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Announcement: Changes coming to SpecHomes.com

September 29, 2009 By Spec Homes 1 Comment

If you have followed our site since the beginning you have shared our ups, downs, and in-betweens regarding the development of our new home marketing site: spechomes.com.

The past 6-12 months have been difficult for the home building industry, and for us too!

new homesEvery day I find stories online exemplifying the challenges that our industry and fellow home builders face, and because I look for it…

I also find hope… I believe that we are beginning to see a solid turn-around in the new home market.

Those of us who have made it this far have an arduous task ahead… changing, adapting, and essentially re-building our industry from the inside out.

People still need shelter – many prefer new homes over resales, but the approach to attract and retain our fellow Americans attention and trust will require a new type of effort.

Without giving the farm away, (I’ve done that before btw,) I’d like to share with you some of the “re-building” and adapting that we plan to implement here at spechomes.com.

Social media seems to all be the rage online these days, but without falling into wanderlust over the idea, here are some features that you might see upon re-launching:

  • WordPress has a fantastic code base nimble, yet strong enough to start any online social platform!

With the help of some of the most talented wordpress plugin developers we aim to deliver to you a multi-user blog network centered around the Spec Home Network.

More news will be posted on the site soon, follow our progress of our pre-launch development at:

http://twitter.com/lancesonka 

Thank you for your continued support, we look forward to continuing to help you exceed your online home marketing goals!

Filed Under: How-to, Marketing, Reviews Tagged With:

The Landings at Golden Isles….a new home community in Brunswick, Georgia.

September 19, 2009 By Spec Homes Leave a Comment

The Landings at Golden Isles is a community of 38 single-family home sites in Brunswick, Georgia.

homes brunswick ga - the landings at golden isles

The Golden Isles Investment Partners (owners Ron Sluder, Keith Ross and Doys Osteen) offer this community as both developer and builder.  The Landings at Golden Isles is an intimate community offering protective covenants, streetlights, underground utilities, county water and sewer as well as curb and gutter. The Landings is the place to be when you like to be close to everything – work, shopping, restaurants and countless other leisure and entertainment opportunities.  The Landing’s location is just minutes from Exit 38 and I-95 at the intersection of the Golden Isles Parkway and Highway 99.  These new homesare convenient to Coastal Pines Golf Course, the mall, water sports, theater, grocery shopping, restaurants and new schools in Brunswick, Georgia.

When you need the convenience of modern life right at your doorstep, but you prefer the privacy of a peaceful community cloistered by greenbelts, The Landings at Golden Isles will appeal.  Home designs range in size from approximately 1,700 to 2,500 square feet of living space plus 2 car garage and porches.  These homesinclude an array of outstanding features included with every home.  When you enter The Landings, you will immediately notice that the street appeal of these single-family homes is extraordinary with stucco exteriors, architectural shingles, beautifully fully landscaped lawns with sprinkler system and elegantly designed driveways and walkways made of brick pavers. 

house

Once inside the homes, each unique home offers elegant appointments including hardwood flooring, volume and vaulted ceiling in great rooms, formal dining rooms with pop up and trayed ceilings, oil rubbed bronze light and bathroom fixtures, custom cabinets throughout each home and granite kitchen counters.  Other standard interior appointments include fireplaces, ceilings fans in all bedrooms and great room, covered rear porches and more.  The owner’s retreats in each home offers tumbled stone walk-in showers, jetted garden tubs with tumbled stone surrounds, gentleman height vanities and cultured marble tops, walk-in closets and more.

inerior

Custom designed for the neighborhood, presently there are eight different home plan options priced starting in the $220,000′s.  Each home plans is designed to make optimal use of the living space.  Custom plans for The Landings at Golden Isles are designed by Golden Isles Investment Partner’s draftsman with changes to fit your lifestyle. 

Julie E. Chapman, REALTOR®, Broker
Chapman Realty
Brunswick, Georgia 31520
912-280-0088 Office
912-270-6767 Cell
Web: http://www.juliechapman.com
eMail: chapmanrealty@yahoo.com 

Filed Under: Marketing, Real Estate, new homes Tagged With:

Home Builder Advertising

August 27, 2009 By Spec Homes Leave a Comment

“Feature your Inventory Homes on SpecHomes.com and drive an overwhelming response from active home buyers on the internet!”

home builder advertisingA Featured SpecHomes.com listing will appear in some of the most prominent sections of the site as well as appearing highlighted in our inventory home search results. Your featured listing will get premium visibility and increase the audience for your ready to move spec homes. The more prospects that see your inventory homes, the better chance you have of finding a buyer.

What are the Key Benefits?

  • High Visibility. Featured Inventory Homes are highlighted in the Search and on other content pages. This increases the chance of your listings getting noticed by active and passive property seekers.
  • More Click-Through. Your listing will get more detailed views from Real Estate Professionals by being a featured listing on SpecHomes.com!
  • More Exposure. Call more attention to your inventory house listing, your organization, and your opportunities by going featured, and take advantage of extra spec home web traffic through our online distribution partners.

