One of the Best Types of Rentals Just Got Cheaper

Dave:
For the first time in years, the price of a newly constructed home is now lower than the price of an existing home, and builders are even sweetening the deals with rate buy downs and seller credits. And this makes new construction an interesting option for investors for the first time in a very long time. But it’s not for everyone. There are important regional differences. Not all construction is the same, and you really need to know how to find these deals, how to negotiate the best deals. And so today we’re digging in on this new opportunity in new construction.
Hey everyone. Welcome to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer. Thank you all so much for joining me for today’s episode. This is actually a topic I have been thinking about making an episode on for a while. I’ve been dabbling in it a little bit here and there looking at deals myself in new construction, but I haven’t made this episode because honestly, for a really long time I would’ve never recommended new construction to investors or people in the BiggerPockets community because there’s just too much of a premium. Ordinarily it just costs way too much to buy a newly constructed home. The rents aren’t that much higher and so the math just doesn’t really work out. But in the last couple of years we’ve seen this interesting phenomenon develop, but it’s only gotten more pronounced the opportunity over the last couple of years I find myself looking more and more and new construction listings.
I’ve toured a couple of new construction homes recently, haven’t pulled the trigger but have gotten pretty seriously interested in them. So I wanted to share with you why I think this is such an interesting asset class and help explain what types of investors this might make sense for and if you are one of those investors, how to actually go out and buy one of these deals. So that’s what we’re doing today. We’re going to start first with the opportunity, just share with you some information and data here. As of Q2 2025, the median price on a newly built home was about $411,000. Meanwhile, the median price on an existing home, a lived in home, a used home if you will, was nearly $430,000, meaning that buying a newly constructed home in the United States is now about 18 and half thousand dollars cheaper than buying a existing home.
Now of course there are regional differences, but this is a crazy stat. This is not something that normally happens. In fact, there was one time back in 2021 where these sort of touch together, but I was looking at data from the National Association of Home Builders who tracks this kind of stuff and it goes all the way back to before the crash in 2007, and there has never really been a time where this has happened. There has been times where it gets close, but these lines have never really crossed until the last couple of years. So we need to ask ourselves if we’re interested in this. Yeah, that’s great on paper, but we need to talk about why this is happening too, to figure out if this is actually as good of an opportunity. As it sounds like the main reason why prices are going down has to do with inventory and just varying inventory dynamics with the existing home market and the new home market.
Basically, builders have a very different calculation about inventory than homeowners do. Think about how their business model works. These are big national builders and of course there are smaller builders, but when we talk about this trend that’s developing, it really comes down to these publicly traded companies that are building thousands, tens of thousands of homes every single year. The way their business model works is almost similar to a flipper in that they have to permit build and dispo these properties as quickly as they possibly can. They do not want a lot of inventory sitting on their balance sheet because this business is super capital intensive. They can’t just go out, maybe even if they have a sub development, right, they’re going to build a thousand homes. They can’t go and build all 1000 of them at a time. Yes, for logistical reasons, because there’d be a lot of construction work, but also for capital reasons, it would be extremely expensive to go out and build 1000 homes, buy all the materials, pay for all that labor all at once.
And so instead what they do is they often build in phases. You see this all the time in sub developments. They’ll build phase one, it’s 200 homes, phase two is another 200 homes and so on, and they need to sell the homes from phase one to get to phase two. They need the money back that they’ve invested into those new construction builds to get it back and to move on and keep their business growing. And this means that they’re incentivized and willing to work with price or seller credits or rate buy downs or whatever the incentives is to move those properties and get them off their books. Now of course, this is very different from homeowners we talk about on this show all the time. The reason the market is in more of a correction right now and not in a free fall is because there’s no forced selling in this market.
People, whether they’re small investors or homeowners right now have the choice of whether or not they want to sell. And right now it’s not the best time to sell. It’s definitely one of the weaker times it has been to sell in the last three or four years for sure. And so a lot of people are just choosing not to. They say it’s too expensive to move or I’m not going to get top dollar for my property, and so I’m just not going to sell my home. And that has limited the spike in inventory in the existing home market. So think about these two things happening at the same time. Existing homes, you don’t have people who are desperate to sell. Some of people are sure, but in a broad big picture sense, they’re not just fire sailing their homes or offering big discounts, they’re still trying to get top dollar.
