Lennar Resource Center

Looking for your next home? Learn how new homes are meeting the needs of  families and offer connectivity features each household member can enjoy? In this recent The Sacramento Bee article, Tony Bizjak describes how new home builders are accommodating the ever changing needs of  families while providing the latest in smart home technology. Lennar’s Next Gen® – The Home Within a Home offers innovative floorplans to accommodate families, and with Everything’s Included®, the most desirable technology brand devices, all of which are included with your new home.

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Shopping for a new home? It’s not all about square footage, counter tops and closet size.

Homes are changing. You’ve got homework to do. Decisions to make. Some will affect your pocketbook for years. Others will improve your quality of life the day you move in.

And one … well, it’ll just make your pooch less smelly.

Here’s a quick tour of cutting-edge amenities now offered at some Central Valley new-home communities:

California Room

For years, builders would slap an awning on the back of the house and call it a patio. Now, homes frequently come with a modern and stylish upgrade called the California Room.

It’s an indoor-outdoor space with a ceiling and just one or two walls. It can be used as a second dining room, outdoor kitchen or even a living room with couches and flat screen TV. It may have a ceiling fan, fireplace and tile or polished concrete floor.

Valley and foothills home builders say they are responding to young buyers arriving from the Bay Area who are looking for an outdoorsy lifestyle at home.

Depending on the level of extravagance, a California Room may add $7,000 to $20,000 to the home price.

Elevators

Baby boomers, some now in their early 70s, want homes they can stay in as physical limitations set in. Home builders call it “aging in place.”

The three-story brownstones in Sacramento’s Crocker Village include elevators as an option. So do new developments in Davis and East Sacramento.

Builder Mike Paris of BlackPine Communities estimates the elevator adds $25,000 to $35,000 to the price of the house, depending on how many “stops” it has. But you don’t have to buy the elevator yet. The spaces on each floor also serve as closets, pantries and storage rooms.

“This gives the buyer the peace of mind that they can age-in-place without incurring the cost when they may not need the elevator at that time,” Paris said.

Doggy showers

Fewer young homeowners have kids. More have dogs, though. And many of us consider our dogs full-fledged family members.

Introducing the indoor doggy shower, with tiled walls and hot and cold faucets, often located in the laundry room. Anthem United Homes is about to put some in its Lathrop subdivision. “It’s about three feet wide, two feet above the ground. A special faucet to wash at your waist. It’s like a half tub,” said Matt Gustus of Anthem United.

Other builders are adding doggy drawers in the kitchen of new homes: Slide open the bottom cabinet drawer, and it holds your pet’s eating dish and water bowl. Slide it back in and it’s out of sight. No tripping or accidentally kicking the water bowl.

NextGen homes

Lennar Homes officials say more buyers are multi-generational families who want to live under one roof, but want some distance from each other. So the company’s begun building in-law apartments that are embedded in the main home, with a front door of their own, but with another door to the main house.

They call them Next Gen® homes. The apartments have kitchenettes, a living room, bathroom, bedroom, washer and dryer and sometimes their own patio. Grandparents can live there. Or boomerang 20-somethings back from college. Or special needs adult children who can benefit from some independence.

Or a homeowner can rent the space out to a tenant for extra income, but that may be a little close for comfort. The main house and embedded unit share the same utilities. Plus, you can sometimes hear noise on the other side of the wall.

Read the Full Article Here.