UPGRADE WITH LIBERTAS & EXP REALTY
By Tim & Julie Harris · October 8, 2026
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Your seller's house is priced right. It's clean. It's staged. It photographs beautifully. Ten minutes away, a builder is throwing in a pool and a golf cart, three years of HOA dues, and a mortgage rate that starts with a three. Your buyer never came back for a second showing. Now you know why.
Today we walk through what builders are really giving away, why they'd rather hand out a pool than cut the price, and how to sell against it or use it to help your buyers. Price is only one number. Are you selling the right number?
Show your seller what they're really competing against
Most resale sellers have no clue. Builders mostly don't put their homes in the MLS, and they don't always list their incentives in the consumer-facing remarks. Sellers also come with their own biases: my neighborhood is closer to town, my neighborhood is this, my neighborhood is that.
Tim and Julie have seen this movie. When they sold real estate in Columbus, Ohio, they watched well-established, huge communities go out of favor more than once, because a new community appeared with a different style, nothing to update, and a builder behind it. They saw the life sucked out of the older resale homes. If you're on the seller side competing against new construction, do your own homework on what your local builders are offering, then show your seller the different ways they can offer similar incentives besides lowering the price.
1. Builders are motivated
According to NAHB's September survey, 66% of builders used sales incentives, up from 63% in August and the most since December. 38% cut prices, by an average of 6%, the sixth straight month at that average.
New homes now cost less than resale. The median new-home price was about $394,000 in August, against roughly $429,000 for existing homes, a gap of about $35,000. Zillow's per-square-foot data tells the same story: $205 for new homes versus $212 for existing in July, with new homes selling at a discount in 17 of the past 19 months. In Austin, new homes sold for about 19% less per square foot. Part of that gap is that new homes tend to be smaller, and none of these numbers capture the incentives.
2. What builders are actually giving away
All of this is real, none of it speculation. Julie's research turned up:
Golf carts. Street-legal carts worth $15,000 to $20,000, especially in 55-plus and resort communities. Mostly in Texas, Florida, and resort areas.
Backyard resorts. Pools, spas, outdoor kitchens, and fire pits worth $50,000 to $200,000, most commonly advertised in Florida.
Fully furnished homes. Models and spec homes sold with designer furniture, appliances, and smart-home systems worth $30,000 to $75,000.
Prepaid HOA and club dues. Three to five years of dues, or golf club initiation fees, worth $20,000 to $50,000, and more in expensive markets.
Lease buyouts. Up to $15,000 to $20,000, with the builder buying out the remainder of a buyer's lease.
In some luxury communities, a membership is attached to the deed, and Tim says those memberships generally run $150,000 to $350,000. Newer construction is increasingly including the cost of the mandatory membership in the price.
Include it in the price (without making your seller net less)
Here's a great idea for resale: include the HOA cost or the membership in the price. You're not asking the seller to net less. If you also buy down the rate, the only thing most buyers care about, assuming they're not paying cash, is the monthly payment. So you can raise the price to include the incentives, including the rate buydown, as long as the payment is affordable and the buyer qualifies. Just make sure it'll appraise. And because seller-paid costs have limits that vary by loan type, run the structure past your lender first.
Lease buyouts work for resale too. A buyer who says "I really liked it, but I still have 90 days left on my lease" used to be a non-lead. Talk to your seller: maybe they can contribute to the buyout.
Stop automatically cutting the price
Say you've listed an expired listing that's been on and off the market twice. The seller is finally willing to price it at market value, but you're up against 30 other houses, and the price may need to go lower. Don't just cut. Package the incentives instead:
"Mr. Seller, right now the market is telling us the house should be repositioned to $949,000, and we can certainly do that, but we'd still be competing against 50 other houses. Here's what I'd suggest: let's leave the price at $985,000 and use the money you would have used to cut the price to pay down the buyer's mortgage rate and give the buyer incentives that make your house more appealing."
What stops the buyer from asking for the lower price and all the incentives? You note that the incentives are available at the purchase price, just like the builders do. What matters to the buyer is the payment, and the least amount of hassle.
A simple version: instead of a $10,000 price adjustment, use the same $10,000 as a rate buydown. After the buyer talks to their lender, they may not need all of it, and the seller ends up spending only $8,000.
3. Why builders would rather hand out a pool than cut the price
Comps. A $50,000 price cut lowers the appraisal for every lot left in that builder's neighborhood. A pool keeps the recorded price high.
Wholesale versus retail. A builder can install a pool for about 60% of what a buyer thinks it's worth.
The lender. Most big incentives require the builder's affiliated lender, which earns some of that money back.
Their financing. In a three-phase subdivision, the third phase can't be cheaper than the first without hurting the whole neighborhood, and it hurts their ability to borrow. Tim and Julie watched a Columbus builder sell houses for less than buyers had paid a year earlier, and it trashed those subdivisions.
So when your seller says, "The new house is $150,000 more than mine, so I'm cheaper," show them the full picture:
"Yes, your house is $750,000 and the new construction we're competing against is a million. But do you realize buying that one actually costs the buyer less per month? They get these extra amenities, and your furnace and other systems are going to age out in the next five to seven years. The new house comes with a new-home warranty."
4. Compete on payment: know the 3-2-1 buydown
Know what the builders are doing, especially the 3-2-1 buydown. In the first year of a three-year buydown, the typical plan puts the buyer into the mortgage three points lower than the going rate. With rates around 7%, Tim and Julie have seen many builder offers in the 4s and plenty in the 3s, and one builder's first year at 2%. The rate steps up from there, and some programs lock in a rate that's still below today's going rate.
Julie's caution: the buyer needs to be set up for the step-up, because the payment adjusts. Tim's answer: buyers can refinance, buy the rate down again, or use a program that locks a lower rate, so read the terms. If you're working with a lender who says "I've never done anything like that," you might be working with the wrong lender. (Lenders: the buydown loans from two and three years ago are your refinance pipeline.)
Creative incentives that aren't a pool
You have tools beyond slicing the price. A coaching client's seller was a dentist who didn't want to come down in price, so he gave the whole family a year of free dental care. In the last housing boom, one agent gave away courtside tickets. It can be as simple as 90 days of HOA payments. Run any incentive past your broker and lender, since disclosure and loan rules apply.
What to do this week
Five concrete moves:
One: map your local builders. Every active community within your listing's school district or a few miles, with current incentives, rate buydown offers, and any HOA or membership costs included.
Two: show every resale seller that comparison before you discuss a price cut.
Three: price the payment, not just the house. Ask your lender what a $10,000 buydown does to the monthly payment on a sitting listing, and advertise the payment.
Four: add one non-price incentive to your toolkit, such as prepaid HOA dues or a contribution to a buyer's lease buyout.
Five: line up a lender who does buydowns and creative structures. Premier Coaching has the scripts: $1 for a 7-day trial at premiercoaching.com.
The bottom line
Builders aren't cutting prices, they're building payments. 66% are using incentives because a pool keeps the comps high, costs them 60 cents on the dollar, and moves inventory. Your resale seller is competing against all of it, and most of it never shows up in the MLS.
Don't just cut the price. Show your seller the full picture, then compete on the number the buyer actually lives with: the monthly payment. Get to work.
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If your next seller asked why the builder down the road is cheaper, would you already have the answer in monthly-payment terms?
— Tim & Julie Harris
Founders of Tim & Julie Harris Real Estate Coaching | Publishers of Harris Real Estate Daily | Hosts of PowerHouseTalk | eXp Realty Sponsors at Libertas
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