Neither of us has bought brand-new construction recently, so we will answer it the way we run it for clients: 'better deal' depends on what you count. Builders compete on different levers than individual sellers. The big one is financing incentives. A builder may buy down your interest rate to a level an individual seller of an existing home essentially cannot match. As an illustration only: we have seen a builder put $30,000 toward buying down a buyer's rate on a $600,000 home. Roughly $12,000 of that was eaten by inflated fees the builder tacked on, which still left around $18,000 of real value that was unavailable on a comparable resale. So the answer turns on your definition: - Raw price per square foot: resale can win, since you are not paying a builder's margin or padded fees. - Total cost of ownership: new construction can come out ahead once the rate buydown and incentives are netted honestly against those fees. Remember that a builder credit is your own money moved around, and an unusually large one can be a flag that the price is inflated to begin with. Price the incentive net of any padded fees and compare it against a resale home financed the normal way. We can run both scenarios for you so the comparison is real rather than what the builder's flyer claims.