Tom's Seminar Presentation: The Greater Charlotte Home and Landscape Show

Homeshow seminar ppt

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How to Avoid a Remodeling Nightmare: Choosing the Right General Contrator

HILARIOUS video! Tom will be speaking this weekend at one of the Greater Charlotte Home and Landscape Show's seminars (1/27-29). He will be opening up the seminar with this great clip that shows just how frustrating home remodeling can be. His seminar is entitled "Remodeling: What You Don't Know that Can Cost You" with a Q & A to follow.

Come see us at booth 438 and 440 at the Cabarrus Arena. 

How to Negotiate with Your Builder

By: Mike LaRuffa

Today, buyers have the luxury of being able to negotiate prices on homes. However, that strategy for negotiating changes when it comes to buying new from a builder rather than purchasing a re-sale. What is the biggest difference?  A re-sale seller is dealing with equity, the difference between what they paid for the home and what they can sell it for. A builder is dealing with materials, land, overhead, plus profit, for a builder, equals sales price.

The typical builder has the following expenses that all add up to 100%… land 18%, materials 50%, overhead expenses 15%, marketing 6%, permits, fees, warranty 3% and profit 8%. So, for a $200,000 house, the profit is only $16,000, not the mega bucks that most buyers think a builder makes. All the other costs are essentially fixed, meaning that the only place to negotiate for the builder is their profit line.

If you are looking at a home that has to be built, be mindful that the builder is less likely to discount the base price of the home since they are building it to current values. Instead of jumping the negotiating gun, ask about the incentives being offered that have been factored into the pricing. This is a good place to get the biggest bang for your buck.  Builders have a markup on options so giving them away has less impact to their bottom line than reducing the overall base price. Furthermore it helps preserve appraised values that reflect general value in the neighborhood and are important to you when you are getting your loan.

If you are looking at an existing inventory home, your negotiating strategy may be a bit different. First, determine when the house was completed. This is importance because builders factor in some interest (overhead expenses) to carry the house until sold. When that runs out, builders start to eat into their profit, so they may be more willing to negotiate. Dropping the bottom out of the price even on aged inventory is still not a preferred strategy due to degrading appraised values. You may want to suggest items that can be added to the home that you would purchase anyway after you move in…additional landscaping, appliances such as refrigerators or washer/dryer, decorator items such as shutters, blinds or special paint colors.

In closing, keep in mind that even though builders are eager to sell their homes; they also need to turn a profit. In your house hunting travels you may find that the builders that are still in business today have survived because they offer a good value at a fair price and they stand behind their product when you need them!

Charlotte, North Carolina Builder to Exhibit in an Upcoming Home and Landscape Show

We have doubled our exhibit space this year so that we can include an on-site design center!

Come see us at booth 438/440

Tom will be one of the featured seminar speakers at the show!

Schultz Custom Homes and Remodeling

Charlotte and Cabarrus County's Premier Custom Home Builder and Remodeler

Schultz Custom Homes and Remodeling was glad to lend a helping hand when Extreme Makeover Home Edition came to Lincolnton, NC. We wish the Friday family a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS and a PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

Visit our website!

Schultz Custom Homes and Remodeling Incorporates NEW Communication Software

Web Based Home Builder Software for Residential Builders and Remodelers

BuilderTREND provides web-based home builder software to optimize communication between the builders, their customers, vendors, and subcontractors.

The BuilderTREND web-based project management software empowers home builders and remodelers to provide a better building experience for their homebuyers, associates, and subcontractors. The system provides real-time 24/7 access to scheduling information, change orders, documents, photos, warranty management, homebuyer selections, and much more.

There is no software to install, a login is placed directly on the home builder's website and the system itself is even branded to their custom look. Automatic notifications help builders manage their communication and operations while providing their satisfied homebuyers with a better building experience.

Here at Schultz Custom Homes and Remodeling, we are proud to be implementing this new computer software into our company. We feel that it will allow our clients to be more involved and aware of the status of their projects at any given time.

http://www.nc-bldr.com/

Do you bring your pet to work??? We do!

Design Your Eating Area for the Holidays

An excerpt from Sarah Susanka’s More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home

“One must consider designing the eating area so that it can expand to accommodate holiday gatherings and parties. Although we typically think of the formal dining room for such occasions, the formal dining room for such occasions, the formal dining table is where many families lay out the buffet. Guests, however, take their plates to the family room to eat. 

A better solution is to make the informal eating area serve this function so that it is closer to the family room, the guests’ final destination. You can make the table in the eating area the place to set out the food, or-my favorite solution-you can design the table so that it can be extended to seat many people. With some thought early in the design process, this setup is not difficult to arrange and may eliminate the need for a formal dining room altogether. 

When something is designed beautifully, we use it automatically. It fits the functions we need it for without making us feel awkward or uncomfortable. It is often said that the kitchen is the most important room in the house, but I suggest that the informal eating area is at least as important, if not more, because for many households today, it’s really the heart of the social space. (pg. 39)”

www.NC-Bldr.com

 

WHAT IS AN OPEN PLAN AND WHY DOES IT WORK?

An excerpt from Sarah Susanka's 

More Not so Big Solutions for Your Home

“Open plan is a term coined by Frank Lloyd Wright to describe his revolutionary approach to home design. For centuries, houses were made up of boxes (rooms) connected by doorways and hallways. Wright spoke about the “destruction of the box”- eliminating walls on the inside to create spaces that flowed inside and outside to become one continuous, organic space. He suggested that instead of each function in the house being enclosed in its own separate box, rooms could be opened wide to one another, circulation between areas would improve, and spaces would no longer be defined by one term, like “living room” or “dining room.” Spaces would be differentiated from each other with changes in ceiling height, as well as with framed openings and columns, rather than with walls alone (p. 16).”

www.NC-Bldr.com

 

How Much Space Do You Really Need?

  

An excerpt from Sarah Susanka's More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home

"You cannot define space by square footage for two reasons. First, a house that has a sense of home has almost nothing to do with square footage; and second, Not So Big means building a house about a third smaller than you thought you needed with dollars reapportioned out of square footage and into quality and character. Both of these points are intended to take the focus off quantity and place it firmly on the things that affect livability.

So where do you start, and how do you know whether the amount of space you are living in or plan to live in is not too big, too small, or just right? The following rules of thumb will help you determine whether it’s more quantity of space you need or more quality you’re really seeking. Although the answer is usually a combination of the two, our typical solution these days is to favor more quantity over quality, when almost always it’s an increase in the quality of an environment that makes us feel more comfortable and more at home (pp. 11-15)."

What to consider when building a Not So Big House:

•          Measure and inventory the rooms you currently live in to identify dimensions and frequency of use.
•        When working with a builder and/or architect, keep the proportions of your existing home in mind.
•         Don’t build spaces that you use less than a handful of times per year.
•         Identify rooms that can do “double duty.”
•        Select a design whose proportions match those of your favorite houses.
•        Always get measurements of the spaces you plan to build, including the ceiling height of each, before committing to a design.
•        If you think something might be too big, visit a model home with similar proportions to get a feel for the space.
•        Find some you can trust to help you with the design and listen to their advice.