I’m interested in knowing how you tell builders cut corners on a house without keeping close tabs during construction.
Keep in mind, that I updated all of my house with home depot and lowes supplies.
Visit any open house built by Ryan and you’ll know not to buy one, regardless of price/sq ft. We plan on buying land in Clarence and building a ~2k sq ft ranch soon.
To tell you the truth, unless half ass work really bothers you it won’t effect the homes value. Which is mind blowing to me, but 80% of the general public are idiots and don’t notice the differences.
My dad general contracted his own house, which was really good for him as he works part time and is semi retired. If you work full time, you better have some vacation time or a flexible schedule.
So I have my PE, I’ve always wanted to build my own house. I’d love to be there with an inspector who says something like “oh well you’ll need to get a PE to sign off on this” then pull out my stamp and sign it off lol. Sucka.
Someday I’ll find where I really want to live or have a house and design a Frank Lloyd Wright esk house. Something very Craftsman / Mission deign driven. It’ll be small and cost a lot, but be full of high quality materials and real woods. ~Dreams~
+1, heard this rumor before and wanted to see more myself…yes $/sqft is lower than others, but like everything else in life you get what you pay for. Would never buy Ryan and glad we went with our builder, 7 years later not one issue and house still looks beautiful as the day we moved in.
So, who did you use?
There is a nice spot in starpoint with not enough land but close enough to the world it might be worth the extra drive.
Financially, it makes zero sense to me build a new home (or move for that matter), but as they say… Happy wife something something pennyless and alone…
I’m good at learning how not to do things.
Open house this weekend 
Sell my house, get $500.
…
More distinction today from Buffalo Business First, as we are named in the top ten academic rankings among all 431 upstate NY school districts:
- Pittsford (Mo…nroe County)
- Fayetteville-Manlius (Onondaga County)
- Cazenovia (Madison County)
- Honeoye Falls-Lima (Monroe County)
- Penfield (Monroe County)
- Bethlehem (Albany County)
- Skaneateles (Onondaga County)
- Brighton (Monroe County)
- East Aurora (Erie County)
- Williamsville (Erie County)
At the housewarming I went to I noticed all of the following. Of course I would never mention it to the owner:
Drywall that flexes really easily because they went with thin stuff.
Every electrical switch and outlet were the super cheap stuff.
Every door knob, pull handle etc were the lowest contractor grade garbage.
You look at some of the unfinished spaces like the basement and see how poorly the framing was done.
Drywall joint work that wouldn’t pass for a DIY much less a professionally built home.
Window caulking improperly done.
Screw pops in drywall already starting to show on a house that was 3 months old.
Mitering work that my 9 year old daughter could probably at least match in quality (just stuff the gaps with joint compound and slap some paint on there).
Carpet that shows a lot more wear than carpet should in a 3 month old house.
Closet doors where the gap varied considerably from top to bottom, telling me the doors frames weren’t square.
CMK Builders who mainly build out this way (Alden, Elma, Aurora but starting to see them move outwards more and more). It was a father/son run company but sadly Kevin Jr passed a few years back but they are still doing great. We moved in 7 years ago this June, never one issue and even hired them to add on another 18x20 attached to our 2.5 car garage. It came out beautiful and perfectly matches to the style/look of our house, looks like we bought it that way…and now have almost 5 car garage haha. I would definitiely recommend them and will actually be selling as soon and rebuilding with them on 30ish acres, once I can find the right lane.
Thread from years back about the house - http://www.nyspeed.com/showthread.php?75890-Photoshoot-(wife-s-new-ride-and-our-new-house)&highlight=CMK
My wife and I have been trying like hell to get into EA. It’s not easy, and seeing all the good media makes me feel like we will never find a place out there for what we are looking to spend these days. I work in the northtowns and still want to live out there and deal with the commute.
