[.ca] Your New House: The Alert Consumer's Guide to Buying and ... (ISBN 1889392111)

Very Helpful:
I recently purchased a new home with my husband. After having problems with our new house in several areas, I decided that for the collge speech class I was taking that I would choose the topic of "researching before you buy a new home." This book was among the five books that I purchased on this subject. It was by far the most helpful and easiest to understand. I will be using it as a Bible the next time we are looking at new houses. Keep in mind that there are better books if you need mortgage or real estate document information. However, this book was the best for giving you information how how to choose your house and neighborhood.

Jaded View Of Building Process:
I find the generalized negative comments about many of the professionals in this book offensive. The authors may have bad luck or are preparing your for the worst case scenerio, but in the midwest where I live, in many cases, the builder, agents and inspectors can be your best friend. There are many better books worth reading that actually provide useful information about the building process.

Good Book...All questions were not answered:
I am a first time buyer and wanted to make sure that I was getting the best deal at every end of the process. I read this book and although many parts of it were good, it did not apply to my situation. This book is excellent for those that are building a custom built home with a builder. If you are looking to buy a production home (centex, KB, pulte) this is not the book you will want. I found some of the examples to be informative, but overall I will need another book to answer my questions. I hope my review helped.

Glib:
I suppose there's some valuable information in here, but it could probably be reduced to a very brief checklist. Much of the book seems to be anecdotes about this "friend" who had this "absolute nightmare" building a home and how that proves that "you should always get it in writing" or something equally prosaic. They will misinform you that anchor bolts--in every house--are only required in earthquake zones and that the concrete compressive strength rating, e.g. 3000 psi, refers to its *weight*. In other words, know little about how houses are actually built, and so have exaggerated fears about what might go wrong. You're better off avoiding freelance writers capitalizing on the research for their own houses; choose a book from an architect, lawyer, realtor or builder with a few decades' experience instead.

Essential:
This is the single best homebuying book we've found. The section on binding arbitration clauses alone is worth the price of the book. Concise, sensible, at times overly cautious -- this book is a necessary skeptical foil to overenthusiastic homebuyers who may be getting themselves into a rotten home or rotten purchase agreement. No, it's not perfect. I'm sure some of the technical information is incorrect. All homebuying books suffer this problem. But the 1-star reviews of this book are inconceivable. Perhaps they were written by shady builders or sellers who are upset that this book is scaring away unwary buyers?