 So you just bought a new house, new construction. Thought it's gonna be all easy peasy and look just like the model home. No, not really. If you're new here, welcome. I'm Bianca Renee and I am a recently new home owner. We bought our first house. We decided to go new construction because we just hated everything that already currently existed. So we pretty much like busted at Thanos and said, I'll do it myself. Now when you hear new construction that does not mean that I just bought a piece of dirt land and then we like built our house. We bought within a new construction community so they were gonna build these houses regardless. We just got in early enough so that we could make some slight adjustments to what we're looking for. But there might not be as much freedom as you would expect when building your own home from scratch when working with a builder. Let me just tell you this. Builders want everything to be pretty much cookie cutter. They bought X amount of this, X amount of that and they just wanna make the same house over and over again. A lot of people don't like that but I mean, if it looks nice, I don't care if my neighbor has a similar house. That's a preference thing. But for our community, for example, there was three different models to choose from. So you pretty much choose your floor plan based on those three different models. Now when you go to the models, just know that those houses are gonna be death out to get you to walk in like, wow, all this for this price? No, the price on the paper is not equivalent to what the model home would cost. When a professional interior designer comes, it's gonna look gorgeous and they're gonna have all the little details that are not included in your house. But before we even get to like the pretty stuff, let's talk about the things that you would obviously think would be included that aren't. Now if you follow me on TikTok, I did share some of these already there first. So if you wanna hear more about my home journey, it's my life in general, make sure to follow me on TikTok and Instagram at Ms. Bianca Renee. But the number one thing that shocked a lot of you was lights. The fact that you can see me right now in this room is an extra cost because if I didn't put the lights that you see in this room, it would be bitch black. Now I can't speak for every single construction site ever but for our builders, there were no lights in any of the bedrooms. So you know, when you look up, you see like recessed lighting or at least a ceiling fan, no. Basically, if it wouldn't look weird to have a lamp in that room, they ain't giving you no lights for that room. So like in our little like loft area above the stairs, no lights, none of the bedrooms, not the master, but lights did come included in the kitchen above the stairs because you wouldn't put a lamp on the stairs, you wouldn't put a lamp in the kitchen and the bathrooms, the garage. That's about it. Family room, dark. So one of the first things that we did was that we hired an electrician to then add the lights. You can't add the lights when you go to the design center. So after you purchase the home, you then go to the design center and you start picking out all your customizations and there they will try to upsell you on everything including getting lights. But I kind of ended up doing the math and it was cheaper to just hire an electrician to do it later. Even though it would be way easier for your electrician to come in while your house is still like in build mode and before they seal the walls and paint everything but they're not allowed to step on the property until you close escrow, meaning the house is yours. So then your electrician has to come in and like cut holes in your wall and try to find the wires. So it's like an annoying extra step to finish the house and then go back in and put the lights or just letting them do it because it's your house and you're paying for it anyways. They don't let you and show this liability, blah, blah, blah. So it's annoying, but we saved a lot of money by doing so. Now that you are no longer in the dark you might wanna go outside and play in the sun. No, no backyard. I mean, you get a backyard, you get the dirt but there's no landscaping included in a lot of new construction. When I first heard that I thought that was crazy. Like what do you mean there's no landscape? I gotta buy this tree, I gotta buy this grass, I gotta buy the cement floor. Yes, our backyard came with a California room which is just like a covered cement patio. Technically it's like under the primary bedroom but there is no grass and no plants or trees in our backyard. We did get a couple little shrubs in the front yard because they realized that nobody wanted to pay for landscaping so a lot of the neighborhoods just looked really like not cute and like dirt because nobody did it so they started to give us some succulent and some ground covering so that the neighborhood would just look nicer overall. But besides the couple shrubs, that's it. I quickly became thankful for having the steps to then walk into the house. Like I'm surprised that's included. They don't go all the way into the sidewalk but we got a couple steps that connect to the driveway. The next thing you might notice when walking into a model home is how beautiful the floor is. Like laminate, vinyl, hardwood, you ain't getting any of that. You get