I think that about does it. For more details visit our website or one of our Sales Offices!
Need I Say More?
You won’t dread the electric bill with guaranteed heating and cooling costs.
Tag: Antares Homes
A Little Something Extra
No stress. No worries. From extra inspections during construction to engineered steel rebar foundations to guaranteed heating & cooling costs, your Antares home will provide peace of mind.
Sometimes you just want that little bit more. Something extra. We get it. And we think that little bit more is peace of mind. With the hustle and bustle of life, you don’t need any more stress and worry than absolutely necessary. So we go out of our way to provide our customers with a worry-free experience. Let’s examine the ways:
- Guaranteed Heating and Cooling. Seriously. Not Kidding. It’s a warranted item. Our 3098 square foot floor plan in Garden Heights is GUARANTEED to average 907.5 kWh/month to heat and cool. At a price of $0.084/kWh that’s $76.23 on average to run the HVAC. Incredible, and true.
- Extra Inspections. We go above and beyond to get additional third party inspections on each home. We want to make sure that a second set of eyes has inspected our homes to catch mistakes we may have missed. The result? Fewer Warranty Requests from our Home Owners.
- Rebar Foundation. Each foundation is tailored to the specific needs of each neighborhood. Did you know that Tarrant County soils can vary so much that a soils test in one neighborhood can yield completely different results when compared to another? We always take the most conservative approach with our foundations and it shows in our record with Bonded Builders — our Third Party Warranty Partner. We have been claims free on our foundations since the company was founded in 1998.
- Graduate Master Builders. Astonishing as it may be, all of our Construction Managers that build our homes are Graduate Master Builders. Continuing education is vital for anyone who desires to be the best in their field. We are no different. Experience and education make a difference in the end product. We are very proud to have such a great team building our homes, and you will be too.
- Top Notch Salespeople. Our Sales Team is the best in the business. Why? What’s different about them? They are highly trained in areas that make the most difference to our Customers. They are very knowledgeable about the latest loan programs for first time buyers, repeat buyers and credit challenged buyers. If there is a way to save you money and get you the Home of your Dreams, they can find it. They are most concerned with helping people, not selling people. And our Customer Service Surveys reflect their hard work.
And if you still want more, call one of our Sales Offices to find out what’s so special about their neighborhood!
STOP! Don’t work on improving your credit all by yourself!
Think you know how to repair your credit score? You’d be surprised at how easy it is to make it worse. Best advice: Talk to an expert before you take any action. There are plenty of dos and don’ts when it comes to credit repair.
Sorry for yelling STOP in all upper caps but this topic is way too important to let slide. A prospective home buyer–let’s call her “Melanie”–just stopped by one of our sales offices to share some exciting news. Turns out she’s been trying to repair her credit score on her own. (Insert big “oh, no” here.) Ms. Melanie said her credit score (pulled just two months ago) was only 20 points short of qualifying for a loan. She had taken on the challenge to boost her score and proudly announced, “I’ve been paying on some old stuff.” (Insert another “oh, no” and throw in a sigh.)
So what’s the big deal?
The problem is that credit repair is very tricky these days. Recent credit items are more important than old debt, and most lenders can overlook some dings to your credit if they occurred a long time ago. Believe it or not, paying on an old debt breathes new life into that carcass and makes it show up on your credit report as a recent item. This can cause your score to tank.
No one told Melanie to do this. Despite a consultation with Marcy Rutherford, a veteran sales counselors who is very knowledgeable in credit repair, Melanie didn’t take her advice. The result is that Melanie may very well have set herself back over 100 points! This will take a very long time to undo.
Please take a lesson from our unfortunate friend and stop working on your own credit. We can help! Just call one of our Sales Offices and make an appointment to find out more about our Credit Watchers Program. Call toll free: 1-800-Antares (800-268-2737) or choose your favorite neighborhood and phone number from this list.
As the heat goes away, some of our unwanted guests are on their way back…
The record-breaking summer heat helped keep pesky bugs away. Now that cooler weather has finally arrived, they’re baa-aaaack!
We have been assaulted by record setting heat and a drought here in North Texas. It has been unrelenting and very draining. But every cloud has a silver lining: Very few bugs this summer. In an area known for it’s humidity and “Everything is Bigger in Texas” creepy crawly pests, we have had an unusual experience. Absent were the cool evenings sitting on the back porch under the bug zapper. But, as the days start to cool down (and yes 85 to 90 degrees is considered a cold front here) and the moisture slowly returns to the area, now is the time to start planning for the return of our six legged friends. Make an appointment with your favorite pest control now, and prevent unwanted guests this fall!
You work hard for your money. Make it work for you. The best investment you can ever make.
Today’s Master Builder Musing is by Nancy Scott, VP of Sales and one of our newest team members to earn the Graduate Master Builder (GMB) designation.
