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National Home Builder Emphasizes Sell-Off of Existing Inventory At its Greenbriar Communities through Significant Discounts and Incentives
With its fiscal year coming to a close, Lennar recently completed a thorough analysis of its standing inventory at its Greenbriar active-adult communities throughout New Jersey and developed a strategy for selling as much of it as possible.
That approach now has the 55-plus home buying market throughout the state energized. Buoyed by the depth of resources that comes with being one of the nation’s leading home builders, Lennar is conducting an aggressive Year-End Inventory Sale, offering significant incentives to buyers who can close on a new home by November 30th. It’s a classic case of a motivated seller with the where-with-all to move product at a discounted rate, and a home buying public ready, willing and able to take advantage of the good timing.
“We’re committed to significantly reducing our existing inventory by the end of our fiscal year,” said Don Bompensa, President of Lennar’s New Jersey Division. “We’ve looked at all of our Greenbriar communities and identified specific opportunities that we could offer buyers who are serious about purchasing a home this year. Whether its substantial price reductions, closing cost incentives or the inclusion of appliance packages – or a combination of all three – we’re offering real, value-laden deals to buyers which should effectively move those who have thought about enjoying a resort-like lifestyle off the sidelines and into one of our Welcome Home Centers.
Lennar provides even more value to its buyers through a long-standing automatic upgrade program it calls “Everything’s Included” (EI). First launched in 2006, the popular EI program aims to eliminate the hassles, headaches and guesswork from the home buying process by determining the most popular features in the marketplace and integrating them into the home design at no extra cost to the homebuyer. Lennar essentially passes the discounted bulk-rate, wholesale prices it receives directly to its customers. Features such as granite countertops, hardwood flooring, custom cabinetry, stainless steel appliances, and high-end electric and plumbing fixtures add approximately $25,000 worth of value to each home.
“Between the Year-End Inventory Sale at our Greenbriar properties and the consistent, everyday savings we offer through our Everything’s Included program, you would be hard-pressed to find a better deal right now in the active adult marketplace,” Mr. Bompensa added.
The Year-End Inventory Sale is being held at Lennar’s Greenbriar communities throughout New Jersey: Greenbriar Fox Ridge in Rockaway Township, Greenbriar at Villagio in South Brunswick, Greenbriar Stonebridge in Monroe Township, Greenbriar Falls in Tinton Falls, and Greenbriar Oceanaire in Waretown. Lennar’s five Greenbriar communities each offer unique home designs, amenities and atmospheres, but are tied together by the brand’s trademark upscale, resort-inspired lifestyle.
Located off of Exit 35B on Route 80 in the Morris County town of Rockaway Township, Greenbriar Fox Ridge features 336 one- and two-bedroom, single-level condominium homes priced from the mid $200,000s. The visually-stunning wooded property features a clubhouse with a fitness center, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, social rooms and a tennis court, as well as a community garden and other amenities.
Inspired by the Mediterranean and the Italian countryside, Greenbriar at Villagio offers beautiful new two- and three-bedroom homes just minutes from downtown Princeton, priced from the low-$500,000s. Residents of the community enjoy a number of features, including manicured walking paths, picturesque ponds, tennis courts, basketball courts, gazebos, a waterfront amphitheater and a clubhouse with numerous amenities, including an outdoor pool.
Greenbriar Stonebridge is located just off of Exit 8 of the New Jersey Turnpike, offering an incredible 946 single-family homes, including two- and three-bedroom Estate Homes priced from the mid-$400,000s. The community features the largest clubhouse of any active adult community in New Jersey, a palatial 41,000 square feet of amenities and gathering areas, including a grand ballroom, magnificent theater with stadium seating, billiards room, state-of-the-art fitness center, indoor swimming pool, spa, two-story great room, card room, computer center, meeting rooms and nearby outdoor pool, sun deck and tennis courts.
In a quiet suburban neighborhood in Monmouth County, Greenbriar Falls offers tremendously spacious luxury townhomes with three bedrooms, priced from the mid-$600,000s. The spacious layout and well-appointed interior spaces allow buyers moving from larger single-family homes in nearby Rumson, Red Bank, Colts Neck and Holmdel to move right in without sacrificing the amount of space or luxury lifestyle they enjoy, all in a location just minutes from the Garden State Parkway, beaches, golf courses and the celebrated offering of restaurants, shops, and boutiques in downtown Red Bank.
