It is best to have your home look occupied. Buy a few timers and set certain lights to turn on throughout the evening. Lights typically deter burglars who are looking for dark entry areas.  Be sure to either have a friend or family member collect your mail and pick up your newspaper; or call your post office and local newspaper and have them put on hold until you return. A pile up of mail or newspapers is a sure sign of your home being unoccupied.

Your valuables are called your valuables for a reason. Whether it is sentimental or monetary, nobody wants to part with their valuables. Either take them with you or leave them in a safe or safety deposit box.

Making sure you have set up a service or a friend to care for your yard while on vacation is very crucial to protecting your home. Leaving the yard unattended can give signs of a vacant property. In this market a burglar might even think that the home may have foreclosed, and is hoping to find belongings left behind.

I hope everyone finds these reminders helpful while planning your last minute getaways. Enjoy your last weeks of fun in the sun. Just remember the old saying. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

What about the formal dining room?  Is it going the way of the formal living room?  The answer depends on what buyer demographic you ask.  For example, many of the first time buyers in the Gen Y group have opted for no formal dining space whatsoever.  Instead, they have chosen to have a larger great room with a generous informal dining space occurring at the kitchen.  Baby Boomers, moving down in size, usually keep the formal dining room to accommodate holiday dinners with the extended family.  In smaller condominiums targeted at first time buyers, a breakfast bar in the kitchen may be all the floor plan can accommodate.

Usually the area designated for formal dining is in the front part of the house just off the foyer but not always so.  In Florida, for example, single level plans tend to be more open and informal.  In their case, the single dining area is completely open to the kitchen, great room, and sun room and have few, if any, walls separating the spaces.  Many of the Federal and Colonial house built in the Northeast have both the formal living and dining rooms off the Great Foyer in the front of the home.

Perhaps formal dining rooms have more “staying power” today because they represent more than just a place to eat.  For many of us, there is an emotional component attached because this is the room we use to entertain family and friends.  We make fond memories on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Birthdays by celebrating them around food served in this room designated for such “special” occasions.  Dining rooms help us commemorate the present and have a way of fondly anchoring us to our past.

Preparations are under way for the 2010 Homearama Event in Patriot’s Landing.  Sponsored by HBAR, and hosted by East-West Partners, the event will showcase 6 fully decorated, energy efficient homes and is expected to draw thousands of people.  Our home will have a number of creative and fun ideas.  The master bath tub was special ordered and delivered to our office today!

It will also utilize numerous energy efficient construction techniques, and it will be Energy Star certified by a third-party inspector.  One of the most innovative energy efficient features is the Links System from Schlage / Trane.  This system allows you to use your computer and/or smart phone to control door locks, lighting, cameras and thermostats remotely.  When someone enters your home while you are away, you are notified by text message.  You can adjust thermostat settings at any time, from any where.  Check out this video for a short overview of the system and it’s various components:

You can also learn more about the system on Schlage’s web site.

Stay tuned to our blog over the summer for more updates about our Homearama house, and some of the creative features!

Our company, Lifestyle Builders & Developers, recently made a decision to donate net proceeds from the sale of our Homearama entry to the Children’s Hospital Foundation.

While we are still in the process of putting this project together, we are finding the generosity of our trades – the product and service providers – that make building a home possible, to be overwhelming.  Many are stepping up to the plate to offer free or discounted products and services, in order to benefit this worthy cause.

It may seem like a strange time to be making donations such as this.  Times are tough for all of us in the homebuilding industry.  But this is only a season in a cyclical industry.  Over time, the industry will recover.  Families that have been touched by tragedy, however, will live with those realities for the rest of their lives.

Going to work every day is about more than profits and losses.  It is about more than balance sheets.  It is also about the impact that we have on other people’s lives.  It is about community, service, and giving back. It is about the “mojo” of our companies.  As businessman Danny Meyer puts it (in Small Giants), it is about “business having soul.  He believed soul was what made a business great, or even worth doing at all.  ‘A business without soul is not something I’m interested in working at,’ he said.”

Our team at LifeStyle Builders & Developers has soul.  I see it every day.  I am proud to be a part of a project that benefits our community, and gives our people an opportunity to show their soul.

Houses are as different as people. No matter how many times a particular model is built, one is never like any other. And I don’t just mean that no lot is ever quite is the same. Of course selections differ and the trees and how the sun hits a house will always vary. But in the sense that once you move in a house, it becomes your home. Unique to you and unlike any other.

That occurred to me as I waded through the learning curve of building a house for the first time. I, of course, was focused on the logistics of scheduling. How A comes before B, and so fourth. But once the house was complete and someone moved in, I thought about how that house is going to be the backdrop for moments in these people’s lives for years to come. Rooms won’t just be dimensions contributing to the total square footage anymore. They will become offices and baby rooms. From the moment the first piece of furniture goes through the front door, it ceases being a lot number on a neighborhood plat, and becomes where memories are made on graduation nights and anniversaries.

So I realized no matter how many times I run the same schedule on the same floor plan, to the people who move in, it is a house like no other. It’s their home, regardless of who else may eventually live there; they can always drive by and remember super bowl parties and family dinners. It became a more significant way to spend my day, not building a house for someone to buy, but a home for someone to live in.