Homestead at Scioto Reserve

         3 Pillar Homes is pleased to announce the development of twelve new home sites in the Homestead at Scioto Reserve. Located in Powell, OH, the Homestead at Scioto Reserve offers homeowners the best of both worlds: an active social lifestyle community filled with camaraderie, including weekly calendar events, as well as the luxury of carefree living with maintenance-free exteriors and landscaping.

          In the next month, 3 Pillar Homes will be breaking ground on two spec homes in the Homestead at Scioto Reserve. These affordable free-standing condominiums offer residents the choice of a custom 2-story or ranch style home design. With generous standard features, 3 Pillar Homes can help you achieve your dream home while meeting your lifestyle and budget needs.

          The Charleston features two bedrooms and two bathrooms in an open Ranch style detached condo, with a spacious great room and kitchen, walk-in pantry and center island, and private study with French doors. The Savannah features three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms, boasting an open two-story first floor master design, with a covered porch and stone patio.

          Features in both spec homes include hardwood floors, granite counter tops, 42” Maple cabinetry with double stack crown molding, signature decorative arches and trim, an electronic charging station, full basement with poured wall and rough-in’s ready to finish, as well as a two-car garage.

Located in the Buckeye Valley School District and conveniently close to parks, golfing, shops and restaurants, homeowners at the Homestead at Scioto Reserve will enjoy the independence of detached condo living with beautiful finishes, as well as full access to fantastic amenities such as the community pool, clubhouse, and fitness facility.

          For more information about 3 Pillar Homes or the Homestead at Scioto Reserve, please visit us online at www.3pillar.com for additional floorplan designs and home site locations. You can also visit us at one of our current model homes located in Lewis Center or Jerome Village, or contact us by phone at 614-286-0659 or by email at lsolo@3pillar.com.

www.home-builderscolumbus.com  

3 Pillar Homes

5710 Delano Ave, Lewis Center, OH 43035

(740) 548-8599

Top Custom Home Trends of 2012

Let’s throw out the rows of cookie cutters and take a look at what’s trending for custom home design in 2012. Every home owner is unique. Expressing individual taste in your home is becoming more popular than ever. People are daring to be different. Networks like HGTV and DIY are challenging homeowners to take on remodeling projects and showing viewers a little ingenuity can go a long way. Here's a list of hot design trends from this past year.

Accent walls are popular in many new homes by adding color and textures to walls. Individual homeowners are able to make spaces in the home individualized, with their own stamp of unique taste. This can be tricky, but on the other hand can be done with flair and grace by our custom home builder company.

Homeowners who favor one color can follow that same color from room to room by adding different accents to the room. Homeowners can create an individual theme in their home geared to their specific taste. While one wall is painted in a favorite color, the opposite wall could be papered, painted with a boarder or present wanes coating, or brick. The brick used could include colors such as gray, red, brown and tan. Using these earth tone colored bricks, the custom home builder can pull colors out of these bricks for the color theme in the rest of the home to make the design flow from room to room.

Homes designed with a separate living space for multi-generation occupancy is popular. More families are being encouraged to take care of their seniors at home, versus a long term nursing facility and homes are being constructed with this concept in mind. This additional living space can also be utilized for the college student, or overnight guest. Our company is seeing more homes being requested with garages or separate living areas that are built at an angle, to offset the home, and this adds additional appeal to the home.

Homeowners are leaning toward nature and requesting trendy screened porches or all-season rooms to enjoy in any weather. These all seasoned rooms are nearly all thermo glass and enjoyed in the coldest or warmest weather, bringing nature into the home. Homeowners are requesting their new home have a wall of windows to add a unique feature to their home in at least one room of the home.

Homeowners are realizing that they need one specific room for individual hobbies or entertainment, and many more families are realizing that in this stressful and busy world, they would like one room of the home designed as a quiet, serene thoughtful room where individuals can rest and relax. A movie theater room is very popular these days for entertaining guests and children. A specific room for movie viewing can be added on or an extra room could be converted for this purpose.

Women homeowners are asking for granite counter tops in the kitchen, with earth tone colors or back to the basic colors, such as black and white throughout the kitchen to add cozy appeal. A designer backsplash behind the kitchen sink in an array of designs are trendy and can be met by our company. Oak cabinets are popular with most homeowners.

More popular today are spacious laundry rooms off the kitchen area or a room built off the kitchen for laundry and sewing are functional and appreciated and can become quite a time-saver. And, a new and surprising addition to the kitchen area is a butcher's pantry with counter tops and glass cupboards. These pantries just of the main kitchen are used as a storage area, as well as a food preparation center. Our company can add this type of class to your kitchen area, and it is also an attractive addition for future selling appeal.

Have fun designing your new home, and with the help of a quality custom home builder, you can achieve the home of your dreams!

