If you live in the greater Phoenix area, and you've driven anywhere in the last few months, you've seen that there is a heavy presence of new home builder's in the area, specifically in the North & West Valley. As a Realtor in a heavily saturated new build market, I currently have a love/hate relationship with builder's. They can make life easy or very difficult for the average Realtor. On the love side, as a buyer's agent, I love new home sales! It can be a dream transaction. Your client's walk through a gorgeous model home, absolutely fall in love with all the fancy upgrades, furniture, and pretty things the stagers have stashed in the home. The process is straight-forward, with very few hiccups along the way. The buyer's move into a brand new home, where things are pristine, new, smell good, and EVERYTHING has a warranty, just in case. Why even show resale homes, right??? There are so many more things that can go wrong on the resale side, right? Possibly, sometimes.
On the "hate" side, with buyer's, it can be hard putting it nicely, to tell your buyer's to stay away from these gorgeous model homes, or to at least wait for a Realtor to accompany them. I get it! Before I was a Realtor, I loved going through the model homes, too (I still enjoy it, what am I saying?), for the same reasons buyer's love the model homes. It's an easy way to kill an afternoon. You can go through at your own pace, get decorating ideas, see several homes all at once, and you don't even have to have an appointment. Most of the time, it's low-pressure sales, that if you don't show any interest, the builder's salesperson doesn't work you over like you are buying a used car. All in all, whether you are looking to buy today, in 6 months, or a year from now, it can be an enjoyable day walking through these model homes. The "hate" part for us, as Realtors, though, is that, as soon as our clients walk through the door, the builder thinks they have them, as an unrepresented client. So if we aren't with you, on your first tour, they want you to buy from them, unrepresented. UNREPRESENTED. So one of the biggest purchases of your life, they want you to use their lender, their title, AND go into the deal, without anyone representing your best interest. I did say that new build's have very few hiccups...meaning that there ARE times when there is a hiccup, or even a situation much bigger than a hiccup. I've personally had problems in new build contracts, with general build-out issues, electric, HVAC, framing, and one time, they even installed the AC on the wrong side of the home, blocking the only gate to the backyard installed on the property. I've had clients that couldn't shut lights off, because there was no switch affiliated with the lights that were on. I've had pre-wired speakers, not actually be pre-wired. Currently, I have one builder, who is not using the correct insulation, that is per our contract. Now, saying this, I've also had new builds that have gone start-to-finish with no issues at all. But, just in case, wouldn't you want someone on your side? Someone to communicate on your behalf? Someone that has your best interest at the forefront-not the bottom line's, the GC's, not the builder's, & not the lender's? Your best interest! That's who we work for. YOU!
Did you know that you can negotiate with a builder? Most of the time they won't even let on that you have options to negotiate? They give you the base price, and present you with an al a carte menu of all the upgrades that you just saw in the model home, that may or may (probably) not have been included. In the last 4 new build sales we've done, at least one portion has been negotiated. One builder gave them $7500 off their advertised base price, just by asking. Another waived a lot premium that equalled a $10,000 savings, and one ended up giving them $5000 in unadvertised upgrades. We have one just going into contract that gave us a discount on pricing, waived backyard landscaping, which saved them almost $10,000 AND they are paying for the buyer's closing costs on the loan, which is another $9,000+. Every builder is different, but if you don't have representation, you may not be able to negotiate these items, or know what is possible. There is a value to having representation with experience under their belt, to ask the questions that you may not even think of. We, as Realtors, go through these experience's day-in and day-out. So many times I've heard my client's say, "Thank you, I'm so glad you're here. I never would have thought of that!".
We hope that this doesn't come off as "anti-new build". That's not what we're trying to convey. We just want to help educate why it's best to go into any situation in Real Estate, with proper representation. We are in the BUSINESS every day. We want to help you with one of the biggest investments you may ever purchase.
In the next blog entry, we'll discuss some of the items that can be negotiated in a new build situation, we'll highlight some of the best builders that we've worked with, and touch on Spec homes. Contact us at 602-882-6045 for a comprehensive list of new home builder's in the area, or check out resale homes on our website at www.3rdbasehometeam.com.
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