From now until July 4, buyers can take advantage of our $7,500 “Use as You Choose” offer.  This money can be used for anything from closing costs and mortgage points* to pricing discounts or new home upgrades such as countertops, lighting and flooring at our Personal Selection Studio**.

This is an offer that you don’t want to miss. So, stop by a sales center today to find out why we’re a top Central Florida home builder.

For more information about our “Use as You Choose” offer, visit the Highland Homes website.

*Incentive money can be used towards mortgage points as applicable.

**The Personal Selection Studio is open by appointment only on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Below are some hurricane safety tips to help you protect yourself and your home.

Develop a family disaster plan: When the hurricane hits, where will you go, how will you get there and how will you care for your pets? The disaster plan will help you answer these and other questions.

Build a disaster supply kit: This should include everything your family will need for three days (as long as it may take disaster relief workers to reach you with supplies). Suggested items include water, food, medicine, important legal documents, clothing, pet supplies, flashlights, extra batteries and something to keep you entertained such as non-electronic games.

Once you have your plan and supply kit in place, then next thing you should do is make sure that your home was constructed by Central Florida home builder Highland Homes. Our homes are built to the latest building codes for hurricane safety and include the following features:

• Hurricane straps on the roof connections
• Windows meet current design pressures required by the Florida Building Code
• Shingles meet ASTM standards for wind resistance required by the Florida Building Code, and also often are covered by a longer warranty (25 or 30 years) than older shingles
• Stem wall foundation: Raises the home above ground level for less chance of water intrusion and creates a more stable foundation.
• Lot and driveway elevated to drain away from the home
• Reinforced concrete block construction
• Reinforced garage doors
• Specially engineered roof trusses
• Underground power lines

These are just some of the hurricane safety benefits of a new home versus an older home. Keep in mind that homes built prior to 1994 are especially at risk because the high wind building code was not standard at that time.

Make sure your family is safe this hurricane season. For more information, visit the Highland Homes website.

For more information about protecting your home, visit the following websites:

International Code Council

Florida Division of Emergency Management

Florida Department of Community Affairs

So, what makes Highland Homes the Florida new home value leader? Our commitment to providing affordable homes with prices starting in the low-$100,000s, a variety of finance options, our $99 Moves You In special offer, and a variety of single-family home floor plans to suit every buyer’s needs. Not to mention the experience that comes with constructing more than 12,000 new homes throughout the years, and the fact that we are the only locally based builder on Builder Magazine’s Top 100 Builders of 2010.

But don’t take our word for it. Come see for yourself what makes our homes so special. We construct Lakeland, Winter Haven, Orlando, Tampa and Davenport new homes, so you’re sure to find the perfect home in the perfect location.

For more information about our history or homes, visit the Highland Homes website.

Builder Magazine annually ranks homebuilders based on their closings, and we were recognized for our 247 closings in 2010 and made the list right at the #100 spot. For a local builder who builds in just six counties, being ranked against national companies who build homes throughout the United States, it is quite an honor to make the list. For more information about the Top 100 Builders of 2010, visit the Builder Magazine website.

Come see for yourself what makes Highland Homes one of the top homebuilders in the country. Our affordable pricing, variety of finance options, and $99 Moves You In special offer make purchasing a home affordable to Central Florida homebuyers. Our beautiful, single-family homes feature three to five bedrooms and span in size from 1,210 to 2,827 square feet. Couple that with the hundreds of options available for you to design your home, and we have the perfect home for first-time or move-up buyers.

The perfect home at an affordable payment – that’s a winning combination

For more information, visit the Highland Homes website.

Now, the St. Petersburg Times has more positive news: “Florida home sales surge in March,” showing that Florida’s housing market continues to distance itself from the negative effects of the recent market crash.

Are you ready to return to the housing market? We can make your transition into a new home easy and affordable. We offer more than 30 floor plans that can be upgraded with the finishes and features that you love.

Plus, now is a great time to buy a Highland Home. Professionals, retirees and veterans of the healthcare and education industries and the police and armed forces still have time to take advantage of our Heroes month offer of $3,000 in free upgrades for the Orlando, Tampa or Lakeland homes purchased in May.