carpet and you only get like three colors to choose from. Beige, darker beige or gray. We went with the nice beige. And at first I was like, man, I don't want carpet, I want the nice vinyl, it looks so nice. But then I really thought about it and now I love having the carpet because I have two kids, I have a toddler and I'm seven months old now. And you know, he's gonna start to learn how to crawl. They're always rolling around playing on the floor. So I'm actually glad to have the carpet in our family room, on our stairs and all upstairs. You only get this certain type of vinyl and they only give you like, I think one option but then two colors to choose from, gray or like a tan. They only give you that in the wet room. That's considered your kitchen, your laundry room and your bathrooms. But anywhere else, it's gonna be carpet unless you upgrade even the stairs. So without, we'd cross that bridge later in life when everyone's walking, no one's crawling and we're not really playing on the floor as much. But I'm in no rush. They could mess up this carpet and we could upgrade later. Now one of the big upgrades that we did decide to upgrade was our kitchen countertops. The standard stock, they only gave us one option to choose from and it was like a black and white speckled, was it marble? I believe it was marble countertop. Being an influencer and like social media, everything needs to be like white and clean. Like we live in an Apple store. So the black speckles wasn't really the vibe I was going for when like creating content in the kitchen. So I really wanted like my pretty white countertop. So we did upgrade to do the countertop. I was debating on if it would be cheaper to upgrade later but when you do upgrade, you're already paying the cost of like the marble that's existing that comes with the house and then you're just paying the upgrade fee on top of that. Versus if you do it later, now you have to pay a construction company to demo your current brand new countertop, throw that away and then bring in a whole other one. So it's gonna get messy, it's more work to take something out. So you might just wanna do that at the design center. The only floor that we did upgrade was right when you walk into our house like the foyer area because they were gonna give us tile. And when I was calling around for different flooring companies, it costs a lot more to even demo tile because with vinyl or laminate, you could just pull it up, rip it up, carpet, you could just pull it up, it's easy. Most companies don't charge you to take that out but they will charge you to demo tile. So I was thinking like future proof, if I do wanna upgrade, I better get rid of this now so it's not gonna cost more to take it out. So we did upgrade to like really nice. I believe it's a vinyl floor in the front and I love it. Now here's a really big expense that I did not expect when buying a new home which was solar panels. This is a California thing, I do live in California and apparently they just passed a law that all new construction must have solar panels on the roof. Okay, it's cool, it's gonna be good in the long run. Maybe we'll get an electric car and we gotta have a little charging station in the garage. Our electricity cost should be lower now that we had to buy lights. But we couldn't even shop around or do any type of like government incentive program. We had to buy our solar panels through them. You could buy it or lease it. And that was an additional $20,000. 20,000 that I just did not expect. It is not on the price when you buy the house. It's like here's the cost of the house and the one she agreed everything. It's like oh, by the way, you have to get solar panels that need $20,000 and you have to use our company. Little sketch, little sketch. So that sucks, the only good thing is that it is a really big tax write off and you can include it in your mortgage payments like when you get a loan, you could lump it in there. We chose to purchase it instead of lease it because I was told that when it comes to reselling your house, somebody might not want to buy your house if they have to take over your solar lease and they'd rather just be like purchased. So something to think about. Now here's something that you probably knew weren't included but you didn't really remember until you moved in the house. One of them being your appliances. You're gonna have to get a fridge and a washer and dryer. That's gonna be a pretty big lump sum right there. The house does, ours did come with the other kitchen appliances. So we got the dishwasher, we got the stove and we got the oven and we actually upgraded to get this microwave oven top bottom situation. So we upgraded our appliances to the better ones. Like it's like a microwave oven and then a normal oven versus just like the oven that's underneath the counter. So now I have more cabinet space because my oven and microwave are stacked. So we did that but we also got our appliances on Black Friday. So depending when you're moving, definitely hit those sales. We got like a three appliance bundle pack of some sort and we love them. Now here's another big one that shocked basically our parents and just anyone that has a house is that our house did not come with rain gutters. Now usually that would not be a problem here in sunny California because we never really get rain. I always say we really only have