Omaha Builder Guide

I’d like to challenge more Omaha home builders to use permission marketing.

Permission marketing means that the marketer delivers anticipated, personal and relevant messages to the people who want to get those messages.

The key word here is want.

Your potential customers should want to get your updates. Your customers want to know all sorts of things. Things like:

• New floor plans
• New homes for sale
• New lots for sale
• Price drops on existing homes for sale
• New options
• New contractors that you’re trying out
• New vendors whose products are going into your homes
• What you think about the latest home trends

Yes, Omaha home builders, your customers (and potential customers) are interested in hearing what you have to say. You’re the expert home builder, after all. What you have to say on the subject has to be worth something, especially to people who are considering plunking down $200,000 to $1,000,000 on what you sell.

How does permission marketing benefit your home building business?

Well, permission marketing, done right, can help Omaha home builders avoid that whole request for proposal/price shopping stage of the game.

Selling anything, including homes, on the basis of price alone is a losing proposition for the seller. When you and the other folks in your field fail to differentiate yourselves from one another, you’re not selling a home, you’re just selling a commodity. When a bunch of people are just selling commodities, cheap guy wins.

If you can skip over the RFP stage, you’re already ahead of other Omaha home builders. While they’re fielding calls and talking to people who want to dicker over $500 here and $2000 there, you have customers who are waiting to see what you’re thinking, doing and selling. They’re interested enough in your product to permit you to market to them.

And please, make it easy for your customers to sign up for your updates. RSS feeds are an excellent way to do this, especially if you implement a blog into your website. Jeff Davis, an affordable search engine optimization consultant, can do this for you for a good price.

One of HearthStone Homes’ most recent additions to their lineup of floor plans is a simple 2-garage 3 bedroom/2 bath 1497 square-foot ranch that they’ve named the Albright.

Sitting at the entry point for HearthStone Homes’ mid-priced Gallery collection, the Albright is relatively inexpensive, with a base price around the mid $130’s, depending on the subdivision, lot premium and elevation.

When looking at the plan from overhead, the Albright has a recognizably square shape, which saves HearthStone Homes (and hopefully you) some money. Framing costs on a house increase substantially when you start designing little alcoves and pop-outs from the main house. A perfectly square house is the cheapest kind of house to produce from a framer’s point of view.

The L-shaped kitchen is medium-sized, with a minimum of counter space and a small pantry. The lack of counter space means the kitchen island option would be a necessary upgrade for someone who plans to spend any time in this area. The eating area is strictly informal, with only space for a small kitchen table in the breakfast nook. Due to the lack of storage space in the kitchen, adding the available wall of cabinets upgrade for around $3000 would be a good idea.

The open floor plan means the kitchen flows into the good-sized great room, which will probably be the main “hang out” of the Albright’s occupants.

Directly off the great room lies the master bedroom. While not extravagant by any means, it is large enough to encompass a king-sized bed and two nightstands with no problem. The large walk-in closet is accessible from the master bedroom which, for some people, is a design flaw. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that most people would rather access the closet from the master bathroom, which allows for a quick shower-to-dress experience, instead of having to re-enter the master bedroom after a shower to access the closet to select your clothes.

Bathrooms

Although the master bathroom is a full bathroom, sadly it does not feature a separate toilet area from the rest of the master bathroom, which limits usability in the morning rush to get ready for the day. A combination shower/bath is a standard feature from HearthStone Homes. For approximately $1000 more, you can replace the linen closet with a shower and replace the shower/tub combo with a regular soaking tub. For about an additional $1000, the soaking tub can be upgraded to a whirlpool tub with several jets. Counter space can be hard to find in the Albright’s master bathroom if you choose the dual-sink option. Counter space is even harder to find in the second bathroom, which is also a full bathroom.

Odds and Ends

The laundry facilities are located near the two bedrooms at the front of the house, which gives the illusion of a drop-zone.

Unfortunately for buyers, depending on how they furnish the entry to the house, it appears to be almost a complete waste of space – that you’re still paying for.

The stairs to the basement are in the middle of the floor plan. HearthStone Homes offers a basement finishing option that will set you back between $7000 and $10000, depending on the model you’re working with. The Albright has a very nicely sized basement, coming in at 833 square feet.

One problem some people had with HearthStone Homes’ ranch home offerings is that although there appeared to be four different floor plans, there were really only two, each of which has a version with a bonus room on an upper floor. Those models have since been discontinued. The Albright’s more spacious counterpart used to be the Durand, which had a 400 foot alcove space above the main floor.

