hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars. I’m like hmm I wonder who the builder is. I’m sitting there thinking it’s something equivalent to maybe a Rutenberg or maybe a Cardel sort of an upper-end builder, semi-custom builder, and custom builder and I was shocked to see it was a US Home and I thought to myself “oh my gosh! I cannot believe someone would pay four hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars for a US home and take nothing away from US home but let me just sort of explain US home is an entry-level builder. They were always an entrance level builder. Matter of fact years ago in the early 2000s Lennar ended up purchasing them as their entry-level builder and then they just found out they were a real piece of junk company they ended up shutting them down then for some reason the brought them back over in New Tampa and Live Oaks again and then they ended up shutting them down again. Again they were just the entrance level builder so I’m looking at this home at four hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars and sure it has good architectural detail with columns outside and you’ve looked inside the home and it has some a deep attention to detail inside the home but the problem is they’re basically building the same home as an entry-level home. They’re just making it look a lot nicer. I mean again it’s one of those things you could put lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day it’s still a pig and I don’t want to be that mean about it but I’m looking out and I’m sitting there thinking to myself well this is the same quality of construction is behind the walls. The same type of wood, the same type of insulation, the same contractors are all pretty much being used. They’re just making everything grander cosmetically and I really feel personally I just can’t believe someone would spend half a million dollars on a US home.

Now if they go in and it’s a Cardel. Well, Cardel is an upper-end builder or builder equivalent Homes by Westbay or Rutenberg, a really good builder. That’s what I would expect. I just didn’t expect this and I think the problem is when people were buying these homes, they’re not really and I say the buyer, the buyer may not know but they’re going to real estate agents, the real estate agents aren’t really doing a lot of research and they’re just thinking okay well it looks nice, it’s big, it’s in a nice area but what about the utility bills and it’s sort of like a car, you could go buy a car and it might look really nice inside outside but if it’s going to break down all the time, if the maintenance is really bad. Are you going to buy it? Then it’s sort of like that looking at this with the US Home the insulation isn’t going to be anywhere near the insulation of say a Cardel, a West Bay, a Rutenburg not that WestBay was even in existence when this home was built in the late 90s but the appraiser goes out there and unfortunately appraisers are very complacent and a lot of appraisers just don’t know what they’re looking at because they don’t look at many homes when they an appraiser goes out and doesn’t appraise a lot of home they’re looking at one home and one home only that’s the subject property. They’re just looking at the other ones and seeing the other ones in black and white and take nothing away from appraisers there’s a lot that understands a lot about homes but some of them don’t and I even had an appraiser compared a Lennar and a Ryland years ago with an art the Rutenberg so all I would say is do your homework, get an agent that understands the different types of builders. Just so you know they could be perfectly happy in the home and they could even know it’s a Us home and know about the history of Us Homes and know what type of quality US Home was being built to and they might still like it, you might still like it but it’s understanding. I personally would never buy a US Home for five hundred thousand dollars at least today. I just can’t see it. I know what the insulation is going to be like. I know what the quality of construction was like behind the walls. They could fix it all up and make it look nice outside and make it look nice inside, but I do this video because I just think you need to be educated when you’re looking at the homes when I look at homes and I go through I always look at the builders. Now there are some builders that I don’t know who they are. They were built before my time. Maybe they were just a small little builder but that’s not the vast majority of it. The vast majority are the bigger builders, the Rutenbergs, the Centex's, the Lennar's, back then the US homes, now the Homes by WestBay, the Cardel's, the Cal Atlantic's, etc.

So understand who the builder is and that’s the whole point of this video. Just get educated on who built the home in what type of builder they are. It’s sort of like I would tell people in this price range would you rather have homes by West Bay build a home that’s used to building homes in the fours, the five the six hundred thousand dollars range or would you rather have a Centex where is an entrance level builder who would rather have built your home for the same price because that if a builders building if they’re an upper-end builder and their building down there is still using the same quality of construction the same people built in the home that’s an entrance level builder building up. They are still using the same people much like a car you have $30,000 to spend on a car would you rather have a Mercedes Benz build it or would you rather have Kia build it so that’s all I’m saying.

I hope this video helps you. If you have any questions at all please feel free to contact me and if you like these videos share them on Facebook, share them with your friends. Have a wonderful day.

My YouTube channel https://youtube.com/tampa2enjoy has hundreds of educational real estate videos. From buying, selling a house to tips for first time home buyers. Don't forget to share these videos with your friends. Thank you.