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Nov. 27, 2017- Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX- Celebrate this holiday season by donating canned goods for the Irving Cares, Inc. food drive at any of Lennar Dallas’ Welcome Home Centers across the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex. The drive will be collecting nonperishable goods for families in need until December 8th.
“We’re excited to host this food drive and ask anyone who wants to donate nonperishable food items to bring them in,” said David Grove, Division President for Lennar Dallas. “It’s a great way to celebrate the holidays and embrace the season of giving.”
Examples of nonperishable items Irving Cares, Inc. is in need of for their food pantry:
Irving Cares Inc., it’s a hand up, not a handout; offers training, education and assistance to provide an effective way out of poverty. Emergency Assistance offers food, limited financial assistance, and information about additional resources. Employment Services provide targeted job leads, education & childcare, and case management to overcome barriers to employment. For more information regarding Irving Cares Inc. visit https://irvingcares.org.
Find donation stations at Lennar Welcome Centers across Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, visit www.lennar.com/dallas to find the one closest to you.
With hundreds of communities nationwide and homes designed for first-time, move-up and luxury homebuyers, Lennar has grown to become one of the nation’s leading and most respected homebuilders. Lennar has a longstanding history of building homes of enduring quality in only the most well planned and desirable locations throughout the country.
Tucson, Ariz. – November 2017 – Lennar is now selling new homes in their newest community of Starr Pass Vistas. Set in a beautiful area of Tucson, this new community offers a great opportunity to own a new Lennar home with Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Design and integrated home automation features. Models are expected to be finished at the end of January.
“This community offers a great opportunity to live in the Starr Pass neighborhood of Tucson and own a new home with great connected features at no additional cost,” said Tom Gansheimer, Division President for Lennar Tucson. “We’ve included some of our today’s most popular home automation technology and devices as standard and even provide the service to get everything set-up and working so that you don’t have to.”
At Starr Pass Vistas, home shoppers will find six distinctive floorplans to choose from with sizes that range approximately from 2,203 to 3,173 square feet, four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Among these plans are two Next Gen® – The Home Within A Home® designs, the Oracle and Revelation plans. Both layouts include an attached private suite that comes with its own separate entrance, living room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette that allows for as much privacy or access between each home as desired. Designed specifically for multigenerational families in mind.
Every home boasts Lennar’s Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Home Design™ which builds in wireless access points throughout the home that later pair with commercial-strength Wi-Fi from Ruckus, an Everything’s Included® feature, to offer seamless coverage in every room. Other home automation features that come with the Everything’s Included® program are the Ring Video Doorbell and a smart lock, Honeywell’s programmable thermostat, lighting control with Lutron, portable music from Sonos and more — all of which can be powered from any smart device or voice controlled by Amazon’s Alexa.
Model homes for this community are expected to finish in late January but eager home shoppers are encouraged to act now to take advantage of pre-model pricing. Learn more or join the interest list by visiting www.lennar.com/tucson.
With hundreds of communities nationwide and homes designed for first-time, move-up and luxury homebuyers, Lennar has grown to become one of the nation’s leading and most respected homebuilders. Lennar has a longstanding history of building homes of enduring quality in only the most well planned and desirable locations throughout the country.
If you’re planning to buy a home in one of these major cities, you might want to start looking ASAP! According to this MarketWatch article by Scott Teran, the following 25 metro areas are the hottest real-estate markets in the U.S. with vacancy rates under one percent. Lennar offers new home communities in 10 of the markets listed below!
They say a good place is hard to find, but if you’re looking to live in one of these 25 metropolitan areas, that may feel like an understatement.
Using data from ATTOM Solutions, we checked which metro areas have the lowest vacancy rates—that is to say, the fewest available residential properties—and ranked them. To make the list more relevant, we didn’t include areas with a population less than 100,000.
Believe it or not, every metro area on this list has a less than 1% vacancy rate. So if you’re a house hunter in one of the following 25 metro areas, we wish you good luck (you’ll need it).
25. Portland-South Portland, Maine (0.69% vacancy for residential properties)
24. El Paso, Texas (0.65% vacancy for residential properties)
23. San Diego-Carlsbad, Calif. (0.65% vacancy for residential properties)
Though it has the same percentage of vacancy as El Paso, the San Diego-Carlsbad population is much larger (3,200,000 vs. 800,000), so it ranks No. 23.
