‘Buying New Construction Meant I Could Score a 5.25% Mortgage Rate—and $30K in Incentives’

When Jonathan Ayala first started his search for a home in Hoboken, NJ, new construction wasn’t in the mix. For this real estate agent and owner of the photography and marketing business Real Estate Photography, numbers drove the search—and not just list price.He saw 10 homes in person, but none of them made sense for him to purchase.“I wanted to see the condition of each property, what repairs and upgrades were recommended, and the financing and overall cost of owning each property,” he says. Several of the homes he saw needed new roofs and one had water damage. And even if he managed to negotiate a lower asking price, it wouldn’t be much of a win given the massive work needed to make the homes move-in-ready.“It was both exciting and frustrating,” Ayala says of the house hunt, which lasted roughly a month. Quickly, the process became a “numbers game” as he was comparing the asking price against the cost to repair and renovate each home.“These homes were appealing at first, but all the repair, renovation, and maintenance and other costs can add up fast,” he says.When a new-construction home within the same price range popped up in his search, he switched focus. The benefits of new ...