The Building Lingo

If you spend any time on a construction site, you're likely to hear words that sound like a foreign language. Worse yet, you may hear words that you thought you knew but which have some specialized meaning to the people around you.
Don't worry! You aren't really on another planet. Like any profession, the home building community has a language all its own. Because we believe effective communication is a critical element in meeting our clients' expectations, we make it a priority to help clients understand the building process. This includes some familiarity with the language of building. Here are several common building terms that, when understood, can help us communicate effectively.

• Cycle time is the number of days between the first day on the job site and a home's completion. We work with our materials suppliers and subcontractors to determine a reliable cycle time so that our clients can move into their new home on time, as promised. Controlling cycle time also enables us to provide accurate estimates and helps us stay within budget.

• "Rough-in": The "rough" stage of construction is the behind-the-wall structural and mechanical work, the parts you don't see when the building is complete. That includes work such as framing the walls, pulling the wiring through the studs, and installing pipes and heating ducts. During this point of the construction process, we can "rough-in" a system or product that provides an upgraded or extra service, such as wiring for a high-speed Internet or digital cable network. Installing a system's "backbone" during the rough-in stage of construction costs significantly less than installing it once the house is finished.

• Staging: To help reduce costs, we stage or organize and schedule the delivery of materials as we need them, rather than receiving a huge load all at once. Staging may also refer to the way we place loads of materials on the job site to make them more accessible to various workers. Both practices help us reduce waste and theft, save time, and keep better track of costs -- all of which keeps budget and cycle time on track.

• Lien Waivers are issued to us by each of our materials suppliers and subcontractors for the work they perform on a house. Lien Waivers (also called lien releases) prove that we have paid the agreed or negotiated costs of labor and materials in full. Lien releases also protect our clients from any liability if suppliers or subcontractors claim that additional payment is due. This type of claim can prevent the closing of the homeowners' loan, so we have a formal process to collect and verify lien releases before the close of escrow on a property.

• Tape and texture: To create a finished wall, our drywall contractor applies tape and texture to hide nail or screw heads and conceal the joints between panels of drywall or gypsum wallboard. The contractor uses a mud-like compound to fill and cover the nail heads and secure a fibrous tape that bridges the joints between adjacent drywall panels. The mud is allowed to dry and is then sanded smooth before applying paint, wallpaper, or other finishes. A quality tape and texture job ensures that cracks or nail heads won't show through finished surfaces.

And this is just a sampling of common terminology used on a building site! We'll be back with more vocabulary in a future edition.

3 Pillar Homes 2012 BIA Parade of Homes Participant

Be sure to check out the BIA Parade of Homes website at www.biaparade.com

Also, you can LIKE them on Facebook-http://www.facebook.com/biaparade

Or Follow on Twitter @Biaparade

The 2012 Parade opens June 16th and runs until July 1st, Come See Us!

Excellence vs. Perfection

Famous football coach Bill Walsh was known for demanding perfection from his players during practices, even though he knew they would never attain it. His philosophy was if you don't strive for perfection, you don't have a chance to achieve it.

As professional builders, we follow the same philosophy; plan for perfection to attain excellence. Like Coach Walsh, we don't stand a chance of delivering an excellent new home that satisfies a client's wants and needs if we don't set and expect the highest standards possible.

In the pursuit of excellence, we coach our homebuyers about the building process so that their expectations are high but realistic. We want our homebuyers to push and challenge us to always do better, but it is also our job to define excellence ... and point out the difference between it and perfection.

Our best and most effective method for doing that is listening. Really listening. Not just to find out which floor plan a client prefers, but why and how it will satisfy their lifestyle needs. Not just about which community they want to live in, but also their concerns and questions about the quality of nearby schools, proximity to shopping and public services, and commute routes to work.

In this discovery phase, we craft a strategy for a new home that truly addresses and justifies our client's reasons for making such a significant investment and sets us on course to deliver it according to those expectations.

It is also critical to maintain a regular and open line of communication during the construction process. As during the planning stage, our first job is to listen to and then educate and inform our buyers about the subtleties of new-home construction that are specific to their concerns.

Responding to a buyer's question with "that's just the way it is" or "it's complicated" is unacceptable. Instead, we strive to deliver details, demonstrate our methods, and ensure that questions are answered to a buyer's satisfaction. That approach and level of respect for our buyers helps build a better understanding of our work process all the way through the final walk-through and close of escrow.

Finally, a key component of delivering excellence comes after the sale, once a buyer becomes a homeowner. We make sure to communicate our policies and procedures for warranty service -- once again demonstrating the difference between perfection and excellence. Ideally, we've done an excellent job of building their new home to the point where service callbacks are kept to a minimum; for those small warranty items that crop up after move-in, we work to be responsive and responsible to address them in a timely fashion.

As a homebuyer and owner, it's okay to want the "perfect" home. The best we can do, however, is to strive for perfection and achieve excellence that satisfies the lifestyle needs of our clients and protects their investment now and well into the future.

Homebuilding Myths: The Three-Bid Rule

As the housing industry becomes more sophisticated and conscientious about achieving genuine and lasting homebuyer satisfaction, the level of professionalism among builders continues to reach new heights.

