You are not required to have one. You are also not going to get a better price without one.

The person who greets you in the model home is a licensed agent who works for the builder. They are professional, knowledgeable, and genuinely helpful, and their fiduciary duty runs to the company that pays them. If you walk in unrepresented, the only licensed professional in that transaction represents the other side.

The builder does not discount the home because you came alone. That money does not come back to you.

What your own agent actually does here: reads a contract that is not the TREC form you may be expecting, knows which incentives that builder has actually given on other deals, tracks the build when the sales rep goes quiet, and is still involved during the punch list and warranty period after the sales office has moved on to the next phase.

Yes, and this is the single most expensive mechanical detail in new construction.

Most builders honor buyer-agent compensation only if your agent is registered at your first contact with the community and is physically present on that first visit. Lennar, for example, requires the agent be identified at the buyer's first interaction with any Lennar employee and present on that visit, with registration expiring after 60 days.

Tour a model home alone on a Saturday drive and you can permanently forfeit representation at that community. Not for that day. For that community, on that purchase. Bringing an agent in later usually does not fix it.

If you are going to look at anything, even casually, call me first. It takes thirty seconds and it is the difference between having someone on your side and not.

Yes, and it took effect recently enough that most buyers have not heard about it.

Texas SB 1968 amended the Real Estate License Act, and effective January 1, 2026, Occupations Code §1101.563 requires a written agreement between a buyer and a license holder before that agent shows residential property. The law also repealed subagency in Texas.

There is a narrow showing-only path where the agent provides no advice or opinions, which is capped at 14 days.

How it interacts with model homes: these rules attach to the agent representing you. A builder's own employee may be exempt from licensing entirely under TREC Rule 535.34, so nothing stops you from walking into a sales office alone. But your agent needs the written agreement in place before showing you property, which means the paperwork has to happen before the tour, not during it.

Almost always the builder, and that has not meaningfully changed.

Following the NAR settlement effective August 17, 2024, buyer-agent compensation is no longer published in the MLS and sellers are no longer presumed responsible for it. Builders overwhelmingly still pay it, because a buyer's agent is a sales channel and the cost is already in their marketing budget.

Per Redfin, the average buyer's agent commission was 2.40 percent in the first quarter of 2025, up slightly from 2.37 percent in the fourth quarter of 2024 and 2.36 percent in the third quarter of 2024, when the new rules took effect.

Compensation is negotiable and is now stated in your written agreement. What matters practically is the registration rule above, since that is what determines whether the builder pays at all.

Sometimes yes, and you will not know without running both.

Nearly every meaningful builder incentive is tied to the preferred lender. Rate buydowns, closing cost credits, and design credits typically evaporate if you finance elsewhere. That is legal. What is not legal is requiring you to use them or charging you a higher purchase price for declining.

Where the builder and lender share ownership, an Affiliated Business Arrangement disclosure is required at or before referral under 12 CFR §1024.15, you cannot be required to use the affiliate, and referral fees are prohibited. The CFPB does enforce this, including a $1.75 million penalty against Freedom Mortgage in August 2023.

Get a Loan Estimate from the builder's lender and from at least one outside lender, then compare all-in cost over the years you will actually own the home. A preferred lender with a $15,000 credit and a slightly worse rate frequently still wins. Sometimes it does not. Run it.

Not the base price, in almost every case. Nearly everything else, in most cases.

Builders hold base price to protect the comps in the community. Cutting your price by $20,000 reduces the appraised value for every home they sell after yours, which is why they will hand you $20,000 in other forms before they will move the number on the sign.

Where the room actually is: closing cost credits, rate buydowns, design center credits, lot premiums, appliance and blind packages, and fence or landscaping allowances.

When the room is largest: standing inventory that has been finished and sitting, and the end of a quarter or the end of the year when the sales office is chasing a quota. October through December is the strongest window; April through June is the weakest.

Financing help, mostly, and more of it than the sign out front suggests.

Rate buydowns are the primary tool. Temporary 2-1 structures lower your rate two points in year one and one point in year two before reverting. Permanent buydowns cost the builder more and lower the rate for the life of the loan. Per HousingWire in February 2026, roughly 70 percent of new home sales now include rate buydowns or structured incentives.

Closing cost and flex credits in DFW commonly run $10,000 to $30,000 depending on the community and the home. Examples circulating in 2026 include Lennar publishing rates near 3.99 percent plus up to $10,000 in closing costs on select inventory, and stacked packages around $21,500 in the Arlington area.

Read the stack carefully. A "$50,000 incentive package" that combines a temporary buydown, a lender-contingent credit, and a design center credit priced at design center markup is frequently worth $25,000 to $35,000 in real terms. Still real money. Not fifty.

