As a buyer there is a lot to consider when selecting your new home and most builders don’t make it any easier on you by playing tricks with only one thing in mind… more profit for them! Lets look at a few common things buyers encounter and how to avoid them.

Builder’s with their own Financing or in house lender

Often, builders offer buyers big incentives to use their preferred or their in house lender. For instance “Apple” Homes will suggest and often reward buyers who use “Apple” Mortgage their lending group for financing. What we see a lot is builders offering something along the lines of “A free Sun room or Morning room” for using their preferred lender.  Buyer Beware!  Nothing is ever free.  The “free” addition on your home often means either a higher interest rate on your loan and / or higher closing costs.  It may even not look like much, you may say to yourself, that an interest rate of just a small percent higher is not a big deal, and your payment may not increase much either.  However what buyers don’t realize is that they are paying for that morning room over time with higher payments and when it is all said and done, they could have bought 3 or 4 morning rooms for what was lost.  As we have seen recently, choosing the wrong loan now can have horrible consequences on you for years to come.

Bellamy Homes does not have preferred lenders we only have relationships with lenders.  If you have questions we can help steer you in the right direction or you can select whichever lender offers you the best deal.  No matter who you choose you don’t have to worry because you have already gotten a great deal on your new home.

Low Advertised Prices!

At Present, common practice for builders is to strip homes of included features so the builder can advertise a lower price.  We have seen this all over the place and it makes shopping for a nice home very challenging for buyers.  A few typical changes include: hardwood flooring to vinyl flooring, granite counter tops to laminate counter tops, ceramic baths to vinyl baths, removing features like a deck, fireplace, tray ceilings, appliances, accents on the exterior, sodded yards, and landscaping.  The challenge for buyers is comparing apples to apples because some builders like Bellamy Homes are continuing to include these features while others include next to nothing.  When Shopping, make sure you ask the right questions and have a good understanding of what you get included with the home.

Options Pricing and Total Cost

As previously discussed, builders are trying to do all they can to lower their base price so they can advertise as low a price as possible.  As well as stripping options from the home, another thing that’s been happening is builders are lowering their profit on the home to drive down price.  While this may seem to good for buyers, it isn’t always the case because those lost profits must be made up for somewhere and lots of times its in the options.  We have seen builders actually raising option pricing recently to help boost their margins on homes they are selling.  Buyers may think “well I just won’t put any options in the home” but that is unrealistic especially in a home that has recently been stripped down of common included features.