New construction: the person in the sales office is not your agent

Who the sales consultant works for

The builder. Their job is to sell that community at the builder’s terms, and they are measured on it.

This is not a criticism — it is the arrangement. But buyers routinely treat the person across the desk as a neutral guide, and then wonder why nobody mentioned the CDD, the lot premium, or that the incentive requires using the builder’s lender.

What is negotiable, and what is not

The base price usually is not. Almost everything around it is.

• Closing cost credits, which are the builder’s preferred currency because they do not touch the recorded price or the comparables in the community.
• A rate buy-down, often through the builder’s own lender — see what a builder buy-down actually costs you.
• Design centre allowances, upgrades and appliance packages.
• Lot premiums, which are pure margin and are more negotiable at the end of a phase than at the start.
• The closing date, which matters more than people think if you are selling somewhere else.

What is generally not negotiable: the base price on an early release, and the contract itself, which is the builder’s own document rather than the standard Florida contract.

The three questions nobody in the office volunteers

1. Is there a CDD, and what is the payoff figure? A CDD is a government assessment collected on your tax bill, not an HOA fee, so it does not appear in the monthly figure you were quoted. Across the Florida new-construction communities we track, the median published CDD is $168 a month. Part of it can often be paid off in a lump sum; ask for both the annual amount and the payoff.
2. What will the tax bill be on the finished house? Until it is built, the property is assessed as land. The first full bill is a different number, and it is the one to budget from.
3. What is still to be built next to me? The empty lots, the phase plan and whether the amenity centre is funded. A community sells its final phase against its own earlier phases.