Greenbriar Oceanaire in Waretown, near Exit 69 off the Garden State Parkway just north of Long Beach Island, is a community of 1,400 single-family homes spread across 950 rolling acres of lush greenery. Fewer than 20 homes remain available for sale — with only a handful situated along the community’s private, 18-hole golf course. Home prices start from the low-$300,000s and residents enjoy access to an award-winning clubhouse.
For more information on Lennar’s Greenbriar active adult communities, visit www.greenbriarnj.com or call Internet New Home Consultant Iris Barrios at 609-349-8258. For more information on Lennar, visit www.Lennar.com.
Lennar San Antonio has only a few remaining inventory homes left in The Summit at Alamo Ranch, its luxurious gated community in the highly popular Alamo Ranch area.
The Summit at Alamo Ranch features the Vista and Texas Reserve Collections of beautiful one- and two-story homes. Currently, five inventory homes remain, starting from the $330’s. These homes range in square footage from 2,592 to 3,028, all with four bedrooms and two or three bathrooms.
The Summit at Alamo Ranch is located in the highly sought-after Alamo Ranch/Culebra Road area in northwest San Antonio, offering a plethora of shopping and dining opportunities at the nearby Alamo Ranch Marketplace. Children in the community attend Northside ISD schools with the local elementary school just being a few blocks away.
“This gated community offers the best of everything—spacious floorplans with designer touches, a private playground and community pool and a fantastic location in the Alamo Ranch area,” Tony Cerna, III, Director of Sales and Marketing, said. “This last opportunity to own a new Lennar home in The Summit at Alamo Ranch can’t be missed.”
Lennar has distinguished itself as one of the country’s leading homebuilders, in part by including the most desired, high-quality features and upgrades in every home at no additional charge as a part of its Everything’s Included program. Lennar’s homes in The Summit at Alamo Ranch feature items that other builders would charge extra for, like covered patios, landscaping, full sod and irrigation, blinds, appliances, granite kitchen countertops and more. All Lennar San Antonio homes go through a rigorous third-party inspection process throughout the building of the home.
The Summit at Alamo Ranch’s remaining inventory homes are available now for a quick move-in. To view available homes, visit http://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/san-antonio/san-antonio/the-summit-at-alamo-ranch-texas-reserve or http://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/san-antonio/san-antonio/the-summit-at-alamo-ranch-vista.
To visit The Summit at Alamo Ranch, from Loop 1604 and Highway 281 in north San Antonio, take Loop 1604 west then south to Culebra Road/FM 471. Turn right on Culebra Road, travel for about 1.5 miles, and turn left on Alamo Parkway. Travel on Alamo Parkway for 1.1 miles, and The Summit at Alamo Ranch will be on your right. Turn right on Lexi Petal. The Summit at Alamo Ranch Welcome Home Center will be on your right at 12219 Lexi Petal, San Antonio, TX 78253. Call (210) 370-3059 for more information.
Wounded US Army veteran Sgt. Kyle Snyder and family were honored by Operation Coming Home on August 14, 2015 at a groundbreaking ceremony in Wake Forest, NC. The Snyder family is being given a new Lennar home, known as Hero Home #11, in Traditions at Wake Forest. Sgt. Snyder was wounded in service in Afghanistan with a lengthy hospitalization and is currently serving with the NC Army National Guard.
Operation: Coming Home’s 11th Hero Home will be built by Lennar Homes in Wake Forest, North Carolina. The home is part of Lennar Homes’ commitment to give back to America’s veterans. A groundbreaking ceremony for the home will be hosted this summer.
ABOUT OPERATION COMING HOME:
Operation Coming Home is a joint volunteer project by the Home Builders Association of Raleigh-Wake County (HBA), and various area nonprofits and businesses. The project builds and donates homes for disabled combat veterans who have served in the Middle East, after a selection committee interviews candidates to determine the best fit. For more information, visit http://operationcominghome.com.
Come visit one of Lennar’s 20 communities in the Triangle and see why they are the only A+ Builder in the country! Offering townhomes from the $180’s to the $300’s and single-family homes from the $180’s to the high $400’s, Lennar offers you a variety of floorplans to fit your lifestyle. Lennar has grown to become one of the nation’s leading and most respected homebuilders and proudly remains steadfast in their commitment toward quality, value and integrity. Lennar has a longstanding history of building exceptional homes in the most well planned and desirable locations throughout the country.
