New Home Cost Labby Good Guys Labs

Version 1 · August 2, 2026

Evidence rules that payment cannot change.

This validation product helps buyers compare new-construction models on consistent fields. It does not rate build quality, predict resale value, or substitute for a builder quote, contract review, inspection, appraisal, tax advice, or financing advice.

Source boundary

We monitor only whitelisted builder-owned pages and official government pages. We do not copy NewHomeSource or another marketplace, circumvent blocked sources, buy a data feed, or republish builder floor-plan images without permission. Structured facts link to the original page.

Base priceShown only when an official builder page associates a model with a starting or base price.
Available-home priceClearly distinguished from a base price when the official page prices a specific quick-move-in home.
Price unavailableUsed when a model has a published specification but no unambiguous model-level price.
Builder-confirmedUsed only after a verified business-domain claim submits information that passes the same source checks.

Freshness and automated monitoring

Each record carries a last-observed date. The source monitor runs twice weekly and looks for the exact model and price field on an allowed official page. A high-confidence unchanged match refreshes the date. A plausible, unambiguous change may update the record. Multiple candidates, missing model labels, off-domain redirects, implausible jumps, blocked requests, or broken links create an exception instead.

After 14 days without a qualifying observation, an unconfirmed displayed price is removed and the record becomes stale. The system never fills a gap with an estimate from a nearby model.

Organic order

Initial results are sorted by county, community, and model name. Filters use the buyer’s chosen facts. We do not calculate an undisclosed quality score, pay-to-play score, or builder rating in this phase.

Sponsorship boundary

A paying builder may appear in a separately bordered area labeled “Sponsored showcase.” Sponsorship does not change its organic position, price record, evidence label, included/excluded explanation, calculator output, or source-monitor decision. We reject requests to buy rank, suppress supported evidence, or alter an estimate.

True-cost formula

The calculator uses fixed arithmetic:

Contract scenarioBase price + lot premium + structural options + finish allowance + elevation and site costs − incentives.
Recurring first yearEstimated annual taxes + twelve months of HOA payments.
First-year viewContract scenario + recurring first-year costs. It is not cash to close or a mortgage-payment calculation.

Anonymous quote observations

A buyer can analyze numeric quote lines without uploading a document or entering a name, address, email, phone number, contract, or lot address. Exact lines are stored only when the buyer checks the optional research-consent box. They are internal validation observations and are not published as market benchmarks during this phase.

Corrections

Anyone can point us to an official-source issue at hello@good-guys-labs.com. Qualifying builders can use the business-email claim flow. Submitted changes remain pending until the claimed field and official source match confidently.