What Georgetown Builder Incentives Mean for New Construction

Drive the Wolf Ranch Town Center loop past the H-E-B and the string of new model homes lining West Bend, and you will pass at least three signs promising a rate that starts with a 2, a 3, or a 4. Coventry says 2.99. Drees says 2.99. Westin says 3.99. Somewhere in the fine print, each of those numbers has an expiration date, a lender requirement, and a different loan structure hiding behind it. None of them is the number that determines what a Georgetown new-construction home actually costs you over the years you own it.

That number lives somewhere else entirely, in a filing deadline at the Williamson Central Appraisal District that has nothing to do with your builder and everything to do with your tax bill.

The rate on the sign has an expiration date

Builders in Georgetown's master-planned communities have leaned hard on rate buydowns through the first half of 2026, and the terms vary more than the signage suggests. Earlier this year, Coventry Homes was advertising a 2.99% starting rate on a 7/6 adjustable mortgage, or a 4.99% fixed rate for FHA and VA buyers, on homes closing between January 1 and February 28. Drees Custom Homes offered a 2.99% first-year rate on move-in ready inventory through its lender partner, First Equity Mortgage, plus a separate deal knocking another 1% off the rate for buyers who selected a floor plan to build by January 31. Tri Pointe offered a permanent 4.99% buydown with builder-paid closing costs, or up to $25,000 in credit, on homes closing by the end of 2025. Westin structured its West Bend Southfork offer as a 2/1 buydown starting at 3.99%, paired with a closing cost credit through its preferred lender.

Every one of those windows has since closed or rotated into a new one. Wolf Ranch's own builder FAQ describes incentive periods running on short cycles, often four to eight weeks at a time. That is the pattern worth understanding, not any single expired rate: the specific number on the sign changes constantly, but the two structures behind it do not.

A temporary buydown, the 2-1 or 3-2-1 style, lowers your payment for the first one to three years, then reverts permanently to the full note rate. A permanent buydown uses discount points paid at closing to shave a fraction of a point off the rate for the life of the loan, typically a quarter to a half point. Builders pick one or bundle both with a closing cost credit depending on how much inventory they need to move that month. Neither is free. The cost of funding a buydown gets absorbed somewhere, usually in the base price of the home or in a design center markup tied to using the builder's preferred lender.

What the incentive is actually buying you

Here is where the comparison gets useful instead of theoretical. Take a $480,000 new-construction home in a Georgetown master-planned community carrying a MUD, a PID, and a standard HOA, financed at 6.5% with 5% down. Run the full monthly obligation, mortgage, taxes at an effective rate around 2.1%, insurance, and HOA, and you land near $3,340 a month before any builder incentive is applied.

Now compare that to a $440,000 resale home in an established Georgetown neighborhood with no MUD, no PID, and a modest $150 monthly HOA. Even at a $40,000 lower price point, the resale home's monthly cost runs roughly $1,071 less than the new-construction home's baseline, before the buydown does anything at all. That is the gap a rate buydown has to close before new construction becomes competitive on pure monthly cost, not just on the sticker.

The reason for that gap is structural. Many of Georgetown's growth-corridor communities, including sections of Wolf Ranch, sit inside a Municipal Utility District or Public Improvement District that finances the roads, water lines, and amenity centers before the city takes them over. Those districts carry their own tax rate, stacked on top of city, county, and school district taxes, and they don't disappear once your buydown period ends. An established resale neighborhood, built out years ago, typically has none of that stacking left.

None of this means new construction is a bad move. Morningstar's entry-level collections start in the mid $300,000s, Wolf Ranch floor plans start in the mid $400,000s, and Taylor Morrison's Parkside on the River prices from around $498,998, more than 10% below the area's roughly $649,900 average. For a buyer who runs the full monthly math and still comes out ahead, or who values a warranty and modern energy efficiency over an established tree canopy, the incentive can be real money. The point is that the rate on the sign is the opening bid in that math, not the answer.

The median price headline is telling you the wrong story

If you've searched Georgetown home prices recently, you've likely seen a version of this: the median sale price fell from around $490,000 in February 2025 to roughly $405,000 to $411,000 in February 2026, depending on the data source. Read as a standalone number, that looks like a market in retreat.

