Weight the tax rate over the incentive rate. The property tax is effectively permanent; the mortgage rate may not be. A builder buying down your rate is nice, but a community's tax rate tends only to rise, and you may refinance the rate away later anyway. So the deciding comparison is that specific community's all-in tax rate, including any special assessments and bond obligations, against other communities you could buy in nearby. The spread is real. Some areas run in the low twos as a percentage of value, while a newer master-planned community can sit well above three percent, and that difference is a recurring cost for as long as you own the home. A homestead exemption helps at the margin. Where the base add-ons are large, an exemption is unlikely to offset a materially higher rate, and homestead rules differ a lot by state, so confirm exactly what your state's exemption does before you count on it. Buy on whether this is the right home, the right location, and the right total cost of ownership. Treat the builder's rate incentive as a bonus rather than the reason, and remember that an unusually rich incentive is a cue to look hard at the price itself.