Hello everyone! I am a 2nd year MBA student at the University of Illinois conducting research on those looking to/have purchased a new home in the last few years I would be extrodinarily grateful if you could answer these questions!!! 1) Where did you look when begining your search for purchasing a new home (ie, if online, where? If not online, where? Did you go to a home show?) 2) Did you use a real-estate agent when looking to purchase/build your new home....or did you just contact the builder directly? 3) How many years did it take between determining you wanted a newly built home, and actually buying/building it? 4) What was the most useful resource when buying/building a new home? Thank you all so very very much!!!!!!!!!! Jeremy

You pose way too broad a range of questions for useful MBA-paper research, IMO.

The vast majority of buyers of new homes purchase one within a large development constructed by a production builder offering relatively few options so as to maximize economies of scale. The lot in that case is nearly always owned by the production builder who tightly regulates client access to the project throughout the construction process. In return for that highly constrained contract clients receive maximum square footage at minimum cost, though with a barely code-compliant, short-lived structure.

A much smaller minority (including me) opts for a truly custom home on a personally owned piece of land. That is a much more complex evolution than the typical production builder / subdivision process and thus bears no resemblance to the vast majority's acquisition process.

To answer your questions:

1) We educated ourselves via print and online resources for two solid years in the process of developing our home design

2) Many home shows

3) We decided we wanted a custom home and took 2-3 years to dial it in and select a builder. Construction took over a year, but we were in no hurry.

4) We have been in the home for 4.5 years, but it is not complete. In fact , it will never be truly complete. We strove to create a structure with excellent "bones" that would support 40-50 years of our residency via continually evolving utilization of the space and volume while establishing and preserving a robust legacy for our children to either occupy or sell as they see fit.

Good luck with your research project.

Thank you so much for such a detailed response! I'm not really familiar with the real-estate process since I've never looked into the subject matter nor have much prior background. As a few follow up questions, By "home show" do you mean an event where there are multiple demo homes next to one another and it is a formal event (I just learned about those), or was it visiting a single demo home? Also, do you recall which online resources you looked into? Once again, thank you so much for your help! Jeremy

Home shows are typically held in convention centers where 300+ exhibitors gather to hawk everything from BBQ grills to air conditioners...generally not whole homes, though a few builders may exhibit.

The mother of all shows is held in Orlando and is actually geared more toward builders, although it is an excellent resource for those seriously contemplating a custom home.

We browsed pretty much any manufacturer of anything we were considering, ranging from shingles to termite barriers.

Many production builders maintain showrooms (though probably not so much now)

realator.com is a popular place to look on line.

The International Builder's show rotates between Orlando and Las Vegas every few years.  The next show will be in Las Vegas.

The SEBC show is in Orlando every July.  Both great shows I have attended for many years.

The World of Concrete will be in Las Vegas again the next time.  Great show also that I attend occasionally.