Whether buying or building, keep your eyes wide open

FILE  NATION MEDIA GROUP

By LIZA GIKUNI 

 

In Summary

• Constructing your own house is a very personal thing. Like carrying a baby to term, it calls for intense planning, patience, and care and is faced with challenges, and sometimes even losses. In spite of these, seeing your final product is very gratifying and the process provides an invaluable experience. Buying, on the other hand, saves you the hustle and time, but is fraught with risks

I clearly remember the day we broke the ground to build our second house. As I watched the activity around me — workmen digging up the red soil, wheelbarrows to-ing and fro-ing, dust suspended in the hot air — I was filled with excitement, pride, and apprehension.

What I felt then and what I had felt when we moved into our newly bought house three years earlier was vastly different. It was not just the scale of the build that led to these different feelings, but the fact that we had decided to manage the building project ourselves.

We had reached this decision as a result of our unfortunate experiences with our ready-built house. We had initially chosen to buy a house because the price was right, we planned on starting a family, and my husband and I had no time to take on a building project as we were both working full-time.

We had, however, during the construction of our home, visited the site, given our input, and asked the developer to make changes and corrections where mistakes were apparent. Some were sorted out, but we had to constantly push to have our requirements and standards met.

On completion, we were happy to move into our very own home at last. We had barely settled in, however, when we started noticing problems with our house. First it was the electricals, then the plumbing and sewage systems. The sinks and shower cubicles leaked, the taps would constantly run dry, gurgle, and develop what our plumber called “air pockets” that had to be repeatedly cleared. When water did come, the taps fitfully spat it out.

The toilets constantly clogged up due to either the wrong size of pipes or wrong gradient and manholes that were themselves pot-holed such that the sewage could not flow. Most dangerous of all were the minor electric shocks we received whenever we attempted to use the showers, which resigned us to the use of buckets from time to time.

The roof leaked when it rained, the gutters did not work as they were not aligned properly and, up to this day, I cannot not tell you the function of some switches in my house as they do not seem to light anything, while some are interchanged.

With time, we were attacked by termites and had to save our door frames and woodwork by calling in exterminators who left both a dent in our pockets and ugly marks on our tiles caused by drilling at intervals to inject the insect-killing chemicals.

Worst of all, we came to discover that our septic tank was shallower than my grandmother’s pit latrine. We had to call in an exhauster — my husband politely calls them “honey-suckers” — every two or so years.

Attempting repairs was like setting off a chain reaction. When we tried to unstick our China-fabricated front door, the wall around it cracked; when air-pockets in the pipes were cleared, a leak would develop somewhere. Our home had turned into a house of horrors.

We constantly had workmen in our home repairing this or the other. The mere thought of our house and its catalogue of defects sends me into minor bouts of depression, the only positive thing being that it seems to have withstood the recent floods and thunderstorms ravaging the country. Even as I write, the putty is falling off the glass in places and I expect to be collecting broken window panes if I do not call in yet another fundi very soon.

It was this frustration, weariness, and disappointment that led us to by-pass property developers and believe that building any other house ourselves, though demanding, could not be as problematic or as painful as what we had, and continue to, experience.

We are now two years into our build. I have come to compare building with pregnancy. Buying a built house is like engaging a surrogate mother. Though you may be filled with anticipation, you may not share in all her experiences, but you still get your baby.

Building a house yourself, on the other hand, is a very personal thing. Like carrying a baby to term, it calls for intense planning, patience, and care and is faced with challenges and sometimes even losses. In spite of these, seeing your final product is very gratifying and the process provides an invaluable experience.

Below are a few tips to consider, whether you choose to buy or build your own house.

Building? The Do’s and Don’ts

Consider your location depending on your needs, whether building or buying. Will it be residential or commercial? Do you want to buy leasehold or freehold property?

Also, consider the security, water, and power connections, and look for property that is close to facilities that are important to you (or your tenants or buyers) such as good roads, hospitals, schools, public transport, shopping complexes, parks, and your place of work.

