Builder incentives across Central Texas, tracked, ranked, and compared.
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Most builder incentives are advertised once and never compared. We check them against each builder’s own site four times a day, cross-check what we can against independent secondary signals, and screen out anything past its stated deadline before it ever reaches this page. Then we rank every live offer by how much value actually reaches the buyer, so you can see what’s real, what’s rising, and what’s about to expire before you walk into a sales office. Every check is time-stamped, and the full history is never edited or deleted. A new tracker issue publishes every Monday, and the week’s key moves roll into Friday’s Weekly Dispatch.
Several builders on this page are advertising a permanent, below-market fixed rate instead of (or alongside) a cash incentive. That rate is not free to the builder. They typically pay their lender a forward commitment fee to offer it, roughly 4% to 6% of the loan amount (illustrative; the exact figure depends on the cost of debt when the builder locked the rate). On a $400,000 loan, that is about $16,000 to $24,000 of the builder's own money, comparable to or larger than most advertised cash incentives.
That same cost can be reallocated: to the rate, to the price, or to closing costs, instead of preset as a rate buydown. Which is better for you depends on your goal (lowest monthly payment vs. least cash to close) and how long you plan to stay. A bigger down payment shrinks the loan the buydown applies to, so a price cut or closing-cost credit can win instead. Run the breakeven with a buyer's agent before choosing the rate just because it is the headline number. See the live dollar comparison against today's market rate on the Daily Hot Sheet.
The number builders don’t put on the sign
Concession Index · latest verified reading · Jul 22, 2026Across the offers we track, about $1 in every $5 of the advertised figure never reaches the buyer — lost to lender strings and how the credit is structured. Our buyer-value estimate weighs the incentive type and whether it’s locked to the builder’s own lender.
Think of it like a store gift card. The sign says $20,000 — but a lender-tied credit only spends at full value if you use the builder’s own lender. Step outside for a better rate and part of it evaporates. The offers with no strings are the ones worth real cash.
What $20,000 can actually do for you
A dollar figure means nothing until it’s pointed at a goal. On a ~$450,000 new home, here’s what a $20,000 credit does depending on what you’re trying to win — pick the one that fits your situation (figures illustrative).
Where buyers have the most leverage right now
The offers with the strongest hand for the buyer today — weighing how big the credit is and whether it’s locked to the builder’s own lender. Ranked from the verified offers in the table below.
- 1Ashton Woods — Headwaters · up to $30,000 no lender stringsThe strongest real value on the board: nearly the largest credit and not tied to the builder’s lender, so the whole amount is yours to keep or steer.
- 2Perry Homes — Wolf Ranch & Bryson · up to $35,000The largest single offer we track. It runs through Perry’s lender, so get one outside rate quote — the value holds only if the rate beats the open market.
- 3D.R. Horton — Anthem · up to $25,000Flex cash you can steer toward the rate, closing costs, or price — whichever moves your monthly payment most for how long you’ll hold the loan.
- 4AHA Dream Homes — Whisper Valley · up to $20,000 no lender stringsCash or a lower rate, your choice, with no lender requirement — take whichever is worth more over the years you’ll actually keep the home.
How we compute the Index and buyer-value ↓ · Every figure is builder-advertised and verified live on the builder’s own site — not field-verified, not an endorsement. The full list of expired-but-still-displayed offers is flagged in the table below.
Goals first, then area, then community, then builder, and only then the numbers. A bigger incentive can just be a bigger markup underneath. This tracker exists for trend awareness and negotiating windows on a home you already chose for the right reasons, never so a discount picks your house.
The full order of operations →Movement log
Updated with every sweepThe market right now
SummaryBest value right now
Top offers, buyer-adjustedRanked by how much of the advertised value actually reaches the buyer, weighing the incentive type and whether it's tied to the builder's lender, not just the headline dollar amount. Why the ranking differs from the raw dollars ↓
Every tracked offer
Filter · sort · compareThe table below holds the fully verified records with price history. The wider set of advertised promos we monitor appears in the Movement Log above the moment one changes.
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Seen a different number?
Report an incentiveIf a sales office quoted you something better, worse, or different from what we show, tell us. We verify before anything appears, your name never does. This is how the tracker gets sharper with every sweep.
How we track this
MethodologyWhat counts as verified
Every offer carries a source tier. We only call an incentive Verified when it's confirmed in writing for a specific home and at least one independent data point, an outside lender's Loan Estimate on the same house, or the county's recorded sale price, corroborates the real value. Everything else is labeled for what it is:
Sales-office confirmed, put in writing by the sales office for a specific home, with terms and deadline.
Builder-reported, advertised flyer, website, or promo. A claim, time-stamped and screenshotted, not a fact.
Why the ranking isn't just the dollar amount
A "$20,000 incentive" is not $20,000 of value. How much actually reaches you depends on the type and whether it's tied to the builder's lender. We rank by transferability of value:
- Price cut, highest. Lowers your loan balance, tax basis, and appraisal comps.
- Permanent rate buydown, real for the life of the loan (if you hold it long enough).
- Closing-cost credit / flex cash, useful, but often lender-tied and partly clawed back through a higher rate or fees.
- Temporary rate buydown (2-1, 3-2-1), a cash-flow perk that resets in a few years; the teaser rate understates true cost.
- Design-center / upgrade credit, lowest. Priced at builder retail, not market, a $20k credit isn't $20k of value.
The Central Texas catch: MUD & PID taxes
A low "from" price or a rate buydown can hide a higher carrying cost. Many Austin-metro communities sit in a MUD or PID special-tax district, pushing the effective property-tax rate to roughly 2.7%, 3.2%, well above what online estimates show, and enough to cut borrowing power by tens of thousands. Two identical incentives are not equal if one home sits in a high-tax district, so we track each community's effective tax rate as a first-class field, not a footnote.
How to verify a claim yourself
- Get the incentive in writing for a specific home, with the expiration and any lender/title conditions stated.
- Pull a Loan Estimate from the builder's lender and one outside lender on the same house, compare total cash-to-close and interest, not the monthly payment.
- Check the county appraisal district for the community's tax rate and, where available, the recorded sale price, it reveals whether the "incentive" left a price footprint or was baked in.
Then run the numbers through the Incentive Reality Calculator.
Background sources (incentive mechanics & market context; figures in the tracker are our own field observations): Kiplinger, Movement Mortgage, National Mortgage Professional, ResiClub Analytics (Census inventory data), Lennar & D.R. Horton FY2025 to 2026 earnings, and The CLR Sales Group on Austin MUD taxes. The full source list is published on the methodology page.
We track these numbers every week. The Dispatch tells you what moved.
Every Friday: the incentives that rose or fell this week, the single best-value deal, and one field note from an actual site visit, pulled straight from this tracker. Four minutes, free, no builder spin.