5 Reasons Why a Concrete Home Is a Smart Investment

Everyone has an image in their mind of their dream home. Maybe yours is a colonial brick home, or a cottage with a stone exterior.

Now let’s say you finally got the chance to build your dream home. You and the architect sit down to discuss details, and he suggests building a concrete home.

What? Wouldn’t that look really boring and clunky?

In reality, concrete homes are a smart investment. Concrete has many qualities that make it a durable building material, and a concrete home does not have some of the same problems as those built with wooden frames.

Let’s take a look at some of the features that make concrete homes refreshingly unique.

1. Concrete Can Withstand Extreme Weather

Concrete homes are common in hurricane-prone areas because they are virtually impossible to topple with even the strongest gusts of wind. Whereas wood is lightweight and individual pieces are easily torn away in a tornado or hurricane, concrete is a heavy, solid mass reinforced with steel rebar for even greater strength.

2. Concrete Is Fireproof

Let’s say you live on the west coast, where hurricanes and tornadoes typically aren’t problems.

However, a natural disaster threat you may face is wildfires. And even if you don’t live in a wildfire-prone area, house fires can start in the blink of an eye for any number of reasons.

Concrete is naturally fireproof and thus a housefire spreads slower in a concrete home, giving firefighters more time to respond.

While this doesn’t necessarily guarantee that your belongings wouldn’t perish, at least with a concrete home you can rest assured that your investment will not completely burn to a pile of ash, allowing you to restart your life a little sooner.

3. Your Energy Bills Are Lower in a Concrete Home

In a traditional home, cold air always finds little crevices to escape through, making your HVAC system work harder all year round.

But because concrete is solid and has impenetrable joints, these drafty areas are significantly reduced. The temperature in your home should stay steady, requiring your heater or air conditioner to kick on fewer times.

4. Bugs Don’t Like to Eat Concrete

When your home is made with wood, it is only a matter of time before termites, carpenter bees, and other pests move in too. But concrete is not appealing to these insects.

Larger critters also don’t find much to love about concrete homes because there are no gaps in which to burrow. The concrete is solid, and no amount of chewing or clawing changes that.

This means you can save money on pest control and damage repair with a concrete home.

5. Concrete Homes Can Be Made from Recycled Materials

The cost of concrete can be reduced by using recycled concrete as the aggregate for new concrete. Ask about this option, when hiring a concrete company.

Using recycled concrete means your new home is environmentally friendly, and it too can be completely recycled in the future.

And No, Concrete Homes Do Not Have to Look Like Monoliths

Concrete is easily recognizable by its dull, grey appearance. But you’ve likely seen concrete in far more colorful and aesthetic uses without even realizing it was the same material as the sidewalk.

In fact, concrete homes can be very pretty, both inside and out. There are techniques that allow concrete to look like brick, stone or tile, and concrete can be colored and shaded too.

The result is such that only a concrete professional or a stone mason would be able to tell the difference. You can still have the look of your dream home, but with all the extra benefits of using concrete as your main building material.

Cathy Habas is a freelance writer based in Louisville, KY. She specializes in construction, home improvement and real estate topics for clients from all corners of the globe