Considering a New Construction Home in Tucson or Phoenix Arizona?

Purchasing a new construction home is often the best way to buy. Currently, great incentives and bottom dollar prices are being offered by builders to move their inventory, but how do you know which builder to select? Ultimately it all comes down to price. If your resources are unlimited, then naturally you can hire a full custom homebuilder to build the home of your dreams. But, if you’re like most, you will need to buy and build from either a local tract homebuilder or a national one that builds in Tucson. Here are some tips to help you select the best fit for your family’s needs.

First, you need to determine what your family’s needs actually are. Does your family need maximum space for the lowest price in the area? If so, KB Home or Richmond is your best bet. The homes typically don’t offer many luxury features and comforts, but for the most part, offer the most square footage for the dollar. KB Home, for some reason, does seem to carry a reputation for building an inferior product here in Arizona, and I am not 100% sure why. My thinking is that they seem to be very set in their ways and are inflexible with their building plans. In addition, I know that many other homebuilders have a difficult time selling against a KB Home community simply because, on average, they build the most home for the dollar. To combat KB, many other homebuilders’ sales staff push the “KB Home builds inferior product pitch.” Right or wrong, I have seen it said and heard it from clients many times.

If, on the other hand, you want a relatively inexpensive home that is engineered for energy savings and customer service and stands out above the rest, Pulte Homes maybe the builder for you. In Tucson, Pulte Homes consistently leads the industry in JD Power customer service rankings for best overall homebuilder. In my experience, I would have to agree. For a large homebuilder, Pulte homes, on average, are well-built homes, and they do try to keep customer satisfaction a top priority.

If you are looking for a more unique home, and you are willing and able to pay a little extra, it may well be worth it to purchase a local homebuilder’s home. Local homebuilders in Tucson offer communities that are hard to beat in terms of appearance and features. The only downside is that they are typically a little more expensive then their national homebuilder competition. The reason for this is simple. They cannot beat the national builders in price discounts of materials and labor, and a large national builder can buy huge chunks of property to develop over a period of years. By doing so, they basically receive a bulk discount on the land purchase. A smaller local builder cannot afford to buy and develop such large tracts of land and to stay competitive they must offer more unique and diverse home solutions for customers who do not want a “Big Box” (as I have heard the large builders’ homes referred to). Depending on different factors, the two local Tucson Arizona homebuilders I really like are A.F. Sterling (I personally own one of their homes) and Pepper Viner homes, who also builds very distinctive and mostly affordable homes. Both of these builders’ homes are typically priced in the $300k-$500k price range, although some A.F. Sterlings can start at just under $1 million. With these builders, you can have semi-custom and upper-end features built into your home. Other national builders, with the exception of Toll Brothers, cannot really compete. These local builder homes are generally about 10% higher in price, so depending upon your budget and how much you appreciate differentiating your home from neighbors’ homes, you may want to give a local builder an opportunity.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 at 2:54 pm and is filed under New Construction, Buying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.