When we were looking for a new home around seven years ago, Florida hadn’t yet suffered a fatal hit to its real estate market. Everywhere you looked, pasture land was sporting new roads, and plot markers for future home sites dotted the horizon. Just north of Tampa, the sounds of hammers and saws were louder than traffic noise most of the time.
The real estate bubble hadn’t yet popped, but it had sprouted a slow leak.
We were ready to buy a new home, and saved enough to have one built; part of that savings included cutting out coupons and looking for deals.
Clip, Save, Repeat
We had selected a subdivision and builder, picked out a lot and narrowed down our house plans. At this point, it was very nearly a done deal.
Then I noticed an ad in the real-estate section of our local paper; it featured a coupon for $1,000 off the cost of upgrades for any inventory home listed by the same builder.
Coupon Queen
We did our homework. While found out how much it would cost to retrofit our kitchen with the counters and appliances we wanted, and which floors we wanted and how much it would cost to install them ourselves. We also knew that the builders added their own substantial markup to most of these upgrades.
Although our house was a new home, and not an inventory house, we brought the coupon to the table.
To Buy or Not to Buy?
We proposed that the builder accept the coupon towards upgrades for our new home, and we added a composite island to our wish list of upgrades and modifications.
The builder was looking at an increasing number of inventory homes that sat vacant, and a sure sale with buyers who wanted to add upgrades to the plans for a new home.
Your Move
It didn’t take long for the builders to approve the credit. Since we weren’t purchasing an existing inventory home, a credit for the same amount was instead applied towards upgrades. That coupon saved us money we were able to apply towards our first mortgage payment, which saved us even more money.