Meanwhile, builders, they just got to move this inventory so they can move on to the next thing and they are willing to give concessions, whether that’s in terms of price or rate, buy downs or whatever. And you see this reflected in the inventory data. One way that we measure inventory is months of supply. The higher it is, the more inventory there is. And for existing homes you used homes, it’s 4.6 months, whereas for new construction it’s about 7.6 months as of September. But before that, it was actually closer to nine. So the average over the last couple months is eight and a half, so significantly higher than existing home sales. And this is exactly why we’re seeing this flip in the trend. Now, if you’re wondering, does this spell trouble for builders, are they in trouble and they’re going to be losing money? That is hard to say.
But so far the data I could dig up points to, no, I couldn’t actually find data for 2025, but when you look at data from 2020 through 2024, there is some studies from the National Association of Home Builders again, that shows the gross and net profit margin for builders. And it went up a lot in 20 22, 20 23, 20 24. That suggests they have the ability to lower prices or to offer concessions and still turn a profit. They means their margins may go back to 2020 levels or 2017 levels, but they were still making 18, 19% gross profit margins during that time. Their net profit margins were at 8.7% as of 2023, but normally they’re in the seven, seven and a half range. So they might go back to those periods, but they’re probably willing to do that as long as they’re still selling homes and moving inventory. And the good thing for the home builder industry is that’s exactly what’s happening.
They are seeing inventory move, especially in the last month. The average over the last couple of years has been an annualized rate of about 700,000 homes, give or take. It fluctuates a little bit, but it’s been relatively flat around 700,000 homes per year. As of August, 2025, that annualized rate spiked to 800,000. So this suggests that there still is demand. Demand just went up. We saw like a 10% spike in new home sales in August, 2025. It’s only one month of data. Always want to caution that those aren’t trends and we need to see if this is an anomaly. But it is interesting to see this big spike in home sales because they’re offering incentives and there still appears to be buyer demand. And so that suggests that this trend may continue into the future, which is what makes it a potentially interesting opportunity for real estate investors.
We do have to take a break, but when we come back, I’m going to talk about why this is such a good opportunity for real estate investors and how you can potentially jump in. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to On the Market. I am Dave Meyer. Thanks for joining us today to hear about the potential opportunity that exists in new construction these days. Again, this isn’t something that is normally that appealing to real estate investors, but I want to talk a little bit about why small, regular mom and pop real estate investors, people with modest portfolios like you and me should consider this. Not saying everyone should do it, but it is at least worth thinking about because the numbers kind of make sense. So here are a couple things for you to think about. First of all, the lower all in monthly costs, your just expenses on paper and into the future are likely going to be lower.
So the first thing is one, the prices are lower. That’s just going to make your cost lower because it costs less to buy these homes. Now of course, that’s going to vary market to market, but we’re just talking on a national level and I dug into a couple of markets in Florida, I looked in Oklahoma a little bit in the Carolinas, and this is true in a lot of places. You can buy new homes, comparable specs, comparable size at a cheaper price, so that’s going to be cheaper. The second thing really comes from these concessions builders right now, in order to move this inventory, because we are in a slow market, generally speaking, they’re often buying down rates. Sometimes they’re buying points, so you have a permanent buydown. Other times they’re temporary buy downs, one, two buy downs, 1, 2, 3 buy downs, which lower your costs for one, two, or three years.
They’re also closing cost credits that you can save money on. So all in all, your monthly payment on a new home could actually be lower than an existing home that is incredibly attractive. The reason it’s so attractive is because they’re not necessarily apples to apples comparisons. When you buy an existing home, you are buying something used. Essentially it’s like the difference between buying a new car and buying a used car. When you buy the used car, there’s stuff that’s probably going to go wrong that’s been a little bit worn down, even if it’s taken well taken care of. There’s just wear and tear on things that happen, and that means your CapEx and repair costs are going to go up. Meanwhile, when you buy new construction, a lot of them have warranties. I know people have differing opinions on the value of warranties, but a lot of them do have warranties.