We are also offering special incentives at Wind Meadows in Bartow to celebrate the move of Highland Homes sales veteran Doug Pike to this wonderful community. So, visit a sales center today to learn how you can take advantage

For more information about Highland Homes, visit our website.

Utility and Value: New home shoppers are searching for a value, not extra frills. Instead of looking at a home as an investment to be sold in a year, buyers want real estate that they will live in for an extended period of time. At Highland Homes, we offer affordable homes priced from the low-$100,000s with only $99 out-of-pocket. With more than 30 floor plans to choose from, you’re sure to find the life-long home of your dreams. Plus, with a Highland Home, you can still afford the extras such as covered lanais, garden tubs and large, walk-in closets.

Energy Efficient Materials: Buyers, especially in light of the recent recession, are continually looking for ways to save money on heating and cooling bills. While most are not quite ready to add solar panel to their roofs, homebuyers are still interested in energy efficient materials. We recognize the importance of energy efficiency in new home building. That’s why we offer green options such as Foam Injected Wall Block, Radiant Barrier, Double Pane Windows and Level 1 Mohawk® recycled carpet to name a few in the Lakeland, Tampa and Orlando new homes that we build.

We continue to strive to meet the demands of new homebuyers. For more information, visit the Highland Homes website.

If you’re ready to take advantage of Tampa’s affordable home prices and low interest rates, then stop by a Highland Homes sales center today. We’re a Tampa home builder with many beautiful home options. We offer more than 30 floor plans to choose from with prices starting in the low-$100,000s, so there’s a home for every buyer. With features such as covered lanais, garden tubs and walk-in closets, and a little help from our Personal Selection Studio, you can design the home that you’ve always wanted.

Plus, we’re offering a special incentive in honor of Heroes Month. Professionals, retirees and veterans of the healthcare and education industries and police and armed forces who purchase Orlando, Tampa or Lakeland new homes in May will receive $3,000 in FREE upgrades.

As always, qualified buyers can move into their dream homes for only $99 out-of-pocket. For more information about Highland Homes, visit our website.

That’s why we decided to honor our heroes all month long with a special incentive to all professionals, retirees and veterans of the healthcare and education industries and the police and armed forces: Those who purchase Orlando, Tampa or Lakeland homes throughout May will receive $3,000 in FREE upgrades.

Not sure what upgrades you’d like? No problem. Schedule a time to stop by our Personal Selection Studio (call 863-667-4782) and talk to our design consultants about the cabinetry, fixtures, appliances, countertops, lighting, flooring and more that you can choose from to design your new home. And, as always, $99 moves you in to your dream home.

As a leading Tampa home builder, we’d like to thank you for enriching our community, shaping young minds, saving lives and protecting our freedom!

For more information, visit the Highland Homes website.

*Photo by Hayley Anderson

Everyone will tell you to not worry about bad decisions, because you learn from every mistake. I wouldn’t call buying a fixer upper that I fell in love with, instead of new Florida real estate, a mistake, just something that I should have never tried to tackle.

My husband and I bought our first house together a few months before we got married. After a month of looking we found what we thought was the PERFECT house. It was over 2,000 square feet, on a third of an acre, close to everything, had a HUGE kitchen, and was built in 1954 with plenty of character. There were a few things that needed to be done to make it what we wanted, but we knew it “wasn’t going to be that hard” to fix it. That statement would come back to bite us in places we didn’t want to be bitten.

I’ll start with a list of repairs that we wanted to immediately make. Hey, we had gotten the first-time-home-buyer tax credit. $8,000 was enough to do what we wanted, right? We needed to put walls around the master bathroom because it was completely open to the master bedroom, and add more counter space and a new sink and faucet for the kitchen. We needed to buy a washer and gas dryer and refrigerator. We needed paint for the utility room floor and the outside of the house. We needed to overhaul the bathrooms and kitchen, eventually. We needed a new privacy fence. That’s about it. It still doesn’t seem like a lot.

Now, let’s take all that, and talk about what we really did. We bought a washing machine, gas dryer, refrigerator, kitchen sink, and faucet. We bought paint for the utility room floor. We decided to paint the living room, for fun, and we also decided to paint what was going to be our guest room. That doesn’t seem like that much, and truly it wasn’t. Here’s where things started going wrong…

My husband started in on our master bathroom. We were going to wall it in. It was one of the first things on our list to do, so about two-and-a-half weeks after moving in, he took a crowbar to the trim and wood around the bathtub, and the baseboard. During this process, he got a devastating phone call. His grandfather had passed away. I was alone in our fixer upper with holes under the bathtub, while my poor husband had to travel to Indiana alone.

