Questions on New Home's upgrades

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FTHB

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Hi everybody,

Newcome here.  This maybe a stupid question, but please help me out if you can.

We are about to purchase a new home, and have some questions about floor upgrades.  Generally speaking, suppose that we use comparable quality materials, which is the more preferable way to do the upgrades, through the builder or by finding my own contractors?  Suppose we use our own contractors, could we purchase the new home w/o their cheap carpets, just to make it ready for the hardwood floors? 

Thanks!
 
Builder plus:  convenient, warranty
Builder minus: cost (taxes for life of house)
Contractor plus:  price
Contractor minus:  they're contractors (watch Holmes on homes)

Any that involves drilling, cutting, you might want to go with builder.  We got an alarm after we got our house and will never let anyone blindly drill thru our ceiling again.  Carpet and landscaping should be ok, get good recs.  Make sure drainage is setup correctly, if you choose a landscape contractor.  Take lots of pics if possible before your house is done to know where to cut/drill for any installations.
 
Thanks for the input!

"Carpet and landscaping should be ok, get good recs."

We just want to upgrade the builder's carpet to wood floors, so it should be fine?

"Take lots of pics if possible before your house is done to know where to cut/drill for any installations."

This is great advice!  Thanks!
 
FTHB said:
Suppose we use our own contractors, could we purchase the new home w/o their cheap carpets, just to make it ready for the hardwood floors? 
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When we last bought a new house, we were told by the builder that escrow required that the house has some type flooring installed before we can close escrow and move in.

But that was long long ago. You should probably ask your builder if there is an option not to have any flooring installed and see what they say.
 
Thanks! 
[/quote]
When we last bought a new house, we were told by the builder that escrow required that the house has some type flooring installed before we can close escrow and move in.

But that was long long ago. You should probably ask your builder if there is an option not to have any flooring installed and see what they say.
[/quote]
 
bones said:
I've seen houses close with just a subflooring.  I would ask your builder - no sense in having builder grade carpet installed and ripping it out a day later.  You may even get a credit?
Click to expand...

Exactly what I thought.  I will feel guilty to rip out the new carpet w/o even using them, even though they are cheap.
 
Some lenders, including BofA, will not let you close with bare floors.
In those cases, ask the builder to put as much carpet as possible so it's easy to get rid of.
Any tile work will require extra cost to rip it out.
 
I have purchased a TIC property recently and am going through the same steps right now, TIC will need to give you the flooring as per the minimum spec at which they price their base house at. This meant I get tile in entryway, carpet in great room and tile in kitchen. They refused to even change it to all carpet in the ground floor for the reason i mentioned as they would have to drop the price below what their base started at to be able to satisfy the title company and this could cause a comp reduction of the tract ( is my guess). Carpet is free to demo but tile costs 1$ or so per sq.ft to remove which is why i was trying to get them to do all carpet at the least and was turned down after repeated attempts with different levels in the Irvine company.

Long story short I have purchased with the above setup and will be ripping out the entire flooring and replacing with travertine in the ground floor and hardwood upstairs. As a price comparison I was able to get most products (stone or hardwood) two to three times(even after the joke they called a builder discount) lesser than what the design company wanted to charge me but the caveat here would be to do your research and pick the best people to do this. I have been spending my saturdays for the last two months talking to and reviewing quotes with contractors. If you want to PM me I can help you with the what I've learned from the process so far.

As far as warranties go you will not lose much in the living areas but the bathrooms is where you should be very careful. You will lose warranty on the plumbing in every bathroom that you mess with but the TIC warranty on the plumbing is only for 1 year anyways so I got over that pretty fast. The only areas I paid for was inside shower flooring, this has a hot mop below it which is the water barrier under the tile and you do not want to mess with it other than at construction time. Any damage to the hot mop will require a complete gutting of the shower and reconstruction of the shower stall. 

The only upgrades i did were all the electrical and entertainment stuff to prevent any drilling later. Even if you don't get a fan or center drop light installed get the access lines installed so you don't have to drill later, some things like their plasma conduit are ridiculous (it is a plastic tube that they stick between the framing and stucco over so you are mount ready) but  get those to not have to break walls later.
 
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