New construction is not a harder purchase than a resale purchase. It is a different one — different contract, different timeline, different people on the other side of the table. Chris Moore represents new-home buyers in all six Northeast Florida counties: Nassau, Duval, Clay, St. Johns, Baker and Putnam.
A brand-new house is a different transaction from a resale house. The contract is written by the builder’s lawyers rather than pulled off a standard form. The timeline is measured in months instead of weeks. The money moves in stages. And the friendly, well-informed person sitting in the model home is employed by the company selling you the house.
None of that makes new construction a bad idea. Plenty of buyers are happier in a new home than they would have been in anything on the resale market. It does make it a purchase that rewards preparation, and one where having somebody on your side of the table changes what you end up signing.
Chris Moore works with new-construction buyers across the full Northeast Florida footprint — Nassau, Duval, Clay, St. Johns, Baker and Putnam counties. Not one county and not one builder’s list of communities. Wherever inside that region you want a new home, you can have your own representation for it.
Almost every new home falls into one of two categories, and the difference drives everything else about the deal.
To-be-built (sometimes called a build job or a dirt start) means you choose a lot and a floor plan and the house does not exist yet. You get the most choice — elevation, structural options, finishes — and you wait the longest. You also carry the most exposure to schedule slippage, and in some contracts to cost adjustments.
Spec or inventory homes are houses the builder started on its own account. Some are framed, some are finished and standing empty. You lose most of the choice, you gain a much shorter closing timeline, and this is usually where the builder’s incentive money is concentrated — an unsold finished house costs the builder money every month it sits.
A third case shows up near the end of a community’s life: the model home itself, often sold with a leaseback so the builder can keep using it while it sells the last lots. Those come with their own set of questions about wear, warranty start dates and rent terms.
This is the single most consequential thing on this page, so it goes near the top.
The on-site sales consultant works for the builder. Many of them are excellent and genuinely helpful, and none of that changes who pays them, who reviews their performance, or whose interests they are contractually obliged to protect. They are not your representative, and they are not obliged to tell you which option is a bad value or which lot has a drainage problem.
Nearly every builder operates a broker registration policy, and most of them require that your agent be disclosed — usually physically present — on your very first visit to that community. Walk in alone, sign the visitor card, and at a lot of builders you have permanently forfeited the ability to be represented in that community. Not for a week. For that community, for good.
Representation on a new build is customarily paid by the builder out of a marketing budget that exists whether or not you bring anyone. The base price does not drop because you showed up by yourself. So the practical rule is simple:
Call Chris Moore before you set foot in a model home — even if you are “just looking.” It is one phone call, it costs you nothing, and it is not reversible afterwards.
A Florida resale usually runs on a standard form both sides have seen a hundred times. A builder contract is drafted by the builder’s counsel to protect the builder, and it is not that form. Read it as a different document, because it is one.
Things worth reading closely, and worth reading before you put money down:
You will often hear that the contract cannot be changed. For the core boilerplate that is frequently true. For addenda, credits, timing, what is included and what gets fixed before closing, it is frequently not true — and the difference is worth having somebody in your corner who has read one of these before.
A to-be-built home in this region is a multi-month project. Permitting, weather, inspection scheduling, trade availability and material lead times all move the date, and they move it in one direction.
What matters is not the estimate the sales consultant gives you in the model home. What matters is the completion language in the contract, which typically sets a generous outside date and gives the builder relief for delays it does not control. Understand which date is enforceable and which one is a hope.
Then plan around it. A slipped closing collides with rate locks, lease end dates, school calendars, movers, and the sale of the home you are living in now. Practical habits: ask early about extended rate locks and any float-down provision; build slack into your lease or your own listing; and do not give notice on a rental until your final walkthrough is actually on the calendar.
Builders are generally reluctant to cut the base price, because the base price sets the comparable sales for every remaining home in the community and follows the appraisals for the buyers who came before you. So they pay you in other currency: closing-cost credits, rate buydowns, design-centre allowances, appliance or fence or blind packages, and occasionally a lot premium waiver.
Most of the largest incentives are conditioned on using the builder’s affiliated mortgage company, and sometimes its title company as well. That arrangement is legal and disclosed, and quite often it genuinely is the better deal. It is not automatically the better deal. The way to find out is to put the affiliated lender’s Loan Estimate next to at least one independent lender’s, pulled the same day for the same lock period, and compare the total cost of the loan rather than the headline rate. If the credit is large enough it wins even at a worse rate — but you should be able to see that on paper.
Two more things about incentives. They move, sometimes month to month, and they tend to be heaviest on standing inventory and toward the end of a quarter. And a verbal promise is not a term — if it is not in the contract or a signed addendum, it does not exist at the closing table.