like pre-summer, summer, mid-summer and post-summer. And then like five days of rain throughout the year. Tell me why. As soon as we moved in the house. Oh my goodness gracious. Never seen that much rain in our history of living in something California when both my husband and I were born and raised here in Cali. So much so that it like flooded many of our friends' houses. Everybody's realizing they got leaks now, not us thank God. But my dirt backyard was getting pretty muddy and we just decided not to get them in the upgrade. We wanted to get them later. We thought we'd have more time but we did kind of buy in the winter. Hopefully now we are done with the rain even though it did actually snow here. Look at our car, this is really happening. This is really happening right now. So those are pretty much all like the big ones you should really keep in mind and or budget for when buying your new home and to ask about to see if it does come included with your house. Now I really love when some builders have model homes that show you the base. Like there is one building company that they have three models, at least three. And the first one is like, this is how it looks with no upgrades at all. This is how it looks with some upgrades and here's a house that has it all decked out. I think that's just like such an honest way to sell a house. It's not going to be preferred because obviously you're going to sell more when you show all the glitz and glam. But realistically, you just want to know what you're paying for. And if I could see like, okay, this is what I'm getting this is what I'm starting off with at this price. Then you can decide if you want to be fancy. But if you show someone the fancy then you strike away all their dreams. It's a little much. So hopefully you could find a builder that has one of those options. So you can see a bare minimum model home but they don't want to show you that. Now let's go over the little details that like aren't a big deal but once you move into your house you're like, oh, we don't have that. For us that would be window treatment. One of my favorite things about our home is our view. And I love looking at it. And then once it's like seven in the morning I'm like, oh, I'm still looking at him looking at the sunrise actually because you have no window treatments, no blinds anywhere. And you don't realize that you need them until you're trying to walk your little naked self to the shower. And you're wondering if your neighbor can see your naked little booty. We just got our blinds last week and we've been in this house for a couple of months. So we've been running to the shower like this. We've been going in the bathroom like trying to hide ourselves making sure we have towels on hanging towels over our shower. It was a little much. We did get temporary like paper ones but then they fell down. So we were just jetting it in and out the shower. So budget for blinds and shutters because those are also not cheap. That was like at least another, you know, three grand for not even all the windows. We just chose the main bathroom ones and like the street view but we still got some more windows to cover. Those might just have to be curtains. If you go to a model home and you see any texture on the wall, not included all like the wall details like those little squares and stuff or there's like wood panels or crown molding, not included. The drawers and the bathroom and the kitchen all the clothes nice and softly, not yours. You're gonna have to pay extra for soft closing drawers. Oh, there's a door that separates your bathroom from your bedroom. That's extra. It's just gonna be open. There's a door for the toilet room but if I wanted a door to separate the primary bedroom and the primary bathroom, that's extra. And if you wanted to be a barn door, that's extra. Any barn doors, not included. Regular doors, sure. Thank God we get the doorknobs. Another little thing that we have but I didn't think to ask about, what we kind of don't have it, is a mailbox. There's no mailbox right in our front yard. It's like one of those like community mailboxes. So it's just a big square and I now have to like go around the corner to get our mail out of a whole box of everyone else's like numbers. It's not a big deal to walk around the corner but I can't just like go to my front yard and check my mailbox, put something in and out. I have to remember to like go check my mail around the corner. Something I literally didn't think about until we moved in. So I also asked you guys on Instagram if you want to follow me, follow me at Ms. Beyond Grenet and I said, what are some things that you didn't expect to have to buy if you bought new construction? And some of you, like a big expense is a fence that separates your house from your neighbor's house. So my friend, India Batson, if you guys don't follow her she also makes really great content and she also does bought a new home. So we're both kind of sharing our home journey so follow her if you're interested but she had to purchase a fence in her backyard. Like a huge perimeter fence and that she said was a lot of money. Luckily our house did come with fences dividing everything. We couldn't choose which fence we wanted but I'm glad we got a privacy fence because our neighbor just has like the black bars so everyone could just see into their backyard. I don't know why