Author Archives: Mitch

Why Home Builders Create Quick Move-In Homes

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Sometimes it seems like, at least for awhile, there are a lot of homes ready for you to quickly move into. Indeed, when a new home community is being built, there are a lot of homes that one might think are open, but most of those homes have already been pre-sold.

Where home builders really do themselves proud is with the models they build to show potential customers many of the options that can be obtained if a homeowner wants to spend the money for upgrades. And when these home builders decide to break out the good stuff, it’s a benefit to everyone.

For instance, I’ve seen some model homes with some of the most beautiful media rooms you’ve ever seen. Both media rooms and theater rooms can add something special for those people who love entertaining. The same goes for a game room, sometimes with things such as pool tables, ping pong tables and other things added for effect.

What about extra large garages, or garages with lifts? What about a jacuzzi in the bedroom or even a special jacuzzi room with a large flat screen TV? What about a home library or den or extra large office space? What about a greenroom?

Here’s the thing. Builders create these masterpieces as showrooms for the kinds of things they can add to a quality home. Visitors love seeing what they could have in their homes, even if they don’t always follow through on it.

But where it comes through positively for both parties is when the home builder is ready to sell the model. Models don’t stay that way forever. At this point, deals can be made that are beneficial to both seller and buyer. Sellers know that they’re not going to get what they normally get for these homes, yet they’re going to get a lot for them just because of what’s in them. Buyers know that these homes will cost a little more than they might have been thinking about paying and yet it’s hard to deny oneself all these great amenities that they might have never been able to consider before.

This truly is a case of “build it and they will come”, or in this case “buy”.

Filed under Quick Move-in Homes

Jun 24, 2011

Expecting Perfection In A Quick Move-In Home

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There are many people who love their new homes, whether those homes have been previously lived in or are quick move-in homes that home builders have already built and customized for sale. Those that don’t totally love these types of homes often are those who just can’t bring themselves to making a decision on a home. It could be that they’re looking for perfection; is that realistic?

The first question to ask is what is perfection. The reality is that perfection means something different to each person you ask. When it comes to home ownership, it’s no different than anything else. While one person might say perfection is having an extra large 2-car garage, someone else might say having a hot tub in the bedroom is perfection.

When one moves into a home that’s already been built, if they’ve taken the time to look at everything in that house they’ve already recognized certain things that they wish they could change, or plan on changing, but have said that they can live with it. When moving into my first home the one thing I wasn’t crazy about was that in half the house there was pink wall to wall carpeting. I figured there was a way around that so I didn’t let it bother me. What my wife and I ended up doing was purchasing large rugs and putting them in each room to eliminate so much pink, and people thought it was a great designing trick.

In every home, unless you’ve taken the time to design in and go to the store to select each and every component, there will be something you won’t like. Most things won’t cost all that much money to change, such as cabinets, rugs, or even windows. No one should ever let that type of thing keep them from looking and then purchasing one of these homes.

However, there are some things that everyone just won’t be able to overcome. If the bathroom totally irritates you and the cost of changing it runs into 5 digits or more, you really have to consider whether this house is for you. If there are multiple things you want to change or that you can’t live with, it’s probably better to move on and find something else to your liking.

If you expect perfection in almost anything you will be disappointed. The same goes for homes, whether you have one built or buy one that’s already in existence.

Filed under Quick Move-in Homes

Jun 10, 2011

How Do You Feel About Automated Homes?

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Lennar Homes is once again ahead of the game when it comes to home innovation. They announced this week that they will be showcasing some of their new homes in Las Vegas this coming weekend that will have automated features that will become standard in homes they build in the future.

The concept of automated homes used to mean that homeowners could turn things on and off from one central location. It could be a panel on a wall in one or many rooms in the house or it could be connected to a program that one’s computer could run. In this case Lennar is setting things up so that homeowners can run the automation from their smartphones as well.

They tout this as potentially saving energy by allowing homeowners to better control heat or air conditioning while they’re away from home, such as turning them on shortly before getting home to be comfortable without having to worry about setting timers all the time. Other features are turning lights on and off and even possibly setting things up to do pet maintenance while you’re not home.