 

Consider the lay of the land, what is on it and what may lie beneath it. A sloppy plot would be more expensive to build on as it may have to be levelled out first.

Consider the type of soil. Black-cotton soil, for example, can turn into a quagmire and is more expensive to build on. Power lines passing over your land may need to be re-directed, which could cost and also delay your project. We once came across a plot for sale that had latrines scattered all over it. Any interest we may have had evaporated the instant we imagined breaking ground.

Make sure you fully understand the building plans, the size of the building in relation to your land, and the size of the rooms. Mark them out on the ground if you have to.

Check your builders’ credentials and ensure that your team (engineers, architect, foreman, and other workmen) are qualified, will listen to you, communicate clearly, and are easy to work with. Get referrals from people they have worked for and, where possible, visit finished sites they have worked on. Beware if any of them have a reputation of being “difficult” or if their former employers all but died of stress.

Materials are a major expense. Shop around, including outside your locality, to get the best prices. Do not throw away anything during construction as unused material can find alternate uses or be used later to save you money.

The saying that “time is money” rings true in construction. It is not a competition. The faster you want to finish your project, the more expensive it is likely to get. Building at a slower, more manageable pace helps you keep a handle on the budget, averts losses, and enables corrections and changes to be made before you have gone too far such that it becomes too expensive to make alterations.

Putting more time into your project or acting as your own project manager is likely to save you tens of thousands of shillings, if not hundreds of thousands.

If you do choose to buy

When buying a house, look beyond the style, expensive-looking finishes, size, and price. Know the reputation of the developer — talk to people, and preferably talk to those living in a house he has built. This will help you decide whether to look elsewhere.

Work out the true cost of buying. For example, if taking a mortgage, you may have attendant expenses such as legal fees and valuation fees. Whether it is a new or old house, consider the cost of what you may have to fix or change.

Quiz the sellers, especially if it is an old house. Find out what problems they may be aware of that the house may have had in the past even if these may have been fixed. In their article on International Standards of Practice for Performing a General Home Inspection, Nick Gromicko and Kate Tarasenko of The


International Association of Certified Home Inspectors warn that home buyers should remember that sellers’ disclosure is not always a legally airtight means of recourse if a material defect is discovered after the sale. What a seller did and did not know about the home for sale may be difficult to prove in court, even with disclosure.

Consider your view — what do you see around you, what kind of houses are coming up in the neighbourhood? Are there any trees, open spaces, or old houses being torn down to build bigger ones? The last thing you want is a behemoth structure squatting right next to your home in a few months, blocking your light, affecting your privacy, and significantly reducing the enjoyment of your property.

Talk to neighbours. They may know why the house is being sold, which could save you a lot of grief. They may also help you know whether it is primarily a rental area or alert you to problems such as water scarcity or the security situation. Talking to people and staying tuned to the media could also alert you to any proposed projects that may affect the enjoyment of your land.

Consider zoning and any restrictions on your property. A controlled development may mean that you cannot simply do as you wish with your land. If you wish to keep some livestock, pets, or start a farm, this may not be for you.

Visit your proposed home and the area around it on different days and different times. This will help you assess the behaviour of the environment surrounding your home to help you decide whether you want to live there. What is the traffic or noise like at different times of the day? Is there an airport, hospital, school, sewage treatment plant, car garage, or railway track nearby? Is there a slum or rough neighbourhood a few hundred metres away? What is the flora and fauna in the area? Are you likely to encounter snakes in the yard or a stray hippo outside your gate?

Ask for utility bills. This will help you avoid inheriting unpaid electricity and water bills and-or reconnection fees and may also help you assess roughly how much you would be incurring on a monthly basis and whether you can afford it.

Find out if there are separate charges, such as service charges, that you may have to pay on a monthly basis. You may still need to chip in a significant amount to cover common utilities or services shared by your neighbourhood.