What would you choose?
Input from people who have done either would be appreciated as well.

I'm not currently looking to buy my first place anytime soon being I'm still in school and such, but I just had it on my mind. The "ideal" circumstance that I would prefer for my first place would be to either

1- Buy a loft/condo that for all practical purposes, could stand a full renovation, or
2- Build a house, but contract it myself

I like both of the ideas, being that you can pretty much do what you want with the place and not have to rely on searching for what you want. Of course each has their pros and cons. Building a house, you know its new, you can have more control on how the overall ending quality turns out including construction and the details you don't see once the house is complete that can make a big difference. However, I know contracting your own house can be REAL task. My dad did it in the house they are in now, and even though I was pretty young, I still remember sizable amount of work and planning he went through. Of course, it's nice in the end when you don't have to pay 20% or more to a contractor.

With renovating a condo/loft, I'd guess to say it's considerably less work/organization than fully contracting your own house. And with a complete renovation, you can still create pretty much whatever you want within the constraints of the space you have and the building codes/by-laws. I guess cons would be monthly HOA fees for multi-unit buildings can sometimes be 50% of a mortgage by itself and more in some cases depending on where you are. Also, for the money, you'll most likely get less square footage, and you have the possibility of having noisy neighbors which isn't exactly ideal.

 

I think you need to decide on something like this when you're closer to that time. By the time you want to get a place you may still be single, or you could be married with a kid. Too many factors I think

With that said, my Dad and family pretty much built our house by ourselves, using skills that we knew and some of our friends knew, and did most of the work ourselves. You can definitely save a lot of money, but no doubt it's a lot of work.

 

I was just kind of curious as to what other people would do, given the choice.
Not necessarily using this as basis as to what I'm gonna do.

 

I am extremely handy but I would not want to deal with the hassle of being my own general contractor.

 

There are so many aspects to building a home, not to mention the inspections and permits and stuff that you need to get from the city and the various building codes and standards that need to be met. I'd love to have a new house built, but I wouldn't want to manage it.