Buying new construction feels simpler than buying a resale. There is no seller with feelings, no inspection report full of a previous owner's neglect, and a sales office that is pleasant to deal with. It is also a different transaction on a different contract, and the things that go wrong are not the things that go wrong in a resale.
Whose agent is in the model home
Start here, because everything else follows from it. The person who greets you in the model home is paid by the builder and represents the builder. They may be perfectly straight with you and their obligation still runs the other way.
Bring your own representation, and bring it on the first visit. Most builders will register the buyer to whoever accompanied them initially, and turning up alone first can complicate that later. The cost to you is generally nothing.
The contract is theirs, not the standard one
Resale transactions in Texas run on contracts promulgated by the Texas Real Estate Commission, which are written to balance the two sides. Builders use their own forms, which are not.
Things worth reading closely: what happens if the completion date slips, what happens if your rate lock expires because of that slip, how the earnest money is treated, what the dispute resolution clause requires, and how much discretion the builder has to substitute materials.
The option period as you know it from resale may not exist in the same shape. Inspection rights are frequently narrower. This is worth understanding before signing, not after.
Follow the incentive
In a market with this much standing inventory, builder incentives are substantial. As of August 2026 the Austin area is carrying roughly 5.9 months of supply, and a completed spec house is expensive for a builder to hold.
What that produces is a strong preference for incentives over price cuts, and the reason is straightforward: the recorded sale price sets the comparable for every remaining unit in the community. A builder will buy down your rate, cover closing costs, or throw in upgrades far more readily than they will reduce the headline number.
Two questions to ask. What is the incentive conditioned on, which is usually using the builder's affiliated lender and title company. And what does the same loan cost with an outside lender. Sometimes the incentive genuinely wins. Sometimes the rate on the affiliated loan is high enough to eat it. You cannot know without pricing both, and the sales office will not run that comparison for you.
Ask about the tax before you set your budget
New construction around Austin sits disproportionately in Municipal Utility Districts, because MUDs are the mechanism by which the water and sewer infrastructure under a new community gets funded. That is an extra line on your annual tax bill.
Also ask what the assessed value will be once the house is complete. The tax figure quoted during construction may reflect an unimproved lot, and the first full-year bill on a finished house is a different number. This is the single most common budget surprise in new construction, and it is entirely knowable in advance. See what a MUD tax is.
Around Leander, Cedar Park, Georgetown, and Kyle this comes up constantly.
Yes, get an independent inspection
New does not mean flawless. Municipal inspections confirm code compliance, which is a floor rather than a standard of workmanship, and the trades that built your house were working quickly across many houses.
Inspect at two points if the builder permits it: before drywall goes up, when framing, plumbing, and electrical are visible and cheap to correct, and again before closing. An independent inspector working for you finds things a builder's own quality process does not, and the pre-drywall visit is the higher-value one.
The warranty, specifically
Builder warranties are typically tiered: a short period covering workmanship and finishes, a longer one on systems, and a long structural warranty. Ask what each period actually is, what is excluded, who administers the claim, and whether it transfers if you sell.
Ask also how warranty requests are handled in practice. A builder still selling in the community has more reason to respond than one who finished and moved on, which is worth weighing if you are buying into the last phase.
Things people forget until it is too late
- What is not included. Fences, landscaping, blinds, gutters, and refrigerators are frequently extra, and the model home has all of them.
- Upgrade pricing versus doing it later. Some upgrades are only sensible during construction. Many are cheaper afterwards, and financing them into the mortgage is not free.
- Lot premiums. Real money, sometimes for a lot whose advantage disappears when the next phase is built behind it. Ask what is planned on adjacent land.
- What the HOA will cost once the builder hands it over. Early dues are sometimes subsidised.
- The completion date. Ask what happens to your rate lock if it slips, because it frequently slips.
What we do about it
We come to the first appointment, price the builder's lender against an outside one so the incentive is compared honestly, ask what the tax bill becomes on the finished house, and get an independent inspector in before the drywall. None of that is adversarial. It is the same diligence a resale gets.