22. Raleigh, N.C. (0.61% vacancy for residential properties)
21. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas (0.59% vacancy for residential properties)
20. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, Colo. (0.56% vacancy for residential properties)
19. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Va.-Md. (0.56% vacancy for residential properties)
Despite having the same vacancy rate as number 20, the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metro area has more than twice the number of people (5,900,000 vs. 2,700,000), so it’s higher up on the list.
18. Ogden-Clearfield, Utah (0.55% vacancy for residential properties)
17. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, Mass.-N.H. (0.54% vacancy for residential properties).
16. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif. (0.54% vacancy for residential properties)
Though it has the same percentage as the previous pick, the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim area has a population of more than 13 million, which is almost three times the size of number 17 on the list.
15. York-Hanover, Penn. (0.53% vacancy for residential properties)
14. Boise City, Idaho (0.52% vacancy for residential properties)
13. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Conn. (0.48% vacancy for residential properties)
12. Green Bay, Wis. (0.47% vacancy for residential properties)
11. Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, Calif. (0.45% vacancy for residential properties)
10. Austin-Round Rock, Texas (0.42% vacancy for residential properties)
9. Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif. (0.39% vacancy for residential properties)
8. Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Ark.-Mo. (0.39% vacancy for residential properties)
7. Madison, Wis. (0.39% vacancy for residential properties)
Madison has the same vacancy rate for residential properties as the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metro area, but Madison has a higher population, so it took the number-seven spot.
6. Provo-Orem, Utah (0.34% vacancy for residential properties)
5. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, Calif. (0.34% vacancy for residential properties)
The San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area has the same vacancy percentage as the Provo-Orem metro area. However, when it comes to population, the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward has four million more people, so it takes the number-five spot.
4. Manchester-Nashua, N.H. (0.31% vacancy for residential properties)
3. Lancaster, Penn. (0.26% vacancy for residential properties)
2. Fort Collins, Colo. (0.24% vacancy for residential properties)
1. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif. (0.23% vacancy for residential properties)
Is it any surprise Silicon Valley made the number-one spot? If you’re looking for a home in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area, good luck finding anything—less than a quarter of a percent of properties are vacant.
Millennials may be slower to become homeowners compared to older generations, partly due to student loan debt and the higher cost of living in some areas. However, owning a home shouldn’t be a dream out of reach. Learn how you can become homeowners quicker in this RealEstate.com article by Casey Fleming.
According to a recent Pew Research Center report, millennials, as compared to previous generations at the same time in their lives, are significantly less likely to own their own homes. In 1982, for instance, 41 percent of boomer households owned their homes, and, in 1999, 40 percent of Generation Xers owned their homes. In 2016, however, only 35 percent of millennials owned their own homes.
We know that student loan debt, a tougher job market and a lower savings rate (you only live once, right?) have contributed to the problem and may make some millennials feel hopeless about owning their own homes. But it doesn’t have to be so.
First, you should know that buying a home for the first time has ALWAYS been hard. You may think that your parents had it easy when they bought their first home, which cost one-fourth of what homes cost today. But remember: Wages were much lower and interest rates were much higher then. The monthly cost of owning one’s first home has always been higher than renting, thus the dilemma. To buy your first home, you’ll need to make some sacrifices. But once you do, moving up is much easier.
The two most common barriers to buying are a lack of cash for a down payment and high debt load. If this describes you, keep reading.
Depending on your circumstances and the price range of the home you want to buy, you may need to increase your income, reduce your overall debt, reduce your monthly debt obligations, improve your credit or save more cash. Every prospective homeowner is different, so the right way to prepare to buy your first home depends on your situation. To know for sure, you must meet with a good mortgage advisor to get a clear baseline from which to work.
If this is what bugs you most, you have several solutions available:
Vancouver, Wash. – November 2017 – Find your dream home this season at Lennar’s Firestone Park community with the super-spacious and smart Mulberry plan. This home provides a great layout with plenty of space and smart design.
“The Mulberry plan has become a very popular home design for us,” said Sia Howe, Marketing Manager for Lennar Portland. “It’s three-bay garage provides plenty of room for storage and the first floor master suite seems to be a hit with many homeshoppers.”
When you first enter the 2,557 square foot-Mulberry plan, enjoy spacious ceilings in the foyer and a study that’s located just off to the left. At the end of the Foyer is the open-concept living area where the gourmet kitchen with island effortlessly connects into the dining room and great room with fireplace, and off to the covered back patio.
Off the main area on the first floor is the master suite with a spa-inspired master bathroom featuring dual vanities, a garden tub, separate shower and spacious walk-in closet. Upstairs are two more bedrooms, another full-sized bathroom and an oversized bonus room that could be utilized for a number of things.
