Buying in Bluffton? Let's Look at the Incentives the Builders are Offering Right Now Here at The Lakes, Midpoint, and The Heritage
Bluffton, South Carolina • Real Estate Insights
Buying in Bluffton? Let's Look at the Incentives the Builders are Offering Right Now Here at The Lakes, Midpoint, and The Heritage
Bluffton, South Carolina · Real Estate Insights
Three builders in New Riverside are offering aggressive incentives to buyers right now.
If you are a buyer looking to purchase a home here in Bluffton, this is worth a serious look as you're comparing against other homes available for sale in New Riverside — K. Hovnanian at The Lakes, Pulte at Midpoint, and Smith Family Homes at The Heritage are all offering different incentives, and the offers change month to month as they move through their inventory.
Let's look at what each one is offering, what it calculates to as a buyer, and whether it all makes sense.
On their newly built homes, The Lakes at New Riverside is offering 3.75% on a 7 year ARM (Adjustable Rate Mortgage, ask me more if you don't know what this means) with no cost to you as a buyer on one of their "Quick Move-In" homes, priced at $503,900. This same home can also be purchased for a lower price of $469,900 but at the current market mortgage interest rate, with a $10,000 credit from the builder. This can be used towards a rate buy-down (paying upfront to get a lower interest rate) or towards your closing costs. Other Quick Move-In homes at The Lakes have different incentives, and those will change as their inventory moves. K Hov is working to be fully built out at The Lakes by early next year, which is why they offer such aggressive financing options and pricing right now.
Midpoint by Pulte Homes is offering buyers in New Riverside incentives that can get your mortgage rate as low as 3.99% on a 7 year ARM and 4.99% on a 30 year fixed through serious rate buy-downs, as well as credits towards your closing costs. Right now Pulte's incentives apply across all available lots at Midpoint, not just their Quick Move-Ins. They are also offering a $40,000 incentive on some of their homesites and $20,000 on others. Midpoint has about two more years of build-out ahead, and the incentives will continue to change as Pulte moves through their inventory this Spring.
The Heritage by Smith Family Homes is offering buyers a 4.99% interest rate on their Quick Move-In homes, and a 5.5% mortgage interest rate plus a $15,000 credit towards your closing costs on their other available homes. Smith Family has 75 homes left to build at The Heritage, with Phase 10 coming up as pre-sale — that build is about 7 to 9 months from contract to close. The Heritage incentives change month to month, so what they are offering today might change by October.
All three builders are offering aggressive mortgage interest rates, lots of money towards your closing costs, and strong incentives on their homesites. They have inventory to move and timelines to hit, which is why they are offering you what they are offering you right now. As a buyer looking in New Riverside, it's worth your time to go look at these homes with your Realtor, see if the homes work for you, and see if the incentives they are offering work for you too.
Here's how the math works on one of the more aggressive interest rates being offered in New Riverside right now — The Lakes offering 3.75%.
If you walk into the sales office without having talked to a savvy mortgage professional, you're going to see the offer of 3.75% and it's going to spark your interest. The open market right now on the same loan product is closer to 5% to 5.125%. A buyer who isn't working with me or a good mortgage broker is looking at a payment closer to $2,047 a month at 5.125%. The builder's offer of 3.75% looks like it saves you about $180 a month compared to what the open market is currently offering.
The math changes once you compare it to the interest rate I'm able to offer as a mortgage broker. The 4.625% rate is what I'm able to offer my clients. As a mortgage broker, I have access to the best and biggest wholesale lenders in the nation, plus lenders you've never even heard of that I have direct relationships with. My pricing is about half a percent better than what the open market is currently offering. This isn't a sales pitch. It's just how the broker world works.
The truth is my pricing is just as aggressive as what the builders are offering. They just package theirs as an "incentive."
Assuming you put 20% down on both options. At the higher-priced option of $503,900, on the 3.75% rate at the 7 year ARM, the principal and interest payment comes to about $1,867 a month. At the lower-priced option of $469,900, with the $10,000 builder credit going towards a rate buy-down at 4.625%, the principal and interest payment comes to roughly $1,932 a month.
That's a $65 difference between the two options. Property taxes on the higher-priced home are calculated at a higher value, adding about $15 to $20 more a month, which brings the actual difference between the two options down to about $50 a month.