they stopped right after ours but I'm glad we got the good fence. And another little random one you guys told me some of your homes didn't come with the toilet paper holder. The little thing on the wall where you put the toilet paper roll apparently that did not come in a lot of your homes. Ours did, woo hoo, thanks, we must be fancy but you had to like buy a toilet paper holder or put one on the wall. In the bathroom like the shower bathtub combo there's no bar for your shower curtain. So it's just open. Your house is also gonna come all white. Like I'm okay with that as a content creator I think it's just like white and even clean but if you want to paint the walls a certain color before you get in that's extra, you guessed it. So with all these little things do I love my home? Yes, I really do. I was in a position here in California where I was either gonna pay the same amount for a ugly fixer upper or get a brand new home for the same price. If you buy an ugly fixer upper it should come at a cheaper cost so then you could use that extra money to upgrade your house because if you don't wanna look at that floral wallpaper or the green carpet for a year you gotta rip it up immediately. Where with this house there's certain little upgrades that I wanna do but if I don't do it like I can live with it just being white. I don't feel like disgusted in living in my home. Like even if I do nothing else to the house well now we got the backyard done. Gonna do a whole landscaping video soon as well. Make sure you're subscribed but inside the house we're good. I just have to remind myself that I don't have to turn our home into my Pinterest board overnight. Really well too, that is so expensive. So I think those are all the main things you have to consider when buying new construction. Make sure you ask all of these questions when you're going through the model home and you're really considering that home have the person walk with you and just ask questions. I felt like I was like being super annoying but I needed answers. So you're like, is this included? Is this included? Is this included? Like things that you wouldn't even think you'd have to ask. Oh, the tread on the staircase. Like the open bars like that makes it all nice and open when you look up. Now it was extra. Otherwise it would just be a closed off wall. Like you wouldn't think to ask about the tread on the staircase but you do. Make them point out every little thing that's an upgrade and ask for photos of what it would look like without the upgrade. You really wanna try to get these answers before you sign and go to the design center. I know that might sound obvious but for me I felt like I was like kinda rushed into it because we had to make the decision before the next day they were gonna start construction. So if you wanted to make any structural changes to the house like we added like a three panel sliding door instead of it just opening like this to the backyard. We wanted a fifth bedroom instead of it being a den. So that meant they had to add a wall and a door and like another bathroom. So if you wanna make any like hardcore changes like that to the home, we had to do it immediately. So we signed and then I didn't even know like the final cost of the house because you don't go to the design center until like two, three weeks later and then you gotta decide if you want solar. So there's just so much added to the price that once you say, okay, I want this house, you don't even know the final price of the house. And that's what made me a little uncomfortable. She was like, oh my God, you bought the house and congratulations and we were just like, what do we just do? Like what do we, how much is it? So it's never a good feeling to buy something before you know the price but that's kinda what happened to us. So I would not recommend that part. Try to get as many numbers as you can. But if you know anyone that is looking to move anytime soon or you are considering new construction, please share this video with them so they are not as stressed. Everyone that I've talked to that has done new construction has said that they'll never do it again. I always heard that and I was like, ah, I'm sure it'll be fine. Like what could happen? Yes, delays with construction but luckily ours is only a little month. I get it. It's a long tedious process. While they're building it, you gotta make sure you don't buy anything or touch your credit score for the whole duration of them building it. So you're kinda like walking on eggshells for a while and your taxes can get messy. I would love to have just found the perfect dream home at the price I wanted but that just didn't exist for me here in California and I wasn't leaving. I'm not gonna say I'll never do it again but I would hope to not have to go through new construction again. I wanna continue to make more home content for you guys from when I do start to decorate, from our landscaping, to any other questions you may have about buying a home. Please leave them down below and I'll try my best to answer or maybe I can make a whole video on that topic if a lot of people also wanna know. So thanks for watching. Share this video, give me a thumbs up and subscribe. I post new videos every Sunday and remember to follow me on Instagram and TikTok at me as Bianca Renee. I'll see you guys next time. Thanks for watching, Bianca Renee, today.