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12<br />
Key reasons<br />
to buy new<br />
Buying new has many advantages. No one has<br />
yet lived in your brand new home and it has that<br />
new home smell and feel.<br />
That doesn’t appeal to the villa crowd.<br />
But many people dream of a home in a<br />
new suburb.<br />
There are many other advantages --<br />
such as being able to customise the home<br />
before it’s built. Buyers love it that their<br />
build guarantee covers most things and<br />
there’s little maintenance to do for the first<br />
10 years.<br />
There are a long list of reasons some<br />
people dream of buying new.<br />
They include:<br />
• Current Building Code requirements<br />
specify a higher standard of insulation<br />
and glazing than you can expect in an<br />
older home, which makes your new home<br />
warmer in winter and cooler in summer,<br />
meaning cheaper to run. In addition<br />
there has been a vast improvement in the<br />
quality and technology of construction<br />
materials over the last decade.<br />
• New homes are designed for modern<br />
lifestyles with walk-in wardrobes, double<br />
or triple car garaging, en suites and heat<br />
pumps.<br />
• Internal access garaging.<br />
• Indoor-outdoor flow. Home builders<br />
before the 1970s rarely thought about this.<br />
• Automatic pool covers and electric<br />
curtains are included in a lot of new<br />
homes, he says.<br />
• In a new subdivision you’re not going<br />
to have five cross-leased small homes next<br />
door to your architecturally designed fivebedroom<br />
dream home, he says.<br />
• New purpose-built shopping and<br />
service centres cater for the modern life.<br />
• New schools can be popular. New<br />
schools are being designed with “Modern<br />
Learning Environments”, which are<br />
considered better layouts for 21st-century<br />
learning.<br />
Another important factor is it’s easier<br />
to get a mortgage. New Reserve Bank of<br />
New Zealand loan to value (LVR) ratio<br />
restrictions from October 1 don’t relate<br />
to new homes. Likewise the KiwiSaver<br />
HomeStart grant is doubled for first time<br />
buyers.<br />
When it comes to new apartment<br />
buildings they’re built to a higher<br />
standard of earthquake/fire proofing and,<br />
hopefully, are no longer leaky.<br />
There are, of course, disadvantages to<br />
buying new. Not everyone wants to wait<br />
six or 12 months to move into their home.<br />
Other downsides include:<br />
• Borrowing to cover the progress<br />
payments is more complex than taking<br />
out a mortgage on an existing property.<br />
• Builders and developers can go broke,<br />
leaving the buyer in an awkward position.<br />
• With some new homes the buyer<br />
effectively needs to become a project<br />
manager.<br />
• You have to deal with council for<br />
building and sometimes resource consent.<br />
• The location may be further from the<br />
centre than you wanted.<br />
• If it’s infill housing you might have a<br />
cross lease situation that some people find<br />
tricky.<br />
• There are often teething problems with<br />
a new build.<br />
• You won’t get a quaint tree-lined<br />
street.<br />
• Your section will most likely be<br />
smaller than that of an existing home.<br />
• Fences, paths and landscaping might<br />
need to be added at a cost.
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