It isn't, and the mechanism is worth understanding if you're timing a purchase. The full-year 2025 median across Georgetown was $454,859, only a modest step down from 2024's $465,781. The sharper monthly drop in early 2026 lines up almost exactly with a surge in new-construction closings concentrated in the market's more affordable communities: Morningstar, the entry-level sections of Wolf Ranch, and Sun City's age-restricted resale inventory in the $300,000 to $450,000 band. When a large volume of lower-priced new builds closes in the same month, the citywide median drops mathematically without a single established home actually losing value.

Days on market backs up the more measured story. Homes in Georgetown averaged around 90 days on market in late 2025 and early 2026, up from about 66 days the year before, a real shift toward buyer leverage but nowhere near the days-long bidding wars of 2021 and 2022. Price per square foot across 2025 sat around $202, which is the more stable number to watch if you want a sense of whether values are actually softening.

The growth story underneath both numbers hasn't changed. Georgetown remains one of the fastest-growing cities in the country by U.S. Census estimates, and the new PEGATRON manufacturing facility adds another employment anchor to a city that already sits within commuting range of Austin via I-35 and TX-130. A buyer reading the median price drop as a sign to wait may be reacting to a statistical artifact rather than to anything happening in the actual market.

The deadline that quietly cancels your first-year savings

Here is the friction that catches new-construction buyers specifically, and it has nothing to do with the builder. Texas homestead exemptions are filed with the county appraisal district, not the builder or the lender, and in Williamson County that means the Williamson Central Appraisal District. The general window to apply runs January 1 through April 30 of the tax year, and there is no fee to file.

New construction complicates the timing in a way resale doesn't. A home that wasn't finished or occupied as of January 1 often gets assessed at a partial, incomplete value for that first tax year, then reassessed at full market value the following January once the county catches up. For a buyer who closed on a temporary 2-1 buydown, that reassessment can land in the same year the rate steps up toward its full note rate, meaning a higher mortgage payment and a higher tax bill show up close together, right when the builder's promotional rate stops doing any work.

Miss the April 30 deadline and you don't lose the exemption permanently. Williamson CAD allows a late filing up to two years after the delinquency date. But you do lose that tax year's benefit in the meantime, and depending on your school district's rate, that's real money sitting unclaimed on a home you already own. It is a small piece of paperwork that has nothing to do with financing sophistication and everything to do with knowing the calendar.

The builder's rate is a marketing decision. The tax reassessment date and the exemption deadline are calendar facts that show up whether or not you were paying attention.

Running the actual number

None of this is an argument for or against new construction in Georgetown. It's an argument for running the comparison the way it actually plays out on your mortgage statement and your tax bill, not the way it's printed on a sign. That means asking every builder whether the advertised rate is temporary or permanent, confirming whether the community carries a MUD or PID and at what rate, and marking your calendar for April 30 the moment you close, regardless of what the rate does after year one.

If you're weighing a Wolf Ranch or Morningstar floor plan against an established resale home in Georgetown, that's exactly the kind of side-by-side math YES Realty walks clients through before they sign anything, builder financing included. Toni Thompson has spent more than 22 years translating this kind of fine print into a plain answer: what does this actually cost you, month over month, once the promotional period ends.

Schedule free consultation if you want that math run on the specific community and floor plan you're considering.

A few questions worth asking before you sign:

Does the builder's low rate last for the life of the loan? Depends entirely on the structure. A 2-1 or 3-2-1 buydown is temporary and reverts to the full note rate after one to three years. A permanent buydown through discount points lasts the full loan term but typically only shaves a quarter to a half point off the base rate.

Do all new-construction communities in Georgetown carry a MUD or PID? No, but many of the newer master-planned communities in the growth corridor do. Ask specifically, since that tax layer stacks on top of city, county, and school district taxes and doesn't go away when your buydown period ends.

What happens if I miss the April 30 homestead exemption deadline? You can still file. Williamson CAD accepts late applications up to two years after the delinquency date, but you lose that tax year's reduction in the meantime, so it's worth filing as soon as you close rather than waiting.