What should you expect with the building process with Drees homes and what does it look like to design and choose all those fun finishes for your house? I’m here at Drees homes main headquarters in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. And we’re gonna go take a look at their design center. Let’s check it out. My name is Eric Sztanyo from Keller Williams Realty and team Sztanyo.com, where we are helping you find your home and strengthen your family. And today Sztanyo clanyo, I’m in the Sztanyo vanyo again, you know, I got to ta keep doing that because I’ve got a weird name and I’ve got to help you guys understand how to say it. And I actually just closed on a house with some of you guys, some of my YouTube subscribers who found me on YouTube and bought a brand new house in Hebrew, Kentucky. Beautiful, gorgeous Drees home. We just closed. We just signed the paperworks. And so I thought, Hey, I’ve done a lot of videos on Fisher homes. I actually was showing some properties this week and somebody was like “Oh, I know you from YouTube. You’re the Fisher guy. I’m like “No, not necessarily”😄
I guess I’ve done a lot of videos with Fisher, but I should also do some with Drees homes. So we’re here at the designs center and I wanted to talk a little bit about their process and what it looks like going through their design center.
Who is Drees Homes and What To Expect in Buying Their New Construction Homes
So Drees homes was founded in 1928. They’ve been around for 90 years. They’re family owned and operated business. And if you know anything about me, you know, I’m a dad of five kids. And the thought of working with my kids in the future is super appealing for me. And so I love the fact that they’re a family owned and operated business here in the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky area. They’ve extended out to other regions as well, but they started here in Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky. So today I asked for a little bit of paperwork from the girl working at the desk and she gave me what’s called the Drees homes path, which is their guide to establishing clear communication, setting the right expectations and helping you understand our home building process from start to finish. And I will say, with the clients that we just close with, they had high reviews and higher marks for the communication process throughout. So good job Drees homes on that.
In terms of the steps here, you can see there’s the plan phase. There’s the finance phase, the design build and own. We’re looking particularly at the design phase since we’re here at the design center. So let’s check that up.
I wanted to make a quick note here of what their purchase agreement says because at the purchase agreement, let me just read this. You’re gonna get a clear understanding of your purchase. What’s included in the base pricing and the options available. We recently did a Fisher home called “From lot to the dotted line” where we talk of about the base pricing and how much you might expect to go on top of that, In terms of your pricing. Here with Drees homes, kind of similar process, you’re gonna determine your plan-based options and include that in the purchase paperwork. The purchase is not final until the contract has been reviewed, approved and Ratified by Drees homes.
And then once your purchase agreement is approved, the job is released to architecture, engineering and permitting. Thus, plan-based changes are no longer allowed. So I actually just asked that question inside because Fisher just made a switch on this, where you had that first purchase agreement meeting with the sales rep, maybe at the Fisher model home and same here with Drees homes. You’re figuring out your plan-based options and you review the contract and you know, your base pricing. Then you come here to the design center to choose your designs with Drees homes. I asked “Hey, can you make changes here to your base options at the design center?” And they told me, “No, you can’t. Those are locked in because again, we’ve released that to our architecture, engineering permitting and so forth.” And Fisher just made a change on that. Where at the design center, when you have that meeting, you can actually go back and change some of your base options. That was new to me. I think that’s a new plan. They just implemented where you have a little bit more flexibility there. Drees homes do not have that at least at this time.
So in terms of the design center meeting says the design center here is gonna contact you within 14 days after your purchase agreement is complete. You’re gonna have a virtual welcome session along with your selection session. That’s where you actually get to schedule time to come here to the design center. The design center business hours are 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Monday through Friday, the latest selection appointments start at 3:00 PM. Why is that? So if they’re open till six, but they don’t start till three means it’s gonna take a couple hours for you to choose all the different things that are here. There’s a lot to choose from. So buckle in. So at the design center, you get to pick your carpet and your flooring and your cabinets and your cabinet hardware and your kitchen and your counters and your appliances and the lighting. It goes on and on and on, right? There’s so many things to choose, your bath faucets, your kitchen faucets, your brick on the outside of the house, the color of your vinyl, all the different things, your doors, your exterior lighting.