A house is an asset that is built for folks and families to live in, enjoy and maintain. It gives us a sense of who we are. By making payments to a mortgage company instead of a landlord, the house becomes an asset. The problem with combining that thought with housing is that our houses are not banks. The real purpose of housing has nothing to do with cash-out refinancing. It is a place to call home, to raise a family, to enjoy Sunday ballgames, to decorate with your style, to park your car in, or to barbecue in the back yard with friends.
This year, the average renter in Tarrant County will be handed two rent increases. Let’s face it, you have to pay to live somewhere. If interest rates are low and rent increases are high, the true best investment is housing. The required down payment when you buy a home is usually less than 3 and one half percent (sometimes as low as zero down), yet when housing prices rise, the investment value increases on the total price of the house.
Now it quickly makes sense. Builders are now building on discounted lots. The lots were discounted to the builders when the housing market declined. The builders now offer brand new homes at lower prices than they have been able to offer in decades. Lower pricing combined with the new home warranty and energy efficiency really add up and just make good solid sense. The discounted lot supply is limited, as developers cannot redeliver new lots with the same type of discounts.
Today’s interest rates are some of the lowest in the history of our country. Today’s home prices are the lowest since the 1990’s. These two combined make a huge difference in a payment. Let’s compare the principle and interest payment.
For example, in June 2000, the average interest rate was 8.5%. On a $150,000 home with a 8.5% interest rate the principle and interest payment was around $1124. The total payment with taxes and insurance was $1672.00
The new builder pricing in August 2011 for a similar home as the above example is about $130,000 in the current marketplace. The current interest rate is about 4% – the principal and interest payment is $628. The total payment including all taxes and property insurance is around $1121.
Now let’s see how much you will have paid off after 15 years if you stay in your home. With the 2000 pricing and rates, you would have paid down to a balance of $114,155.
With 2011 pricing and rates, you would have paid your home balance to $84,924 after 15 years. Now imagine, if you paid extra each month, the amount that buyers actually paid in June 2000 and kept paying it for the 15 years-an extra $496 per month. Where would you be? Your house would be completely paid for and it would have been paid for in February 2024. That means your home would be completely paid for in 13 ½ years. This is the true way to wealth. This is the true American dream.
Amazing, huh? This doesn’t even show how much the “discounted home” will rise in value over the years. An apartment will never be paid off. Renters just make someone else rich.
Do you really want to take this risk that interest rates and housing will stay low? Or do you want the benefits that a home provides?
Cleaner Glassware
Here’s a great tip I learned from a friend of mine: Add Lemon juice to your soap dispenser in your dishwasher for cleaner glassware. All of my glasses and glass vases were building up this unsightly scuzzy film that I could not remove no matter how hard I tried. My friend told me that there was a water additive that had been removed from the local drinking supply which prevented this from occurring in the past. So I took her advice and now I have bright shiny CLEAR glassware. It also works when you add to the water when you wash by hand as well.
Do you have any cleaning tips? Post them in the comments!
Shocking!
After all of the gloomy predictions about what a downgraded credit rating will do to our economy I was shocked to learn today that many of our recommended lenders are offering a 30 year fixed rate loan at 3.75%. Crazy! Just a few weeks ago rates were hovering around 5%. What does that mean to you? On a 30 year fixed rate FHA loan for $120,000 your payment at a 5% rate including Taxes, Insurance, Mortgage Insurance and Interest is around $1065/month. At 3.75% that number drops below $1000/month to a shocking $979/month! If you buy our least expensive home, priced at $99,490, your payment becomes $812/month. Why would you not buy today? With prices and rates so low, you can’t miss this opportunity to invest in your future!
–Link to 8825 Highland Orchard, pictured above.
Help is Here!
Do you need help just figuring out if buying a new home is an option for you? Do you need help planning to save money for a down payment? Do you need help understanding why your credit score went down instead of up after all that work you did? We have answers for you! We are offering a FREE Home Buyer Class at our Crescent Springs Ranch location this Wednesday, August 10 from 7-9 pm. Call the office at 817-704-7532 to register today! We will have a finance specialist on site to help with planning for a home in your future!
Selection Studio Unfettered
Sometimes you appreciate being given a choice of two or three options. For example, “Do you want to go see Horrible Bosses or Harry Potter this weekend?” Someone else has already decided what they like and you get the final say.
You know when this doesn’t really work? When you are building your home. You don’t really want to settle with pre-made packages that someone else thinks looks good, you want to live your OWN Dream.
In our Selection Studio we don’t limit you to package options. If you want to upgrade just the dishwasher in your kitchen, go ahead. It’s not tied to upgrading the other appliances. Want to put lipstick red grout with your dark slate colored tile? Go for it! Are you wondering if there is such a thing as too much freedom? Nah, spread your wings and fly!
