The sales office will point you to the builder's own mortgage company. You are not required to use it. Before you sign anything, get an independent quote on the same loan - it costs nothing, and it is the only way to know if that "incentive" is actually a deal.
Large production builders - Lennar and D.R. Horton are well-known examples - commonly own or partner with their own mortgage companies, and their sales process is built to route you there. That is legal and often convenient. But it is a sales channel, not a rule. The choice of who finances your home belongs to you, and a builder cannot make using their mortgage company a condition of selling you the house.
The in-house lender knows most buyers never compare. That is exactly why you should.
This site is published by an independent mortgage broker and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Lennar, D.R. Horton or any other homebuilder. Builder names are used only to describe how builder-affiliated financing commonly works.
"Use our lender and we'll cover closing costs." "Financing special this weekend only through our mortgage partner." Offers like these are real money - but they are conditioned on you taking the builder's loan, and the loan itself is where the math lives. An incentive up front can sit on top of financing that costs more over the years you hold it. Or the incentive can genuinely win. The point is that the headline number never tells you which.
The only honest way to evaluate a lender-tied incentive is to weigh it against the total cost of each loan over the time you expect to keep the home - incentive included on their side, everything in writing on both sides. We build that comparison for buyers every week, and we tell you plainly when the builder's package is the better deal.
Separate the incentives tied to in-house financing from the ones you keep no matter who writes the loan. They are often mixed together in the pitch.
Verbal assurances at a model home do not survive to closing. If the deal depends on financing, the dependency should be on paper.
Ask directly. The answer - and whether they will write it down - tells you a lot about how the incentive is really funded.
An advertised monthly payment is not a loan offer. Ask for the complete terms, then hand them to an independent lender to price against.
Incentives, conditions and full loan terms from their lender - all of it in writing.
Same house, same loan amount, quoted independently across the wholesale lenders we broker to. No cost, no commitment.
We line both offers up side by side over the time you plan to own, with the incentive counted on the builder's side.
Take whichever wins. Even if that is the builder's lender, you now know it - and comparing often improves their offer by itself.
Home Loans Inc is a licensed mortgage broker. We do not build houses and we do not answer to a builder - we answer to you. A builder's mortgage company can only sell you its own products; we put your one loan in front of many lenders and let them compete for it. New construction purchases, including production-builder homes on the builder's timeline, are financing we handle every day. Learn more about us at HomeLoansInc.com.
Send it over. We'll price the same loan independently and show you the two offers side by side - total cost, incentive counted, in writing. Then the decision is yours, made with real numbers.