HYBRID Dug Today and More
Anyone who has been reading my blog has likely seen the earliest writings of a few moths ago when I explained my HYBRID Ranch concept. If you have no idea what I am writing about, please go back to my first postings. It is a very exciting project and I am thrilled to see it finally coming out of the ground (or to be more exact, going into the ground). It is going to be the centerpiece of our new set of models we are building in Reflection’s Village in Richfield.
This home has been a long time in the designing and tweaking phase and Reflection’s Village is just the place to showcase this latest example of Miracle innovations. I think of Reflection’s Village as a great “experiment” to be a modern development with a look of the older villages of the early 1900’s to 1940 era.
This concept was originally a vision of one man who would later find the financial crunch of just a few years ago just too much to allow him to steer the project. After the long, hard community approval process of Richfield, the project stopped and looked for an investor to buy the project. An investor group was eventually formed and many millions later, Reflections is again on the move but with a slightly different set of guidelines. The important aspect of this being a micro-community with shops, a park, a fishing pond, a swimming pool clubhouse, and lots of walking trails and side walks, is still intact. The original insistence of every home being a certain Victorian-styled , pre-approved motif, is gone in favor of a more diverse style of homes. The Milwaukee Metropolitan Builder’s Association has approved this unique development to be an official site for the big August Parade Of Homes. There are two other sites, one in Pewaukee and one in Franklin, but (while both are first class developments in their own rights) neither has the charm and unusual aspects of this promising concept of being a “Walkable Hamlet”.
As for my involvement, I and my crew have designed 3 homes which will be a part of Reflection’s Village, and a 4th home which will technically NOT be inside the development , but WILL be directly at the entrance into Reflection’s, just across the street on highway 175(Appleton Avenue). If you wish to drive-by, it is quite easy to find. Just take Highway 45 north past Germantown and take the Holy Hill Road exit, heading West. When you go about two or three blocks, you see a Dairy Queen and a school. Turn left(South) at that corner and in 2 blocks, you will see Reflection’s on the left(East).
Presently, the Village of Richfield will not allow any permits to be taken except for Parade lots until the development’s pump house is built and running. The general prices for these lot/home packages will be in the $400 to $500,000 . The lots are seemingly expensive until you realize the lots include the sewer community mound systems in the price. Frankly, the VERY high architectural standards are pushing the prices substantially upward. On the other hand, I truly believe that these very high standards are the key element to this development working.
While two of my homes will likely be kept as longer-term models(mostly due to the higher amenities and price tags that these homes will carry, not because I am interested in “collecting” long-term homes), the other two homes I am building are not only going to be fun and stunningly beautiful masterpeices(if I do say so myself), I also intend these homes to be the best values in the development with price tags (yet undetermined as of this time) probably near the $375,000 to $415,000 area. For this life style, anyone who wants to reserve one of these special homes knows to call us…soon.
ON ANOTHER PAST SUBJECT…
I have been telling you folks about the solar powered new home which is right next door to one of our models. It has been reported by one of my staffers that this home now may have an accepted offer on it. If this is true, I congratulate the new buyers and think the price was just SO RIGHT and it was a great , reduced buy. As I expressed, the original price was closer to $300,000. The home sat on the market nearly a year and was eventually reduced to the very low $200,000’s. If you are thinking going “green” in building a new home, be careful. VERY CAREFUL, not to go extreme green.
You and I may, or may not ,think the price for things like solar panels, and triple-pane windows, and foam insulated walls, and Geo-thermal, and on and on are great investments. The biggest issue standing in the way of making these ideas all work is the bank’s appraisals. We have seen several solar panel homes simply cost more to build than the bank is willing to lend. The appraisers do not have enough comparables to assess the homes to the kind of money needed , so if you really want to go ultra-green, get ready to bring extra ( I am resisting saying extra green)money to the table to make the loan work since you will likely need to subsidize the bank loan for the home yourself . We just had a few cases of folks who wanted nothing more than to add some (not all) of these green items to their dream homes and found themselves as much as $40,000 short of the home’s contracted price.
I am taking photos of the Reflection’s Village homes while they are being built, and hope to share them with you each week. I did go to Chicago a few days ago to the huge National Kitchen and Bath show. Perhaps next time I can share some news on this show and what I saw. I was only there a half of a day but came away with a stuffed bag of good ideas.
Blessings,
Tom Higntie
Thanks for so many of you coming out to see me at this past weekend’s opening of the MBA Spring Tour Of Homes. Remember, we are open this coming Thursday night at Milwaukee, Jackson, and Monterey, form 6 to 8 at night.