Most of them should have very modern systems that should reduce any near term costs. You’re going to have a brand new roof, right? You’re going to have a brand new hot water heater, you’re going to have a brand new HVAC system, you’re going to have new appliances. Some people might say that those will break sooner. I am one of those people that tend to agree new appliances suck and they all break faster than the old ones, but overall, you are very likely to have lower CapEx and repair costs at least for the next couple of years when you combine that with the lower cost of your mortgage payment. So you’re going to have lower expenses, then you have to consider the rental side because if you are a renter, all things being equal, if you’re looking for a three, two and you have an existing home that’s worn in or you have a three two that’s new construction or recently built, you’re probably going to want to live in the new construction.
And so that means you can potentially command higher rent. Now, that’s really going to come down to location. Some of these giant massive subdivisions in the middle of nowhere aren’t going to command higher rent, but there are areas if you buy, right? And we’ll talk about that in a little bit where you can actually command higher rent on new construction. And so when you combine these things, you look at potentially higher rents, definitely lower costs, you are going to make better cashflow potential. And as a real estate investor, that’s what you’re looking for. That’s why it’s such an interesting opportunity. You’re getting this newer product, you’re getting new systems, you’re getting energy efficient, smart home features, all these things that people want that you probably want in a home that you can’t get with existing homes and you’re getting it at a cheaper price. Just to hammer this home, I want to give you an example using real numbers right now, existing home average price is $423,000.
If we assume we’re putting 20% down, getting a 30 year fixed right now, probably get, if you’re an owner occupied, I’m just going to use the rate 6.5%. That’s nice and round your principal and interest on your mortgage payment’s going to be $2,140. If you bought a new home with the median price of 410,000 with, let’s just say you get incentives, let’s say you negotiated down 5%. I don’t know if that’s possible. Let’s say you get it for three 90, just as an example, you had to rate down of one point that we get your p and i down to $1,770. That’s a difference of $370 per month. That in most markets is the difference between a strong cash flowing deal and one that you just wouldn’t buy, right? Just imagine that you could get, I don’t know, 2,500 bucks a month in rent, 2,700 bucks a month in rent on that.
You could definitely cashflow potentially really well depending on taxes, insurance, other stuff in your area. Again, also with those lower repair and CapEx cost. And of course, this is just an example. In some markets you are seeing discounts of 5%. In other markets, you are seeing them really loaded up on concessions. It depends on the location, it depends on the builder and the incentives they’re offering. I’m just trying to give you an example that you can legitimately lower your expenses by meaningful amounts if you buy these properties right Now, buying, right, of course depends on locations, and when you look at new construction opportunities, they’re not really spread throughout the country equally, you see them in high demand. I think you could probably guess. We see them in Texas, we see them in Florida, the Carolinas, you see them in the Sunbelt parts, Vegas, Nevada.
You also see ’em in Oklahoma. There are areas of Ohio that they’re building a lot, and that is a really interesting dynamic because you’re going to have a trade off here. This is where more inventory exists and where they’re willing to offer concessions. But that’s probably because demand isn’t that high right now, right? They’re not giving concessions out of the kindness of their heart. They’re giving concessions. They need to incentivize people to buy these homes. And so what happens is in a lot of these markets, you are going to see some of the biggest corrections markets like Austin, San Antonio, parts of Houston and Dallas. Not all of those metro areas, but parts of Houston and Dallas, they’re seeing corrections, but they have tons of inventory on the market. Same thing with Phoenix, Tampa, Orlando, areas of North Carolina. We’re seeing the exact same thing. And so you’re having this dynamic like a lot of the rest of the country where there’s more inventory, more opportunity, but these markets are seeing some of the biggest corrections in the country.
