Author: carrie.davis

What is up with getting a loan?

I’ve heard it quoted all over the internets that Housing is what brought us out of The Great Depression and other Recessions, but why is it that Housing is so sluggish?  Well, it’s not housing that’s sluggish, it’s lending.  The potential buyers that walk through my model home doors today are facing the strictest lending laws I’ve seen since I got into home sales.  I see several people a week who desperately want to buy a home and take advantage of all the benefits available to home owners, but they can’t get approved.  Why can’t they you ask?  Well, it’s not all “Bad Credit” as you might think.  I hear one of our salespeople every week mention someone with 780 credit score, who makes 90,000 a year who can’t get a loan on a $120,000 home.  WHAT?  Yes.  Commissioned Salespeople and Self-Employed with good credit are pretty stuck.  FHA guidelines were written with a very specific box in mind.  And when they were written the lending market was very wary of self employed and 100% commissioned folks.  All of those people with potentially variable incomes are some of the people with good credit who can’t get a loan these days.  What’s ironic about all of this is that with the economic weirdness that has been happening, a lot of smart people who find themselves out of a job decide that they have a lot to offer and go into business for themselves.  Entrepreneurship always increases in times of economic instability and that gives rise to the next strong economy.  Well, we might not have that very soon until lending laws loosen up a bit.

UPDATE 12/13/10

I said it weeks ago and the Wall Street Journal is chiming in!

When is it a good time to make an investment in your future?

So, I have made an appointment to meet with Bryan and Nikole on Sunday evening.  Thankfully they aren’t picky eaters like my husband since I am cooking dinner for them.  I hope they like food with some spice in it!  I have been deprived of onions and garlic for the longest time (my husband hates even the smell of them) and I can’t wait to cook something with those ingredients in it.  Anyway, they live in our Ashford Park neighborhood which we just closed out a couple of months ago.  They just might be the youngest buyers we have ever had.  Both of them were under 21 when they went on contract in April of this year.  The burning question that makes them interesting as buyers to me is “when is it a good time to make an investment in your future?”  These two are waaaaayyyy ahead of the curve.  I told them this as they sat in my sales office.  I thought of myself and wondered how my life would be different today if I had bought a home earlier in my life.  I often meet people who have ridiculously low mortgage payments or have paid off their homes because they bought 15 years ago.  Since I am well over 15 years older than them, that secure home owner could be me…if I had just bought a home when I was their age.  So, I guess even though it is never too late to become a home owner, the reverse is also true:  It is never too early to become a home owner.

Ok, so I’m a Nerd.

Can I just say that I love construction?  I mean, I reaaaalllllly love construction.  You may not believe it, but it’s true.  My hubs and I love to walk through homes under construction just to find out what’s on the inside.  Needless to say I always want to know why we do what we do when it comes to construction.  A lot of my buyers consider me to be very well informed because I can answer about 90% of their construction questions and I get super excited when one of my buyers brings a friend or relative who actually builds or remodels homes for a living to check us out.  It’s like getting to be on Construction Jeopardy!  So, that makes me a big nerd.  But, it’s also good for you ‘cause I’m going to explore our construction on this blog.

When I first started thinking about this topic, I thought about my Gramma’s cooking.  She is an excellent cook and any one who’s ever eaten her food will tell you that.  (you know who you are, ahem, Cecil)  The secret to her cooking is that it’s a little different every time.  You can’t ever really re-create any of her dishes because there really isn’t a recipe she follows religiously; it’s just what she does in reaction to how it’s going at the time.  Well, building a home really isn’t like that.  Yes there are ingredients and every buyer has their specific color and carpet choices that are going into the home, but we warranty our structures and guarantee our kilowatt hours on our HVAC and we can’t just wing it every time.  A dash of insulation here or there won’t a guarantee make!  So is there a recipe for building a sound home?  Yes!  What is it?  Well, stick around and find out, ‘cause I’m gonna show you!

My Quest

Home Owner in Lasater Ranch

What makes an Antares Home Owner tick?  What makes them choose us?  As a company, we spend countless hours trying to figure out how to get better responses on our customer surveys, analyzing data, and attending meetings about this subject.  This is the question that keeps a salesperson up at night.  We ask ourselves, why this person did, or did not buy our home.  In the homebuilding industry the buyer is the celebrity, the hero.  They are the person we most want to know about.  A new home salesperson would jump at a tabloid that featured gossip and interesting info on all of our buyers as well as those that got away!  So, why not create that?  I am starting a quest to find out as much as I can about our buyers.  I am going to visit with them in their native habitat and study them.  I will have them fill out one of those little questionnaires that you see in the celebrity profiles of your favorite magazine and take pictures and dish it up!