Placement of Lennar Homes in Austin, Texas’s primary daily newspaper on behalf of our Builder Marketing Services
Lennar’s “Everything’s Included” homes include “full-home automation wired to your smartphone, solar power, (and) eagle-eye attention to energy efficiency with some very unique features,” says Julie Miller, marketing administrator for The Home Action Team, a real estate firm that often works with Lennar.
Published: 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011
In a tough economy, many struggling home builders are cutting out amenities in the homes they build. The less they spend, the logic goes, the better the odds of making a return on their investment dollars.
But there are some home builders taking the opposite approach — they’re adding upgrades. Their logic: The more you give buyers, the better your odds of making a sale.
Production builders are looking for ways to compete with the resale market and to differentiate themselves from competitors. They’re hoping to lure buyers by offering that little something extra, sometimes as an option and sometimes for no added cost.
One example: Lennar Homes’ “Everything’s Included” program, which sells new houses that the company says feature thousands of dollars in extras at no extra charge.
What exactly comes with that?
“Everything,” says Sean Chandler, Lennar’s division president. “You want a dog, you just tell me the breed and I’ll see if I can find one.”
Lennar’s “Everything’s Included” homes include “full-home automation wired to your smartphone, solar power, (and) eagle-eye attention to energy efficiency with some very unique features,” says Julie Miller, marketing administrator for The Home Action Team, a real estate firm that often works with Lennar.
High-efficiency insulation and windows, tankless water heaters and solar panels are included. Lennar can afford to include the upgrades, Chandler says, because the company is able to buy items in bulk at a good price.
“Now that (‘Everything’s Included’ homes) includes home automation and is built to exceed (U.S. Department of Energy) ‘Builders Challenge’ standards — 15 percent more energy efficient than the standard new home — the response has been very positive,” Chandler says. “This is all during a time when many new home builders are still removing features to become more profitable.”
Home automation is appealing to home buyers, Chandler says, and will be an important tool for home security in the future.
“You can check on your home, your belongings and your children,” he says. “Set your thermostat, lock and unlock doors and get email and texts when (doors) are opened without your consent. These types of systems were only for the very wealthy, but now they are available for the rest of us.”
Lennar builds homes in several local communities. In Buda, homes in the Stonefield neighborhood are priced from $149,990 to $210,990. In Colorado Crossing in South Austin, homes are available for $135,990 to $162,990.
The home automation trend also has been picked up on by home building company Scott Felder Homes.
“I think you definitely will see people wanting to control things in their house in the future u2026 remotely,” says Patty Forrest, vice president of supply management at Scott Felder Homes. “A lot of people have smartphones.”
The builder also is offering buyers home automation upgrades such as Trane thermostats and Schlage wireless front door keypads.
“The home-automated thermostats you can access from your smartphone or the website,” Forrest says. “It does a lot of other really neat things. You can monitor your indoor and outdoor temperature.”
The front-door keypad allows homeowners to assign personalized codes for different family members and can be programmed to use a recurring code to let in, say, a cleaning service every week only during the time specified, Forrest says.
You also can set up a one-time access code for a visitor, or even remotely grant access, she says.
Add a camera and you can monitor your home from your computer or cellphone, Forrester says.
Scott Felder Homes builds in neighborhoods such as Lake Creek Park in Austin, where three inventory homes are available for less than $300,000, and in Rim Rock in Driftwood where two inventory homes are priced at just less than $500,000.
Home automation is one way to stand out from the crowd, but there are other ways, including focusing on energy efficiency.
A number of home builders such as Meritage Homes and KB Home already are building all Energy Star qualified homes, with energy-efficient construction techniques, high-efficiency windows, insulation and appliances.
Now they are going a step further. In 2009, Meritage Homes decided to hire an environmental engineer to help launch a new program to design, build and sell net-zero energy homes.
A net-zero energy home is capable of producing renewable energy equal to the amount it consumes, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Until recently, only custom home builders were building those homes because of the cost.
Meritage looked for ways to cut energy demand as well as for ways to produce energy and yet stay at a price competitive with the U.S. production home market.
The company now builds net-zero energy homes in Phoenix, Tucson, Ariz., and Las Vegas, and is offering similar options on other homes it builds.
Locally, Meritage builds in communities such as Reserve at Westcreek in Pflugerville, where prices start at $129,990, and Parkside at Mayfield Ranch in Round Rock, which offers homes from $209,990.
Meritage does not offer net-zero homes in Austin at this time because it is building them only where it can get multiple rebates to keep the costs reasonable, says C.R. Herro, Meritage’s vice president of environmental affairs. But that doesn’t mean Meritage isn’t looking at energy efficiency in its Austin homes. “In order to accomplish net zero, you have to start with a new standard in energy-efficient home design and construction,” Herro says. “The building principles and materials in our net-zero homes are included in our ‘Extreme Energy Efficient’ homes in Austin, which can reduce energy consumption by over 50 percent from an average home.”
KB Home recently rolled out its next generation of energy-efficient home designs, a net-zero energy home it has dubbed ZeroHouse 2.0.
“This is a national initiative on the part of KB Home,” says Cathy Teague, a spokeswoman for KB Home. “We rolled it out in Austin, San Antonio and Tampa.”
Home buyers can take a guided tour of the ZeroHouse 2.0 model in the neighborhood Lakes at Northtown in Pflugerville. The tour shows the solar power systems and building techniques and features that enhance the efficiency beyond the builder’s Energy Star qualified standard.
“Thousands of KB homeowners are already enjoying savings on their monthly energy costs thanks to our standard Energy Star qualified homes,” says Jeffrey Mezger, president and CEO. “With the introduction of the ZeroHouse 2.0 program, we are now able to offer home buyers a home that outperforms typical new and resale homes, reduces their monthly electric bill significantly and potentially gets it all the way down to zero.”
The base price range of homes in this community is $149,450 to $213,450 but KB Home builds houses in a number of other local neighborhoods, too.
Teague says buyers can pick and choose which of the ZeroHouse 2.0 home’s features they want to include in their homes.
“Solar panels is a new option that buyers can choose,” she says. “Also solar water heaters, increased wall and attic insulation. They can make the choice of how far they want to go. The cost varies depending on square footage and how many solar panels they might need.”
Energy efficiency and home automation go hand-in-hand and the next generation of home buyers will expect to have all the bells and whistles, says Yvonne Maund, sales rep for Mesa Home Systems.
Now that Lennar is offering homes that include features that typically have been upgrades, other production builders will follow, she says.
“Custom home builders have been here and now production builders are coming to us,” Maund says. “Now that Lennar’s in the game, (home automation) is going to become the industry standard.”