Lennar’s Everything’s Included® program also helps add tremendous value to this home with a number of great features that come as standard and at no additional cost. Among these are GE® stainless steel appliances, washer and dryer, quartz countertops, upgraded cabinetry, air conditioning and much more.
Located inside Firestone Park at 614 Northeast 149th Street in Vancouver, visit this community to tour this beautiful home today. A variety of quick move-in homes are available and prices start from the upper $400,000s.
For more information visit https://www.lennar.com/new-homes/washington/vancouver or call 888-208-1908.
With hundreds of communities nationwide and homes designed for first-time, move-up and luxury homebuyers, Lennar has grown to become one of the nation’s leading and most respected homebuilders. Lennar has a longstanding history of building homes of enduring quality in only the most well planned and desirable locations throughout the country.
Seattle, Wash. – November 2017 – Lennar was awarded the National Builder of the Year at the National New Home Council Award Ceremony earlier this month. Lennar Seattle attended and also took home awards for New Home Consultants Paul Foster and Erik Granquist who won Sales Team of the Year, and Internet Sales Consultant Callie Gaudreault for Best Online Sales Counselor.
“We are honored to be recognized not only as National Home Builder of the Year, but also to have associates from our team be awarded for their outstanding achievements,” said Bill Salvesen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Lennar Seattle. “We are always striving for quality, value and integrity at Lennar – not only in the new homes we build but in the services that we provide.”
The award ceremony was held in Bellevue and was the ninth year the annual event has taken place. Centered around celebrating the achievements of Washington State builders, awards were given out in categories pertaining to individual successes, marketing efforts and overall performance.
The National New Home Council is an independent team of new home building professionals who help promote education and progress in the industry through events, promotions and recognition.
“We couldn’t have been more thrilled to take home the most prestigious award of the night,” Salvesen said.
With hundreds of communities nationwide and homes designed for first-time, move-up and luxury homebuyers, Lennar has grown to become one of the nation’s leading and most respected homebuilders. Lennar has a longstanding history of building homes of enduring quality in only the most well planned and desirable locations throughout the country.
The holidays might be the most jolly time of the year, but it is also a burglar’s favorite season. Before you pack your bags this year, make a home security checklist and include these tips. Learn about six smart tricks to protect your home while you are away in this recent Realtor.com article by Holly Amaya.
Some of us wait eagerly all year for the holidays and the jolly merriment that accompanies these few crazy weeks: the festive shindigs, the bottomless eggnog bowls, and the no-longer-so-ironic ugly sweaters. All of it might have you feeling like nothing can go wrong.
But as much as you’re looking forward to the holidays, so are the bad guys.
Yes, that dizzying schedule of end-of-the-year fêtes and last-minute holiday shopping means you’re out of your home more often than in it, providing would-be burglars ample opportunity to case your place. And whether you’re checking in at a winter ski getaway or Instagramming that sweet Black Friday deal you just nabbed, your social media profile is also alerting the world that nobody’s home.
Don’t give the bad guys a holiday bonus! You can outsmart them and protect your home, as long as you know where you’re most vulnerable. Luckily, we’ve done the heavy lifting to gather security experts’ top tips to keep your home—and everything in it—safe during the busy holiday season.
Nothing too earth-shattering here, but it bears repeating: If you’re going to be out of town, program your outdoor lights to switch on at dusk and off at dawn, keep your doors and windows locked, and set your alarm system, if you have one.
If you’re going on vacation, some experts recommend keeping a car parked in the driveway so it looks like someone’s home. To prevent your mailbox from overflowing while you’re away, have your mail held until you return.
In other words: Don’t make yourself a target.
“Packages sitting outside your door are like a billboard that screams ‘no one is home,'” says Justin Lavelle, chief communications director for BeenVerified, an online background check platform.
His recommendation? If you live in a city or high–foot traffic area, consider using an Amazon Locker, where you can pick up packages at your own convenience. (You can also have packages sent to your office address or, for U.S. Postal Service deliveries, held for pickup at a post office location.)
If you’re purchasing from a retailer with brick-and-mortar locations in your area, consider having your items shipped to the local store for pickup.
If that sounds like a lot of work, most shipping providers (including UPS and FedEx) allow you to postpone delivery until you know someone is home. UPS and FedEx also allow consumers to leave directions for where to drop off packages.
“Follow their shipping details so you know what date the delivery is anticipated, and leave a note attached to your door with where you want the delivery to be left,” he says. “Just make sure you write ‘For UPS’ or ‘For FedEx’ on the outside and fold the note over or put it in an envelope.”