As a result, potential clients searching for a builder to create their dream home have a much deeper pool of talent from which to select. Today's professional builder is not only skilled in construction and client relations, but also highly competent in terms of his or her business expertise.

This new and more professional breed of builder deserves to be evaluated by homebuyers in a new way. Namely by dropping the age-old practice of collecting three bids for the work in favor of a more business-like approach to a very important decision.

Comparative Bidding is Inaccurate:

In theory, the three-bid rule was thought to work because it assumed everything else, other than cost, from the competing builders was equal. This thought process assumed that each builder had assessed and calculated the scope of work, blueprints, and specifications in the exact same way.

In reality, however, such assumptions are rarely, if ever, accurate. Every builder and contractor, professional or not, analyzes a new-home project and estimates its associated costs differently; as a result, the three bids are not apples-to-apples comparisons. The differences can be subtle, but they exist. And those differences render an unequal playing field for competitive bidding creating confusion and misunderstanding.

In addition to being inaccurate as a cost comparison tool, the three-bid rule reduces each builder to a number rather than considering his or her various skills, experience, personality, record of success, and ability to do the work. For this reason, an increasing number of the best homebuilders simply refuse to bid competitively, opting out of such opportunities because they know they are being evaluated only in terms of a cost estimate (that is inaccurate) rather than whether they are the best builder for the job.

The Negotiated Contract: A More Useful Approach

The professional builder prefers a different approach to contractor selection: the negotiated contract. In that scenario, a homebuilder is selected based on his or her abilities for the specific project and personality and how they fit with the homebuyer. These are two critical considerations considering how closely builder and client will interact with each other during the construction of a new home.

The negotiated contract also takes the guesswork out of the project's cost. The budget is shared up-front with each of the builders being considered based on what the buyers can afford, not what the builder (and his stable of trade contractors) thinks it will cost.

Sharing the budget not only removes assumptions and judging a builder's worth based on price alone, but also begins to build trust between homeowner and builder. They can explore honest communication about actual costs and, if necessary, choices that need to be made to match the project's scope with the homebuyer's budget. That's the "negotiated" part of the contract process.

The negotiated contract process is far superior to the three-bid rule in matching personalities between the homebuyer and the builder, as well as between projects and a building company's skills and experience. By first narrowing and then selecting one homebuilder based on everything but the cost of the project, buyers can better make their decision on which builder is most likely to be on-budget and on-schedule and result in a finished home that meets (or ideally exceeds) their expectations.

As the homebuilding industry continues to evolve into an increasingly professional business, it requires new and more effective models for conducting that business. The negotiated contract has strong advantages over the three-bid rule. This approach reflects the new age of new home construction to the benefit of every homebuyer.

Top 5 Questions: Builder References

You just left an impressive presentation with a professional homebuilder, one among the few you're considering for your new home project.

In addition to a brochure about his business and highlights of his recent work and the communities in which he builds, he provided you with a list of recent homebuyers for you to call or email to ask about his quality, ethics, skill, and professionalism.

Now the ball's in your court to actually reach out to those references and gain some valuable inside knowledge about your builder before you consider negotiating and signing a contract for your project.

But what to ask? For many prospective homebuyers, we suggest a few questions to solicit the kind of information that will help them make an informed and confident decision. Of course, you may have your own agenda and priorities, which we encourage; if you need them, these questions just may help get the conversation going.

1. Was the company easy to work with? Ask how the builder managed communication with the buyers before and during construction, ideally through one point of contact (typically the site supervisor) with the authority to make or negotiate decisions as opposed to a bureaucratic quagmire that is frustrating and confusing.

2. Was the jobsite clean? The best builders leave the job site clean at the end of each day. They sweep and haul their trash away, store or take their tools, and stack their materials. Not only does the jobsite look good (as good as anything can under construction), but also is one that's safer should the owners want to check out the progress of the job on their own after work.

3. Did they finish on time? Finishing on time reveals the builder's commitment and organizational skills. If the answer is "no," dig a little deeper into why; it may be that the owner made changes that caused some delays, or that bad weather was an unavoidable factor.

4. Did they finish on budget? Like finishing on time (or within the owner's expectations), finishing on budget indicates a builder's organizational and business acumen, specifically his cost-estimating skills. If the answer is "no," ask why and look for clues about change or special orders by the owners that may have been outside the scope of the original budget, or if the builder neglected to calculate a cost and tried to make the owners pay for it at closing.

5. Did they disappear after move-in? Perhaps a new-home owner's biggest worry is what happens after they close escrow and move in. A builder who has been available to answer questions and respond to reasonable warranty issues is an important indicator of a builder's long-term commitment to the quality of his homes and the ultimate satisfaction of their owners.

This handful of questions probably does not satisfy all of your needs, but it's a start and often will inspire more questions that further reveal whether the builder you're considering is one you can trust and rely on to do the job right.