New Custom Built Home vs Pre-existing Home in San Antonio!!

Personally I would prefer New, if you go that route make sure you check out the company your doing business with first. You might find a better deal used guess it really depends on what your looking for.. Check into the taxes before you make any decision prior to purchasing. Taxes are based on the square footage of your house and can really rack up depending upon where you choose to live. C.

well, if you get a new home you wont get irritating junk mail from previous tenents!! plus you know how old everythink like your ac and appliances are and the history of your house.

Hmmmm. I used to be in construction and you wont believe what some of those workers do while building houses. Let's just say, some of them are not supervised, make mistakes, and no one hears about them. If you decide to build, I recommend D.B. Horton or Carl Rogers Custom Homes. That guy is fantastic and on his own but he does awesome work. He is out of Boerne.
I would have one built definitely. It is stressfull if you pick the wrong company. I do not suggest Centex or KB. Their is a class action lawsuit going on against KB and their subcontractors. If you decide to be your own contractor, be prepared for tremendous stress but at least you will have a lot of control. Good Luck and God Bless!

In our experience, a new, builder-constructed home (is that what you mean by custom-built?) is usually less expensive than an existing home in a nice neighborhood. We built our current home in 2000 and now couldn't afford to buy another home in our current neighborhood due to appreciation. We want to move closer to our church (NW side) but have been unable to find any existing home in a good neighborhood for less than we can build a new home. So we're building again.

We've been looking at existing homes for months but have found - at least on the NW side - a lot of issues with location. Nice homes next to scary neighborhoods, or with not-so-good schools, or in bad traffic areas. But homes in good, newer areas with good schools are out of our price range. (We're looking for 4-5 bedrooms.) We haven't even broken ground on our new home yet, but it's already appreciated $3000. (Same house in same neighborhood costs $3K more this month than last month.)

Now, the disadvantage is setting up a new house . . . things like blinds, paint, and landscaping. Tough to do that yourself with young kiddos. We're addressing those issues by: having our builder install all the blinds, using a builder that completely sods the front and back yards, and we're thinking of hiring someone to paint the inside of the house before we move in. However, our home situation is a little different that yours. We both work outside the home and have a 2 year old and new baby on the way, so our children will be less independent than yours - you may be able to do some of those things while your son entertains himself.

Hope this helps. Good luck to you!
K.