gala522-I really like your house. its got the craftsman look with modern amenities. Our budget was/is so small that most builders laughed at us (we've got the finial number down to a little less than $124 a sqft including the land). We really wanted to buy an old house for the charm, but you can't buy one for less than around $230k here in Asheville and then they need to be updated with all new wiring, plumbing, HVAC, etc. Luckily with us doing all the finish work on it, we were able to splurge a little and some of the areas we were able to convince the builder that it really wasn't any more work to achieve a certain look. We did go with exposed rafter tails and they look great, but they are a pain in the butt to paint (as you can see, i am the one painting them in the first picture i posted).

I look at my mortgage as just another investment opportunity. My mortgage rate is currently 4.5% before taxes (about 3% after taxes). It makes more sense to me to put the extra money into other financial assets that I expect to return more than 3% after taxes. My house is still my house and I'll continue living there as long as I like. All the money that would have gone to pay my mortgage will still be there in those alternate investments, so if I ever find paying down my mortgage to be more advantageous, I'll do so. Even if I paid off my mortgage, I still wouldn't have that sense of perfect peace knowing that no one could take my house away. I pay about $1,000 a month just in property taxes and home owners fees. If I became destitute, I'd have to move anyway. My house is currently mortgaged with a 5/1 ARM. If, after four more years, the rate goes up more than I'd like, then I'll pay off my mortgage. If that happens and rates go down substantially below what I think I can earn elsewhere, I'll trun right around and put another mortgage on my house and invest the money. Contrary to the Rich Dad Poor Dad stuff, I do see my house as an income producing asset. It produces an implied return equal to what I would pay to rent it. If it ever got substantially cheaper to rent a home compared with what I thought it would cost to own one (include expected appreciation or depreciation), I'd sell my home and rent one. This logic either doesn't seem to hold with most Californians or they seem to think that homes will continue to appreciate dramatically in the coming years. My quick appraisal during my last visit showed houses selling for about 2 times what would be justified based on rental rates. I suspect that a lot of Californians are in for a nasty shock as home prices flatten or decline in the next several years.

Honestly, I'd be much more comfortable buying an 11 year old house over a brand new one. I have heard and experienced too many horror stories regarding shoddy construction of new houses - unless you really bone up on good building practices and are there supervising every day, you really have no idea if your new house is built well or not. My sister-in-law just spent $400K on a new Pulte townhome (a big tract builder around here). In one year, she has had about 5 separate plumbing leaks, a basement leak, several leaks at the windows, her kitchen floor has heaved and had to be torn up and replaced twice, and her heating bills are running over $500/mo because the houses weren't insulated correctly and the HVAC was sized wrong. And everyone in her development is having similar problems. They just don't build new homes well anymore. Even "slightly old" houses can have really bad problems. We bought a 3 year old house that was custom-designed and built with very high end materials (cedar roof, 4-side stucco siding). We ended up having to spend upwards of $140K fixing it because it leaked like a sieve. We are now in litigation with the builder trying to recover our repair costs, but have spent over $10K in lawyer fees with no end in sight. I will never ever buy a brand new house again - in fact, I've sworn that any house I buy will be at least 80 years old, LOL! But by the time a house is 10 or 11 years old, any serious problems will probably have shown up - our house had been leaking from day 1 but it took until the house was 6 years old before we discovered it, since all the leaks and damage were confined to the insides of the walls for the first several years. I'll link to our saga for anyone who's interested. Here is a link that might be useful: Our house...

Give us a photo so that we can see.