Won’t be easy to look at all the builder models at one place so you don’t have to drive by each community in a big Master Planned Communities? You asked for it and Cinco Ranch made it happen.
Cinco Ranchrecently launched a model home village which has 24 homes from almost all the builders offered in the master planned community. It was designed well enough to accomodate as many visitors/future home owners and spend a whole day looking at these homes. Take a look at the virtual tour which will surely peeks your interest to visit and venture out.
As per the news and sponsor of the category, HoustonNewcomersGuide.com has published that Cinco Ranch has been awarded the Houston’s Best Model Home Village for 2011.
Opened this spring, in time for Cinco Ranch’s 20th birthday celebration, the Cinco Ranch Model Home Village showcases 24 decorated model homes by 16 leading homebuilders, representing new homes priced from the $170,000s to over $1 million.
Make yourself free for weekend and go and check out these model homes located at LaCenterra at Cinco Ranch, just drive down Cinco Ranch Blvd. from Simply Cinco and you will see the store front.
Riverstone
A Fort Bend area master-planned community where luxurious homes, water features and resort-style amenities define the landscape, Riverstone is one of Fort Bend County’s most desirable addresses. Riverstone residents enjoy an enviable lifestyle with a superb selection of new homes with Sugar Land and Missouri City addresses. Plus, with varied highway access and an array […]
Sienna
Sienna is a comprehensive 7,000-acre master-planned community. Sienna is more than houses inside one of the top Fort Bend County subdivisions. Neatly tucked between the acclaimed cities of Missouri City and the City of Sugar Land, it is a community in the truest sense of the word. Every effort is made to maintain a sense […]
Bridgeland
Imagine a place with vast open spaces and spectacular sunsets. An 11,400 acre master-planned community in northwest Houston where flocks of waterfowl glide across natural lakes. A refuge from the chaos of your workday. A place where you can find true balance. The new home community of Bridgeland is such a place. Bridgeland attracts and […]
Towne Lake – Master Planned Community, Cypress
Towne Lake reflects its Texas-sized appeal in a 300-acre lake, with beautiful views. Lake coves allow neighbors easy access to the water and to the many amenities and destinations throughout, bonding the community together. Towne Lake Charm is all these things and more, reflected in a community steeped in Texas pride. Caldwell Companies has perfected […]
Cypress Creek Lakes
Cypress Creek Lakes is a beautiful master-planned new home community nestled in the charming Northwest Houston suburb of Cypress, Texas. Mischer Development has carefully designed the 1,600-acre community to respect the natural beauty of the land while developing approximately 2,000 new home sites. Its convenient location on Fry Rd. just off of Highway 290 also […]
Cinco Ranch wins Houston’s Best Model Village Award
For Sale – Stunning One and half Story Home at Berkshire Community
David Weekly floor plan home, providing space equal to a two story. Beautiful entry w/ high ceilings opens up and connects large kitchen, breakfast, huge living room. Kitchen has 42inch wood cabinets and huge island w/ pony wall w/ more built in cabinets. Spacious Master w/ large closet with whirlpool tub and dual sink. Huge Gameroom upstairs & Covered patio w/ Tile floor perfect for BBQ parties. Large Kids and Guest Bedrooms. Home upgraded w/ more closets for more storage space.
Check out the listing and video of the property.
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Bridgeland – An Active community
There are many master plan communities around Houston but not many of them participate in the active lifestyle by bringing people together like Bridgeland does. Bridgeland has been very conscious about helping people in their community to be a active citizen and planning lots of activies year around.
This year they hosted, Triathlons on Aug 6 & 7th,Disc Golf Tournament on Aug 13th, NatureFest which brought 4000 people all around the area to have fun together. Howl-O-Ween Fest is coming up on October 29, 2011 in Bridgeland’s Oak Meadow Park from 10 AM to 4 PM. This spook-tacular annual event is put together to we honor our furry friends, Dogs.
Later this year, Bridgeland is again hosting the Mistletoe Fun Run, set for Sunday, Dec. 4, and benefiting Run Over Cancer.
Participants can choose a 10K or 5K run, a 1-mile Family Walk or a half-mile Kids’ Fun Run. Registration begins at 6:30 a.m., with the 10K and 5K runs starting at 7:30 a.m. The Family Walk follows at 8:30 a.m., and the Kids’ Fun Run starts at 9 a.m. An activity area will be set up 8-11 a.m. and children are encouraged to bring their holiday wish lists, as Santa is expected to visit. You can register online to participate in the event.
Bridgeland surely making lots of efforts to keep their residents and people around the area busy with life in keeping them active and helping them to be better residents.
Out of Ordinary Home Renters
Lately I been seeing great influx of traffic from renters who are new to the home renting arena especially around Northwest Houston. There are lot of reasons to this new breed of people who like to rent home instead of renting apartments. One, there are more houses on the market for rent than ever because sellers like to rent instead of keeping the houses on sale for ever in this bad sellers market. Second, apartment rents have gone up many folds in recent years.
As per an article published by Newyork times, in August, rents paid for primary residences were up 0.4 percent compared with July, and 2 percent above a year earlier. The reason is simply a matter of increasing demand for rental properties.
(Credit – Newyork Times)
Third, in a better economy, the people who are now renting might be looking to buy a house. Even with interest rates at historic lows, lenders are making prospective borrowers go through ever more hoops to qualify for loans. Fourth, unemployment is around 9.2% and many people are insecure about their jobs so they do not want to commit to mortgages and trying to postpone their decision. Finally, many Gen X and Y’ers want to try out their home ownership dream by renting homes and see whether they can keep up with it. Also with more rental house on the market, they get to have more space for the same money compared to renting an apartment.
