Last week, I wrote about the hidden costs of buying a new home -- from the added expense of improving the landscaping, to having to spend on new decks and patios, or possibly, finishing the basement. But, there are also pluses to buying a new home that homebuyers may not realize. If you buy into a development of similar newly built houses, you most likely will join a community of homebuyers with similar likes and needs as yours. Good Neighbors That happened when my husband and decided to buy a home in a mini-new-home community of 10 houses being built on an old nursery site in the center of an established Central New Jersey town. With the exception of one couple whose children are now grown and out of college, most of the people who own the new homes on our cul-de-sac are within the same age range, plus or minus 10 years. What most of us share is that upon moving in, we started building our families, with six little ones being born to five families within the same year. Now, we get... - Reggie Nicolay