If you're selling a resale home on the same streets a builder is building on, you're in a heavyweight match — and pretending otherwise is how listings die. In Breakfast Point, where I live, builders have closed 58 homes this year. Resales have closed five. The way you compete isn't a secret, but it starts with something most sellers never do: find out what the builder is actually charging, because it isn't the number on the sign. Here's the whole playbook. (Or watch the 14-minute video)
First, some background so you know where this comes from. My wife and I wrote the first sales contract in Breakfast Point back in phase one, and I've sold 60-plus resales here since — including one this year where I worked with both the buyer and the seller, and another that just went under contract in 20 days. What follows is what's working.
How badly are builders outselling resales?
The numbers, from my MLS pull of Breakfast Point and Breakfast Point East: new construction is a 3.5-month market. Resales are a 28-month market. Same streets. Five or six months of inventory is neutral, so the builders are effectively in a seller's market while resale owners sit in more than two years of supply. Supply is nearly even — 26 builder homes listed against 18 resales — but the closings are 58 to 5. And twelve resale sellers cancelled or expired this year. They tried, and it didn't happen.
Why can builders win on price when their asking prices look similar to yours?
Because their asking price isn't their price. Nationally, 63% of builders are using sales incentives, per the National Association of Home Builders — and locally I'd bet it's over 90%. Last week a national builder building here emailed agents offering an 8% commission to whoever brings a buyer. That's how motivated they are, especially the publicly traded ones who want closings inside the quarter.
So do the subtraction. If a builder is asking $600,000 and running $36,000 in buyer incentives — rate buydowns, closing costs, design credits — your real competition isn't $600,000. It's $564,000. That's what the buyer is comparing your house against, and I think it's the single biggest reason the count is 58 to 5. The resale market hasn't reset to the builders' net pricing, because the builders' topline never moves. The money moves underneath it.
What's the playbook for a resale seller?
Tour a model. Before you list, walk into a builder's model and let them give you the full presentation, like a buyer. Then ask three questions: what's the incentive today, in dollars? Is it tied to using your lender? Does it change if I close by the end of the quarter? These change almost month to month.
Price under the line, not under the model. Pricing $10,000 below the model home isn't a strategy. Pricing below where your segment has actually been closing is. We just did this at 340 Basin Bayou Drive — priced deliberately under the ceiling, with real thought about what happens around major price points — and it went under contract in 20 days with strong showings from day one.
Sell what a builder can't sell. Your yard is grown in. Your fence, gutters, blinds and window treatments are paid for — every one of those is a real check a buyer writes after closing on new construction, and a builder will upcharge for most of them. You can promise a closing date; a builder often can't. And nobody is framing a house next door to you. A finished street is a real amenity. Put all of it in the marketing, explicitly, because buyers won't do that math on their own.
Match their flexibility. Builders pay closing costs — sometimes tied to their own lender. You can offer credits too, and buyers read your credit exactly the way they read the builder's. A credit is often cheaper than a price cut, because a price cut resets the whole comp set. The builders understand this perfectly; it's why their topline never moves while thousands of dollars move underneath.
And the fundamentals still decide it. The resales that closed here this year averaged 97.6% of asking. I used to say they weren't staged better, just priced right — I now think it's both. Pricing, staging, condition, and marketing all have to be on point at the same time. Right before I filmed the video version of this, an agent texted me about another one of our listings — 15 days on the market, prepped properly — asking if the sellers would sell it furnished. That's what being ready looks like.
Thinking about selling against the builders? Start with my home valuation tool and we'll find your line.
FAQ
Questions, or want to know what the builders near you are really offering? Call or text 850-290-0417 — that's what I do.