So it’s fun. It can get overwhelming, but it’s also really fun. And they have design, you know, kind of specialists here who are gonna coach you along. So if you’re like me and you don’t know how to design anything. I’m good at YouTube, right? I’m not good at the design. So don’t hire me to do your design. I hire designers for that. But they’ll have people here to kind of coach you through that. So if you get overwhelmed with it, you, you can just kind of ask, “I don’t know, what do I do?” And they’ll help you. But if you’re also very particular and you know exactly what you want, you can choose all those things here too. It’s kind of like which color of neutral do you want of our 37 options of neutral colors.You’re not gonna get too crazy on the color scheme and all that, but you do get to do lots of fun options here.
Once that’s done, once you’ve chosen all your selections, it’s onto the build phase and then onto the own phase. In terms of moving on in the process, you’re gonna be introduced to probably a number of different and people than we’re your original sales rep. There’s your Drees homes team. You’re gonna have a market manager and your builder. They are your primary points of contact. After your contract signing, you’ll be introduced to your builder at the pre-construction meeting. Once construction begins, Drees homes is gonna guide you through the process with weekly communication. They’re gonna give you progress update. They’re gonna answer any of your questions and discuss any concerns they’re gonna coordinate schedules and any additional communication is welcome. They say, feel free to stop by in person, call us or send an email.
I can verify that with my clients who just close here today. They said, I stopped by the project regularly. I talked to them regularly. I have questions. And I watched this as your agent. They CC’d me in-on all that communication throughout the process. So I’m kind of watching everything. If there was an issue where I needed to get involved, I got involved. Otherwise I just kinda let the Drees homes team do their thing and was making sure that my client had everything they needed on their side. It brings me into another point. I know you guys are gonna get tired of this. I say in every video, but if you’re thinking of doing new cons and we talked about why there’s a lot of good reasons to do that now, when the inventory is so light on the market, but if you’re thinking of new construction, make sure you reach out to a buyer’s agent.
It doesn’t cost you anything to use an agent on your side. Who’s working with you, helping you with the details, helping you with the timelines, maybe asking some questions that you wouldn’t ask, who knows the neighborhood and the areas in the area well, maybe a little better than you might. Use the buyer’s agent because the builder, most builders in the areas, not all of them, they’re gonna carve out the commission for that buyer’s agent in their proforma. So it’s already built in, the builder’s gonna pay for the commission and you get representation from an agent on your side. So be sure to reach out to us or another agent that you wanna work with If you’re gonna go new construction. And make sure you do that before you go and have that threshold meeting, where you go to the model home and get registered, otherwise they might not want to include the agent in the process.
New homes are fun. Designs are fun. It’s fun to have everything from scratch, where you get to pick your colors and your design schemes and all that stuff. So Drees homes very similar to Fisher homes in terms of the process. You know, there’s some similarities. There both are really quality home builders here in the Northern Kentucky Cincinnati area. In fact, you’ll probably often see a lot of neighborhoods where they’re both building together. I know in triple crown, that has been the case in Union, Kentucky. I know in Arcadia, in Alexandria, Kentucky, that’s the case. And I know the same thing is on the Cincinnati side and many different neighborhoods as well. The two have a big footprint in the area and they’re both really good builders. So it’s just kind of look through the designs on both of them and see which ones you like better, but both are high quality solid builders here in the Cincinnati of Kentucky area.
Team Sztanyo! Your Trusted Guide in Buying New Construction Homes
So I wanted to give you guys a look into what that looks like with Drees homes. Hopefully in the near future, when I’m out in these different neighborhoods, I can do some tours of some of the different building developments that Drees homes has going on and looking at some of their model homes just like I’ve done with a lot of the Fisher homes. If you guys wanna see other builders as well, put it on the list, comment below, I’m doing all I can, I’m doing my best to bring you more and more content. If you haven’t already, be sure to Subscribe up to the channel, cuz we are bringing on a weekly basis.
Hopefully soon we can do more than a weekly basis, but we’re working on that. More content to you guys, all about real estate buying and selling in the Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati area. If you want team Sztanyo to work with you, reach out to me personally, my email is Eric.sztanyo@kw.com. Either myself or my assistant, someone on my team. Carrie’s gonna get back to you soon. Our team is growing and building here and if you’re an agent by the way, and you want to grow, you wanna get on a growing team, reach out because we’re growing and because of you guys, awesome team Clanyo, this thing continues to grow. We need some more awesome people on the team. So give us a shout guys. Thank you so much for watching this one. Sun is out, it’s turning into spring. Winter’s finally breaking. makes me very, very happy. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you so much. We’ll see you in the next one.