Against the 4.625% rate I'm able to offer, the savings on that 3.75% builder offer is about $50 a month — and you aren't tied to one specific home to get it.
One more thing worth knowing as a buyer: the base price plus the builder incentive is almost never the final price you actually pay. Once you start adding upgrades, options, structural changes, and design center selections, the total can climb significantly. Quick Move-In homes are the closest thing to what-you-see-is-what-you-pay, but anything else, you need to go in with your eyes open and a Realtor walking you through what every option costs before you sign.
Buyers shopping New Riverside are looking at homes online first. That's where the search starts. Many of our buyers aren't even from the area — they're in bed late at night, scrolling listings on their phone in whatever free time they have. They're putting their list together before they ever fly down to see homes in person.
A brand new construction home offering an interest rate of 3.75% is going to get your attention online. That's exactly what it's designed to do.
But the rate alone isn't the full picture. The base price isn't the full picture either. Once you account for upgrades, lot premiums, design center selections, and the actual mortgage rate you can secure with a savvy broker, the headline offer can look very different by the time you sign.
That's why your time is best spent looking at the homes with a Realtor who knows New Riverside, working with a mortgage broker who can give you a real read on what you actually qualify for, and comparing the builder offers against the other homes available for sale in the community.
👉 3.75% at The Lakes, 3.99% at Midpoint, 4.99% at The Heritage — What New Riverside Sellers Need to Know
👉 How Buyers Decide If a Home Feels Worth It
👉 New Riverside Market Snapshot — 60 Active Homes, 66 Under Contract, and What That Tells Us
Working with a good Realtor and a savvy mortgage broker is what gets you the best home at the best total cost in New Riverside. The builders are running organized, well-staffed sales operations. They have their own mortgage companies who are working for the builder. Your team needs to be working for you.
The Realtor you want to be working with is walking you through the homes available for sale in New Riverside, including the homes that the builders have available, and showing you all of your options across the community. We compare what each home offers, what the actual numbers look like, and what fits your family best. That's the value of working with a Realtor who knows this market.
A savvy mortgage broker is going to get you the best mortgage interest rate because they have access to many lenders. The builder's mortgage company is set up to close their loans. A mortgage broker like me works with a wide range of wholesale lenders, including ones you've never heard of, that I have direct relationships with. In many cases, the same loan comes out at a better rate through a broker than through the builder's lender — even with the builder's incentive layered in.
Put the two together: a Realtor showing you every option in the community, and a mortgage broker getting you a better mortgage interest rate than the builder can offer on their own. That's the combination that works for you as a buyer.
Three things.
One. Hire the right Realtor. A good Realtor in New Riverside knows the homes that the builders have for sale, knows the homes that have already been built and sold in the community, and walks you through everything that fits what you're looking for. Hire well, and the rest of the buying process is set up to work in your favor.
Two. Make sure your Realtor knows what's going on at the builder sales offices. A good Realtor is in these offices regularly — Jules was at Midpoint earlier this week, and at The Lakes and The Heritage today, and knows the builders and the salespeople at the builders really well. We keep on top of this so that when we look at homes with you, the builder offers are factored in correctly.
Three. Move while the incentives are running and the inventory is fresh. K. Hovnanian is working to be fully built out at The Lakes by early next year. Pulte will keep advertising aggressive offers while it works through Midpoint's Spring inventory. Smith Family Homes has 75 homes left to build at The Heritage. The incentives are tied to those timelines. The market is also active right now — 19 homes have gone under contract in New Riverside over the past 15 days. The right home for you is on the market right now, and the offer that fits your math is on the table right now too.
If you're a homeowner reading this and you are thinking about selling your home in New Riverside, the builder incentives we just laid out are what buyers in this market will be looking at when they look at your home.
The good news is you have options. For instance, offering a small $3,000 to $5,000 credit towards a buyer's closing costs is a real, actionable move that puts your home in the same conversation as the builder offers. We talk about these sorts of incentives with our sellers when we sit down to set the listing price and prepare their home to go live.
Jeff & Jules Moran
Anchor & Isle Real Estate
Bluffton & Hilton Head Island
Strategic Marketing. Experienced Negotiation. Real Results.
Real Estate. Financing. One Strategy.