OP, Starpoint and the general Pendleton area is pretty nice. I’ve lived here my entire life. Pretty good school system. While there has been some BS in the town, there’s been some change in the town board which should help for the better. Combined property and school taxes on a home assessed at $100k is ~$4k a year. Half the town is grinder pump with sewer, half is leech field. Most of the town has gas but in some areas homes are on propane tanks. Pretty much everywhere has water at the street. Do the math to figure out what you’ll be paying. Anything you need is close. Less than 15 minutes and you have several options for anything as you’re right in the middle of Lockport, Amherst, and North Tonawanda while still being “rural”…although the area is still growing. 20 min to the river, 30 min to downtown, 30 min to Lake Ontario.
As far as selling a house without an agent, how does this work? My neighbor has asked me if I’m interested in her house before it goes to market next year, so I’m preparing for if this happens as the house is perfect for me. Can we both just go to my bank to do some paperwork? I’ve never owned a home… My current “rent” is paying taxes, utilities and upkeep on my current residence.
If you were going to buy your neighbors house, there are a bunch of things that need to be done depending on the town.
A decent lawyer is all both sides would need as far as I know.
Still looking for land if anyone knows where to get an acre or two.
95dime i would definitely not use a realtor. It will cost both of you a few thousand for nothing. Feel free to message me with questions or a good attorney i buy and sell houses without a realtor all the time.
We bought our house with just attorneys. No problems. You can handle the mortgage on your own with the bank.
As someone who has just sold two homes this year, USE A REALTOR TO SELL. I can’t say enough good things about the realtors we used.
Sold my house in Raleigh in less than 24 hours, then had some really difficult inspection and permit related issues that were a huge pain in the ass to navigate. At the end of it all, my realtor got me to the closing and got it done. I don’t think the deal would have closed without good realtors.
However, it sounds like you don’t own a house now, and you’re looking to buy from a person that you know. In that case, you just need a lawyer and a loan. Find a bank to give you a mortgage and ask around for real estate lawyer references.
We are not using a realtor for the house we are building now. We are working directly with the home builder (local small business, not national builder). But that’s an entirely different situation.
My experience with realtors is that they tell you everything they know which takes about 5 minutes. If you need anything else out of them they look like deer caught in the headlights. Do they take a 2 hour course to get their license or something like that? If I ran my business like they run theirs I would have been out of business a long time ago.
And… Everyone is like “Use my guy he is great!” Yeah… he sucked too. It seems like a half hearted industry.
My 2 cents. 
You’ve only worked with shitty realtors.
I guess I just happened to get 6 bad realtors in a row. I am sure the rest are super awesome.
Ha
Truth be told, when things are going smoothly, it’s a fairly straightforward process. Especially in NY, since both buyer and seller will have their own lawyer. When any oddball scenarios arise, though, there is a ton of value. With our house in Raleigh, the buyer was a ROYAL PITA. They insisted on bringing in 4 different inspectors. They tried getting us to pay $10k so they could get new windows. They insisted that we fix items which we OBVIOUSLY visible when they looked at the house and made their offer. They wanted us to pull permits for work that had been done without permits (and only gave us 1 week to get it). Our realtor was able to navigate the permit process, so that I didn’t have to take time off of work (which I could not do). He was able to work out reasonable concessions to the inspection results. He had professional photos of the house taken and personally conducted an open house, at which he spent 4 hours of his Saturday doing. He spent A LOT of time working things out. Time that I, flat out, do not have.
I can tell you that if you counted up the number of hours he spent, and the amount of money he walked away with, it wasn’t a whole lot. And in the end, a realtor with access to list on MLS will get you more showings than any For Sale by Owner listing out there. Even if you’re listed in MLS through some kind of listing service, buyer agents will avoid your house because they don’t want to deal with you.
Glorifed locksmiths in my opinion. I think boardjnky4 managed to land the 1 in 10,000 who give a shit about their job and work hard. As far as his difficult buyer, I’d have told him to go fuck himself in short order.
Agents have quite the union going.
I finally caved to my wife’s constant pestering to use an agent.
Agents can absolutely be helpful when trouble arises… BUT, I don’t see 6% of value to remove my house from the blacklist.
Like all things, you pay a premium for convenience.
Also note, Agents will lie about for sale by owner properties. My wife called one about our house. It had apparently sold.
Real estate brokerage is where it’s at. 90 hours of training and a test (I think it’s 90). Then take 2% from all of your agents for the opportunity
to sell houses.