Prioritize Resale Value When Designing a Custom Home

For many people, designing and building a custom home in Asheville means realizing a dream decades in the making. Having thought about your ideal home for so long, you might expect to live in it even longer. Surprisingly, the Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey indicates that isn’t usually the case. Buyers around the country will stay in a new home for an average of 13 years. In Asheville, that figure is slightly lower at 12 years.

When you’re designing your dream home, moving out of it is probably the last thing on your mind. Still, just because you imagine staying in a home forever doesn’t mean you will. While you may never be forced to sell, circumstances change. These three common developments are just a few of the reasons it might someday be a good idea to move on:

1. The location is no longer the right fit

Do you want to be closer to friends and family? Consider your home resale value while building.

According to 2020 research from the National Association of Realtors, the most common reason people sell a home is to be closer to friends and family. Maybe your adult children move across the country and you want to follow them, or perhaps your company moves its headquarters and strongly incentivizes you to come along. Many people fall in love with Asheville and western North Carolina, but some external factors are too compelling to resist.

2. You need to up or downsize

When you’re designing a custom home, you’re creating it for a certain stage of life. You can plan all you want, but it’s impossible to guarantee the house remains a perfect fit. Maybe you’re building for your young family, and that family ends up growing beyond what you had originally anticipated. The second most common reason homeowners sell is that they’ve outgrown a property (14%). A change in their family situation (12%) ranks a close third. People who build custom homes tend to be “Type A” planners who like things a certain way. The reality is that life is messy and unpredictable — by prioritizing resale value, you’re indirectly planning for all sorts of surprises.

3. You decide to take advantage of market conditions

The real estate market is absolutely booming. Asheville home builders are busier than ever. June 2021 data from Redfin shows a year-over-year increase of 24.8% in the median sale price of a home in the U.S. The average home also sells in just two weeks — 25 days faster than the same time last year. With the market tilted so heavily in favor of sellers, many are choosing to cash in on homes they might have expected to reside in for longer. It’s hard to imagine selling your dream home before you’ve even built it, but current market conditions might someday return. You’ll be glad you thought about resale value when you’re entertaining an offer that’s difficult to refuse.

When you’re designing a custom home, you should absolutely make it your own — that’s the point, right? Still, a deliberate effort to maximize the resale value of one of your biggest assets can also help you preserve your family’s wealth in the event that the home goes on the market.

Convinced you should prioritize resale value? Great! In part two of this post, we’ll look at how you can do it without having to compromise your current vision of your new home.


Kaizen Homes builds relationships and custom homes. Contact us when you’re ready to start the conversation.