With overall home prices deflated or flattened, you may be wondering whether it’s best to buy a brand new home or an existing home. In a previous post, I talked about the benefits of buying a brand new home from a builder. In this post I look at 6 reasons when and why buying an existing home might be the better approach:

Existing homes cost less. Not just less, but a lot less! The median price of a new home was $230,600 while its $157,900 for existing homes, both as of January of this year. That’s a difference of almost $73,000, which is sufficient to wipe out most of the new home advantage all by itself!

More room to negotiate on price. An individual home seller who’s unemployed, behind on his mortgage (but not yet in foreclosure) or needs to sell his home to take an out of town work …

In the current housing market, you might be wondering whether it’s better to buy a newly-constructed home or one that has a few (or more) years of wear and tear – especially since some home builders, eager to move their supply, are offering to throw in flat-screen televisions or even cars. What’s a buyer to do in today’s housing market when deals on foreclosures and short sales are plenty?

There are advantages to either buying a new home or buying an existing home, so today’s post is part of a two part series looking at both sides of the issue – starting out with six advantages of buying a brand new home:

New homes need fewer repairs. Replacing roofs, furnaces, air conditioners, windows and driveways can cost many thousands of dollars. Remodeling a 20-year-old kitchen or bathroom can easily run into the tens of thousands. That’s REAL money! Buy a brand new …