In my last post I talked about hubby’s and my search for a new home in our new city. After less than a month of looking at homes online that fit our criteria  — within biking distance to downtown, 2+ bedrooms, 2+ bathrooms, backyard, garage, open layout, energy efficient, and updated — we gave up.

Actually, I should specify.

We gave up looking at old homes and started searching for new homes. Brand spanking new!

We could have gotten a pre-owned beauty like this home on the left, but what we really had our eye on was a brand-spankin’ new home, such as the one on the right. It wasn’t just a decision about having a home that looked good on the outside, but one that looked and worked great on the inside, too.

Surprisingly enough, some of the homes in the new communities were priced just as much per square foot, if not cheaper, as some of the older homes we were looking at, but with the obvious advantage of being brand new and updated.

Okay, so that price range they advertise may not be accurate at all, but they are still a good deal for a brand new home.

While we never set foot in a single “pre-owned” home during our home hunt, we did visit several model homes in new communities. Visiting the model homes was an awesome and fun experience during our home decision process and I’m so glad we went down that road instead of the alternative. Visiting model homes was like combining house hunting with shopping at IKEA. You get to go home shopping and at the same time, get great ideas on how to decorate your living space.

Pie was concerned about the important aspects of our new home, and as you can tell, I was concerned with the more “cute” aspects of our home while we looked at models.

Part of the reason we never set foot in a pre-owned home was because we never saw any online that piqued our interest enough to see in person. Oh my! How house hunting has changed over the years! Now you can see just about everything online without having to set foot outside your own home — or in our case, our tiny, rented, one-bedroom apartment!

More importantly though, we heard so many personal stories about the process of buying a pre-owned home in Denver and we were so turned off from the idea of buying a home this way. Much of it involved looking at listings daily — and even hourly — and being ready to jump when you found a nice home you liked that was a good deal. Many of the homes that were in decent shape close to downtown would elicit crazy bidding wars and that was not something that we wanted to deal with.

We loved the idea of leisurely visiting the new model homes and deciding at our own pace whether we were interested in that particular home or not. Moreover, with the model homes, we were able to choose from so many different layouts and endless options. It was a very enticing idea to be able to pick a home that was tailored exactly to our needs and wants.

House hunting in one of the new model homes by David Weekley.

Around the time that Pie and I had moved to Denver and began house hunting, it just so happened that hubby’s twin cousins were also each in the process of house hunting with their spouses in order to move out of their smaller living spaces. They had both done a lot of their own research and came to the same conclusion that we did — that buying a pre-owned home didn’t make as much sense for their circumstances and lifestyles as a new home. Both his cousins decided to purchase brand spanking new homes, so they were a great source of information and support on purchasing a new home.

With their advice, they helped us affirm our decision. We were definitely going to purchase a new home. But where?