New Home Value, By The Numbers

When looking for a new home builder, many things can seem confusing or complicated. Looking for a deal can quickly become an undertaking, especially since home buying is a rare occurence. Here at Legacy Homes, we want our customers and potential customers to be savvy about buying their new homes and the details that go along with that. Today, we’re going to break down how you can tell how much home you’re getting for the money and highlight why you should build a new home with Legacy.

What if I asked you the simple question, “How do you quantify value in a house?” The first thing that may come to your mind is price per square foot. Price per square foot is a simple and common way to compare similarly equipped homes to each other. While price per square foot is not everything, it can help those who are not in the real estate industry to get a basic idea of what they are getting for their money. For example, let’s say that someone is in the market to buy a new house and they are shopping around between different builders. There are a few houses that are similar, more or less, with the same number of rooms, bathrooms, and the same features such as an island in the kitchen or a spa-style master bathroom. If the most expensive of these is $135/sf and the least expensive is $118/sf, buyers can get essentially the same features and setup for a lot less, in the long run.

Price per square foot is also helpful when comparing homes that are not as similar. If a buyer is looking at a house and sees that it is being sold for $98/sf and compares it to another house that is being sold for $147/sf but has a lot more features, they can get a sense of just how much more expensive all of those extra features are on paper.

At Legacy Homes, we strive to give our home buyers the most value for their dollar. This includes a set of home features that come at a competitive price per square foot. Square feet size is great, but consider a more important question, “What do you get IN the house?”

Legacy Homes’ Lifestyle Triangle is a concept that we’ve created to give our customers maximum usable space in the parts of their homes that they spend the most time in. By combining rooms such as the Cafe, Great Room, and Kitchen into a larger common area, our homes dedicate important functional space to areas in which you spend at least 80% of your time. With this feature in your new home, you can take advantage of every square foot of space that you pay for!

At Legacy Homes, energy efficiency is always a priority. When it comes to a home’s financial efficiency, energy efficiency is often at the top of the list. The HERS (Home Energy Rating System) of a home is an indication of how energy efficient it is, lower is better. To show just how energy efficient Legacy Homes are, the average HERS rating of an existing, not-new house is about 130. The average newly built home in the United States is around 100. Now, what about all new homes built by Legacy Homes? Every new home built by us comes in at a HERS rating of only 66. That’s 200% more efficient than an existing home on the market today. As a matter of fact, when compared to these existing homes, buying a new homes from us carries an approximate yearly energy savings of $1,257! The same features that save you energy and money also help push your home’s cost per square foot down the longer you own your home and the more energy and money that you save.

Speaking of maximizing usability, Legacy Homes’ Direct Connect Laundry feature is a way for new home owners to be able to quickly access their laundry area from the master bedroom. We implement this by connecting the master bedroom’s walk-in closet to the laundry area directly. This way, you can quickly and easily wash clothes without having to carry dirty clothes around the common areas of your home.

When it comes to getting to most house for your dollar, price per square foot is a great indicator of value. Other factors come into play, however, such as energy efficiency and usability features which only further increase the value of your new home. When you are interested in building your next home, we would love to talk to you more.