So as a buyer, you really need to be discerning. You can’t just buy anywhere. You need to focus on really good locations even within these markets. And think about competitiveness. You need to identify areas where you can buy a new build, where you’re going to have strong renter demand or resale value demand in the future. And that’s going to depend on the same things that always matter when you’re buying a property, access to amenities, desir abilities, school districts, that sort of thing. So I think it’s really just up to you. Some people, if you’re really bullish on Orlando, you should go and just find the best property in that area and really negotiate hard for the best incentives you can find, but there’s a correction in that area. Or you could also target markets, like I said on some in North Carolina or in Oklahoma for example, where the markets are somewhat flat, but there’s still inventory that might be a little lower risk but a little lower upside.
So that’s really up for you to decide. But just as a reminder, these deals aren’t available everywhere, but you can Google this and find out where this kind of inventory exists in terms of strategies and ways that you can use these properties. I think they’re pretty standard. This isn’t really all that different than buying a traditional rental property. So I definitely think that long-term rentals work, generally speaking, this is not true everywhere, but generally speaking, you want to target friendly family subdivisions. These is single family rentals. They’re usually bigger homes. They appeal to families. So you want to, which to me is great. It’s a great strategy. You can find tenants who will hopefully stay a long time. So long-term rentals definitely work. These definitely work for house hacking for sure. You can buy as an owner occupied with a builder that’s going to probably get you even a better rates.
Then you can convert it to a rental later. And actually when we were on the Cashflow Road Show in Indianapolis, I went to it sort of like this. It wasn’t a build to rent community, but they were buying a lot of infill in this one area in Indianapolis, which is good market, and they had a lot of duplexes, and I just thought that was an awesome opportunity for house hacking this kind of deal. It would do a little better than break even probably if you did it as a traditional rental. But this kind of deal, if you bought it as an owner occupied living in a brand new side-by-side duplex, that’s a really intriguing option. I’ve actually even seen some build to rent fourplexes that work well at current rates, but with incentives and owner occupied, they can be amazing. So I should mention that for both of these, they don’t just have to be single family.
A lot of these build to rent communities have duplexes and have fourplexes that you can buy as well. I would just, when you’re looking at those things, again, think about renter demand because one thing that always worries me about these big subdivisions is if there are a hundred rental units that look exactly the same, how do you compete? And if there are going to, if there’s a decline in rent or there’s adverse economic conditions, how do you compete with your neighbors? If they start lowering their rents, you might be forced to lowering your rent. So that’s something to think about in these build to rent communities. All things being equal. If it were me, I would choose new construction in infill, not in massive subdivision for that very reason. But there are pros and cons to both other things you could do, you could definitely do short-term rentals or midterm rentals with these kinds of things.
I basically think it works for any type of long-term buy and hold sort of strategy. As long as you are really testing demand, you need to know who wants to live there, who wants to rent there, and if it works in your neighborhood, new construction can work as well or better than existing homes in a lot of these markets. We got to take one more quick break, but if this opportunity sounds intriguing to you, I’m going to walk you through a little bit of a playbook on how to identify, negotiate, and execute on these kinds of deals. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer walking you through the new opportunity in new construction. Before the break, we talked about what’s going on, why this is an interesting opportunity, and if it’s for you, I’ll just share with you a couple of thoughts about how you can actually go about pulling this off.
First up, where to source these deals. A lot of builders right now are putting up marketplaces because this did not exist in the last couple of years, but similar to Zillow, they’ll have their own listing platform that you can go and check out properties. There’s one from Lennar or Lennar. People always tell me I’m pronouncing it right, I have no idea how to pronounce it, I’m sorry, but Lennar, let’s call it Lennar. They just put out one that actually calculates expected cashflow for you, which is pretty cool. It’s pretty fun to poke around with, but other builders are doing the exact same thing, so you can check that out. So that’s a good place to source. The second thing is if you live in a market where there is a lot of new construction, go drive around. I was driving around through Colorado recently where there is a lot of new construction and I went on a 50 minute drive through the Denver metro area, sort of the outskirts behind it, and I was just seeing billboard after billboard after billboard for new construction, and all I kept thinking was, man, I should walk in there and go negotiate a deal because not only there were two things about it that struck me.