No, and this catches almost every buyer who has purchased a resale home before.

Licensed agents must use TREC-promulgated forms in resale transactions. Builders are exempt and use their own attorney-drafted contracts, written to protect the builder.

What is typically different: no option period and therefore no unconditional right to terminate; earnest money and deposits that can become non-refundable once construction begins; delay clauses that give the builder wide latitude on the completion date; and frequently a binding arbitration clause.

TREC does publish New Home Contract forms for incomplete and completed construction, but production builders generally use their own.

The resale instinct is that you have a few days to change your mind. On a builder contract you may not. Read the termination and delay language before you sign, or have someone read it who knows what is missing.

Depends entirely on where you are in the build and what the contract says, and the answer is harsher than in resale.

Before construction starts you generally have more room, though the builder's contract governs and there is usually no option period to lean on.

After construction starts deposits commonly become non-refundable. The builder has ordered materials, scheduled trades, and started building something to your selections. Design center deposits are frequently non-refundable from the moment you sign the selection sheet.

The financing contingency is where most buyers actually have protection, and only if the contract includes one. Verify that it does and understand exactly what triggers it.

Do not put money down on a to-be-built home until your financing is genuinely solid. Get fully underwritten first. The contract will not save you the way a TREC option period would.

Yes, and you need three, not one.

Pre-drywall is the most valuable and the one most buyers skip. Once drywall covers the framing, plumbing, electrical, and HVAC, defects become invisible until they cause problems years later. Fixes at this stage are cheap and the builder makes them.

Final walkthrough before closing catches finishes, appliances, and anything visible.

The 11-month warranty inspection happens before your one-year workmanship warranty expires, after the home has been through all four seasons. Settlement cracks, nail pops, drainage problems, and HVAC performance issues surface in that first year.

A DFW practitioner with over 300 new construction closings reports buyers who do all three save $8,000 to $15,000 on average in repairs that would otherwise fall outside the warranty. Combined cost of the first two runs roughly $600 to $1,000; the eleven-month adds $300 to $500.

The city inspector checks minimum code compliance, frequently in fifteen or twenty minutes. That is not a quality inspection and it is not working for you. A builder who resists an independent inspection is telling you something worth hearing.

Three tiers, and Texas law changed recently in a way that matters.

One year covers workmanship and materials. Two years covers the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC delivery systems. The third tier covers major structural components, and that number is now negotiable by statute.

Texas HB 2024, effective June 9, 2023, amended Civil Practice and Remedies Code §16.009 to shorten the statute of repose from 10 years to 6 years if the builder provides a qualifying written 1-2-6 warranty. If no qualifying warranty is provided, the ten-year window remains. It applies to detached one- and two-family homes and townhomes up to three stories, for contracts signed on or after that date.

Ask which one you are getting. A builder offering the 1-2-6 warranty has cut your structural claim window from ten years to six in exchange for putting the warranty in writing. That is a real tradeoff and it should be a knowing one.

Texas has a required process, and skipping it can cost you the case.

The Residential Construction Liability Act, Texas Property Code Chapter 27, requires written pre-suit notice by certified mail with at least 60 days elapsing before you can file suit. Courts will not let a claim proceed without it.

After receiving notice the builder has 35 days to inspect, up to three inspections within that window, 60 days to make a written offer of repair or settlement, and if you reject the offer as unreasonable, 10 additional days to supplement it.

Separately, limitations run four years for breach of contract or warranty and two years for negligence. HB 2022 in 2023 also voided contractual attempts to waive RCLA.

Document everything from day one. Photographs with dates, written communications rather than phone calls, and a specific finding with measurements. Builders sometimes argue an item is within tolerance or normal settling. Sometimes that is legitimate. A photographed, measured finding is much harder to wave off.

Because the first bill was probably for a vacant lot, and almost nobody warns buyers about it.

Texas appraises property based on its condition as of January 1. If your home was not finished and on the tax roll by that date, the first year's bill may reflect the unimproved lot value only. The completed house gets added the following January.

Two things go wrong at once. The tax bill jumps enormously, and your lender set your escrow based on the low first-year number, so you get an escrow shortage on top of the higher payment.

The homestead cap does not protect you here. The 10 percent cap begins only on January 1 of the tax year after the first year you qualify for the exemption, so that first full-value assessment is uncapped.

File your homestead exemption immediately, budget from the projected full-value tax rather than the first bill, and consider protesting during that gap year to set the lowest possible base before the cap starts working for you.

Additional taxing layers that are extremely common in newer DFW master-planned communities, and they stack on top of county, city, and school rates.