Lot premiums are charged for preserve backing, water views, cul-de-sac position, corner lots and extra width or depth. They are real money and they do not reliably come back at resale. Ask precisely what the premium buys, and if it is a preserve view, ask what protects the preserve — a platted conservation tract is a different thing from a vacant parcel somebody else is entitled to build on later.
The design centre is where budgets go to die, and the reason is a genuine distinction rather than a sales trick. Structural options — an extended lanai, a bumped-out room, a different window or door location, extra electrical rough-in — have to be selected before construction and cannot be added later at any price. Cosmetic finishes such as flooring, counters, fixtures, paint and landscaping can very often be done after closing for less than the builder charges. Knowing which category each item falls into before you sit down for the appointment is worth a lot.
One financing note: upgrades are not automatically covered by your loan, and a heavily upgraded contract price can appraise short. Talk to your lender about how upgrades are treated before you select them, not after.
These two get confused constantly, and they are not the same kind of obligation.
An HOA fee is paid to a private homeowners association for common-area maintenance, insurance on shared property and enforcement of the community rules. It is billed monthly, quarterly or annually by the association.
A CDD — Community Development District — is a special-purpose unit of local government created under Florida law to finance the infrastructure of a master-planned community: roads, water and sewer lines, stormwater systems, and often the amenity centre. The district issues bonds to build all of that up front and repays them through assessments that appear on your annual property tax bill, on top of the ordinary county and school millage.
The assessment usually has two parts. A debt-service portion retires the bonds and has an end date. An operations-and-maintenance portion pays to run and maintain what the bonds built, and that part continues indefinitely. Amounts vary by district and by individual lot, so the only reliable number is the one pulled for the specific address you are considering.
A CDD is not automatically a bad thing — it is frequently the reason the amenity exists at all. But it belongs in your monthly payment arithmetic from the beginning rather than as a surprise at closing. Florida requires a CDD disclosure at purchase; read it, and ask three questions: what is the current total assessment for this lot, when does the debt-service portion end, and is there a separate club or amenity fee on top.
New does not mean flawless. It means nobody has lived in the house long enough to find what is wrong with it. Municipal inspections check code compliance on behalf of the jurisdiction; they are not performed for you and they are not a substitute for your own inspector.
The pre-drywall inspection happens after framing, rough plumbing, rough electrical and HVAC rough-in are complete and before insulation and drywall cover everything permanently. An inspector is looking at framing and connections, hurricane strapping and structural fasteners, sheathing nailing patterns, window and door flashing, penetrations through the envelope, duct routing and support, and whether anything got notched, drilled or omitted. This is the only opportunity you will ever have to see the bones of the house.
The final, pre-closing inspection covers the finished house: roof and attic, exterior envelope and grading, drainage away from the slab, HVAC performance under load, electrical protection devices, plumbing fixtures under pressure, appliances, doors and windows, and the whole punch list. Do this early enough that the builder has time to correct items before the closing date, not the afternoon before.
Many buyers add a third: an eleven-month inspection, timed just before the one-year workmanship coverage expires. It is the cheapest inspection you will ever pay for relative to what it can recover.
One practical warning. Some builders restrict third-party inspector site access or require scheduling through the superintendent. Establish what is permitted before you sign the contract, not during the week you want the inspection done.
Most production builders in Florida issue a tiered express warranty, and the common shape of it is workmanship and materials for a short initial period, distribution systems — electrical, plumbing, heating and cooling — for a longer intermediate period, and major structural components for a substantially longer term.
The actual durations, the definitions of what counts as a structural defect, and the claim procedure vary from builder to builder. The warranty booklet governs, not the conversation you had in the model home, so ask for it and read it before you sign rather than at closing. Pay attention to how a claim is submitted, what the builder’s response window is, what maintenance obligations fall on you and can void coverage, and whether warranty disputes go to arbitration.
Appliance and system manufacturer warranties run separately from the builder’s and generally have to be registered by you. Keep your walkthrough punch list, keep dated photographs, and put every warranty request in writing — a phone call to a superintendent is not a record.
Six counties, six different kinds of new-home market. The contract mechanics above apply everywhere; what changes is the sort of building that actually happens and the questions worth asking first.
Most of Nassau’s master-planned new-home activity sits along the I-95 and SR-200/A1A corridor around Yulee, between Jacksonville and the coast. Move west toward Callahan and Hilliard and the pattern shifts to acreage, individual builds and smaller subdivisions. Because so much of the county is coastal or near-coastal, wind mitigation, flood zone and insurance questions carry more weight here than they do inland — and they are worth answering before you choose a lot, not after.
