Everything you Need to Know

If you’ve ever looked into buying a new construction home in Boise, Idaho…or even came here and tried to search for one, you probably realized: it’s a little confusing.

I grew up in California and was used to large tracts of homes covering the landscape, each little yard like a quilt square, all sewn together with tidy roads, blanketing the land with stucco patchwork. And if you wanted to build a new construction home there, you would go into the subdivision and find a large sales center, filled with eager Realtors waiting to serve you. And one builder owned the entire subdivision, so you could easily choose your floor plan and lot.

That’s a pretty good sales model, and it makes it very easy for the buyer to find and buy their new construction home.

But that is not typically how finding a new construction home works in Boise, Idaho.

Now there are a few new construction builders who offer a sales center experience, but it is not the majority. Often, people from out of state come to look at new construction homes here and find themselves getting frustrated and confused with how it’s done here. How is it done then? Well, I’ll tell ya.

Let’s clear up some of the new construction confusion so you can find your newly built home in Boise, Idaho.

UPDATES FOR 2021 – AS THE SUPPLY CHAIN ISSUES CONTINUE ALONG WITH UNSTABLE PRICING ON MATERIALS, IF YOU CHOOSE TO BUILD NEW CONSTRUCTION FROM THE GROUND UP, PLAN ACCORDINGLY. IT CAN TAKE UP TO A YEAR AND A HALF FROM BEGINNING TO COMPLETION. DEPENDING ON THE BUILDER AND HOW THEY DO PRICING, THE PRICE CAN CHANGE FROM THE TIME YOU RESERVE A LOT UNTIL YOU SIGN THE OFFICIAL PURCHASE CONTRACT. ALSO, IF YOU BUY A NEW CONSTRUCTION HOME THAT ALLOWED YOU TO MAKE PERSONALIZED DESIGN CHOICES, BE PREPARED FOR HAVING SOME OF THOSE CHOICES CHANGE AS THINGS GO OUT OF STOCK, DON’T COME IN ON TIME, OR ARE NOT PRODUCED ANYMORE AT ALL. 

First, and I’m not just saying this because I’m a Realtor®, but seriously…if you want to make your life easier when looking for a new construction home in Boise…HIRE A REALTOR®. The choices of builders, communities, and locations are almost endless here. And, as I will explain, it can get really frustrating, time consuming, and confusing to try to go at it on your own. Your agent will go to all the locations for you that you like, gather community maps, get information from the new construction builders on who is building where, and take a huge burden off your shoulders. Plus, they will go to bat for you and represent YOUR best interest over that of the builder through the entire 6-8 month process. (Update for 2021..the process can take up to a year and a half with some builders). Okay..got that out of the way.

Types of Builders:

Next, you’ll need to understand the three main types of builders we have here.

  • Custom Builders
    A. Build wherever you want, whatever you want.  This is for when you find a lot for sale that says, “bring your own builder,” or you buy a piece of land in the country where you can have whomever you want to build there.
    B. Builder owned lot – many custom builders own lots throughout the Boise area, and if you find a lot you love that a builder owns, you’ve got to use that builder for that lot. But since they are custom builders, they will build whatever you want that will get approved for that lot.  You’re generally going to see this option in high-end communities.
  • (Update for 2021 – there are very few builders building truly custom at this time due to all the supply chain issues and unpredictable pricing of materials, so many custom builders have switched to a semi-custom, or even a “spec model” system for the time being and until supply chain issues resolve and prices stabilize). 
  • Semi-Custom Builders
    These builders make up the majority of the new construction homes in the Boise area. They are a more affordable option than all custom built, but you can still make quite a bit of personalized choices. You can generally choose from several floor plans, finishes, detail work, landscaping choices, and some semi-custom builders will even make slight changes to floor plans for you – like turning a dining room into a guest room, for example. Some have a design center for the builder where you can go to make all your finish choices, and others will “budget in” a “level” of finishes, and they have a designer that will go shopping with you to help you pick things out and help you stay on budget. I’ll go into more detail about how to find a semi-custom builder in conjunction with a community you like in the next section…so read on.
  • (Update for 2021… most, but not all, semi-custom builders have also switched to building just “spec homes” due to supply chain and cost of material issues, but I would think they will return to a more semi-custom model when things stabilize… )
  • Mass Production Builders
    A mass production builder builds a more budget friendly option. They fill the niche for people wanting a new construction home, but needing to stay within a lower budget, and they do it very well. Some offer a few choices to the buyer, but usually only a handful of cabinet, flooring, or finish choices. One of the mass production builders is currently not offering any finish choices and only sells homes when completed and move-in ready. 

Okay…now, you need to know about how the subdivisions, or communities in Boise work. Custom building is it’s own category that I will make a video and blog post about another time, so we will focus on the other two, more common types of builders. I talked about builders first, but when searching for a new construction home in Boise, you need to:

  1. Find the community in the location you want first 
  2. Choose a builder within that community. (If it is a community with more than one builder). 

This is so important; you’ll see why as I explain how it works.

Semi-Custom Communities
I will try to make this as simple as possible, but hang tight, as it gets a little confusing. The way subdivisions work in Boise is that a developer will buy a huge tract of land. Developer will put in utilities, streets, and subdivide it into lots. Then the developer will sell off the lots to individual builders. And those builders may buy one lot, or maybe they will buy 20. So the lots in one community are owned by many different builders. (This is true for almost all communities except for a few like CBH, Hayden, Hubble, and Toll Brothers, which are the only builders in their subdivisions).
There are almost no central sales centers in these semi-custom communities (with the exception of a few places such as Avimor in NW Boise, Boise-Hunter Homes, Toll Brothers communities, and Hubble Communities). Builders who own lots in the community will typically build a model home to act as their individual “sales center.” So when you visit the community, you will see several model homes, but each home is owned by a different builder. People tend to choose the home they love first, and then look at lots. But that, my friends, is where the frustration begins.
Here’s a common scenario:
Buyer goes to the community they like and goes into Builder’s model home.

