Most new home builders work in the same fashion and have the same steps from initial contract through closing. By knowing the steps and properly preparing for your purchase, you stand a good chance of getting a great home built. They sell you a "lot", and you pick the floor plan and the options that will be built upon it For locking in the price and the home, you sign a contract that will be very sided to the builder's interests builder. What most people don't know is that - although very - some terms of the contract can be negotiated rare. Did the homebuilder guarantee a certain date of completion? Ask that it be written in. Frequently, the builders' agent sees that you are in need of a home by a certain date, and will guarantee that the builder will make that date to "close" the dirty. Then some "paternalism" forces the builder to have delays, and the home does not even come close to the original date. Of course, by this time you are stuck. If you walk away from the home, you lose your deposit (s). This is a trick that I have seen many times, especially to those who are in true need of having a home completed a fast schedule. If the builder's representative guarantees a date, then have it in writing that it will be done by that date. If the home is not finished by that date, then you can cancel and receive 100% earnest money back, or the builder will pay some set amount of money per day that the home is not complete. I have seen anything from $90-$ 180 per day if the home is not completed by the original date promised.
As the home is being built, there are many other things I try to do to look out for my clients' best interests. Here are a few that will certainly help you. Stay on top of what the current base prices for the home are and current incentives are being offered. Many times, people buy their home and they completely forget to check what the current market is doing. This is a huge mistake and one that will certainly cost you a lot of money. Pay attention to the base prices, incentives, and lot premiums being charged. If you check into them and they are much lower then you paid due to the builder having sluggish sales or increased competition, fight them! Ask for a reduction on your price as well, or ask to receive the same incentive being offered. Most times the builder will say, "I am sorry, the price is locked in and we cannot/will not renegotiate the price." In my opinion, that's ridiculous, and most of the time I can get the builder to match the current price or incentive. Now here's where you need to be careful. The builder is in no way obligated to lower your price or give you the same incentive others are getting. In addition, they are literally throwing profits right out the window and they will fight you to not offer the better price. In most situations in Arizona, if a public report was issued and you signed off on it, the builder can take your earnest money if you decide to cancel the contract over the discrepancy. So be careful in your negotiation tactics. Don't get too worked up and end up cancelling your contract then and there. It's a very delicate thing to work the builder down in price. As always, before you even start looking to buy a new home built, you should have a competent and knowledgeable real estate agent who either specializes in new construction or does a large amount of business in it every year and understands it well. Working with builders - especially the large ones who run billion dollar businesses - is honestly not an easy thing to do for most agents who don't have extensive experience with it. It is far more difficult for you on your own without the help of anyone looking after your interests. Just to hammer the point home: MAKE SURE YOUR INTERESTS ARE REPRESENTED prior to buying any new home from any builder no matter what. Believe me, the builders know how easy it is to deal with the public. The new home business is so complex and there are so many facets to it, in my opinion, very, very few buyers can represent their own interests properly on their own without a knowledgeable and aggressive agent by their side. There's just so much you DON' T know and the builder's love that. But that's not all there is to look out for.
The next thing I see a lot is that while some builders better than others, all of them seem to build very poorly, Don't get me wrong. The home is not falling in on you. But with the high production builders - especially those building over 250 homes a year - the homes seem like they could be better. The city or municipality does inspect new homes several times throughout the build process, but even they miss things and the inspectors are just looking for building code items. If it meets the code, then there's nothing they can say about it being done better. So what I recommend is that at the frame walk (just about all builders offer buyers the opportunity to do a walk through of the home sometime after the framing is complete to just before the sheetrock is hung), hire a home inspector to attend the walk through with you and conduct his own inspection. At this point, most of all the important items are installed in the home and are easily led. The home inspector working on your behalf will be able to spot any issues that, in his opinion, are not built correctly or should/could be done much better. This is exactly what you want. You don 't want to spend 100's of thousands of dollars on a home that is built "OK". You want it to be built very well to great. Once you get the inspection in your hands, make sure your agent gets a copy and also give one to the builder's sales representative. Demand that these "items failed" be repaired correctly and make sure your inspector comes back out to verify they were correctly and completely repaired prior to the sheet rock going on the walls. Another word of caution is that in most builder contracts, it reads that the builder does not have to repair items that are in regulation with the area's building codes. If they passed the city or county inspections, then they DO NOT HAVE to go the extra mile to comply with what your inspector says is acceptable. Just be careful what and how you ask the builder to fix. Many times they will do it just to keep you a satisfied customer.
These are just a few tips to really help you with getting your new home built and also letting you know what to look out for along the process. If you are looking to buy or have a new construction home built in the Tucson or Phoenix Arizona (AZ) area and would like top notch representation of your interests, please give my team a call. We have extensive knowledge of the building process and know the current market conditions of the new home marketplace. To get additional information please call (520) 247-4134 gold you can go to my industry leading web site (www.sellingtucsonrealestate.com) for additional information about real estate in Tucson and the surrounding areas.
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