Lew Sichelman
The price gap between new and existing houses has been falling in recent years, but buyers are still likely to pay 15 percent more for new construction than a resale house. Over the long run, though, newly built places will cost less.
According to Realtor.com, “A buyer of a new home can expect to save [an average of] $25,335 over the first 10 years of ownership compared to the buyer of a 20-year-old home. These savings are based on energy usage and replacement costs for major systems.”
“What’s important to remember is that homeownership is not a one-time expense,” the listing site said, adding that “one of the main financial benefits of buying new construction lies [in] saving money on lower utility bills and less home maintenance.”
And with many builders trimming their prices and offering incentives, including mortgage rate buydowns, buyers can take advantage of some “serious, budget-expanding savings.” Over 10 years, deals like these could add up to an additional $30,000 saved, Realtor.com maintains.
Home-Seller Concessions Way Up
Speaking of incentives, builders have always advertised deals in order to land buyers. But existing-home sellers are catching up quickly.
Nearly half of all homeowners who sold their houses in May gave their buyers some kind of concession, according to a Redfin report. Roughly 1 in 7 gave a concession and cut their selling price, as well.
A concession is recorded when an agent reports that a seller provided something that helped reduce the buyer’s total cost. That could include money toward repairs, closing costs and/or mortgage-rate buydowns. It does not include situations in which the seller lowered the list price of their home or lowered the price due to a negotiation with a buyer.
The Boston metro area saw the fourth-lowest rate nationwide, with just 26.7 percent of home sellers in May 2026 giving homebuyers a concession, according to Redfin economists.
Unfortunately, the Redfin report does not provide much in the way of detail about the deals that these sellers have been willing to make.
In the new-house market, 62 percent of builders in May offered buyers incentives on yet-to-be-built houses, according to research and marketing company Zonda. And 46 percent of builders reported to Zonda that there are more incentives today than at this time last year.
Still, they are being more judicious about their offers, said Ali Wolf, chief economist for Zonda and NewHomeSource.
“A year ago, many builder websites almost felt like spam with incentive pop-ups and price cuts advertised,” Wolf reports. “Today, there’s more of a shift towards using incentives to close deals rather than to drive traffic.”
Who You Lose by Over-Pricing
If you price your house at market value, 3 out of 4 buyers will give your place a look, according to Royal Shell, a south Florida real estate brokerage firm.
And if you price your place too high – say, 10 percent or 15 percent above market – you will lose 30 percent of your potential buyers.
Better to tag the place below market and let buyers squabble among themselves, driving up the price in the process, the company said. At 15 percent below market, you’ll capture interest from 9 out of every 10 candidates.
Fewer Marriage, Less Homebuying?
In 1980, 67 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 54 owned their homes. By 2025, that rate had dipped below 50 percent.
But affordability is not the only culprit, according to Brad Wilcox and Maria Baer of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. They maintain that the fall-off is also due to marriage – specifically, the lack thereof. Today’s young adults aren’t marrying the way their predecessors did, they say.
Getting hitched motivates more people to seek out their own domains.
“Married men are more likely to work additional hours, are less likely to be fired, and earn more income than single men do,” write Wilcox and Baer. “Parenthood also motivates Americans to save for and purchase a single-family home.”
What Dual Agency Costs Sellers
According to Zillow, some big money is being lost by sellers who allow their agents to represent their home’s buyers, a practice known as “dual agency” that’s legal in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and several other states.
Money is likewise being lost, the portal’s researchers said, by sellers who allow their homes to be shopped by their agents before being listed for the general public.
Over the last three years, sellers whose buyers were represented by the same agent lost a total of $1.49 billion, the popular listing site reports. Private sellers who opted not to list their homes on MLS systems gave away almost the same amount: an estimated $1.36 billion over three years.
When the agent speaks for both parties, Zillow points out, they sometimes fail to negotiate a higher price for the seller, opting instead to keep things as-is so that the buyer will move forward. This way, the agent collects the full commission, rather than splitting the take with another agent.
Lew Sichelman has been covering real estate for more than 50 years. He is a regular contributor to numerous shelter magazines and housing and housing-finance industry publications. Readers can contact him at lsichelman@aol.com.