Buyer: “Hey, I really like Builder and everything works here for me.”
Buyer: falls in love with houses.
Buyer: “Show me the lots that are available in this subdivision.”
Sales Person: pulls out a map of lots.
Buyer: “Oh, I love this lot here, the one that is next to the green space.”
Sales Person: “Oh, sorry, Builder doesn’t own that lot.”
Sales Person: “Here are the lots you can build on with our Builder”
Buyer: “None of those lots will work for me.”
Sales Person: “Well we do have a larger lot you can build on over here in this other community.”
Buyer: “But that’s 20 minutes away from here. I want to live in this community, and I really like your Builder.”
Sales Person: “Well then you’ll have to choose from one of these smaller lots.”
Buyer: “Those lots won’t work for me.”
Sales Person: Keeps trying to talk you into building in a different community where Builder owns a bigger lot.
Buyer: End up having to build with the builder that owns the big lot they wanted, and not use Builder they really liked.

Let’s say Buyer looks at a lot map, and decides they really want that lot with the green space, and will just have to use the builder that owns that lot. But then they learn that that builder doesn’t even have a model home in that community! So now, if they want the lot with the green space in the community they love, they have to call the builder who owns that lot (or, if Buyer wanted to make their life much easier, they would have hired a Realtor® by now to do this for them), find out where the builder has a model home, and drive half way across town to see it and talk with their sales person so that they can have it built back in their original chosen community.
So, to save yourself much trouble and disappointment here’s what you need to do:

1) Choose your location in which you want to live first. Choose by your personal criteria, such as proximity to jobs, schools, affordability, amenities, etc…

2) Go to any model home in that community. Do not start thinking about builders or floor plan yet.

3) Ask to see the map of the community that shows the available lots, and who owns those lots.

Then, when you decide on which lots you like best that are actually available, just go visit the builders’ model homes that actually own the lots you want.

If you don’t care about lot location or size, you can choose builder first…but sometimes you’ll fall in love with Builder and learn that they don’t have any lots left in that “Phase” of building, so if you want that builder, you’ll have to wait until they open another phase, which may add several months onto your building timeline. See number 3 above to avoid this scenario.

Once you have chosen your lot and builder, then you, your Realtor®, and their sales person can work out the fun details, like personalizing your floor plan, finish choices, flooring choices, etc..(update in 2021…possibly you can do this but most likely it will be a spec home and you can’t make any changes). 

Mass Production Builders
There are several mass production builders in the Boise area, but the two most common are CBH and Hubble. Now this is where you can expect to find those sales centers like you might be used to in another state. With mass production builders, that builder owns ALL the lots in the community, so the entire community will be a “CBH” or “Hubble” community. And because of that, buying a home in a community you want can be much simpler. Let’s take a closer look at the two largest mass production builders.

CBH

Excels at the sales center experience

You have NO personalized customization choices

Currently only selling pre-built, ready to move into homes

Have a sales center at every new CBH community

At the sales center, they can show you every CBH home available in the whole valley, what each home offers, what each community offers, and if there is nothing you like that is currently available, they can show you which floor plans, lots, and communities will have homes that will be coming available soon.

Hubble Homes

Sales centers in most of their new communities, but they are not as comprehensive as CBH

They sell a mix of spec homes and homes you can choose to build.

If you choose to build, you can choose some finishes, within what the builder has to offer.

Sales team members seem to only know what is available in that community that you visit.

If you want to know what is available in a different Hubble community,  you would have to go visit it in person, or call the sales center in that community to find out what is available, or…hire a great Realtor® who will do all that for you.

Oh and what is a “spec home” you may be thinking? This is a home in which a builder has made design choices for the home, and YOU CAN CHOOSE NOTHING (except your lot that is usually assigned a floorplan) AND MAKE NO CHANGES. NONE. NOT EVEN IF YOU BEG US TO ASK IF THE BUILDER WILL PLEASE CHANGE ONE LITTLE THING. THEY WILL NOT.  The builders that used to be “semi-custom” that have switched to a spec system usually still have very nice designs and finishes that their designers have chosen. And you can see those choices on a “spec sheet” or on pictures before you would agree to buy the home, so you know what it will look like before it is finished. Builders not allowing for choices aren’t trying to be difficult, they are trying to have some semblance of control over the timeline and pricing as there are so many factors causing those things to fluctuate greatly. 

About 18 years ago, my husband and I set off to find our first home in Boise. I was not a real estate agent then, and we first went to find a new construction home with our California sales center expectations. It was really frustrating to expect to find all the info about builders and lots in one centralized place in the community we wanted to build in, only to find that it didn’t exist and that we’d have to visit all the model homes to figure it out. We ended up hiring a great real estate agent to help us…and…long story short, we ended up buying an existing home and not new construction. But, it was a great introduction to me of how finding a new construction home in Boise works. And since then, I have worked with many clients in this same scenario. Once I go over the expectations of finding a new construction home in Boise, how it works, and what I will do for them to make it easy on them…the process goes quite smoothly.

With so much growth in the Boise Idaho area, there are many new construction homes available.  So…it’s important you understand how finding a new construction home in Boise works!

If you want to talk about new construction home builders in Boise or new construction in Boise, please feel free to reach out!