If you are moving to south or southeast Monroe County and you assumed buying new would be easier than competing for a resale, this post is for you. By the end you will know where the 6.8 percent figure comes from, what it does and does not measure, the three different ways people actually end up in a new build in Henrietta or Rush, and where the money and timeline risks sit. I will also tell you plainly which numbers I have and which ones do not exist in any published source I can point you to.

Where the 6.8 percent comes from

In its 2026 housing forecast, published December 19, 2025 and covered locally by WROC, Realtor.com ranked Rochester the number two housing market in the country for 2026. That forecast put new construction at only 6.8 percent of listings in the Rochester area. The same forecast projected 5.3 percent home sales growth and a 10.3 percent increase in median sale price for the year, on a median list price of $256,900 against a national median around $415,000.

Two things about that number. First, it is a forecast published in December 2025, not a live count taken this month. Second, it is a metro-wide share. It tells you that new construction is a small slice of what is on the market. It does not tell you how many new homes are available in Henrietta, West Henrietta, or Rush on any given week.

Still, the direction is the useful part. When roughly nineteen out of twenty listings are existing homes, a search limited to new construction is not a shortcut. It is a narrower funnel.

The numbers this post rests on

What I do not have is town-level data. There is no published median price, days on market, or inventory count for Henrietta, West Henrietta, Rush, Mendon, or Honeoye Falls that I can cite with a reporting period. Anyone quoting you a precise Henrietta new-build statistic should be asked where it came from. Everything below about the towns is description and process, not measurement.

Why the resale market matters even if you only want new

New construction is priced against the existing market, and the existing market in Monroe County has been tight and expensive. The county median sale price hit $308,500 in May 2026, reported as another new high. Zillow's county average home value was $285,439 as of its 4/30/2026 update, up 4.1 percent year over year, with homes going pending in roughly eight days.

Builders read those same numbers. When resale supply is thin and prices are rising, spec homes do not sit and get discounted. That is the part buyers relocating from softer markets tend to be surprised by.

One caution while you research. Aggregator pages for "Rochester, NY" describe the city, not the southern suburbs, and they contradict each other. For July 2026, one site published 51 median days on market and another published 13 for the same month. One showed sales up about 79 percent, another showed sales down. One page reported homes selling at 120.57 percent of asking price alongside that 51-day marketing time, which cannot both be true. If a headline tells you the market is cooling, check which geography and which source produced it.

The three routes to a new build in Henrietta or Rush

These are genuinely different transactions with different risks. People often use "new construction" to mean all three.

• Builder inventory, sometimes called a spec home. The house is under way or finished. You see the actual floor plan, the actual lot grade, the actual ceiling height. Fastest path. Least control over finishes, because most decisions are already made.
• Build to order on a builder's lot in an existing subdivision. You pick from the builder's plans and options. Utilities, roads, and approvals are typically already handled by the developer. You wait through construction, and you commit before you can walk the finished space.
• Buy land and hire a builder. More common toward Rush, West Henrietta, and the Mendon side, where parcels run larger. This is where the surprises live: well and septic instead of public water and sewer, driveway length and grading, soil and percolation testing, wetland setbacks, electric service runs, and town approvals that take their own time.

I have walked all three kinds. The third is the one people underestimate. A pretty parcel on a country road can carry tens of thousands of dollars in site work before a foundation is poured, and none of that shows up in a price per square foot comparison.

Resale versus new construction, honestly compared

• Timeline. A resale closes on a schedule you can plan around. A build depends on permits, weather, and trade availability. If your lease or your job start date is fixed, that matters more than the finishes.
• Price certainty. Resale price is set at contract. Build contracts often carry allowances and change orders, and the number you sign is not always the number you close on. Read the allowance schedule line by line.
• Rate risk. Freddie Mac had the 30-year fixed at 6.67 percent for the week ending August 13, 2026, down slightly from 6.69 percent the prior week and close to the 6.58 percent of a year earlier. That reading ended five straight weekly increases. On a resale you lock and close. On a long build, your lock window may not cover the whole construction period, so ask the lender exactly what happens if the completion date moves.
• Inspection. Do not skip an independent inspection on a new build. Get one before drywall if the builder allows it, and again before closing. A certificate of occupancy is not the same as a third-party inspection.
• Taxes. A newly built home is assessed after completion. The tax figure on a comparable listing nearby may not be the figure you will pay.
• Negotiation. On resale, price is usually the lever. With builders, the lever is more often incentives, closing cost contributions, or upgrades, because builders protect their published base prices to preserve values in the rest of the subdivision.

Practical notes for these towns

Henrietta and much of Rush sit in the Rush-Henrietta Central School District. Honeoye Falls and parts of Mendon are in Honeoye Falls-Lima. Check the district and the tax jurisdiction for the specific parcel, not the mailing address, because town and district lines do not always match what a listing says.

Also confirm, in writing, before you commit:

• Public water and sewer, or well and septic, and who pays for what
• Whether the lot is in a recorded subdivision with approved roads, or raw land needing approvals
• What the builder's warranty covers, for how long, and who honors it
• Whether your deposit is held in escrow and under what conditions it is refundable
• Which finishes are base and which are upgrades, with dollar figures attached

How I would run your search

Given how small the new construction share is, I run two tracks at once. Track one is builder inventory and available lots, checked directly with builders rather than only through listing sites, because not everything is listed. Track two is resale homes built recently enough to feel new, where you can see the finished product and negotiate on price. Many buyers who start out set on a new build end up on track two, and are fine with it once they compare the total cost and the timeline side by side.

If you want a straight read on what is actually available in Henrietta, West Henrietta, or Rush right now, and what it will really cost to get to a closing, book a time with me. Bring your timeline and your lender's rate lock terms. I will show you what I am seeing and where the numbers come from.

Khem Kadariya

About this data

The figures in this post were compiled from publicly available sources including Houzeo, Movoto, Redfin, RochesterFirst and Zillow, along with other public market data. Real estate numbers change quickly, and these were accurate as of August 2026. For current figures on a specific home, street, or town, ask me directly rather than relying on a published average.