Duval is a large, long-established city, so new construction here is mostly infill and edge growth rather than open-field development: the Northside toward the airport and the port terminals, the Westside, and the outer Southside. At the Beaches, “new construction” more often means a teardown and rebuild on an existing lot than a subdivision. The trade is generally smaller lots in exchange for city services, established infrastructure and shorter commutes.
Clay is where a great many First Coast buyers look when they want a newer home in a master-planned community, and the First Coast Expressway (SR 23) corridor has made land that used to be a long drive considerably more accessible. Several of the county’s larger master-planned communities carry CDD assessments, so the tax-bill arithmetic described above matters here — get the specific figure for the specific lot.
St. Johns has seen substantial large-scale master-planned development, and the county’s school reputation is a substantial part of what drives demand. Expect CDD assessments in many of the bigger communities, expect amenity packages to be part of the pitch, and expect the sales offices to be busy — which is exactly the environment in which registering your own representation on the first visit matters most.
Baker is a different kind of new-construction market. Rather than large national-builder communities, much of what gets built here is individual homes, homes on acreage and small subdivisions. The questions that come up are correspondingly different: well and septic rather than CDD assessments, soil and percolation testing, driveway and access easements, impact fees, and how far the nearest utility connection actually runs. Buyers come for land and for a straightforward run down I-10 into Jacksonville.
New construction in Putnam skews toward one-off builds, replacement homes and modest subdivisions rather than large builder communities. Land is comparatively affordable, which is much of the appeal, and the practical due diligence is about septic and well, flood zone, elevation, road access and whether a parcel is buildable as platted — not about design centres and lot premiums. If you are building rather than buying finished, the questions start earlier than they do anywhere else on this list.
You are not legally required to have one, but the sales consultant in the model home represents the builder, not you. Having your own representative costs you nothing extra in the ordinary case — the builder budgets for it whether you bring someone or not, and the base price does not drop because you came alone — and it puts somebody on your side of the builder’s contract, the incentive negotiation, the design-centre decisions and the inspections.
On your first visit to that community, before you sign the visitor card. Most builders operate a broker registration policy requiring the agent to be disclosed and usually physically present the first time you walk in. If you tour alone first, many builders will not allow you to add representation for that community afterwards at all. One phone call before you go is all it takes.
As a rule, no. Builders are reluctant to discount the base price because it sets the comparable sales for every other home in the community and follows the appraisals of the buyers who already closed. The money that would have paid a buyer’s agent comes out of a marketing budget, not the price of your house, so declining representation generally saves you nothing and costs you an advocate.
A spec or inventory home is one the builder started on its own account without a buyer under contract. It may be finished or nearly finished, you get little or no say in the finishes, you close much sooner, and it is usually where the largest incentives are concentrated. A to-be-built home is chosen from a floor plan on a lot where nothing has been constructed yet: maximum choice, longest wait, and more exposure to schedule and cost changes.
An HOA fee is paid to a private homeowners association to maintain common areas and enforce the community rules. A CDD assessment is levied by a Community Development District, a special-purpose unit of local government created under Florida law that issues bonds to build a community’s roads, utilities and amenities and repays them through assessments on your annual property tax bill. A CDD assessment normally has a debt-service portion that eventually retires and an operations-and-maintenance portion that continues. The amount varies by district and by lot, so it has to be pulled for the specific address.
Yes, and ideally two. A pre-drywall inspection looks at framing, structural connections, flashing, and rough plumbing, electrical and HVAC while they are still visible — the only chance you will get. A final pre-closing inspection covers the finished house and produces a punch list with enough time for the builder to correct items before closing. Municipal inspections verify code compliance for the jurisdiction; they are not performed on your behalf. Many buyers add an eleven-month inspection before the first-year workmanship coverage expires.
Usually the largest incentives are conditioned on using the builder’s affiliated lender, and sometimes its title company as well. That is legal and disclosed, and it is often a genuinely good deal — but it should be checked rather than assumed. Get a Loan Estimate from the affiliated lender and at least one independent lender on the same day for the same lock period, and compare the total cost of the loan including the credit, not just the interest rate.
Most production builders issue a tiered express warranty: a short initial period covering workmanship and materials, a longer intermediate period covering distribution systems such as electrical, plumbing and heating and cooling, and a substantially longer term covering major structural components. The exact durations, the definition of a structural defect and the claim procedure differ from builder to builder, and the written warranty document governs rather than anything said in the model home. Ask for it before you sign.
Before you visit a model home, before you sign a visitor card, before you put a deposit on a lot — make one phone call. Registering your representation on the first visit costs nothing and cannot be done afterwards.