Buying a house that does not exist yet runs on a different clock from buying one that does. There is no inspection period in the usual sense, no seller to negotiate repairs with, and the closing date on your contract is an estimate for most of the time you hold it. Here is the sequence, what you actually control at each point, and where the schedule usually slips.
1. The purchase agreement
A production builder’s contract is the builder’s paper. It is not the FAR/BAR form most Florida resale deals run on, and the parts a resale buyer relies on — the inspection period, the financing contingency, the appraisal contingency — are either absent, narrower, or written to the builder’s benefit. Read it before you sign, not after.
Three things are worth settling in writing at this stage, because they are difficult to add later:
- Access for your own inspector during construction. Florida gives you no statutory right to send an inspector onto an active jobsite. It is entirely a matter of what the contract says.
- What happens if the appraisal comes in below the contract price, and whether your deposit is at risk if it does.
- Which decisions are locked at contract rather than at the selections appointment. Structural items usually are.
Deposits vary by builder, by community and by how far along the build is. There is no standard figure, and anyone who quotes you one as an industry rule is guessing.
2. Selections
Every builder has a cutoff after which changes stop. The cutoff is real and it is in your contract; the number of days is not standardised, so find it and diary it.
How much you get to choose depends on the builder’s model. A builder running a design centre — Pulte’s Home Expressions Studio is the clearest published example — will walk you through cabinetry, counters, tile, lighting, flooring, paint and hardware in one long appointment, with structural items already fixed at contract. Lennar’s Everything’s Included model works the other way round: the equipment other builders sell as upgrades is in the base price, and the personalisation Lennar’s own materials describe is at finish level, such as cabinet finish or countertop material. Lennar’s annual report is explicit that standardisation is the point — it is what lets the programme include those features at the price it does.
Neither approach is better. They are different trades: choice for price certainty, or price certainty for choice. Know which one you signed up for before you walk into the appointment with a Pinterest board.
3. Financing, permitting and the start
Your loan application runs in parallel with everything else. Builders will steer you toward their affiliated lender; you are not required to use one, and the comparison is worth making even when the incentive is only attached to the in-house option.
Permitting happens between contract and construction start, and no builder we know of lists it as a buyer milestone, because you do not participate in it. You should still care about it: it is one of the two or three things that most often moves a delivery date, and it is entirely outside the sales office’s control.
Ask for a pre-construction meeting with the construction manager by name. Some builders publish one as a formal step; others do not, and you will only get it if you ask. It is where the plot plan, the elevation, the lot grading and the option list get confirmed against what you think you bought.
4. Pre-drywall
This is the one walk you should never skip. Once the drywall is hung, the framing, the rough-in plumbing, the electrical runs and the HVAC are behind a wall, and anything wrong back there is expensive to reach. Builders schedule a pre-drywall viewing as a matter of course; the question is whether you bring your own inspector with you.
5. The orientation walk
Builders name this differently. Lennar and M/I Homes both call it a New Home Orientation. Pulte splits it into a Pre-Closing Orientation a week or two out and a separate handover. Whatever it is called, it is where the construction manager walks the finished house with you and a punch list gets written.
Do not treat it as a formality. Items on that list are far easier to get fixed before closing than after, and the walk is also where you learn which of the house’s systems are on which warranty — the builder’s own, the manufacturer’s, or the one Florida law now requires.
6. Closing
One date on this schedule is not negotiable by anyone: if you are financing, your lender must give you the Closing Disclosure at least three business days before you close. That is federal rule, it applies to every financed purchase, and it means a late change to the numbers can push the closing.
Budget for the fact that your first property tax bill will almost certainly not resemble the prior year’s bill on that parcel. In Florida, a home that is not substantially complete on 1 January has no improvement value assessed for that year, so the first bill can be land-only and the second one is the real one.
What actually moves the date
In our experience across six Southwest Florida communities, delivery dates move for four reasons, roughly in order: permitting and inspection scheduling with the county, trade availability, a material or appliance that is late, and a change the buyer requested after the cutoff. Only the last one is yours to control, and the way to control it is to make your decisions before the cutoff and then stop.
A contract delivery window is a window. If your lease ends on a fixed date or you are selling a house to fund this one, build slack into that plan and do not book movers against the earliest date in the range.