Building a home in Houston (Sugar Land, Missouri City: top neighborhood, for sale, real estate)

[crewmatt]

Hey everyone, I've been kind of reading around on these boards and have gotten some good advice. First time posting . So my wife and I are looking to relocate to houston, hence my stalking the boards. Her job is forcing her to move. My job is fine with it.

Basically we're looking at building a house in Sienna Plantation, and the builder has offered us a discount of 6000 on the land and 75% off of 15,000 dollars in builders credits. Does anyone know if this is a good deal?

[Sunderpig2]

Congratulations on your first post, and welcome!

I'll try not to be a wise guy in my response. First off, I think Sienna Plantation is in Missouri City, not Houston (as your post suggests). Secondly, I don't think you can necessarily trust the builder with those discounts without knowing what the real values are. As an example, a store could have an item that routinely sells for $100. The seller could say, "Look, it costs $300, but we'll give you a $75 discount and a new buyer credit of $25". So that $100 item would end up costing $200. They can say anything to make the deal sound sweet, but the actuals are what would be more important.

[lhafer]

What builder?

[chris_ut]

Originally Posted by crewmatt

Hey everyone, I've been kind of reading around on these boards and have gotten some good advice. First time posting . So my wife and I are looking to relocate to houston, hence my stalking the boards. Her job is forcing her to move. My job is fine with it.

Basically we're looking at building a house in Sienna Plantation, and the builder has offered us a discount of 6000 on the land and 75% off of 15,000 dollars in builders credits. Does anyone know if this is a good deal?

Those numbers don't mean anything, you need to look at the price per sq. ft. of the house. I remember once the builder here took their listings off har.com before a big sales event. I went to the model to check things out and they had marked the inventory prices up 25k over what they had them listed before and were offering a one time super special 25k off list price sales event!

[crewmatt]

Haha yes, thats exactly what I'm afraid of - yes we'll give you 75% off this 400% marked up upgrade. We're from DC so prices here are drastically higher than prices out there - mostly driven by the footprint of the house. Our 1000 sq ft townhouse is the same cost as the house we spec-ed out there.

Yes you're 100% right I'll correct the heading of this post to Missouri City.

Meritage was the builder we were dealing with. So obviously anyone with any experience good or bad I'd love to hear about it.

The Price per square foot was $73

[chris_ut]

Funny because Meritage was the builder I was talking about above. That being said we bought our house from Meritage and have been very happy with it and the prices on the Meritages have held up better here than e other builders homes. You need to get with an agent to run comps and see if you are getting a good price. There are a couple good ones on this board who can help you out and the builder already prices their commission into the house so you may as well utilize them and just ask for a % rebate back if you already have the house picked and they don't need to drive you around to look at properties.

[desertsun41]

Why would you want to inflict all that stress on yourselves building a home when there are over a half million existing homes for sale? Many at fire sale prices. That builder saw a sucker coming. I know you said Houston prices were higher then DC but I know you said that by mistake. That builder knew you'd think his house was cheap compared to DC prices.

Though south Texas is not as bad off as most of the country as far as falling real estate prices, I still see it coming here too. You better be stealing the house you buy or you'll be owing more then the value in a couple years. All the half full thinking people and those who believe whatever their govt tells them will say otherwise but they are wrong. They been guessing the wrong guesses for 5 years now. I'd say it's time to ignore them.

Good luck in your ventures.

[chris_ut]

desertsun is our local end of the world pessimist but I do agree that in the current market is really makes more sense to buy something already built. Also if you buy in a neighborhood with new construction expect to sell your house at a loss if you move within 5 years. Better to buy in an established area.

[ethanw]

And you're the next pessimist after desertsun I am kidding, seriously....

Actually there is a good chance that building a house could also get you a fantastic deal if you have good negotiation skills and the builder is hungry.
I got mine down from $145 to $104 SQ/F in a top neighborhood in Sugar Land.... I had the time and the money so it was up to me to sign on the deal I wanted.

If you don't try pushing it during negotiation, you really don't know how far they can go. Good for thought .......

Originally Posted by chris_ut

desertsun is our local end of the world pessimist but I do agree that in the current market is really makes more sense to buy something already built. Also if you buy in a neighborhood with new construction expect to sell your house at a loss if you move within 5 years. Better to buy in an established area.

[cheryjohns]

Meritage is a good builder. If you are building from dirt, they have just added a pre-sheetrock meeting into the mix. I really like that.

That said, you can always get a better deal on an inventory homes, as opposed to one that you will have built.

With a re-sale, the yard may be bigger. It seems they just keep getting smaller with each passing year, on new.