Buying New Construction Before It's Built: Presales, Honestly

A presale is buying a home that doesn’t exist yet — reserving a unit in a condo tower from a sales gallery, or going under contract on a house that’s currently a foundation and a framing schedule. Around Seattle’s growth corridors this is a big slice of how new homes sell, and the appeal is real: first pick of lots and floor plans, finish selections you actually choose, a brand-new everything, and a price locked while you wait.

The honest counterweight: a presale is the most builder-favorable transaction in residential real estate. You’re handing over a large deposit, on the builder’s contract, against a delivery date the builder controls, for a product you’re judging from a rendering. None of that makes presales bad. It makes them a deal you should walk into with eyes open and an attorney’s red pen.

The three risks that define a presale

Your deposit is exposed in ways a resale deposit never is

A normal resale earnest-money deposit sits in escrow for a few weeks behind a fence of contingencies. A presale deposit is typically larger, held longer — often a year or more — and governed by the builder’s terms. The questions that matter, in writing:

• Where is the money held? Escrow or trust arrangements are the standard you want; deposits the builder can access for construction are a categorically different risk. Washington condo law imposes specific requirements on how presale deposits are handled — verify what applies to your project rather than assuming.
• Exactly which events refund it? Builder contracts enumerate the buyer’s exits narrowly. Outside those, walking away usually forfeits the deposit. Know the list cold.
• What happens if the builder fails? Projects do stall — financing dries up, builders go under. Your recourse depends on how the deposit was held and what the contract says. This is question one for the attorney.

And remember the opportunity cost: that money is locked, unproductive, and unavailable for anything else for the entire construction timeline.

Completion dates are estimates wearing contract clothing

Whatever date the sales office says, the contract almost certainly gives the builder generous extension rights — weather, permits, labor, materials, “circumstances beyond our control.” Slippage of months is unremarkable; large projects can run far longer. Plan around three consequences:

1. Your housing bridge has to flex. A lease ending the month of “estimated completion” is a plan built on the least reliable date in the file.
2. Your mortgage rate usually can’t be locked that far out. Standard locks cover weeks, not construction timelines. Extended and long-term lock products exist — for a price — but most presale buyers are accepting whatever rates are at completion. Underwrite yourself at meaningfully higher rates than today’s and confirm you still qualify; rate risk, not the deposit, is the exposure that actually reshapes budgets.
3. Check whether your obligations are symmetric. Builders typically owe little or nothing for delays; some contracts even let the builder cancel and refund (or worse, re-price) in certain conditions. Asymmetry is the theme — find each instance of it.

The contract was written by the builder, for the builder

You will not be signing the familiar statewide purchase forms. Builder contracts are custom documents, refined over many projects to protect one party, and the sales office’s “it’s our standard contract” is true — that’s the problem. Recurring one-sided features to hunt for: specification-change clauses (“substitution of materials of equal or better quality” — judged by whom?), narrow buyer remedies for defects, mandatory arbitration, deposit forfeiture as the default outcome, and assignment restrictions if your plans change before completion.

Pay a Washington real-estate attorney to review the contract before signing. This is the single highest-leverage dollar in the entire purchase. Some terms are genuinely negotiable — especially earlier in a project’s sales cycle, or in slower markets — and an attorney knows which asks are realistic. For condo presales specifically, the public offering statement is a legally required disclosure document with real review rights attached; read it (or have it read) rather than filing it.

What protections you do have — use all of them

• You can have your own agent, and you should. The friendly site staff work for the builder, full stop. Register your agent on the first visit — builders commonly refuse representation added later. Your agent’s leverage is often better spent on upgrades, credits, and closing costs than on price.
• Inspect anyway. “It’s new and city-inspected” is not quality assurance — municipal inspections check code minimums, not workmanship. Pay for your own inspections (ideally staged: pre-drywall if the builder allows, plus final), and document everything at the buyer walkthrough.
• Understand the warranty before you rely on it. New-home and condo warranties in Washington have specific scopes and clocks; here’s what new-build warranties actually cover — and don’t.
• Verify the builder like you’d verify a used car’s history. Past projects, contractor registration, litigation history, how they handled prior buyers’ punch lists. A builder’s reputation is the best single predictor of how the one-sided contract gets used in practice.

Is the trade worth it for you?

Presales fit buyers with flexible timing, stable finances that survive a rate-rise stress test, and a genuine preference for choosing finishes over choosing certainty. They fit badly for anyone on a hard deadline, anyone whose qualification is marginal, and anyone for whom the deposit is most of their savings. If the trade reads badly, completed new construction — or near-complete “spec” homes — capture most of the newness with far less of the risk; the broader new-vs-resale decision has its own trade-offs worth weighing first.

However you go, go represented — and know what that representation costs before you’re standing in a sales gallery. Manaky Homes is a free marketplace where Greater Seattle agents publish their fees side by side, including agents who work new construction; waitlist signup is open.

A presale is a bet on a builder, priced and papered by that builder. Bet when you’ve read the terms, stress-tested the timeline, and hired your own eyes — and you can end up with exactly the home you picked from the drawings.