Let's make a bad deal: Builder "incentives" seem anything but

    KB Home, the Ryland Group and other residential home construction companies think they may have found the hook to start selling homes again.  They are using a twist on a marketing ploy long favored by electronics retailers and others, aka the "price protection" guarantee.  Buy a television or stereo unit today and find it somewhere else within 30 days at a lower price, and you get it for that price and, sometimes, up to 10% of the difference as well.
    Homebuilders are desperate, as this new twist appears to demonstrate.  They are offering to protect you against a loss of market value in the home you buy between the time you give them a deposit and the time you close on the house.  If you settle on a contract to buy a $300,000 home today, and the market value of your home drops to, say, $280,000 before closing, KB and Ryland will tear up the contract and give you a new one for the lower price.
    But wait.  The legal footnotes for the KB Home price protection offer (see their web site) indicate that, "Price Protection applies only to KB Home's advertised base price for the same floor plan, elevation and model in the same community." In other words, you must purchase a home exactly like your neighbors' on exactly the same size flat piece of property.  If you want the builder to, say, extend the master bedroom another two feet, or build a pantry into the footprint of the kitchen, forget about price protection.
    Let's say that, for some reason, you are fine with an exact duplicate of your neighbor's house, then who gets into the peeing matching with the builder about the market value of your home, you or your lawyer?  And how much extra will that cost?  And if you and the builder disagree on the market value of your home at closing, is there an out clause that gives you your deposit back?
    This promotion comes with more strings than Pinocchio.  I prefer the free big screen TV, the extra homeowner warranty protection and a no thank you.