Building our First Home!

Hello everyone and welcome back to the blog! Today my husband and I are sitting down in our cozy living room to share with you our experience of building our first home during the COVID-19 pandemic. While we had many ups and downs throughout this building process, I wouldn't have changed a thing- truly!! Whether you are a first time home buyer like us or you are looking to build your dream home, we hope you can find something here that makes you feel confident and inspired to move forward in your own house hunting journey!!

While we settle into our cozy living room lets quickly rewind to January 2020. At this time David and I just celebrated 6 months of marriage! Woohoo!! We were living in our 1 bed 1 bath apartment figuring out life together. I was finishing up my last few months of graduate school, and David was just beginning to get his feet wet in the real estate market with his job at Fischer Homes. I look back on this time with lots of fond memories of newly married life but also of much stress in the unknown. Talking about the future was something we did OFTEN. After much consideration, long chats, and lots of pushing through our fears...we decided it was finally time to put some roots down here in Louisville, KY and buy our first home. At the time this seemed like a monumental decision for us at 23 years old.

Even though we felt way over our heads, we felt like we had an advantage of knowing the in's and out's of the housing market at the time. David spends countless hours working with realtors and stalking Zillow likes it's his job (which, technically, it is-lol). We both knew the Fischer product and really believed in the quality, plus the business as a whole. We were ready to purchase a brand new home with Fischer and pick all our features. As an extreme optimist and dreamer, this felt like a literal dream come true!!! David being the level headed one in our relationship (who was equally excited for the opportunity to build) said we should compare several options first before we decided.

After spending several hours, days, and weeks on Zillow we decided to tour a few homes in the Louisville area. These were all older homes that I thought might need a few projects to make it more our style. David was more worried about the bones of the house like the roof, foundation, and AC unit. Regardless, we both knew these homes were going to need some serious work. After much thought and time spent praying, combined with quickly becoming discouraged with the bidding wars for homes that sold for way over asking price, we decided that buying a resale home wasn't the best decision for our family.

In March of 2020 (a week before the whole world shut down due to COVID), we decided it was our best option to build!! There were several reasons that led us to this decision, one being we were able to pick the neighborhood we wanted to live in. This was huge for me because I would fall in love with houses, but was discouraged with the way the neighborhood looked and felt. I wanted side walks and close proximity to amenities! I was also super thankful for the building process because we got to pick our specific floor plan. I loved being able to picture being in this house and decided how many beds and baths was going to suit our needs. Another reason that made this choice easy was we got to pick all our features! Besides this being super fun, it saved us a lot of time and avoiding having to remodel a home. Lastly, we were very thankful for the warranty that came with the new build. We were looking at older homes in the area that were potentially going to need a very expensive new roof or AC unit. A benefit of building was that all of these things were new, but also if there was a problem with them they would get replaced without fee to us for 10 years! Which was a sigh of relief for young and inexperienced homeowners.

Now we are coming up on two years in our home and have loved the process! We were nervous of what the housing market would do after covid, but it has sky rocketed and we are extremely thankful for this investment we have made in our house. I hope you found this to be helpful in your own journey! If you are thinking about buying your first or next home, check out your next steps and some of our best advise below...

I'm interested! What's next?

Text, call, or email my husband David Burton at (630)618-6103 or dburton@fischerhomes.com

He is more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

Do you have to have a realtor?

Fischer Homes is happy to work with a realtor if you already have one, but it is not required in order to buy. If you do have a realtor, Fischer is happy to pay them the same as they would get paid on a resale home!

Do you buy land separately?

We do not build on private land. In order to keep our costs controlled and as low as we can, we buy large pieces of land where we will build out a community. Fischer takes huge pride in how their communities look and feel as you drive through them and live in them, I would encourage you to check them out!

Is building a home better/cheaper than buying one and fixing it up?

To each their own would be the short and easy answer to this... There are absolutely benefits to any path that you choose when you are looking for a home. What made us choose building as our first home is the security that comes with it. Not only do we get the luxury of not feeling like we have to compete with someone else for the same house with bidding wars, we also have the security of every part of the home being new and warrantied. David does not claim to be a handyman by any means.

Do I need a down payment?

This will really depend. Some loan types require a down payment, whereas others do not require anything! For example, we bought our home using a USDA loan which is available in plenty of the surrounding cities of Louisville and we did not have to put any money down. We are happy to elaborate on further questions about this.

How long does the build take?

This is a tricky question. Such as any business during Covid, some of our trade partners are struggling with labor. Right now I usually give a range of 6-10 months depending on how large the home is, how quickly we are able to get permits back from the county and specific product related delays. Our home was done, signing to close, in 4.5 months.

What if something breaks?

This is a great thing about a new home, pretty much everything in the home is warrantied. Fischer has two overarching warranties that I like to explain to my customers. We will cover nearly all cosmetics for the first year and we will cover all the structure of the home for 10 years. This does not include all the warranties you get on your mechanicals and appliances. This was one of the most comforting factors coming from an apartment where everything was taken care of.

How much is it to build?

Louisville is a very interesting market because of the varying prices of land. Right now our homes start around $250k and I have seen homes sell for $800k+. Our communities are in Southern Indiana, La Grange, Buckner, Middletown, Shelbyville, Heritage Creek, Mt. Washington and Shepherdsville. Each community will have a different starting price based on how expensive it was to purchase the land in that area. I would love to meet up and get into more detail about this!