Renters – Get Prepared
Whether you are trying out or really renting to get more space for you money, there are lot of things home renters need to be aware before renting it. Here is a short list of things to think about,
1. Maintenance – In apartments, property manager would take care of any issue in a matter of mins by making a call. In case of homes, it depends on who manages the property. Whether it is given to property management or landloard itself. Also whether the lease agreement is drafted to have tenant pay for part or full cost of the repair.
2. Security Deposit – Sometimes you need to shell out high security deposit sometimes equal to 1 month rent or more compared to apartments it may be on the higher end for many renters.
3. Lawn Mowing – Many times lawn/yard needs to be taken care by the Tenant and watered property to keep with deed restrictions. That might not work for many renters.
4. Utilities – Sometimes you need pay high utility cost compared to apartments because of more rooms, watering lawn and so forth.
5. Keeping up – With more space comes more work to keep up with dust and dirt.
These are some of things you need to think about before renting a home. Otherwise renting a home has all perks from backyard for kids to play to formal dining space and much more to enjoy and have fun.
Seller/Owners/Landlords – Try it out
Landlords and Owners please don’t hesitate to try the new breed of home renters who are coming your way. If you are seller,hestiating to rent while you are trying to sale the house, think about rental income better than keeping the house in this rough market for so long. It might help to rent for a year or two and put it back when the market gets better.
If you been renting, try to help out people who suffered foreclosures and bankruptcy because of job loss in the tough economical conditions. If they have good background and decent credit before things fall apart, I would surely consider to give them home and help them out.
In conclusion, it is a good rental market for both renters and landlords. Just work together to help out each other and help the economy as well.
Sellers/Buyers, don’t hesitate to try out something new…
Early this month I closed 2 condo deals back to back in two fridays. It was great to start a month like this one. Actually I wasn’t really expecting these deals to happen. Meaning, I wasn’t working with the client or something for months. It just came to me to start with from nowhere a month ago. On the day when we got our new van delivered, I got a call from a person who told me that he found me over the internet. He asked to help him out listing his property at Clearlake. I was so occupied with our new Honda Odyssey delivered by the delearship, I decided to call him back later so I can talk to him more in detail.
I called him after few hours and talk to him about his willingness to work with me. He said, he came across my name and profile when he was searching for a smart, honest realtor who can take this right on and roll with it. His google criteria somehow pulled my website and he get to learn about me and my background. He was so impressed, he decided to call me up and ask to list his property. He mentioned that he actually approached few realtors earlier in that area from reputed companies but nobody bothered to take it since it is condo property. In this current economy, selling a condo is not easy one when single families are selling for cheap. But they didn’t realize it all depends on the location. Clearlake is a vibrant community with college grads going to UH of Clearlake.
At first I never thought I would work with him but finally ended up listing his property. Within few weeks, we got our first offer and sold for that buyer within a month and half. From this transaction, I took away couple of strong messages/lessons. Let me phrase them from the perspective of both realtor and consumer.
For Realtors
During the conversation, he also mentioned he wanted to buy a new home near Spring area. So its kinda of a two deal from one customer but I still hesitated to take the listing. Because it is going to be a long drive from my Northwest Houston, around 70 miles two way. I know many realtors drive to very far to get their client but I set my mind not to do it and wanted to specialize in my area. I also didn’t want to take just for the sake of getting a my first listing and worried whether I will be able to give proper service. I discussed with him about my limitations and he didn’t have any issues. He is a very educated consumer and he already prepared the condo for showing. He was all ready to work together to make this deal happen. Still I didn’t say YES immediately, I took my time to make my decision. It was my first listing ever and also someone came out of their way from nowhere finding me over the internet and giving business. That rarely happens in this economy and especially in realtor business. For those reasons, I decided to take it on and plan to deliver my service as best I could within the set expectation.
After I took on the listing, I immediately remembered my coworker who lives in that area who was looking for investment property. I called him and talked about it. I sent him the listing info after I listed it. He didn’t buy it but I ended up being a buyer agent for him for another condo in the next subdivision. Because I contacted him for my condo, he ended buying a condo and used me as buyers agent. That’s why I got 2 condo deals closed back to back.
1. I learned that any listing is worth your time whether it is small or big. Even if you don’t get to sell it after trying, you will really learn lot from it.
2. You will surely get some leads out of the listing which you can take on and get more clients.
3. Don’t say NO just because you are not specialized in that area. If the client is willing to help you and you are promised to put your effort, go for it and try it out.
4. Spend valuable time building your online reputation by blogging and interacting with clients and co-realtors in facebook or linked-in. It helps when client searches for a good realtor.
5. Finally, Don’t underestimate a client. In this internet era, every customer knows something about the market and they are sometimes more educated than us. Don’t try to be over smart, just do your part and help them out.
For Buyer/Sellers
As a consumer, I really appauled my client who found me over the internet and gave me a chance to work with me. He trusted me and my hard working capacity. He trusted me over experiened vetern realtors and I was able to deliver almost upto his expectation and got 4 out of 5 rating. Thank you Jonathan. For buyers/sellers out there, here is what I got to say,
1. Don’t just go for experiened realtors, just look for Smart realtors who know what they do and try out newbies. They can bring fresh ideas to you and help you find what you wanted.
2. Don’t look for realtor only in your area. If you are in Clearlake, you can try realtors in Northwest Houston. In this age, anybody can do anything sitting from anywhere. I know it helps to find someone within your area but at the same time out of area realtors can do magic as well.
3. Always search on the internet about realtors whom you are planning to work with. Online reputation can really help filter out and find good, trustworthy, smart and honest realtor to work for you.
I always like to share my lessons which I learnt from my experience so others can learn from it. If you got something out of it, I am happy and do share them to others.
