Not only is it planned out in your mind, you have seen it! While shopping for a new home, you just strolled through a model home that is almost precisely what you had in mind! The rest is easy to visualize now. It will have a view of a small lake in the distance, and the only homes within view will be just as magnificent, majestic and gorgeous as yours. There’s only one problem, however. The on-site sales agent, selling for the builder you are planning to buy from, won’t give you any warm fuzzies as to whether this picture can be a definite reality. Why? Because they usually can’t speak for what other builders may plan to do around their own site. What if there are homes built nearby that block your view? What if the parcels that are planned around the new home neighborhood you selected are smaller, placing the other new homes closer together?

Builders are usually very careful to state that they cannot guarantee or promise buyers that they will approve of what other builders do around their new home communities. The only entity an on-site agent can represent is his or her own builder-developer. Many times, the agent may be willing to give you information on what they have heard, but will probably tell you to call the city or county or, if signs are in place for the future development, the other builder’s corporate office to answer your questions and concerns. This is very dangerous ground for new home sales agents. They walk a tightrope, so to speak, trying to be a resource of information to the buying public. They must be careful, however, to relegate their answers regarding the surrounding area to what anyone else can freely see or find out, and represent it as such (and many won’t even do that!)

We can narrow down the scope of a new home agent’s responsibility even further. Disclosure to buyers of exactly which floor plans may be next to, across from, or within view of your home, before it is established (permits are in hand, and construction has begun), is not required even within a builder’s own subdivision. I remember, in one new home community I was familiar with, how a builder, in an attempt to become fiscally conservative, planned only its smaller, more popular floor plans on a certain row of homes, creating a long procession of single-level, small houses. Buyers on the side of the street where a larger group of plans were built were disappointed, and even angry, that this was done. They not only felt these recent sales brought their values lower, but also believed it affected the "look" of the neighborhood, not displaying enough variety on that side of the street. Of course, the buyers who bought the smaller homes were pleased with their prudent purchases, believing that their homes may escalate someday in value because of the larger ones across from them. They also loved the low profile of their side of the street and the privacy it provided them. As they say, beauty is all in the eye of the beholder! Eventually the home buying market shifted, and more large homes were built in the area, making all the buyers there feel better.

The best ways I can think of to put your minds at rest is to go to the city planner’s office and see what guidelines the city might be putting forth to any builder who wants to builds home around that community. It could very well be that they will require a certain square footage minimum and maximum, will have established a certain density (number of homes per acre) and even the type of construction they will permit (stucco, tile roofs, etc.) City planning offices are a wealth of information. They can give you a jump on what is being planned for the infrastructure surrounding the neighborhood as well (schools, transit lines, commercial, or industrial). Checking on these items yourself should arm you with enough information to make a final decision on buying in the neighborhood you are considering, and will put the ball in your court, where you ultimately would want it to be in a purchase of this magnitude.

Published: November 23, 1998

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