It wasn’t just one subdivision, there was multiple subdivisions and there is multiple subdivisions for the same builder, which means they’re going to be more incentivized to offer discounts because they have a lot of inventory to move. And there was multiple builders. So that means when you’re negotiating, you can probably play these people off each other by shopping around and looking at different product. And so just keep your eyes open. I think that’s another good way to look at these playbooks. The other thing is talk to agents. Agents should know what new construction deals are on the market and which ones are attractive to you. And of course you can always look at Zillow as well, but personally this is just a suspicion, I believe going directly to the builder is going to give you the best opportunity to negotiate. So I would say look on their own websites or drive around, call the numbers, walk into the sales office at the new place and go face-to-face.
Go direct on the phone. That’s probably the best way you’re going to get to a decision maker and have that leverage in your negotiation. Now, when you’re approaching these deals, you want to look for signs of leverage and power essentially in the negotiation because not every community is going to be desperate to sell. Not every builder is going to offer incentives. So you have to understand where you’re going to have the most leverage. And again, the most leverage often means the most inventory, which means prices could be going down. So this is a decision you have to make for yourself, but if you want max leverage, look for places where the same builder, like I just said, has multiple properties in the same area. Just go see how many things they have on the market and how quickly they’re selling because that will tell you where you are in a negotiating position.
And this is something that’s so much better than existing homes, right? Because existing homes, the seller has one property, you don’t know their motivation level, you don’t know what they’re willing to take. But if you dig in a little bit and see how quickly things are selling compared to how much inventory they have on the market, you can sort of get a sense for how desperate they are or how, let’s call it, how willing they are to cut a deal. Not desperate, but you can get a sense of that. You can also look at this in aggregate. So there are publicly available data sources where you can see months of supply for new homes in your market. I would definitely check that out. And then the last thing, just a little tip I have heard some from friends in this industry is a lot of these builders, they’re publicly traded companies and they’ve quarter end incentives for their salespeople.
And so if you go at the end of a quarter, then you might be able to get a little bit sweeter of a deal as well. So think about timing that a little bit. Obviously just get the best deal you can, but if you happen to be at the end of the quarter, that might help you as well. Now, once you find your deals, you do need to underwrite these properties pretty similarly to existing homes. And I think this is one area that there is a potential pitfall is you don’t want to account for no maintenance or no repairs. You still need to set some money aside for CapEx because if you’re going to hold onto this for a long time, the water heater’s going to break. You’re going to need a roof in 20 years maybe if you plan to hold onto it that long.
So you need to still underwrite it assuming that there are some repairs and maintenance. But I think it’s okay to assume relatively low repairs for the first year or the second year. The second thing to make sure that you look for is HOAs. A lot of new construction subdivisions have HOAs, and we talk about this on the show, that’s not always a bad thing, but it’s something you definitely want to understand how much the fees are, how much they can potentially go up, what they cover, who’s governing these HOAs. I know it sounds like a lot of homework to do and it can be, but it’s crucially important. An HOA is a governing body with legal rights to make decisions about your investment. So if you are going to go buy in one of these communities, you best understand what is going on in that HOA or what is intended to go on in that HOA before you buy.
Again, it is not all a bad thing, but it’s something you definitely need to understand during your underwriting process. Third, you need to understand taxes because sometimes you’re buying new construction before there has been a recent assessment. So you really need to dig in on what your taxes are going to be. Fourth, understand warranties, how good this warranty is. Review the warranty company, see what they cover, how long is it, and use that to guide your underwriting because if you have a rock solid warranty, then you can underwrite for lower repairs for the first year or two. If you don’t, you might as well budget a little bit of repairs to make sure even if the warranty doesn’t cover something, you’re going to be doing well. And then the last thing to make sure that you cover is the rental feasibility, right? You need to understand the demand.
That I think is probably the hardest and most important part of underwriting. New construction, especially in a subdivision. You got to know what you can lease it for. If there’s an HOA, you better understand what the leasing rules are. Can you do short-term rentals? Can you do midterm rentals? A lot of them, but look at what they allow. If there’s any rules on pets or anything that’s going to restrict your ability to maximize your rent, definitely understand that during your underwriting. So overall, it’s pretty similar to underwriting a regular rental property just with a couple of stipulations that I want you all to look out for. So those are things to look for in your underwriting. And again, I think the biggest risks here are one HOAs, which can be a risk, not necessarily, but something to look in. Just the fee creep, the governance of them.