Curb Appeal
We often have buyers who have a home to sell. The most common advice that their Realtors tell them to do to sell their homes quickly is to work on their curb appeal. Now to some people that might sound like a huge task, but it can be pretty easy and fairly inexpensive if you are willing to put a little elbow grease into it!
We have a home for sale at 7017 Meandering Creek in Parkview Hills that has an elevation that we don’t have any professional pictures of. We decided that we wanted to get some photographs of it, but the “curb appeal” was a little blah. We usually save our professional photos for our model homes and they usually have a little extra landscaping, so this was going to have to be a quick project. I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate curb appeal!
So, of course I volunteered to be the landscaper for this one! Since it is a new home, there weren’t any dead trees to remove or major overhauling to do. I thought that a little black mulch would stand out against the white limestone accents on the home and pairing that dark mulch with vivid pink flowers might be the most eye catching combo. I was really excited to be able to buy beautiful sun loving flowers since my own personal garden is so limited. I was going to live vicariously through this East facing sunny garden!
My first stop was Mike’s Garden Center. I love Mike’s because they warranty their plants and they have early bird specials and sales all the time. If you catch a good special you can find flowers for sale at $0.73 per 4” pot. Amazing! Another reason I love my particular Mike’s on Crowley Road is because they are pet friendly. They have their own birdcage and their own shop kitty and three small dogs. One of them accompanied me as I selected my flowers. I loved it!
I bought Vinca and Moss Rose. I love Moss Rose because it is a creeper. It will fluff out and go everywhere. Also it drops seeds like nobody’s business and you will have Moss Rose coming back every year. And, it doesn’t need a whole lot of water. Don’t get me wrong, it needs to be watered, but it is very forgiving of this Texas heat and doesn’t mind drying out a bit. So I loaded up my three flats of Vincas (on sale!) and my one flat of Moss Rose and bought my black mulch.
Of course with all of these plants I needed help getting out of there. The folks who work at Mike’s are always so nice and one guy helped me load up my car. No, you don’t need a truck to haul plants and mulch. I have a two door hatch back and I can get anything in there! I laid down my seats and spread a blanket over the trunk and seats to keep it from getting soiled and me and my Mike’s buddy loaded up my car.
When I got to the home I quickly took a couple of “Before” pictures and got to work. I have found that it is easier for me if I lay the plants out where I want them to go first. So I unloaded all of my flats and got to work. I knew I wanted the Moss Rose to go along the walkway to the entry since it would look pretty there as it began to creep out of the flower bed once it became established. Vincas will get thick, so I also wanted to make sure I placed them far enough apart to not compete with each other for sunlight. I also wanted to make sure I planted thickly against the ugly white washout stub in the flowerbed. You know that thing that looks like a pipe with a lid on it? You have got to be careful when you are gardening not to completely cover it since you need to know where it is in case you have to snake your sewer line out to the street.
Once I had my flowers laid out, I just had to get to work! I used a little gardening spade to dig in the earth.
As I was digging I quickly noticed that the ground was very clay-ey. When I was at Mike’s I wondered to myself whether or not I should buy some potting soil, but I decided against it. Well, I regretted that decision! But, since I wasn’t removing the old mulch, just adding the new mulch on top, I figured it would be ok. In my opinion the best way to convert a clay based flower bed to better soil is to dump lots of mulch on it every Spring and Fall. That’s what I did at my home over the past six years and now I have this incredibly rich soil full of grody earth worms! They make for healthy plants and occasional frights while planting.
After hours of backbreaking digging and planting, the clouds parted (not really) and a ray of sunshine (it had been sunny and sweltering all day) fell on the pretty new flowerbed. I was pooped and the thought of adding the mulch made me have a heatstroke. So I popped on over to Mr. Bentley’s house next door to lounge on his deck and take a couple of pictures of his awesome view. He’s going to be the subject of the next Celebrity Gossip post.
The next morning I was at the home bright and early to spread the mulch. Sounds easy enough right? Right! Today I was wearing my heart rate monitor because I thought I needed to know exactly what my caloric commitment was to this project. It was a day late and the majority of it was done, but I figured I could do some math and guess. Mulching burned 640 calories! Yay! Ok, way off topic.
Anywhoo, I had four bags of black mulch and I laid them out near the places I thought they would be going. I opened each one and threw the mulch out and covered up all the old mulch. Occasionally I had to free some leaves or petals from under a little bit too much mulch, but it was pretty quick work. The only problem was that I forgot about the tree in the yard. That made me a bag short. So I spread it as best I could and it was a little thin at the end. I was regretting that I didn’t start at the entry and work my way out. So when I was running out of mulch, I was at the most important place! Oh well. Since I was sooooooooo tired after I finished, I decided I would finish the mulch the next time I was at Parkview Hills. By the time you read this, it will all be complete. But I did manage to take pictures with what I was able to cover and from the street, you can’t even tell I ran out!
By the end, I was pretty impressed with the effect that some flowers and mulch had on the appearance of the home. What do you think?