A report from Clear Capital and RealtyTrac shows that despite increasing U.S. home prices, homes were at their most affordable level in two years during the first quarter of 2015. The details of the report are highlighted in this article from Trey Garrison of HousingWire.
“Although home prices continue to outpace wage growth in the majority of local markets, this analysis somewhat surprisingly shows that affordability is actually improving in most markets thanks to falling interest rates and slowing home price growth, which is allowing wage growth to catch up in some markets,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac. “At the national level, buying an average-priced home in the first quarter of 2015 was the most affordable it’s been in two years and nearly twice as affordable as it was in the second quarter of 2006 – when affordability was its worst in the past 10 years.
“At the local level we’re seeing several bellwether markets where wage growth matched or even outpaced home price growth over the past year,” he said.
Average home price appreciation outpaced average wage growth between the first quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 in 397 out of 582 (68%) U.S. counties analyzed for the report. But during the same time period, the average interest rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage dropped 57 basis points (13%), from 4.34% in the first quarter of 2014 to 3.77% in the first quarter of 2015. The drop in interest rates – along with wage growth outpacing home price appreciation in 32% of counties – meant buying a home in the first quarter of 2015 required a smaller share of the average wage compared to a year ago in 339 of the 582 counties (58%).
Major markets where wage growth outpaced home price growth in the first quarter – counter to the national trend – included Cook County, Illinois in the Chicago metro area; Orange County, California in the Los Angeles metro area; Brooklyn, New York; Fairfax County, Virginia in the Washington, D.C., metro area; and Riverside County in Southern California, where the average weekly wage in the first quarter was up 10% from a year ago, double the 5% growth in average home prices during the same time period.
Since bottoming out in the first quarter of 2012, the average U.S. home price has risen 24% while the average weekly wage nationwide has risen 7% during the same time period and the average interest rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage has dropped 5%.
For some of us, going through a mortgage process can sound like being in a doctor’s office, with a lot of terms being tossed around that only the experts truly understand. “This ARM needs a DTI right away, and somebody get me a RESPA in here!” Fortunately this extremely informative article from Bankrate provides definitions for all the mortgage acronyms you might need to know.
If you’ve ever shopped for a mortgage, you’ve probably been overwhelmed by an alphabet soup of acronyms that seem to be designed to confuse the borrower at every turn.
The lingo is complex, but the definitions aren’t hard to understand. Here are the basics.
LE: Loan Estimate
The Loan Estimate, or LE, is a document that provides details about a mortgage that the borrower has applied for. The lender is required to mail or deliver it within 3 business days of the loan application. The LE describes the interest rate on the mortgage, shows whether the rate is fixed or adjustable, summarizes the estimated loan costs, calculates how much money the borrower will need to take to the closing table and contains loan-comparison calculations that encourage borrowers to apply at more than 1 lender and compare loan offers.
CD: Closing Disclosure
This document itemizes the loan costs. The CD is designed to make it fairly easy to compare with the LE, so borrowers can see if the lender changed any terms of the mortgage.
DTI: Debt-To-Income Ratio
A debt-to-income ratio, or DTI, is how a lender determines how much a borrower can afford to pay every month. By dividing the borrower’s monthly liabilities by monthly income before taxes, the lender arrives at a percentage. To qualify for the mortgage, borrowers usually need to fall below certain thresholds. Typically, lenders don’t want the monthly house payment to exceed 28% of income, and don’t want all debt payments (house, auto, credit cards, student loan) to exceed 36% of income. Thresholds can vary by lender.
LTV: Loan-To-Value
An LTV, or loan-to-value, is one of the key ratios that lenders use to assess the risk of a loan. The ratio is the mortgage divided by the purchase price or appraised value of the property. When a property has multiple mortgages, lenders use a combined loan-to-value ratio, or CLTV. Borrowers with an LTV or CLTV of less than 80% often get lower interest rates because lenders view such loans as less risky.
RESPA: Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act
The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, or RESPA, and the Truth in Lending Act, or TILA, are the 2 main pieces of federal legislation that govern mortgage lending to consumers. Among other things, RESPA requires lenders to provide borrowers with a Loan Estimate within 3 days of applying for a loan, as well as the Closing Disclosure 3 days before closing.
ARM: Adjustable-Rate Mortgage
An adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM, is a home loan in which the interest rate can change based on movement in an agreed-upon index, such as the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor. Usually, ARMs start with lower rates than fixed loans. But there’s always the risk that the borrower can eventually end up paying more than if he or she had secured a fixed rate.