Also, make sure the path to your door is open, clear, and visible to neighbors and the street.
“If thieves can shield themselves behind large bushes and decor such as large blowups and Christmas trees, it’s that much easier for them to go unnoticed,” Lavelle says.
Yes, we realize this is a tall order in today’s like-happy society. But trust us here: Smart thieves are watching not only your house, but also your social media channels. Be aware that when you trumpet that two-week holiday trip to Bali all over Facebook, you’re telling the world that your pad will be unattended.
The same logic applies to sharing photos of your home and your stuff: They tell would-be burglars what else you have in your home and if there’s something worth stealing.
And while you’re taking stock of your online profile, take a minute to adjust your privacy settings for event RSVPs as well.
“Anytime you publicly RSVP to parties, school events, concerts, or any other event, you’re giving an intruder an invitation to target your home,” Lavelle says. “Social media may not give away your home address, but with the internet it’s not hard to find out.”
Continue Reading: Season for Thieving: 6 Tricks to Protect Your Home During the Holidays
Are you dreaming of a new home for the New Year? According to this recent Realtor.com article by Clare Trappaso, right now may be a great time to buy a single-family home, as builders plan to add more homes to the market. Not only does this rise in single-family home permits bode well for homebuilding’s continued strength, but also greater choice and selection for home shoppers.
Those frustrated by the lack of single-family houses on the market may soon get a little relief: Builders are planning to put up more new homes in the coming months. Finally.
Builders secured 5.9% more permits, a strong indicator of the number of new homes to come, in October than in September, according to the seasonally adjusted numbers in the latest residential sales report jointly released by the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Permits for all housing types were also up 0.9% year over year.
(The numbers have been smoothed out over a year to account for seasonal fluctuations in the market.)
Permits for the classic single-family home—those iconic, detached houses that typically come with yards out back—also received a jolt. They rose 1.9% from September and were up 7.7% from October 2016.
“We continue to see single-family homebuilding recover,” says Chief Economist Danielle Hale of realtor.com®. “That’s great news for home buyers. They need more options in the market, and this will help.”
However, permits plummeted sharply in the Northeast, falling 26.8% month over month, following a high in September, and 11.9% year over year. In the Midwest, they also dipped 4.1% from September, but were up annually by 3.5%. Permits for single-family homes were up, though, in the South and the West.
Housing starts, which is construction on homes that has started but isn’t completed yet, were also up. For every kind of home (including rentals and condos), they rose 13.7% from September. For single-family houses, it increased 5.3%. Annually, overall starts were down 2.9%, but were up 0.7% for single-family homes.
“The level of single-family homebuilding is almost exactly what we saw 10 years ago,” says Hale. “It is a bit of a milestone to get back to that level, [but] there’s still more room for improvement.”
Read the full article: So You’d Like to Buy a New, Single-Family Home? You May Be in Luck
The only thing better than a thanksgiving meal are the leftovers that remain during the holiday weekend for the whole family to enjoy. A classic turkey leftover sandwich might be your go to, but why not spice it up a notch this year? Create new dishes your family will thank you for.
It is only fair that after the many hours spent preparing such a massive thanksgiving feast, that the leftovers are transformed into more delicious meals all your loved ones can devour during the rest of the holiday break. After all, it is not every weekend that you get to spend some quality time with your relatives, specially those that have to fly into town.
We’ve done all the research for you and have gathered a few of the most mouth watering recipes for you to prepare. One thing less you need to worry about. With everything from Turkey Breakfast Tacos to “Thanks” Benedict, you and your family might end up loving the leftover dishes more than the actual meal. All recipes will require the use of the leftovers of a typical thanksgiving spread. Anything from leftover turkey, sweet potato, mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce will be put to use.
Don’t let that leftover turkey and mashed sweet potatoes go to waste. Everyone loves a good breakfast taco and this recipe will have your guest begging for more. Find Recipe at: MathaStewart.com
Potato croquettes are the perfect bite to complement any meal. Find Recipe at: MathaStewart.com
A great use for all the sweet potato leftovers, is making a moist poundcake your family can enjoy over the weekend. Find the recipe at: TasteofHome.com
It’s not that we don’t love a classic turkey leftover sandwich, but we believe that your family deserves more. Bring out that leftover cranberry sauce and make a panini your family won’t get enough of. Find recipe at: FoodNetwork.com
Eggs Benedict are already a brunch favorite to many, so why not do a Thanksgiving leftover spin off. Find the recipe at: FoodNetwork.com