I see much of this as a good thing while still worrying about other things. For instance, if someone gains access to your phone while you’re not looking and knows where you live, they could possibly unlock your doors or turn off your alarm system if you haven’t set your encryption properly. There’s also always the possibility that some technically savvy people could figure out how to run your system much closer to your home.

Still, this is a very bold move, one that could revolutionize the home industry, which could use a boost to help draw people back into the marketplace. It would leave one less thing to worry about if you left home, and you could probably run monitoring equipment of all types, thereby feeling more secure in the safety or your home as well. It’s worth exploring to see just how much automation there is and how easy it might be to use.

Filed under Quick Move-in Homes

May 29, 2011

Mobile Quick Move-In Homes

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Although many people love to joke about them, one could say that most mobile homes are perfect as a quick move-in home. Let’s look at 5 reasons why this is probably true.

One, mobile homes are already constructed. You can get them as small as a large camper or you can get them as large as a 5-room ranch style home. Many are made out of metal so they can transport better, although the larger they are the less likely anyone’s riding around in one for any extended period of time.

Two, mobile homes don’t require the purchase of land. Most people put their mobile homes in parks where they pay lot rent, often as low as $200 a month, which is drastically less than buying land and putting a regular home on it. Sure, you still pay utilities, but their minor compared to regular homes.

Three, the internal parts of mobile homes are already completed. Sure, you don’t get to select what kind of floor or appliances you want, but everything you need has already been built into the home so that’s one less thing you have to worry about.

Four, if you don’t like the neighborhood you’re in, it’s easy to move out. You can move across town or to another state, and you have your home with you, already furnished and ready to reestablish yourself somewhere else.

Five, the costs are way lower, which means you could end up with a relatively nice sized home that could cost you less than $30,000, in some cases less than $10,000. Frankly, that’s less than what most people pay for their cars, and they hold their value better over time.

Filed under Quick Move-in Homes

May 16, 2011

4 Reasons To Consider Quick Move-In Homes

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by Rowena via Flickr

To buy a home that’s ready for you to move into or to buy one that you’ve had a hand in constructing. That’s a tough decision to make when you decide it’s time for a new home. There are pros and cons to each, the biggest consideration overall is what you’re actually ready for at the time. This may or may not make it any easier to decide but we’re going to give you 4 reasons why buying a ready made home might be best.

1. Aesthetics. Whether you’re buying brand new from a builder or buying a pre-existing home, you can bet that each put a lot of time into how they wanted the place to look. They both go for comfort and possibly some Feng Shui aesthetics, which means you know that care was taken to provide the best environment for either themselves or for someone else. If you’re buying from a home builder, you know they took the time to make sure all the appliances looked good together, and that the colors of the room matched up with the colors of the furniture. In essence, both parties have given you an experience you can feel as soon as you want into the home.

2. Convenience. For furnished homes, it’s all been taken care of for you. It’s like the convenience of a hotel only much bigger and it’s yours. Sure, you might want to change a thing or two here and there, but a well done home means you don’t have to change a thing. You can just move in and go about your business.

3. Time. Do you know how much time it takes to just put plans together before any building has begun for a home? Do you know how much time it takes to go out and look at all that stuff that your house is going to be constructed with? I’m sure you at least known the kind of time it takes to go around to stores trying to pick out appliances or furniture for your home. Sure, sometimes that’s fun, but other times it starts to get on your nerve. If it’s already been taken care of for you think of all the time you’ve saved.

4. Cost. Having some create plans for your home and then building it costs way more money than just moving into a completed home. Moving into a home that has no appliances or furniture might seem like it would cost less as well, but most home builders have special deals with retailers so that they get those items at a very low cost because they buy them in bulk. And these are name brand companies, which means you’re getting quality. Only having to make one payment, that being to purchase the home, instead of having to then go and purchase everything else, saves a lot on costs.