I think that this is probably what started our downward spiral into realizing that this maybe wasn’t a task we should have taken on. On top of that, we got a leak in the roof a month after moving in. Then, a few months later, our air/heat stopped working. We were eight months into our house, and three months into our marriage, and we were just DONE.

Thrown on top of that, we have two dogs and a cat that all shed, profusely.  We also had to buy a new car and pay for a lot of our wedding and our honeymoon. So we are trying to keep up with fur balls, general cleaning, repairing the house, and working on figuring out finances for the first time as a couple. I think, had we have known how hard this all was going to be, we wouldn’t have taken it on.

We have one more year that we have to live in the house before we can sell it without giving back the tax credit we got for buying it, and I think we’ve decided to build a home. This has nothing to do with the fact that I now work for a central Florida home builder. This is something we have been thinking about for about a year now. I just sit back and weigh the pros and cons of being a somewhat newly married couple, and what we want for ourselves, and it just makes sense.

So this time, I’m building. I want to know what I’m getting into. I want to have the layout that I want. I want to have the kitchen that I want. I want to have the bathrooms that I want. I want the flooring that I want. And, I want all of this at the same time and to not have to do it myself. If it takes paying a little extra to have it, I’m to the point in which I’m willing to do that.

I did my research even before I was working for Highland Homes, and they have always been the top builder on my list. They are affordable, have many programs for struggling incomes, and have great quality homes. Also, they have affordable, annual HOA fees. And, they have an associated company that will build any of their plans, with the same great features and finance options, outside of a community on your own lot.

For people who don’t want to wait for a house to be built, there are some great houses out there that are “move in ready.” Most builders, Highland Homes included, always have a few completed inventory homes on hand. So, there are many options for Lakeland homes for just about everyone.

There are pros and cons to any decision you make. I just know that what I’m looking for out there is custom, quality, and as little stress as possible. Homeownership is stressful in general, but I feel that building a home will take away the long term frustration of dealing with an old house. It’s something I have to do for my health and sanity.

If you’re in the market, I would recommend really looking at your options and deciding what’s best for you. A house is one of the biggest decisions you will ever make in your life. You need to make a decision that will not cause you a lot of stress in the future. Make sure you research every detail you can, ask as many people as you can, and truly think about your decision. Take it from someone who has learned from a personally bad decision; make sure it’s right before you dive in.

Let’s face it, you’re either the type of person who loves spring cleaning, or who hates it. Either way, it has to be done. If you aren’t one of the lucky ones who can hire professional, RightAtHome.com has some great tips to help you along including downloadable checklists for each room of your Tampa new homes, AND outside.

Some suggestions for an organized spring cleaning experience are:

1. Have a plan… It is hard enough getting started cleaning, but you should map it out and know where you will be cleaning and when. Having a plan allows you more freedom to do what you want with whatever room you are cleaning. It helps you stay on track, and can sometimes speed up the process. Let us not forget that planning also includes delegating who does what. Whether there are two or six people living in your home, delegating tasks helps expedite the process.

2. Make safety your number one priority… You should always be aware of who is doing what, where, and what products they are using. Many products have chemicals that can be harmful to anyone who uses them, especially children. With certain products, and certain areas that you will be cleaning, you may even need special equipment, i.e. goggles, or rubber gloves. It is always a good idea to be aware of your surroundings. This will help prevent accidents.

3. Celebrate the great job you’ve done… Spring cleaning is a big deal. For most people it is the only deep clean they will do of their home all year. When you are done, it is going to be a huge accomplishment. Go out for ice cream, go to dinner, go to the beach, or spend a day relaxing; you just cleaned your WHOLE HOUSE. You know you deserve it.

These helpful tips are brought to you by Orlando home builder Highland Homes. Since 1996, Highland Homes has offered Lakeland, Tampa and Orlando new homes at extraordinary values. If you are looking for Florida real estate, visit us at the Highland Homes website.

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