Market Overview

Builder Programs Ease Stress for Home Buyers

Ollin Toler, vice president of the homes division of Gumenick Properties, stands near the Grayson Hill town houses.

Some very creative incentives are being offered by Richmondarea builders as they fi nd ways to weather the current recession in the home-building market.

Savvy builders are offering different ways to attract buyers with a variety of enticing incentives that make the process inviting and easy.

Orleans Homebuilders' Resale Assistance Program helps buyers who need to sell their existing homes in order to buy an Orleans home. The free, three-part program provides buyers with decorators, landscapers and handymen to help get their existing homes ready to sell.

"In this market with so much competition, a home must be in pristine condition to sell," said Betty O'Neill, spokeswoman for Orleans Homebuilders.

"We will send a decorator to their house at no cost to do an evaluation of what needs to be done. We also have a landscaper who at no charge will evaluate the property in terms of the yard and [determine] if it needs to be spruced up."

The third part is the use of a handyman to come in and do "punch list" items around the house.

The next step

If buyers want to take it a step further and hire the landscaper or decorator for additional services they can do so at a discounted price.

Interior Designer Priscilla George can help with furniture rearranging, staging or changing paint colors. Landscaper Jeff Taylor can help with cleaning up, planting beds, putting in mulch, and adding new or pruning existing plants.

An Orleans' handyman can do small repairs.

"We just want to offer help to the buyer who may be hesitant because they have not sold their existing home yet," O'Neill said.

Stress-free selling

No Worries is the name of another program offered by Gumenick Properties.

"It is stressful to put a home on the market and purchase a new home. So what we decided to do was put together a program that takes out a lot of the worry about selling a home and buying a home," said Ollin Toler, vice president of home building for Gumenick Properties.

Under the No Worries program, Gumenick will pay the homeowner's mortgage for the fi rst six months, pay two percent of his closing costs and pay his homeowners association dues for the fi rst year.

For a limited time under the company's Be Moved promotion, Gumenick will also pair the homeowner with a Realtor from Long & Foster to help sell the home.

Gumenick will also give the homeowner $6,500 worth of moving services from Door to Door Solutions. This includes a professional stager who can recommend how to present the home, plus the services of packing, moving, unpacking, setting up the new home and cleaning the old home after the move.

Homeowners also get eight hours of punch list services from a Gumenick professional and 10 hours of design consultation from Leslie Stevens' Design.

"It is literally no worries," Toler said. "We want the message to get out there that it is a good time to buy. We are trying to offer assistance to those who want to sell a home and buy one of ours."

Easy purchasing

Cindy Jez, manager of the new homes division of Long & Foster Real Estate Inc., said builders want to make the process easy for buyers.

"From a new construction standpoint, the builders are really sincere in wanting to make the transaction as smooth as possible and create a great value for the purchaser," she said.

Terry Gates, vice president of Citizens and Farmers Bank, said buyers can obtain good fi nancing deals.

"There are some tremendous values not only from a purchaser's standpoint but how you can fi nance," Gates said.

"It is unprecedented as far as what you can get for your dollar. As far as purchasers, I have seen interest rate specials from regional and national home builders from 4.5 percent and even as low as 3.99 percent. On the construction loan end, we are starting to make available to some of our builders the 4.5 percent to 5 percent [rates]."

Waiting for turnaround

Guy Lowry, president of G.R. Lowry Inc., is in a holding pattern with his custom-home building company, cutting back on expenses and waiting for the turnaround.

Lowry, who typically builds houses in the $700,000-to-$1.5 million range and custom homes upward from there, said that while business is the slowest he has ever seen in his building career, it means it is also the best time to buy.

"I do not do a whole lot of spec homes or buy several lots at once, so it is easier for me to survive than some others," said Lowry, who said he saw this coming several years ago and started preparing fi nancially for the slowdown.

His gold-winning Parade of Homes house in Queens Grant in River Downs in Chesterfi eld County is the only spec house he built in 2008 and the only house he has for sale.

Gates says most builders are trying to retain house prices by offering incentives rather than dropping prices, which would create an impact on their product later.

"If you decide to let a house go for a lot less than it is worth, that appraisal goes in the system and infl uences the prices of the houses in that neighborhood. You have to think of what that is going to do to future sales," he said.

"If you have the ability to buy and do not have a house to sell, it is probably the best time to purchase one of these new homes. I do not think I have ever seen rates this low, and I have been in this since the late 1980s."

"It is the strongest buyer's market that I have ever seen in the Richmond area," added Jez. "Affordability has never been greater; interest rates have never been lower; and there is available inventory with all the features buyers want.

"And the building industry makes up a lot of companies that represent a great part of the Richmond economy and we need to support Richmond," said Jez.