One readers email reads: “Jesse, you post less than half the time anymore. I love Matt but are you forsaking us?” As many of you know by now, I got engaged this month. Well I have some other big news: we are building a new house. Thats also why I haven’t been able to post as much lately.

I hadn’t posted on it yet because there has been a ton of haggling and shinanogans going on to make things work. The short story is that my fiance lives a ways outside of Fort Collins, while I live in the college area of Fort Collins. We are remedying this by compromising: building a house right outside of town in a brand new development area. Its a seven step process:

1) Find plot we like
2) Have BBQ and drink beer
3) Negotiate with builder
4) Have BBQ and drink beer
5) Sell Lauren’s house & rent out Jesse’s house
6) Build house
7) Have BBQ and drink beer

First the plot we liked:

Its hard to see there, but behind us is the mountains with a great view. Ill have to put up another pic sometime. Next we picked our house:

Next the negotiation:

Something to keep in mind when you are negotiating when building a new home particularly in the case of a semi custom home is that the builder probably has pre-arranged incentives that may or may not be flexible. For national builders a lot of times they are not too flexible on what they will do simply because they deal in so many masses that it is not worth it to try and bend to every potential buyer. But here are my tips that we used successfully to get roughly $32,000.00 off in incentives and add ons.

1)  Ask about incentive programs
Many times the builder will have some sort of program where they will take money off of the base price of the house if you use their lender.  The trick here is to make sure that if you do use their lender, make sure to insist that the builder also pay closing costs.  The reason for this is that if they are not paying closing costs you may end up with very high closing costs due to the lender knowing you are “stuck with them.”  If the builder is paying the closing costs (which 90% will agree to according to my credit union) their lender will have a harder time trying to tack extra points onto closing.

2) Ask for more
In our case to upgrade the basement from 740 feet to 1500 feet it was an $8000 upgrade.  The builder wouldn’t budge on this but they did offer an extra couple of grand at the design center (non structural upgrades).

3) Have other options
If you are willing to walk away from the builder, many times they will do extra to get you to come back.  Having real alternatives gives the ability to play one builder against another.

Ill be adding and updating as we go along in the process, things are heating up!

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