Are you curious about the home builder incentives near you? We’re not surprised. With the strong focus the news has had on the housing market for the last few years there’s been a lot of talk about the kinds of incentives that home builders offer. While we are happy to answer the questions about what incentives we’re offering, we also want to make sure you’re set up for success by setting some expectations. So let’s take some time to talk about what you need to know about home builder incentives in the Utah housing market. Not just for 2024, but whenever you look for a new home.
How Home Builder Incentives in Utah Help Homebuyers
Even in an environment of high prices and low housing supply, home builders are still competing against one another for your homebuying dollars. This competition plays out in several different ways. The level of finishing that comes standard with the home. Amenities offered by the community. Architectural styles, floorplans, landscaping, or even how environmentally friendly your home will be. All of these are ways that us home builders compete with one another. However, sometimes homebuyers want or need a little bit of an extra push to decide between two great homes. In normal markets, this is where home builder incentives can play a role.
Maybe there’s an upgrade to the shower heads you want that just isn’t quite in your budget. Some home builders might offer an incentive to help with that. Maybe you’ve fallen in love with a quick move-in home but haven’t saved up quite enough to cover closing costs. Some home builders might be able to cover that. A current popular incentive over the past year has been temporary rate buy downs. Where, when you work with a home builder’s preferred lender and qualify at the higher interest rate, the home builder will buy down your rate for a short period of time. Allowing you to save hundreds in the first couple of years owning the home and could make refinancing your mortgage easier if rates lower significantly during the rate buy down period. Although you should expect to see this incentive go away as interest rates stabilize. So if a rate buydown is what you need you should act fast. What all these examples and other incentives have in common however, is a way for you to get more out of the home than you would otherwise.
What Should You Be Aware Of?
Now that you know how great Utah home builder incentives can be, let’s talk about what you need to keep in mind to get the most out of them. Incentives might not be distributed across all of a home builder’s communities equally. While we, and our competition, offer them to help you, they’re still a tool meant to get you to choose one home builder over another. A community that is selling three or four homes a week won’t give you the same deal as a community selling three or four homes in a month. And even then, buying a quick move-in home might get you more than if you buy a lot and build on it. The best incentives create win-win scenarios for the homebuyer and the home builder after all. Which brings us to our next point.
Some Restrictions Apply
Remember how we mentioned that there might be incentives that can help temporarily lower your mortgage’s interest rate? That is an example of an incentive that comes with a restriction. With very rare exceptions you will not be given this incentive unless you use a home builder’s preferred lender. They are the ones that help make it possible for a home builder to offer it after all. The same could be said for the rare times a free appliance might be offered. You may be able to get a new refrigerator, but you might not be able to choose the brand of appliance you receive. Or the features that it comes with. Incentives aren’t about giving you an opportunity to take a home builder for all that they’re worth. They’re about making the home buying process just that little bit easier for you and us.
A few final notes, incentives are subject to change without notice, and due to the immortal nature of this article we haven’t covered all of the incentives that we at Garbett Homes offer. If you want the most up-to-date information, we encourage you to visit one of our model homes, currently in Murray, Midvale, Millcreek, Salt Lake City, and Wasatch County. or speak with our New Home Specialist either by calling 801-396-9095 or emailing Janie@garbetthomes.com. We also encourage you to not shop for homes on home buying incentives alone. You will be spending a lot of time with your new Utah home. This is where you’ll celebrate holidays, birthdays, host parties, hold family movie night. It’s going to be a stalwart fixture to your lives. Go into the shopping experience thinking about what your life will be like in that home for the next 5, 10, maybe even 30 years. When you think the long game you’ll be sure to be successful wherever you buy, and whatever incentives help you get there.