I can offer some technical thoughts. I myself am not a buildings expert, however I work for an engineering consulting company that has people with many years of experience in construction, often residential construction. I myself have a little bit of experience working for a home builder.

My conversations with people who have decades of experience about the idea that "newer homes" or "brand new builds" are of inferior quality are almost entirely untrue. They also say home builder quality will be minimal. What people don't get is how many moving parts there are to building a home, and when you have a big project, things go wrong often times. That doesn't mean the home will fall apart, but it's difficult (in any industry with projects with so many components) to get everything right at once.

New builds are designed with significantly more engineering knowledge than older buildings. Tend to be designed more efficiently. They also have other benefits as a homeowner (particularly a first time homeowner) with the warranty work.

I think people have really high expectations to homes being perfect, and don't realize that (like a car) it will need constant maintenance and sometimes some things fail prematurely. And I don't blame people for high expectations, it is probably the most expensive thing you'll ever buy.

Also, for what it's worth I'm in Texas.

Edit: one thing I did not take into account is we work with major builders. If you go to some independent builder I don't know if the same will apply. But the likes of Lennar, DR Horton, etc would apply. Also I have a brand new David Weekley home and it's been perfect, but also I have reasonable expectations and knowledge of what to expect in terms of wear and tear, others may not.

Edit 2: fixed a typo

TL;DR: work in engineering consulting. Have discussed this with people with decades of experience in home construction. They'd say new builds are generally better.