As you drive down the road, you see them. We all see them. Feather flags waving in the breeze, beckoning us to come in and view the new model homes. This week we decided to get the details on Express Homes.
Express Homes has intrigued us for a while. Their homes seemed to go up rather quickly. And frankly, that just scared us. As real estate agents and as consumers, that raised a red flag of warning. Our first instinct is to think that quality would be compromised. So, we decided to take a deeper look.
Express Homes is the beginning tier of homes of the four tiers offered by DR Horton. In this tier, the company has decided to keep it simple. By doing so, they can build your new home in 60 days! How? It’s actually very simple. They offer a limited number of floor plans (in this community it was seven) and you only have three choices to make.
- You choose the floor plan that best suits your family.
- You choose between the different elevations offered
- You choose the cabinet colors.
- That’s it. End of story.
The cabinet color choices are Light, Medium, and Dark. It’s that simple. The designers have done the work for you. They have already selected the coordinating formica counter tops, carpet and tile colors. So, you in essence choose a package. And the pricing includes all of the appliances including refrigerator. Granite isn’t an option. Cabinet pulls aren’t an option. Upgraded cabinetry isn’t an option. Tile throughout isn’t an option. There are no options. If upgrades are an important of your purchase, they will happily transition you to the next tier of DR Horton in a nearby neighborhood.
Throughout our Model Home tour, we were pleased to see that the standard fixtures were quality recognized name brands. DR Horton, as one of the largest builders in the US, has purchasing power. They are able to purchase in enormous quantity getting bulk pricing. So, they pass the savings on to the consumer. Additionally, DR Horton has the capital to keep up with not only the demand of the consumer, but the supply needed for the immediate purchase. They build two times the number of the average number sold. So, if the average is 3 per month, they build 9 to ensure there is inventory for those who need to purchase a spec home.
Am we completely sold on them, not yet. But, we are more than willing to give them a chance. This division of the company is fairly new and their longevity in the market has yet to be seen. We appreciate that they saw a need for the consumer and have been able to open doors for those who were having a hard time.
Millions of bargain-basement priced homes flooded the market after the housing crash, but the vast majority were swallowed up by all-cash investors, who rehabbed the homes as rentals. That left regular buyers out in the cold. Investor competition for distressed homes pushed prices up quickly in the hardest hit markets, adding yet another barrier to entry for lower-income or first-time buyers, who largely depend on credit. This is what prompted the creation of Express Homes.
“We wouldn’t be getting into the Express brand if we didn’t feel like that that was the next segment of the business to recover,” D.R. Horton, CEO Donald Tomnitz said during the company’s April quarterly conference call. As home prices have risen the past two years, first-time buyers have been priced out of the market, Tomnitz said. With Express Homes, the company hopes to convert young adults who are living with their parents and renters into home owners.
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