New Construction Homes in Illinois

New construction gives you a warranty, current building standards and no deferred maintenance. Resale gives you mature landscaping, established school boundaries, a known tax bill and a negotiating position.

The tax point catches buyers repeatedly. A new-construction property tax bill often reflects only the unimproved lot. Once the finished home is assessed, the bill rises, sometimes sharply. Budgeting from the current figure is a mistake.

A resale purchase in Illinois runs on the Multi-Board Residential Real Estate Contract, which contains an attorney review and modification provision and a set of protections both sides are used to.

A builder purchase runs on the builder's own contract. It will not contain that provision in the same form. The terms that matter are construction delay, material substitution, change order pricing, warranty scope and duration, deposit protection, and dispute resolution, which in many builder contracts means arbitration.

Your attorney reviews it. What your attorney cannot tell you is which of those terms this particular builder actually moves on in practice, which is a different kind of knowledge and is most of what representation is worth at a sales office.

On a to-be-built home, two problems recur.

The first is the rate lock. Your lock has to survive the build. Extended locks cost money, and a build that slips past the lock can change your payment materially between contract and closing. Ask what happens to your rate if completion moves by sixty or ninety days, and get the answer before you sign.

The second is the appraisal. It happens against a house that does not exist yet, using plans and comparables. If it comes in short at the end of the build, that gap is usually yours to cover, and by then you have a year of deposits and selections committed.

Neither is a reason to avoid new construction. Both are reasons to ask about them at contract rather than at closing.

The base price is not the price. On a to-be-built home, the design center is where the number moves, and it moves faster than almost anyone expects.

Two things help. First, know before you walk in which upgrades are structural and which are finishes. Structural choices, meaning anything that changes the shape of the house, generally have to be made now and generally hold value. Finishes can be changed later, usually for less than the builder charges.

Second, get the allowance in writing and get the price list. An allowance of a stated dollar amount is only meaningful against the actual cost of what you would choose, and builders price selections at retail.

The pattern that works: spend on the structure and on anything behind a wall, take the builder's standard on anything you could replace in a weekend, and hold some of the budget back, because there will be something at month six.

Before closing you walk the house and produce a punch list of items for the builder to correct. Do it in daylight, take your time, and bring your independent inspection report so you can check every item on it.

Open every window and door. Run every tap. Test every outlet. Run the heating and the cooling. Look at the grading around the foundation and where the downspouts discharge.

Get the punch list in writing, signed, with completion dates.

Understand what changes at closing: after it, your leverage is the warranty and the builder's reputation rather than the money. Anything promised verbally at the walk-through and not written down has a way of not happening once the sales office moves to the next community.

Builders hold base price firmly because it sets the comp for every remaining home in the community. They are far more flexible on incentives: closing cost contributions, rate buydowns, upgrade allowances, lot premium reductions late in a phase. Knowing which lever to pull, and when in the phase to pull it, is most of the value of representation here.