If you take a few minutes to read this article from BrightNest, you might find yourself saving hours of time at home, and eliminating some of the stress from your life in the process.
How would you feel with four hours of extra free time a week? It isn’t a pipe dream. With a few new habits, you’ll save time and feel more relaxed at home. First, take a deep breath. Then, try these simple ways to chillax more at home:
Simplify your breakfast on weekdays. Scrambled eggs and ham are delicious, but saving the big breakfast for the weekends will make your mornings go a lot smoother. Choose something that’s easy (and quick) to assemble like yogurt and granola.
Pick up five things before bed each night. Skeptical about the idea that cleaning makes you feel more relaxed? Hear us out. Rather than spending a few hours each weekend cleaning everything that’s piled up during the week, pick up five things every night and put them away. It will take you at most 15 minutes. By the time the weekend rolls around, your home will take way less time to clean and you can move on to more important things, like brunch.
Prioritize your home tasks. How much time do you spend doing chores? The answer is too much time. To fix that, prioritize your home tasks into these buckets: (1) Most important, must get done ASAP; (2) Needs doing but not urgent; (3) Meh, I don’t really notice the difference after I finish. Now, stop doing the chores in the third bucket! With this system, you’ll stop wasting time doing things like washing unworn sheets in the guest room. The important thing here is to only cut tasks that really don’t matter to you. Otherwise, you’re only going to increase your stress level.
Stick to a schedule. Staying up too late always sounds like a good idea… that is, until your alarm sounds the next morning. Then you rush to get ready, drive to work and start the whole cycle all over again. (Aren’t you stressed just reading about it?) Instead, go to bed early and set your alarm for an hour earlier than your regular routine. You’ll wake up rested and have time to enjoy a cup of coffee and knock out a few emails before work.
Plan one electronics-free night a week. While this habit won’t save you time, it will help you fall asleep faster, which is just as valuable! Designate one night a week as “no-electronics” night, and avoid your phone, computer, iPad, Netflix account, etc. away as soon as you walk in the door.
Lennar, the nation’s only A+ home builder according to Builder Magazine, is partnering with the Charleston Animal Society, Frances R. Willis SPCA and Doc Williams SPCA to increase adoptions and put more pets in new homes.
Through the end of the year, Lennar Coastal Carolinas will feature (nearly) life-size cutouts of a pair of shelter animals in Welcome Home Centers at its Charleston, Dorchester and Berkeley County communities. The partnership is part of an effort to help each organization increase adoptions by 20% percent in the final quarter of 2015.
“We understand that for many of our residents, no home is complete without a pet,” said Lennar Coastal Carolinas area sales manager Guy Ackerman. “This initiative is a terrific way to add something special to the experience for our home buyers while helping the local pet community.”
Lennar and all three organizations will host a kickoff adoption event from 11 a. m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26 at Lennar’s Moss Grove community, 1012 Moss Grove Drive, Moncks Corner, S.C. 29461. Moss Grove, one of Lennar’s up-and-coming neighborhoods, was selected as the event host site for its robust outdoor spaces and vicinity to Lake Moultrie. In other words, it’s a perfect spot for dogs.
About the Lennar Coastal Carolinas Division
Currently building homes in 14 Lowcountry and Grand Strand communities, the Lennar Coastal Carolinas Division is one of the largest builders in the Charleston and Myrtle Beach areas. Lennar offers affordable, move-up, and luxury homes and townhomes in communities that cater to almost any lifestyle. To learn more, visit www.Lennar.com/Charleston or call 843-514-8295.
About the Frances R. Willis SPCA (Dorchester County)
The shelter was established in 1972 to provide a safe haven for stray, abandoned, abused and lost pets and is named for Frances R. Willis, who brought the SPCA to Dorchester County. In addition to a spay and neuter program, the Frances R. Willis SPCA serves the lost, abandoned and abused animals of Dorchester County including Rosinville, Harleyville, Ridgeville, Oakbrook, St. George, Summerville, and Grover. For more information, visit www.summervillespca.org or call 843-871-3820.
About the Doc Williams SPCA (Berkeley County)
Since 1991, the Doc Williams SPCA acts as an advocate for animals in Berkeley County with a public spay and neuter clinic and adoption center for lost, abandoned or abused pets. For more information, visit www.docwilliamsspca.org or call 843-761-5266.
