Anyone who’s ever purchased an existing home knows that every home, no matter how well kept up it has been or how careful the previous owners have been, is going to have some issues. If you’re lucky, those issues are going to be relatively small. If you’re unlucky, buying an existing home can turn into a money pit and put you in debt way beyond your home loan.

Because of this, lots of folks choose to build new homes. They assume that new construction will be sturdier and more reliable than an existing home, and in general they are right.

However, new homes can have problems, too. Here are some of the nightmare scenarios you can find when building a new home:

• The home is built over an old tree stump. If your home doesn’t have a basement, you can’t be certain what’s located just a few feet below ground. That tree stump can lead to chronic termite infestations, and that can be a horribly difficult problem to fix.
• The back yard has a huge, buried boulder in the back yard that you only discover when you try to put in a pool.
• The driveway pitch is so steep that your car’s bumper scrapes the ground every time you enter the driveway and whenever you enter the garage. You wind up having to buy a truck or 4×4 just to avoid the scraping.
• You move into the new home and have your washer and dryer delivered, only to discover there’s no gas hookup for the dryer – only electric.

In some cases, the builder may be able to work with you to address some of these issues, but in other cases you’re looking at huge out of pocket expenses.

There are some minor annoyances, too, that you can find with any new home, including things like:

• Your furniture or appliances don’t fit through the doors to the rooms they need to be in.
• Electrical outlets or light switches may be at inconvenient locations.
• The layout may not be intuitive. For example, the dining room may have no direct access to the kitchen, or the kitchen may be at the far end of the house from the garage.
• The clothes dryer door may interfere with a path in or out of the laundry room or another room.
• The dishwasher door may prevent more than one person from being in the sink area at a time.

Before you sign the dotted line on your new home loan, make sure you know what you’re getting into.

Photo via camshafter