Written By: Tyrone, President and Co-Owner of Heritage Homes
We have great news to share with you! Last week, Congress voted to restore loan limits and the maximum cap for Federal Housing Authority (FHA) loans. Their action reinstates the loan limit of 125 percent of area median price, up to $729,750. Higher loan limits will make mortgages more accessible—in fact, nearly two-thirds of buyers who will be helped by the loan limits extension have income below $100,000.
Check out this link for more information: http://bit.ly/loanstheskysthelimit
At Heritage Homes, we know you can’t put a price on protecting your family. Now, through December 20, 2011, we’re including our Safe & Secure Package – a home security system – with each Heritage Homes new home purchase made. Consider it our gift to you this holiday season!
Written By: Nicole, Customer Care Manager at Heritage Homes
When my girls were younger and I was preparing Thanksgiving dinner, they were always at my ankles and/or needing my attention elsewhere in the house than in the kitchen where I needed to be. As they got older, I decided that I needed to include them in the kitchen and preparing for the family to arrive for dinner.
Since the main course of the turkey goes in so early, I decided to get the girls involved in the kitchen and start our own memories of Thanksgiving in the kitchen.
I did some research on the internet and a great magazine to help you and your kids start some family traditions is Family Fun. The November 2003 issue of Family Fun is where we received the ideas to start the traditions that we now have each Thanksgiving Day.
Besides helping getting everything ready for the baking of the pies, chopping of the items for the stuffing, etc, first on their list is to get the place cards ready for each person coming to dinner that year. They go through my “extra” pictures of the year, and/or print them off from my camera and cut the heads out of the picture of everyone who is attending. They then glue the cut outs on folded place card. Then each person is decorated as either a pilgrim with a black construction paper cut to be a pilgrim hat and glued to the top of their head or yellow and orange paper cut out to resemble turkey feathers and glued around the photo to resemble a turkey. The cards are then placed at the table for where everyone is to sit and this always gets some laughs started.
Next, we make cupcakes and decorate them with candy corn on top to make it look like a turkey. To make eating the cupcakes that much more exciting….we hide (1) quarter in (4) of the cupcakes. Whomever the lucky guest is that gets the quarter, gets a special prize from my daughters (a goodie bag of caramel popcorn with candy corn mixed in) to make for a festive treat bag to take home.
Edible table/plate décor that they love to help with is the “pilgrim hats”. The making of this usually causes a lot of chocolate everywhere in the kitchen, but better yet, it is great to hear the giggles from the girls as they have fun making the hats. It is as simple as a fudge stripe cookie, large marshmallow dipped into a chocolate coating and then placed on top of the cookie and complete it with a making a box on the marshmallow with white icing – completing the look of the hat. They then place two of these on each plate on the table…..giving the table some spark and a fun snack for people to nibble on before the turkey arrives…..who said you cannot have dessert first?! Happy Thanksgiving!
Written By: Eric, New Home Designer at Heritage Homes
Part of the Heritage Homes process is the Design Meeting. The Design Meeting is a meeting between the future homeowners and the New Home Designer. It is a time for the homeowners to talk about their wants and needs and for the designer, myself, to design the house specifically around them. I take into account the lifestyle and dynamic of the family and give them ideas that they hadn’t previously thought about. For example, if working with a family with 3 kids and a busy lifestyle, I might suggest adding a drop-zone and lockers to organize backpacks, coats, or boots, to make life just a little easier for Mom. I might also suggest rearrange rooms to allow for walk-in closets or additional storage. For the guy with everything and nowhere to put it, I would suggest adding to the garage to fit the work bench or motorcycle or lawnmower, and still allow for plenty of room to park vehicles. For the avid entertainers, I can situate the kitchen to allow for added seating or finish the lower level with enough room to watch the big game or movie. Have you always wanted a bigger pantry or a decked-out bathroom, or an area that could be a sunroom, but over the Thanksgiving holiday, when you have 20 people in your house, it also works as an addition to the dining room. Whatever ideas you may have, I can usually find a way to make it work. We don’t build a house and put you in it; we build a house around you.
I can then take these ideas, and I can show you your home in 3D so that it can be visualized before its even built. Most people I show this to are awed by the fact that they can virtually walk into and though their new home. I can show an overview of each floor, show it from the outside at any angle, or even from a single room at a time. I have seen many times where during the walk-through of their homes for the first time, even in the virtual sense, gives a family the feeling of pride in their home and a reassurance that Heritage Homes will not only build what they had in mind, but even better.
Written By: Nathan, Project Manager at Heritage Homes
When it comes to storage space in your garage, we can always use more. It doesn’t matter if you have a two stall garage that barely fits your vehicles or if you have monster garage that is bigger than an airplane hangar. You can always use more. Ultimately, the goal is to get your vehicle right inside the garage door without the door hitting your car. There are many products that help you while pulling into your garage stall. There is the stop light that you can install at the front of your garage that has a sensor that will notify you when your car is in far enough in and the red light will trigger. You can also put rubber stoppers down on the floor and when you reach them, you know it time to stop. Then there is the good old tennis ball trick. You run a string through a tennis ball and hang it from the rafters while your car is sitting where you want it in your garage.