It is important to remember when you’re having a new home built, especially a HearthStone Home or a Celebrity Home, that the way your lot looks when you first walk it may not be how it turns out when you take possession. Mass builders tend to grade severely to control the water flow between their more tightly-packed houses. What appears to be a flat lot when you start building may not end up as a flat lot when the house is finished. Ensure that any concerns you have regarding the features of your lot are spelled out in the purchase contract, and have that contract looked over by a lawyer if you are in any way uncomfortable with the process.

Remember – for 99% of the population, a house is the biggest purchase they will ever make.

It’s your money, make sure you get what you want and you know what you’re getting

For a while, Omaha home buyers couldn’t get enough of Omaha home builders’ offerings in the $250,000 to $500,000 range. Then came the slowdown…

…but before the slowdown started, John Barrett of Barr Homes felt that he had identified an underserved niche in a price range lower than his $250,000 Barr Homes. With HearthStone Homes and Celebrity Homes seemingly dominating the under-$200,000 Omaha housing market price point, John Barrett felt that solidly-built custom homes priced between $190,000 and $230,000 would be in demand.

When John Barrett formulated the plans for this company, he knew that labor and material costs were too high at that point to keep the homes in the right price range – so ProLine Homes was shelved for a while. However, when the slowdown became apparent in 2006, labor and material costs dropped enough to make ProLine Homes a financial possibility.

During 2006, John Barrett built five ProLine homes. In 2007, he built 33.

The more expensive Barr Homes weren’t doing as well, with only 48 sold in 2006 and 26 sold in 2007. According to John Barrett:

We went from doing 20 to 24 houses in a six-month period down to eight in a six-month period. Maybe God saved me, but our ProLine kicked in to fill in the gap.

While ProLine sales are promising so far in 2008, John Barrett still is being conservative for 2008. He originally planned to build and sell a total of 80 to 90 ProLine and Barr Homes, but recently cut that number to 60. He has not yet reduced his work force but might if he doesn’t sell enough homes by July to meet his overhead.

Adding to Omaha home builders’ difficulties is the fact that a few banks have tightened the definition of “pre-sold.” During the Omaha housing boom, one or two of the banks John Barrett worked with would grant a loan to start construction if the home sale was conditioned upon the buyer selling his or her existing home. Today, according to John Barrett, those banks are accepting only “clean contracts,” or contracts with no contingencies.

If you look at the Omaha housing market, you’ll see that there are currently about 7,800 houses for sale in the Omaha area and almost 20,000 lots for sale on which to build. Competition between Omaha home builders is tight and some home builders are looking for new ways to generate interest in their properties.

As many Omaha home builders tighten their belt and look for ways to either reduce costs or increase sales, Omaha home builder Melvin Sudbeck is taking the step of putting several of his properties up for auction.

Sudbeck homes is auctioning nine model homes and two lots.

According to P.J. Morgan Real Estate agent Tom Zoucha, who will help sell the Sudbeck properties:

Folks come to us because, generally, we can get pretty good results with auction method. It’s a great way to target your property for the entire market. Then, of course, you’re setting when and where it sells, how it sells, and you get money back to work faster.

While some homeowners worry about foreclosures and auctions bringing a lot of new homes onto the market and reducing comparable prices for their area, the sale could also be a good thing for homeowners by reducing market supply and giving sellers an accurate picture of the market. While auction prices often start out low to generate interest, the houses that have been auctioned off in other parts of the United States have usually sold for fairly close to what the home builder was asking for them.

As long as the auction is a true auction, without reserve prices, potential home buyers in the Omaha area could see some good deals on a new home through this auction.

The Sudbeck Homes property auction will start on the 13th of May at 7 at night at the Comfort Inn Conference Center at 7007 Grover Street. Buyers are responsible for financing and, if a bid is won, the buyer is required to make a non-refundable 5% deposit.

From the “Why Choose Us” section on the Sudbeck Homes website:

Sudbeck Homes is a well respected home building team dedicated to providing a high quality home at a competitive price. We pride ourselves in exceeding the expectations of our homebuyers.

Sudbeck Homes specializes in custom-built homes offering a wide variety of proven base plans as well as utilizing an in-house design team accustomed to tailoring to the individual needs of its customers.

Our skilled team of craftsmen are dedicated to transforming your lifestyle and budget into a house you’ll be proud to call home.

Sudbeck Homes builds custom homes starting in the $140’s and offers a broad inventory of completed homes throughout the Omaha metropolitan area. In addition to serving the Omaha metro area market, we build in many other local communities such as Blair, Elkhorn, Gretna, Plattsmouth, Springfield, Bennington, and Wahoo. We also proudly construct homes in the outlying countryside including acreage settings.