Rarely does anyone hear from new-home owners who love their home so much that they wouldn’t change one, single thing.
In fact, nearly every buyer has at least one regret, be it a huge one like choosing the wrong home site, or a small one like locating the outdoor water spigot too far from the car that needs to be washed.
The home-buying process is so nerve-wracking and the number of choices is so overwhelming, it’s no wonder most buyers make at least a few miscalculations. Wise builders listen and use this information to improve their designs.
We polled folks who have built (or had builders build) homes in the Chicago area in the last few years, in hopes of learning from their experiences.
If, we asked, you could build your house over again, what would you do differently? Here’s what they told us:
– “We would install a larger water heater,” reports Jamie Sewell of West Chicago. “Ours is a 50-gallon, which meets code. But our whirlpool tub takes so much water, that it doesn’t leave enough hot water for someone else to take a shower. Or, if someone takes a shower first, then there isn’t enough hot water to fill the whirlpool tub after that.”
– “We knew we would someday finish our basement, so we did have the foresight to rough-in plumbing and a drain system for a future bathroom and wet bar there,” says Chip Wagner of Naperville. “But we didn’t think to make the basement one to two feet deeper to allow for higher ceilings.
“Now I have 6-foot, 8-inch ceilings [in the basement] and I’m 6-foot, 5-inches tall. The minimal, extra cost of the concrete and excavation would have been worth it.”
Wagner says he also regrets building a two-car instead of a three-car garage. “[The extra space] was a $7,000 builder option, so we didn’t add it,” he recalls. “But, now I see that having a three-car garage is a $15,000 to $25,000 premium in the resale market in my area.”
– Safer windows for the birds that visit her home would be on the list for Betsy Green. When she built a vacation home in unincorporated LaSalle County last year, Green specified large, single-pane casement windows for unobstructed views of the birds she hoped to attract to her collection of bird feeders and bird houses.
The birds arrived, all right, but flew right into the casement windows when they were opened.
“We wished we had chosen bi-fold casement windows instead,” says Green. Now, she says, she and her husband must choose between fresh air and bird safety. The birds win.
“We rarely open the windows all the way,” she says.
– Better placement of utility cables tops the list for Jennifer Benjamin of South Elgin. She says her new house has plenty of telephone, cable and electrical outlets, but none of them seems to be where her family needs them.
“In some rooms, we’ve spent the money to rewire,” she says. “In other rooms, we just have wires running along the walls to where they are needed.”
Benjamin also wishes she had specified four coats of polyurethane on her hardwood floors instead of accepting the builder’s two coats.
“With three kids, moving out for a few days, plus moving all of the furniture [to apply more coats], just isn’t worth it,” she says. “We should have had it done before we moved in.”
– A loft would better serve the needs of Cherie and Scott Farrell, whose new house in Aurora has a two-story family room — elegant, spacious and downright impractical.
“I wish we had used the space for a loft for a children’s playroom instead,” says Cherie Farrell. “Now, the baby stuff and the toys are all over the family room.”
– Better lighting would please Sandy and Wendell Ellis. They regret not consulting a lighting designer before building their new Geneva home, instead of relying on lighting-store displays.
“The can lights in the ceiling glare too much in the family room,” says Sandy Ellis. “And the bathroom lights aren’t adequate.
“We should have spent more time checking lights in model homes, at least, and made mental notes: Do they light upwards or downwards? Are they halogen or incandescent?”
Another bugaboo in the Ellis home: (mis)location of electrical floor outlets.
“We should have paid more attention to these in the family and living rooms, where we have cozy reading areas that require table or floor lamps by chairs or sofas,” says Sandy Ellis.
Because the floor outlets aren’t where they are needed, lamp cords create dangerous tripwires between the furniture and wall outlets. The Ellis’ basement is finished; so stringing wires to new floor outlets is easier said than done.
– Pocket doors were omitted from the home of John Barcelona, even though he is a home builder. While he installs lots of space-saving pocket doors in the homes he builds through his company, Chestnut Homes in Burr Ridge, he forgot to install one in his own home in the western suburbs.
“We blew it,” says Barcelona of the pocket door that he should have put between his master bedroom and adjacent sitting room. Now, he can’t sleep while his wife watches television in the sitting room, or vice-versa.
“It’s just one of those little things that you don’t realize [when you build] that will be a big issue,” he says.
Now, he uses this example with his customers to underline the importance of walking through models when possible, as opposed to making decisions from blueprints.
– Lack of a skylight is the chief gripe of another homebuilder, Pete Stefani of King’s Court Builders Inc. in Batavia. He failed to add a skylight in his master bathroom in his Naperville home.
Like many buyers, he says the never-ending selection process wore him down.
“By the time we got to the option of the skylight, we were `upgraded out,’ so it was easiest to just say no,” says Stefani. “Now, I wish I hadn’t made the hasty decision.”
– Lack of space for his home office tops the list of oversights for Mike McGee, proving that not even architects are immune from new-home regrets. McGee, of Geneva, says he underestimated how much space he needed for his new, first-floor home office.
In his previous home, his office was in the basement, so the space was unlimited.
“In my new office, I didn’t allow enough room for my files, catalog library or a second computer station,” admits McGee. “A couple of extra feet each way would really help.”
Ditto for his new laundry room. This 6-foot by 9-foot room looked good on paper, he says in retrospect. But that was before the family realized the laundry room would double as their cat’s powder room.
“The litter box area takes up a lot of room,” says McGee.
Whether they build their own homes or hire builders, most new-home buyers have something in common: If they could turn back the clock, they say, they would take more time to carefully consider each decision and its long-term consequences.
Although some of their regrets are can be fixed, like the Sewells’ hot-water shortage, it usually costs more to make changes after the homes are built. Other remedies just aren’t feasible, like adding headroom to the Wagners’ basement.
“It’s easier for buyers who have owned homes previously,” says Roger Mankedick, executive vice president of Palatine-based Concord Homes.
“First-time buyers, especially, often need advice on which options they should choose.”
When budget constraints limit upgrades — and they always do — Mankedick recommends going for kitchen upgrades first.
“That’s where you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck when it comes time to sell,” he says. But even years of home-building experience don’t make you immune to the wish-I-hads and the I-should-have-knowns, says Michael Klein of Lincolnwood-based Airoom Architects & Builders.
“After 44 years of building and remodeling, we’re still learning because every house is different,” he says.
“There is no perfect house. In hindsight, I think, every house has at least five regrets. In fact, if you have only five regrets, that’s great.”
Common home-buying oversights
– Getting too small a garage or basement, meaning a lack of storage space.
– Not providing enough space in a home office, or getting too-small closets.
– Designing too low a ceiling in the basement or on the main floor.
– Ordering the wrong windows or doors.
– Not seeking adequate wiring, or misplacing telephone outlets.
– Deciding on a too-small water heater.