How Does SpecHomes.com Syndication Work?

“Behind the scenes, we distribute your listings via automated XML feeds to major internet classified and search engine destinations such as:

Google Base, Oodle, Vast, Backpage, Propsmart, Edgeio, Lycos, Zillow, Trulia, Local.com, FeedBurner, and many more…

(We also supply automated notification of new page contents to Yahoo, Google, & MSN daily!)

In order for your spec home inventory to appear as a featured SpecHomes.com listing, you must first submit your data via your easy to use account control panel. Once your spec home ad is live, it will be rotated throughout the site with other featured listings in your local region or area.

“Syndication is a term we use to define the most unique part of our service.”

Basically you create your spec home listings once on SpecHomes.com via our easy to use control panel, and we do all the heavy lifting behind the scenes of sending your classified listing information to other high traffic websites. So you can potentially have dozens of websites advertising your inventory all across the internet!

SpecHomes.com consistently appears on the first page of search results for hundreds of keywords and search terms related to:

Spec homes, inventory homes, home builder inventory, new home community, and home builder directory on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and many others as well!

These FREE Extra Features make you Local Internet Marketing Experts!

•         Create and submit new home community events relative to your new homes and communities for free to our online New Home Community Events Calendar – perfect for extra exposure online!

•         Find out what the competition is up to – sign up for free automated email alerts in your area! When another home builder posts a listing in your city, will send you a notification to check out their offerings.

And We Never…

•         Sell, Rent, or Share your confidential information!

•         Charge you for individual leads. Your listings = Your customers!

We want you to dominate your local marketing area on the internet and we provide you the latest tools available on the internet today to do just that.

Contact Us Today!

Filed Under: Home Builders, How-to, Marketing, Sales, Spec Homes Tagged With: ,

Grand Heritage – Bowen Family Homes

September 4, 2008 By Spec Homes Leave a Comment

GRAND HERITAGE – This resort style community offers a luxurious clubhouse, with a 300,000 gallon swimming center, state of the art fitness center, gaming rooms, computer labs, ballrooms, meeting rooms plus more!Convienent to Highway 30, George Bush Turnpike, Highway 78 and 380. Just minutes north of the brand new Firewheel outdoor mall and shopping center.This home has beautiful vaulted ceilings, nice back yard view that backs up to nice wooded area. Ceramic tile in all wet areas, granite,security system, sprinkler system and much much more.

Additional Details
  • Ceramic Tile
  • Fireplace
  • Full Sodded Yard
  • Granite Surface
    		•
  • Ready to Move In
  • Energy Star Certified
  • Landscaped
  • Sprinkler System
  • Swimming Pool
    		•

    $200,990.00
    3 Bed 2 Bath
    2,030 Bldg. Sq. Ft.
    302 Houston Street
    Lavon, TX 75166Schools Community

    View Property Website

    Seller Profile
     Bowen Family Homes @ Grand Heritage
    204 San Jacinto
    Lavon, TX 75166
    972.767.6464
    bowenfamilyhomes.grandheritage@gmail.com
    Filed Under: Home Builders, Listings, Marketing, Real Estate, Sales, Spec Homes, new homes Tagged With: ,

    Spec Home Solution

    January 7, 2008 By Spec Homes Leave a Comment

    CEO discusses new Spec Homes pricing strategy. 

    SpecHomes.com entered the Home Builder Internet Advertising scene with a great brand, and a new take on an established product offering. But a few months later, began feeling unsatisifed with the initial response received within the building industry.

    SpecHomes.com

    “It just wasn’t enough, we really wanted to make an impact.” Says Lance Sonka, developer of the Spec Home Building Network which distributes home builder inventory listings across the internet.

    “Spec Homes Inc. is a smaller company compared to some of the competing players in the new home internet advertising market. The feedback we got after launch was that we had a good product – but the customers were basically saying we are happy where we are at – with the competitor.”

    After conducting user research and reviewing internal test results, they changed their approach, and came up with a new way to meet their audience demands, Lance explains how…

    “We knew that Home Builders paid enormous sums of money each and every month to the “other guys” for basically the same service that we provided; and that the “other guys” depended on those exorbant fees to stay afloat financially.”

    “So we decided to offer the services of the Spec Home Building Network for FREE. It seems that our new pricing strategy solves both the Home Builder’s, and our competitor problem at the same time.”

    Filed Under: Finance, How-to, Marketing, Reviews, Sales, Spec Homes Tagged With: , ,

    Burning Your Spec Homes

    October 12, 2007 By Spec Homes Leave a Comment

    “Ever feel like burning your entire list of inventory homes?

    Well now you can… we’ll even help! SpecHomes.com now “burns” your spec homes to FeedBurner.com.”

    “FeedBurner is the leading provider of media distribution and audience engagement services for RSS feeds.