Filed under Quick Move-in Homes

Apr 28, 2011

5 Ways To Prepare Your Home For A Quick Move-In

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by James Thompson

Home builders aren’t the only ones that put quick move-in homes on the market. If you’re a home owner looking to sell your home quickly, you count as well. There are certain things you can do to move your home fast, other than just dropping the price. At a certain point it takes more than price to really get someone interested in your home. Here are 5 ways to prepare your home for someone to just move in without problems.

1. Paint everything white. To you, the homeowner, that might seem boring, but studies have shown that the best way to your one’s home in the best light possible is to have it freshly painted white, or off-white if you just can’t pull the trigger. It seems most buyers like to use their imagination, even if you’re leaving all the appliances, of how they’d feel in your house, whether they end up changing colors later on or not.

2. Have as many open spaces as possible. Realtors are always recommending that those homey touches that make you feel good in your home don’t always translate to others, especially if it takes away space. Moving things out of hallways and trying to show more open space in one’s living room offers an inviting environment for a potential buyer.

3. Get rid of all animal smells and other smells ASAP! Not every loves pets, and even those that do don’t like the smell already in a home they’re hoping to buy. If they don’t like animal smells, they’re going to hate the smell of cigarettes or many other things. Even if you happen to love aromatherapy items, which smell pretty nice, those scents take away from how someone else will see your home. The one exception; warm cookies. That seems to go over very well, especially if your visitors can take free samples.

4. Thoroughly clean the bathrooms. Obviously you’ll want your entire home clean, but most people will really repel if the bathroom isn’t immaculate, which includes the sliding glass doors or shower curtains. These things seem to be something that many homeowners forget about because they get used to it, but it’s a crucial selling point.

5. Make sure the lawn looks nice. You don’t have to overdo it, but studies have shown that if the outside of the house looks bad, it doesn’t matter what you do on the inside. And the lawn seems to take more importance than the rest of the house unless the rest of the outside of the house looks pretty bad. So, cut the grass and trim the hedges and fill in those mole holes and you could be on your way to a quick sale of your home.

Filed under Quick Move-in Homes

Apr 14, 2011

Quick Move-In Homes In Florida

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It’s no secret to anyone that Florida really suffered from the housing crisis. What that’s done is left a lot of homes that are ready for people to move into at extremely low prices. And these aren’t homes that were built by fly-by-night home builders either. Some of the home builders that are now selling homes at extremely low prices include national home builders like D.R. Horton, Richmond American and Taylor Morrison.

This means that there are some great deals on the market. How great? The price on some homes has come down more than 50% from its original rate. In some communities, where homes have been taken over by banks and then banks taken over by other banks, there have been deals reported as great as 65 – 75% or more. It’s not unusual to hear of homes that were originally listed around $400,000 suddenly showing up at rates under $100,000.

The same thing goes for condominiums. There are brand new large luxury condominiums that have less than a 20% occupancy rate that are looking for ways to attract buyers, and many of these are in places such as Key West, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, places with lots of beaches and great nightlife.

One such condominium community is known as Water’s Edge Luxury Condominiums, a 26-story luxury building in Clearwater, Florida. At one point the building was sitting almost totally empty until they got the approval to not only discount rates drastically, but they received special approval to only have to require a 3.5% down payment from the Federal Housing Administration. That has affected the occupancy rate in a positive direction, but there are still many units available for purchase.

There are plenty of deals like that throughout Florida for homes of all type. These homes are built with quality, are still brand new in that they’ve never had any previous residents in them, and are ready for you to move into them. Contact a realtor and start your new home search as soon as possible before the rebound takes hold.

Filed under Quick Move-in Homes

Mar 26, 2011

Prefabricated Homes

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If you want a new home yet don’t want to wait forever for it to be built, something you might think about trying is purchasing a prefabricated home.

Prefabricated Children's Room

A prefabricated home means that all the components of the house are built in a factory, then they’re all moved to the home site and literally put together like a jigsaw puzzle. Many of these companies have already created just so many plans that they’ll build from, with the expectation that the amenities inside the home offering more customization will be enough for some home owners. Another term for these homes is “modular”.

Prefabricated homes are not mobile homes, though some mobile homes are definitely prefabricated homes. These homes can be as small as a mobile home or as large as a 2-story 3,000 square foot home or even larger, depending on the builder. There are many buildings across the country that are actually prefabricated structures.

