So How is Your New Home Market

[Mack Perry]

I think we are all seeing builders attack this market in ways that are very beneficial to porspective buyers. I am curious as to what special incentives the builders in various areas of the country are doing to sell their properties? In the Atlanta market we are seeing inflated selling side commissions and huge discounts. I wrote an offer this week and the builder is discounting the home $50K, contributing $10K towards closing costs and buying the purchasers home.

What are you seeing inyour markets?

[Jason Painter]

I see large commissions such as 5 or 6% on the selling side. Some offer selling bonuses to agent, many builders are offering to pay for upgrades, mortgage points, closing costs, CDD rebates, and of course big money off the selling price. I typically see these big incentives on inventory homes.

[JimOlenbush]

The outlying suburb areas near Austin have slower selling new home inventory. The builders here sometimes offer 6, 8, or even a few 10 percent BAC.

[darrenwoodard]

I sold two inventory homes today with 6% commissions each. What a day. New homes subdivisions rock.

[ericbadgley]

New homes are not doing well in my area.

[Mack Perry]

Congratulations Darren!!! Heck of a day.

[jbferris]

I use the builder incentives to get better deals for my clients. One builder was offering 5% BAC so I negotiated their already reduced price from the $540s to $523,000 and only took a 1% cut in commission to pull it together. I also leveraged another commission incentive to the benefit of my home buyer when a builder was offering 4% for any home sales by offering to take the 1% off the sale price instead. The community sales manager was so impressed by my generosity that they offered any of my buyers who took that deal 1% of the sale price in no cost home options. I have, at times, taken larger buyer agent commissions but for the most part I think using it to negotiate a better price is fair enough to me. Builders here have also used any one option for $1, no closing costs, huge price reductions (upwards of $100K+) and mortgage rate buydowns.

[Steve Didier]

In Las Vegas I have seen new home developments giving up to 10% commission, as well as buyer costs - one was putting in a pool of your design, capped at something like $80K. That was a little while ago. Those kind of incentives have gone away although you sometimes will still see 5% or 6% co-ops.