A MUD is a Municipal Utility District created under Texas Water Code Chapter 49 to finance water, sewer, and drainage where a city has not extended service. Disclosure is required under §49.452, with notice content specified in §49.4521. Failure to deliver it lets the buyer terminate and recover earnest money and costs.

A PID is a Public Improvement District funding amenities and infrastructure, disclosed under Local Government Code Chapter 372 as strengthened by HB 1543 in 2021, and handled through TREC's Notice to Purchaser addendum.

Combined effective rates in some DFW subdivisions exceed 3 percent. A MUD or PID can add roughly $2,000 to $7,000 or more per year against a comparable non-district home.

A single property can sit in both a MUD and a PID, each requiring its own separate notice with its own independent termination right. Do not assume one covers the other, and pull the parcel on the county appraisal district site yourself.

This is the North Texas question, and the answer has a condition attached that buyers rarely read.

Most homes here are slab-on-grade over Blackland Prairie expansive clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry. New builds are most vulnerable in the first year or two while the soil around a fresh slab settles.

What to do: run a soaker hose or drip line roughly 12 to 18 inches out from the foundation during dry periods. The goal is consistent moisture, not saturation, and water all sides evenly so the slab is not twisted by uneven conditions.

On the warranty, honestly: there is rarely a line saying failure to water voids coverage. What exists instead is an affirmative homeowner duty to maintain soil moisture and drainage, plus exclusions for damage caused by improper maintenance, altered grade, and changed drainage. The Texas Association of Builders standard limited warranty form carries exactly those exclusions, and Perry Homes' own homeowner guidance instructs owners to add moisture during protracted dry periods.

Foundations are warranted against movement exceeding defined tolerances that causes observable damage, not against all cracking. Neglecting moisture and drainage gives a builder legitimate grounds to deny a claim. Set the soaker hose the first summer and keep a note of when you run it.

Different tradeoffs, and the negotiating room sits on one side.

A spec or inventory home is already built or nearly finished. You close in weeks rather than months, you see exactly what you are buying, and this is where the incentives are deepest, because every month it sits costs the builder carrying money.

A to-be-built home gets you your floor plan, your lot, and your selections. You wait, typically six to ten months in DFW, and you have less leverage on price because the builder has not spent anything yet.

If you want maximum value, look at standing inventory near the end of a quarter. If you want the house you actually pictured, build it and accept that the discount will be smaller. Both are legitimate. Just know which one you are optimizing for.

Roughly six to ten months contract to completion in DFW for a to-be-built home, and considerably faster for standing inventory.

The delay question is the one to ask before you sign. Builder contracts commonly include broad language allowing extensions for weather, supply chain, and labor, sometimes granting a year or more past the target date without penalty.

What that language typically does not address is your cost. If your lease ends, your rate lock expires, or you are carrying two housing payments, the contract generally does not compensate you.

Ask directly what happens if the home is not delivered by the target date, get the answer in writing, and do not surrender a lease or a rate lock based on a construction schedule. Build in a buffer of your own, because the contract will not build one for you.

Design center pricing carries a real markup, so the question is which upgrades you cannot do later.

Worth doing through the builder: anything structural or behind the walls. Room extensions, additional windows, electrical and plumbing rough-ins, gas lines, and the slab and framing decisions. These are enormously expensive or impossible to add afterward.

Frequently better done later: light fixtures, blinds, backsplash, landscaping, and sometimes flooring and countertops depending on the markup. A local contractor commonly does the same work for meaningfully less.

Lot premiums are the surcharge for a better homesite, and they range from a few thousand to well into five figures for a greenbelt, cul-de-sac, or corner. They are negotiable, particularly on lots that have not moved.

Buyers commonly spend 10 to 20 percent of the purchase price at the design center. Decide your number before you walk in, because the room is designed to make that number feel small.

Do this before you fall in love with a floor plan, not after.

Talk to people who already live there. Knock on doors in an earlier phase of the same community and ask two questions: how was the build process, and how has the warranty department been since. The second answer matters more.

Look at the warranty response, not the model home. Every builder shows well in a staged model. The difference between builders shows up at month seven when something needs fixing.

Ask which specific warranty they provide and whether it is administered in-house or by a third party.

Check the phase you are buying into. Early phases in a community carry the highest MUD rates because fewer homeowners are carrying the same bond debt, and the last phases sometimes get the tired crews.

I work with builders across Ellis County and the I-35E corridor, including Ridge Crossing, Lakeway, Myrtle Creek, Waterfall Ranch, and Highland Homes. I will tell you which ones I would put my own family with and which ones I would not, and that is a conversation better had over the phone than on a webpage.