Without question the hottest subdivision in Johnson County this past year has been Mills Farm on 159th Street between Quivira and Switzer in Overland Park, Kansas.  Mills Farm features three distinct areas, “Meadows” with homes in the $400,000-$500,000 range, the “Manor” with homes in the $600,00-$800,000 range and the “Estates” ranging from $700,000-over 1 million.

Mills Farm is certainly one of Kansas City’s finest neighborhoods with beautiful landscaped boulevards, fabulous bronze sculptures, and a clubhouse pool complex second to none. Basketball, sand volleyball and tennis courts round out the amenity package at Mills Farm.

Perhaps most importantly resales move quickly and with very little discounting which means that Mills Farm is a superior neighborhood in terms of protecting the value of the homes being built.

Currently, there are a dozen or so builders like Covenant Homes that are building in one or all of the different price points. If you are considering building a new home in Southern Overland Park then you would be remiss if you do not at least look into building or buying a completed spec. home in Mills Farm. If you would like to learn more about building in Mills Farm please give us a call at 913-451-9471 and let us show you that building in Mills Farm just might be the best place for you.

At Covenant Custom Homes we want to help prepare better prepare our clients to
build their dream home.  We are always thinking of ways and ideas to help educate the customer.  Below, is a list of 10 items that will help
you prepare to build your dream home.

1. Establish a reasonable budget – Agree on a maximum dollar amount you can afford and stick
to it.  Don’t over extend yourself.  Maintain a reasonable ratio of the lot cost to the final completion cost of your home.
A good rule of thumb is to keep the lot at about 16% to 17% of the final home price.

2. Do your research – Visit new homes being built in your area.  Look at builders plans online and or visit
home plan websites to try and determine a sense of floor plans and home sizes that work for your needs.  Check out the
many great home plans we have on the models and plans section of our website.

3. Make a list – A critical step is establishing a list of the specific needs you want
to address in your new home.  Numbers of bedrooms, baths, garages and other items.
This list should contain only those non-negotiable needs you truly must
have.  We call this list the must have list.

4. Make another list – This list is called the “like to have” list and is made up of
the various details that you might like to have if they work out in the plan or
fit your budget.  Perhaps, it’s a high end appliance package or built in bookcases.
Make the list as expansive as you would like and try to fit in as many
as you can afford; after all their just the “like to haves” and not the must haves!

5. Develop a design sense – Get online, buy some magazines, visit model homes and show
homes where possible.  Try and separate the look and feel of one home from another.
Perhaps, you can visit an interior decorator and interview them for your
potential project.  It’s important that you have at least a sense for the colors you like or dislike and the design
motif you prefer.  If your completely uncomfortable you can hire a designer or hire a builder who has an in-house
designer like Covenant Custom Homes.  Part of our team features an in-house designer.
Check our experienced team

6. Select your geography – Like they say “location, location, location”!  Look around, check out the schools (even if
you don’t have kids in school), where is the shopping, and the highway access as well.  Make sure you select a
subdivision that can protect your investment for example Mills Farm is
a great community here in Overland Park Kansas that Covenant Custom Homes builds in today.  The last thing you want
is to build and have your equity impaired because the neighborhood is failing in some way.

7. Identify a builder – There are a lot of builders, many of them today only build a few
homes a year, some build more then 50 or 60.
You no doubt want a builder with enough purchasing power to insure your
home is competitively priced but no a builder so big that you can’t get his full attention.  The important thing is
to try and find a builder you can work with after all you will be spending a lot of time working with your builder.
Don’t select a builder who is not fully respectful of your time or your
input.  Definitely, avoid any builder who comes across and impatient, arrogant or condescending.

8. Check it out – Sounds kind of basic but many folks just don’t have time or so they
say to fully check out their builder.  Start with the Better Business Bureau and see if any complaints have
been filed.  Ask for customer references, you should try and get at least three.  If
you turn up smoke don’t wait around for the fire.

9. Bank on It – If you’ve narrowed down your selection to a particular builder or two
then it’s time to contact their bank.  You need to determine the financial strength and viability of any
builder you’re going to give a large sum of money to.  Ask the bank for a letter testifying to the
financial strength of the builder.  Many home builders have gone out of business during this difficult real estate
market so don’t hand over your large deposit to any builder who refuses your financial inquiry.

10. Be a detective – Talk to real estate agents, builders, suppliers and developers to
try and ascertain what the “real estate community” thinks of the builder your contemplating using.  Ask the builder if
he has other projects you can visit.  If the builder has no current projects that is usually not a good sign.  Any builder worth working with typically has
no less than 2-4 jobs going at one time.  Likewise if a builder tells you they build 40 or 50 even 80 homes a year they are far from a custom home builder.

Ifyou would like to interview a custom home builder with a strong financials and
a passion for both customer service and excellent home construction quality please give us a call.  Covenant Custom
Homes would love to talk with you about building your dream home in the Kansas City area.

Every single home builder will probably tell you their quality is the best.  No builder would be in business very long if they admitted that their quality was run of the mill.

Quality is hardly an accident, it is always the result of intention; the kind of uncompromising intention driven by real effort and skillful execution.  Of course, you have to do things right but you also have to be willing to rip something out and do it again.  While undoing something may cost us in the short term it certainly pays off in the long term.

At Covenant Custom Homes, we take great pride in the fact that we never have more than five or six projects at a time.  This means that we are inside every home every day.  We also put every home we build through a continual and exhaustive quality control examination at every step of construction.  No one in our industry take quality more seriously than Covenant Custom Homes.

We have a tendency to be a bit obsessive about home building after all we spend about eighty hours a week thinking about, planning, building and analyzing home construction to keep improving every aspect of the building process.  As a privately owned, local and respected builder we’re fortunate to have not only survived the housing debacle of the last four years but to have prospered and grown during these challenging times.  Experience, continuing education and training, as well as common sense business values and financial strength have combined to make us one of Kansas City’s strongest building companies.

We pride ourselves by respecting our clients time, their intelligence and their wallet.  We’re totally committed to building intelligent homes for intelligent people.  That means no hard sell no double talk and frankly no B.S.  The fact is we are not interested in being the biggest builder in town, just the best builder in town.  Our sweet spot is homes from $600,000 to $2,000,000 and we only build about 10-15 homes per year.  We could build more but we believe our quality and hands on approach would suffer so why jeopardize everything we worked and sacrificed for more than 13 years.

Chances are if you are reading this blog you are contemplating building or buying a new home.  Well, the home building business is quite a competitive business these days, you have got everything from the single proprietor who builds a couple of homes a year to the big lower end builders who might build a hundred homes or more and everything in between.  The decision making process is far from simple but we’ve got an easy format you might want to utilize.  We call it the “10 C’s of Comparison”.  Think about these 10 C’s when evaluating your prospective builder.

Competency

Creativity

Credibility

Character

Concentration

Cooperativeness

Communication

Cost effectiveness

Craftsmanship

Cohesiveness