Will a Utah Builder Negotiate If They’re Already Offering an Incentive?
Builders will negotiate, but maybe not as aggressively as deal-seeking buyers hope. You can often get little things thrown in — free blinds throughout the house, a refrigerator, small credits here and there. But if a builder is already offering a big incentive — say, a 7/6 ARM with a 2-1 buydown bringing the first-year rate down to something like 1.99% — they likely won’t be very negotiable on price or anything else. They don’t need to be. And if another buyer makes an as-is offer while you’re still negotiating, the builder will usually just take it.
Be careful trying to negotiate hard on homes under $700,000 that already carry rate, closing-cost, or price-reduction incentives — that’s where builders have the least room and the least motivation to move further. On more expensive homes — especially ones with no incentive attached, or on dirt-start builds — there’s typically more room to negotiate on price, and you should always ask.
Micah has seen this play out directly with a client looking at a former Parade of Homes home listed at $1,650,000. He asked whether the builder could do better and offered $1,450,000. The builder came back and the two sides landed at $1,500,000 — $150,000 under asking, for the price of asking a question the builder’s sales rep was never going to raise on their own.
Full breakdown: Can You Negotiate With a Utah Builder? · Utah Builder Incentives