    FeedBurner also offers the largest feed and blog advertising network that brings together an unprecedented caliber of content aggregated from the worlds most recognized media companies (e.g. Wall Street Journal Online, Wired News, Ziff Davis), A-list bloggers and blog networks and individual publishers from around the world.”

    And now reaching their massive audience with your new inventory home information just became a no-brainer.

    “Each and every new home listing that you create and post on SpecHomes.com will automatically get syndicated, and available to their network of subscribers!”

    Here are some FeedBurner Fast Facts and Stats:

    According to Nielsen/NetRatings, FeedBurner is growing faster than MySpace and Digg with 385% traffic growth.

    Total feeds: 1,000,000+

    Number of publishers: 584,832

    Number of podcast and videocast feeds: 142,534

    Number of subscribers across all FeedBurner feeds: Too many to fit on this page…

    “All of this extra exposure can be yours at the few clicks of a mouse button!

    What are you waiting for? Get those spec house listings posted for FREE on SpecHomes.com!”

    Filed Under: How-to, Listings, Marketing, Real Estate, Reviews, Sales, Spec Homes, new homes Tagged With: , , ,

    Selling Spec Homes with Social Media

    September 28, 2007 By Spec Homes Leave a Comment

    Have you heard the term viral marketing?

    Chances are you have, but if you haven’t here is a good definition: Viral marketing is a term used to describe a message or information that spreads quickly, effectively, and contagiously through networks of friends, families, and third party relationships.

    • Quickly – the viral message is usually passed on effortlessly, as in email, websites, or by word of mouth.
    • Effective – the same message (whether broad or specific) usually reaches the intended recipient because it originated from a “trusted” source, and it’s effects can be measured.
    • Contagious – well, you get the idea…

    Something similar can said about our new housing economy that is developing in the United States.

    Information should be fluid (like water at room temperature,) yet the new home information received by the public is being put under abnormal and unbalanced scrutiny at the hand of media networks. Because of low ratings, and loss of participation in traditional mediums of advertising – news sources turn to doom, gloom and scandal to garner attention.

    While large media conglomerates are slowly trying to understand the new social media, they still revert to these old standards, even though they are rapidly losing effect. Instead of following money losing, failing business models – why not lead a following through the new medium of social information marketing?

    In your industry, market area, and section of the world – aren’t you the expert?

    Why not create your own media empire? Deliver your own message to your prospects.

    Today, home buyers are being “pressured” by a one-sided argument that now is not a good time to buy a new house. Try as you may to deliver the opposite message, currently you do not have enough credibility with the home buying prospects to change their mind or perception.

    Why? The message and information you provide is one sided to your benefit – and it shows! Every time home builders open their mouths, it is usually to blatently benefit themselves with the sale of a new home. Nobody wants to hear about you – they want to hear about things that interest them! 

    Traditional media outlets generate revenue through advertising (which the value or cost of said revenue is relative to the attention by which the message attracts.) Usually, the message recipient does not always relate the two because “the sale” is usually not a direct byproduct of following through with the action that the advertisement requested.

    Home Builders only generate revenue from the construction of homes, right?

    Not so fast! Let’s get back to your media empire…

    Today, cost effective web technology fused together with online communities, AKA “social media” allows any business – even home builders to create a dynamic, and compelling audience centered message that when delivered in a viral medium can nearly equal the effect of the traditional news outlets.

    Stop being a pawn in the media giants game of doom and gloom that is aiding the destruction of your business.

    Instead, take that budgeted money and start a conversation that new home prospects want to engage in! (And not one about yourself,) make it about them, and use social media to do it.

    Filed Under: How-to, Marketing, Reviews, Sales Tagged With: , , , ,

    About the SpecHomes.com Home Building Network

    August 11, 2007 By Spec Homes Leave a Comment

    SpecHomes.com is the best resource for Home Builder Sales Marketing, and related Home Building Industry Products and Services – period.

    Our online Home Building Network provides Home Builders and Residential Construction Industry counterparts an easy to implement, self-service, internet sales marketing and advertising solution.

    A Home Building Network Membership is perfect for Advertising:

    • Spec Homes, and Spec House Inventory
    • Residential Lots and Home Sites
    • Home Builders and Developers
    • Mortgage, Appraisal, Insurance Co.’s
    • Real Estate related products and services
    • and so much more…

    The enhanced technology we’ve incorporated into our subscription based website, is designed to get maximum exposure for our members; while providing a simple, cost effective, enjoyable user experience online.

    SpecHomes.com Guarantee:  If you can create and send an email online – you can advertise with our simple new home sales marketing system!

    Inquire about a personal site demonstration, or join the SpecHomes.com Home Building Network and start marketing your real estate product or service on the internet today!

    Filed Under: Home Building, How-to, Marketing, Real Estate, Reviews, Sales, Spec Homes, new homes Tagged With: , ,