The most comforting thing is that all these homes have to match the same standards as other homes, so you know your home will be safe and secure. There’s even a national group called the Modular Building Systems Association that oversees the standards of all modular or prefabricated home builders throughout the country. You can also contact them if you’re unsure of where to find someone in your area that makes these homes. Also, if you don’t have someone in your area, you can actually hire someone from almost anywhere and they will drive your home to its location once it’s completed; you can’t get that from normal home builders.

And something you will like is that these homes are normally built in half the time it takes to build a brand new home, and they’ll also come with special packages so your entire home, including cabinets, floors and the like, will arrive much quicker than the norm.

Finally, there are a few communities across the country that have already been built using the prefabricated homes model. These homes will cost you less because it cost the builders less to put them together. True, you might not end up with fancy things such as media rooms, but you’ll end up with a good quality and affordable home that you can move into.

Filed under Quick Move-in Homes

Mar 14, 2011

Major Builders Quick Move-In Homes

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A major concept of quick move-in homes are when home builders such as Lennar or Taylor Morrison buy up a large amount of property and just start building homes. They usually will build a few models in the neighborhood, but the rest of the homes are based on pre-existing plans that are a part of their repertoire.

Quite often, these homes are just what the doctor ordered. They’re clean and well built and no one else has lived in them; sometimes there’s nothing better than that. True, you don’t have the opportunity to sculpt the home that maybe you wanted, but buying a ready made home ready for you to move in removes a lot of the stress of trying to figure out some of the small details that others who build homes have to go through.

In many areas of the country, home builders have taken a look at the economy and decided that the market is ready for new homes as opposed to buyers picking up pre-existing homes. Indeed, that seems to be the way sales are going, although in some communities, such as many in Florida, buyers are able to pick up some homes built before the bubble at great prices that were quick move-in homes. The same thing goes for many homes that were never purchased, yet were brand new, in Las Vegas.

In other places, though, the home bubble never hit, and home builders are ready to take their shot. One builder, Taylor Morrison, has been buying up property in Texas and will be building homes without worrying about having buyers before they build them. They will be starting to build these homes in the spring of this year, mainly in the central Texas area, with the expectation that they will be able to sell these homes, even as they’ve been thinking about leaving the American market.

If there’s one thing you probably won’t be able to do, it’s negotiate on price. The prices will be what they are, and the homes will be beautiful, and sometimes you just have to pay for quality and beauty and hope that it remains as great as it looks.

Filed under Texas New Homes

Feb 25, 2011

5 Things You Want In Your Quick Move-in Home

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by Natalie Maynor

If you’re lucky, the quick move-in home you find will have certain things already in place so you don’t have to spend any money on them. Not that you’re always guaranteed these things, or guaranteed that they’re new, but they’re great to have if you’re moving into one, and thus great things for those moving out to think about as well.

1. Relatively new water heater. If you’ve had a water heater in the house for 15 years that’s not necessarily a great thing. Sure, it may still work, but it’s probably not as energy efficient as a newer one and definitely closer to having to be replaced than not.

2. Regular heater. This is like the water heater in efficiency, but it’s probably easier to prove that it’s had maintenance relatively recently, such as having the ducts cleaned out and such.

3. Refrigerator. Sure, many people will probably want to replace the refrigerator within a few years, but walking into a new home not having to purchase this is a wonderful thing. Being able to just bring one’s food over and put it into a working refrigerator puts smiles on people’s faces. These days one doesn’t have to worry about very old style and unsafe refrigerators as much as getting one that’s sizable enough to be useful.

4. Central air and heating. The days of each room having its own heater should be long gone, but there are many homes that haven’t taken care of this. The same goes for homes without central air, because it means new home owners will potentially have to buy a lot of fans. No one wants to do that in this day and age.

5. Freshly painted walls. Once again, there’s no guarantee that new owners won’t want to paint over the color of the walls, which might be white, but at least they don’t have to go through the process of cleaning, then priming, and then painting again if they don’t need to.

Filed under Quick Move-in Homes

Feb 16, 2011

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