There are pros and cons to all of these, the stop light is expensive, the rubber stoppers move around and are always in the way when you are working in your garage, and the tennis ball is hanging there while you are working. This brings me to the home tip of the month. It takes the tennis ball idea one step further. It is a tennis ball on a pulley system. The first step is to attach a string to the strut at the top of the garage door. Then install two eyelets into the ceiling where the tennis ball will go up and down on the pulley. All of these materials can be purchased at a hardware store. That means when your garage door is up, the tennis ball will be hanging there to guide you into your parking space and when the door is down, the tennis ball is out of your way. This system will allow you to park in just to the right spot and open up some much needed storage space in your garage, no matter how much space you have to start with.
Written By: Megan, Marketing Director at Heritage Homes
It’s 3:23 pm and if you’ve already planted more virtual crops on Facebook than you’ve done actual business today, it might be time to give yourself a swift kick in the you know where.
Not feeling motivated? Wishing the hours of the day away? Take a good look at the environment you are working in. Are your coworkers supportive? Do you have what you need to be creative and efficient? When was the last time you actually laughed or how often do you joke around in the office?
Company culture is more than just having a secret Santa game during the holidays. It’s a feeling created by establishing a caring and respectful workplace that welcomes new ideas, embraces diversity and genuinely caring about its’ people. It stems much deeper than just working with fun and interesting co-workers. Such as having an “open door” policy so you feel comfortable going to your boss or manager for questions, concerns or new ideas. It’s about showing one another respect by not gossiping and giving out warm fuzzies instead of cold pricklies. (Come on- you guys remember that from grade school, right?)
Not everybody is great at self motivation so allowing your employees some freedom to create a work space and environment that is positive and gives them the boost they need to get through a never-ending proposal draft or to come up with that great tagline for a new product launch, is crucial for performance and efficiency.
We spend almost 2,000 hours a year working which is approximately 28 Kardashians. That’s a lot. So make the most of it! Host team building exercises, plan a chili cook-off, get an interoffice softball team going or just have your 4 o’clock Friday meeting outside on the patio for a change. Talent retention doesn’t just happen, it takes work. Treat your work relationship like a spouse. Try new things to keep it fresh and just because you don’t “like” them right now doesn’t mean you don’t love them. Everyone has bad days and you will most likely never enjoy every last detail of your job but if there’s good company culture and positive work environment those are just small bumps that are hardly noticed.
At Heritage Homes we’ve worked diligently to create a strong company culture and it all starts from the top. Our CEO just won first place in the chili cook-off and our President continues to bring us all together once a week to discuss our highlight reels. You need to love what you do and where you do it. Life’s too short not to.
Written By: Tyrone, President and Co-Owner of Heritage Homes
Don’t let the negative press deter you from one of life’s greatest joys. The Fargo Moorhead area is welcoming and when you buy a house, you become a part of that neighborhood and community. You get to know you neighbors and build lasting relationships with them. Imagine being part of a neighborhood where you chat outside when you see people coming and going, your children playing together, becoming involved in block parties, and watching over one another.
If you’ve been on the fence about homeownership, now is a great time to take the leap with interest rates being at all time lows and homes being priced! Start building your equity while living the American Dream!!!
Heritage Homes would love to talk to you about how we can make that happen!
Take a look at five short and sweet reasons that homeownership is great by reading this article written by Carla Hill of Realty Times!
Written By: Nathan, Project Manager at Heritage Homes
With the leaves falling off of the trees, deer hunting opening (unofficial holiday on North Dakota and Minnesota), and the geese flying south, it only means one thing. WINTER. Yes, I know that is a swear word in many people’s vocabulary coming off of the summer months. But these are also good reminders for us to do a couple of household maintenance items to get you through the winter season with little to no issues. The first winter maintenance tip is to make sure that your hoses are disconnected from the exterior spigots. New spigots are frost free but with our harsh winters around here, it is still a safe bet to disconnect them through the winter so they do not freeze and cause a pipe to burst. The other advantage is there are no hoses lying around for the winter. I was reading an article in Handyman Magazine the other day and a helpful neighbor decided that he was going to help out. While snow blowing a sidewalk at his neighbors, he got a hose caught in the snow blower. Not only did it take him over an hour to get the hose out of the snow blower, he had to pay for the flooded basement from a broken pipe caused by the hose pulling a pipe apart.
Tip #2 is to make sure that your sprinkler system is blown out. If you have not done this, make sure to get someone over to your house as soon as you can to get the pipes blown out. This will help prevent broken pipes in the spring which could lead to expensive repair bills.
Tip #3 is to get your furnace checked out by a professional. They will come in and make sure that your furnace is running at its maximum efficiency. They will also do annual maintenance on the furnace. Just like your car, your furnace requires some annual maintenance. A little maintenance now could prevent the call in the middle of the night that your furnace is not running.
Also, after a snow storm, make sure that your furnace exhaust pipe is clear of all snow. The new high efficient furnaces will not run if they cannot exhaust to the outside. This is a safety factor to prevent carbon monoxide from entering into your house.
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