It's not a term I'd associated with houses but it crops up no fewer than five times in the week's Free Press ¾ page editorial feature on Taylor Wimpey's Glasdir.
The term is "secondhand " homes. How odd. It's as if the builder was deliberately trying to suggest that anything other than new was somehow sullied.
Doesn't this rather reduce a house to something akin to a pre-owned car or a used dishwasher? The difference between the items you might find in the classifieds (and there's only a single page of them in the Free Press, most of which seems to be "Horses, Dogs & Pets") and increasingly on eBay is that a home is an investment. It's an appreciating asset. A home is the opposite of a depreciating one that goes down in value. A home grows and changes as you do. It adds to your personality and reflects it. You form a bond with it. A home can never really be considered as secondhand, pre-owned, unnew, worn or hand-me-down, no matter the number of owners. And, for older properties, the number who've owned it may actually enhance its appeal.
Everyone will have noticed that Taylor Wimpey's made huge strides in building its current phase of houses at Glasdir. It seems all of a sudden a whole swathe is available on the market. The editorial suggests that house prices are again rising. Yet, six pages on, there's an advert for Glasdir offering over 12 per cent off a four-bedroom house (to £235,950). That saves £34,000, the cost of an executive motor to park on the drive. The website reduces this by a further £6,140. Mind you, it is right on the Northern Relief Road.
The term is "secondhand " homes. How odd. It's as if the builder was deliberately trying to suggest that anything other than new was somehow sullied.
Doesn't this rather reduce a house to something akin to a pre-owned car or a used dishwasher? The difference between the items you might find in the classifieds (and there's only a single page of them in the Free Press, most of which seems to be "Horses, Dogs & Pets") and increasingly on eBay is that a home is an investment. It's an appreciating asset. A home is the opposite of a depreciating one that goes down in value. A home grows and changes as you do. It adds to your personality and reflects it. You form a bond with it. A home can never really be considered as secondhand, pre-owned, unnew, worn or hand-me-down, no matter the number of owners. And, for older properties, the number who've owned it may actually enhance its appeal.
Everyone will have noticed that Taylor Wimpey's made huge strides in building its current phase of houses at Glasdir. It seems all of a sudden a whole swathe is available on the market. The editorial suggests that house prices are again rising. Yet, six pages on, there's an advert for Glasdir offering over 12 per cent off a four-bedroom house (to £235,950). That saves £34,000, the cost of an executive motor to park on the drive. The website reduces this by a further £6,140. Mind you, it is right on the Northern Relief Road.