It just adds an additional variable that you need to look into. And the second thing again is location risk. Sometimes builders build in really random areas. We saw this during the great recession. We saw these subdivisions just absolutely tank. They’re not good locations. You still have to buy in a good location, even if it’s in a subdivision, it can’t be out in the middle of nowhere. If there is a market correction, buyers, renters are going to be more discerning. They’re probably going to do what they always do, which is want to live in good locations. And so don’t just buy something because it’s cheap, buy it because it is a good asset with low maintenance costs and it has to still be in a good location. And one more thing, sorry, I almost forgot this. One more thing to remember and underwrite for is the rate buy downs.
A lot of times with these builders, they’re offering rate buy downs that only last one or two or three years. That’s okay if you underwrite for that, but make sure that the deal still pencils at the rate that it’s going to reset to. So if you get quoted at 6.5 and they give you a rate, buy down to 5.5 for two years, underwrite the deal at 6.5 and then just treat the first two years as gravy where you save a little bit of money, but do not underwrite it at the lower rate unless that is fixed rate debt that you lock in for the next 30 years. That is super important. If I were negotiating, would prefer to get a permanent, even if it’s less, if I could even get 0.5% buydown for 30 years, I’d take that over a 1% buydown for two years.
I take that all day long. I would much prefer the permanent. I just know what I’m getting. And to me, that’s more important than saving a couple bucks for just two years. So that’s underwriting. And then just a couple last thoughts before we get out of here just about negotiating what you can. A couple tips about negotiating. First thing is to lead with monthly payment target, not the price. And this is actually very different from how I personally approach buying cars where I only care about the price, I don’t care about the financing, but because of the way builders work, they’re going to be more willing to negotiate with you on concessions, credits and rate buy downs than they are on price. And this makes sense. If you think about their business model, right? They’re trying to sell a couple dozen, a couple hundred, a couple thousand properties in the same subdivision, and they will do anything to protect their comps.
They do not want to go from four 10 to three 90 because that will signal to every other buyer that comes down the road that they can get it for three 90 instead. They would rather negotiate on things. They’ll be much more willing to negotiate on things that don’t show up publicly. These are things like seller concessions. They are rate buy downs. They’re seller credits, although everyone wants to buy lower as a rental property investor. If you’re looking for cashflow, just see how much you can reduce your expenses. Of course, you do not want to overpay, don’t pay more than market price for these properties. But where you’re going to have the most leverage, I believe, is in that monthly payment. And that’s where I would push hardest in my negotiations. The second thing is you don’t have to just accept a single concession. You can try and bundle these concessions like a permanent rate buydown or closing cost credits.
Sometimes these properties don’t come with appliances, for example, so you can ask for a washer dryer that can be a couple thousand dollars. So try and bundle as many of these things as possible. Again, they might not be willing to work on price that much. If you get a rate buydown some free appliances, that’s pretty good. That’s definitely lowering your costs. And then the third is make them compete against each other. If you are looking in a market where there are multiple builders, go negotiate with both of them and say, a builder is offering me a permanent buydown of one percentage. Point B builder, you’re only offering 0.5 for two years. I’m not interested. And C, if they will match or beat prices. Again, you don’t want just the best deal. You want to get the best asset, but you want to get the best asset at the best price.
And so use this newfound negotiating leverage that you might have in this market. And that’s it. It really isn’t all that different from buying existing homes, but there are just this few nuances that you should pay attention to when you’re researching, underwriting and negotiating these deals. I would love to hear from all of you if this is something you’re interested in or if you’ve done this in the past, let me know in the comments on YouTube or on Spotify because I’m very curious what your experience has been. I have a few friends that have delved into this. I’ve been looking at a couple of these over the last couple of months and I’m going to continue underwriting them. Haven’t found one in one of the markets I already invest in, and I haven’t decided yet if I want to sort open up an entire new operation in a new market just to pursue new construction. But it’s something I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye on, and I would love to hear from all of you what your experiences have been. Thank you all for listening to this episode of On The Market. I’m Dave Meyer. See you next time.