With the housing market in a slump, many companies seek new and different ways to lure customers. Builders such as Buena Vista Custom Homes and The Ryland Group offer incentives and slash prices to attract interest. West Coast developer SunCal Cos. hopes its grassroots music talent program will keep it in tune with customers' evolving needs.
Buena Vista Custom Homes, the 7th largest home builder in the Portland market by closings, has partnered with JPMorgan Chase to create a new financing program that allows potential home buyers to own one of its homes and pay less than one third of the monthly mortgage payment. Buena Vista will pay the remaining two thirds of the payment for two years.
Caruso Homes CEO Jeffrey V. Caruso knew he had a powerful secret sales weapon holed up in its Symphony Village community in Centreville, Md., he just didn't know how powerful, until recently.
The Home Depot and Homestar Builders–a division of the Lake City, Texas?based factory-built housing manufacturer American Homestar Corp.–are working together to respond to the affordable housing crisis that has been plaguing New Orleans and several other Gulf Coast communities since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
This story has all the trappings of a fairy tale. It begins with a promise by a big builder. In the middle, a man of limited means empties his wallet of its last $5 to buy his 9-year-old daughter a sliver of hope to tuck beneath her pillow at night to wish on. And, in the end, the little girl's dream comes true despite the odds, making the builder's travails seem, in retrospect, more than worthwhile.
