D.R. Horton is a national home builder that provides unique and quality homes at Seven Oaks, a gorgeous landscaped community with breathtaking natural surroundings, a club with pools, plentiful parks and playgrounds, tennis and basketball courts, and more.

D.R. Horton offers single-family homes in the Stonecreek neighborhood of Seven Oaks. This gated neighborhood of 47 homes, most with conservation views, features a neighborhood park with a sports court, playset, and swings.

Choose from 8 floorplans that range from 3-4 bedrooms and 1,808 to 2,879 square feet. Aside from the many available home plans for those looking to build, two quick move-in homes are currently available from D.R. Horton, including:

The Laurel
$233,485
3 Beds, 2 Baths
2-Car Garage
Ranch Floorplan
1,808 Square Feet

The Juniper
$226,196
4 Beds, 2 Baths
2-Car Garage
Ranch Floorplan
1,899 Square Feet

Click to schedule your appointment today!

This week, from August 29-September 6, over 50 Tampa Bay restaurants are showcasing their menu during “Dine Tampa Bay” week, a week to celebrate the many great restaurants the city has to offer. Participating restaurants are offering $25, $30, or $35 three-course menus including an appetizer, entree, and dessert.

A wide variety of restaurants are participating, including the latest hot spots, national chains, and all fares including Asian, Spanish, French, Italian, tapas and sushi. For a listing of participating restaurants and a map to each location, visit the Dine Tampa Bay website.

Participating restaurants nearest to Wesley Chapel include:

Dempsey’s Steak House

Dempsey’s Steak House offers quintessential dining in a cozy environment. Guests can choose prime beef in a variety of cuts, plus family-style side dishes, tableside Caesar salad, and delectable desserts from the resort’s bakery. Located in the Saddlebrook Resort.

GrillSmith

GrillSmith is a friendly, affordable neighborhood restaurant serving fresh fire-grilled food with an extensive selection of beer, wine, cocktails in a fun, contemporary, and unpretentious atmosphere. You’ll enjoy fresh fish, grilled steaks, chicken and burgers. Try GrillSmith for lunch, dinner or at the bar for Happy hour.

Urban Culinary Cuisine Cafe

The locally owned Urban Culinary Café offers choices for those who crave southern cuisine and those who savor more international flavors, for fans of out-of-the-way spots as well as proponents of small but stylish, upscale cafes, for those who sway to the sounds of live smooth jazz and those tap their feet to live R&B music. This Greenwich Village New York-styled cafe focuses on Upscale African American Cuisine.

Be sure to check out the restaurants nearest your future home this week! To keep updated on Tampa area events, sign up for our elist.

Homes by WestBay is building their Siesta Key floorplan, which offers the following features:

• Versatile floorplan with 5 bedrooms, 3 ½ baths and 3,476 square feet
• Expansive windows in the rear bring the outdoors inside
• Dramatic Grand Room with soaring 20 foot ceiling
• Gourmet Ktchen with island, large counter-bar, and walk-in pantry
• Owner’s Retreat and a second master suite downstairs
• Formal Living and Dining Rooms for elegant entertaining
• Children’s Retreat and two additional bedrooms upstairs
• Design can be expanded to 7 bedrooms
• Courtyard entry 3-car garage

At Seven Oaks, Homes by WestBay builds single-family homes in the Watermark Neighborhood. This neighborhood features the largest home sites that are available at Seven Oaks, and nearly all are surrounded by heavily wooded conservation. Within the Watermark neighborhood, you’ll find a large neighborhood park featuring a playground and room to run around on the grass play area.

Homes by WestBay offers several floorplans in Seven Oaks, ranging from 2,822-4,000 square feet. Home prices begin in the mid $300s, including a standard homesite.

After decades of building homes in the Tampa Bay area, the Homes by WestBay team presents new homes created for today’s lifestyles. Whether you work from home, live with extended family, pursue your artistic talents, or entertain your many friends, you will find design options that fit your needs. Explore unique and efficient designs and visually exciting homes of enduring value—at prices that may surprise you!

To keep updated on the model Grand Opening information, sign up for our elist.

D.R. Horton is a national home builder that provides unique and quality homes. Enjoy our brief video describing the benefits of living in the Seven Oaks community and D.R. Horton homes.

If the video above does not work, click here to watch the video on YouTube.

Feel free to ask us any questions or leave us your thoughts. We’d love to share them with our audience. We also welcome you to make an appointment to see the Seven Oaks community in person.

• 4 bedrooms
• 3.5 baths
• 4,420 square feet
• 3-car garage
• media room
• game room with covered balcony
• second-floor jack and jill bath
• great room with large stone fireplace
• large covered lanai with outdoor kitchen

In the Danielle model, you won’t want to miss the spectacular dining room, with an expansive ceiling that rises to the top of the second story. You will be impressed by the rich finishes chosen by the decorator–all the custom cabinets and storage areas are stained dark wood and in the great room and the study, and the decorator chose the feature of spectacular dark stained beams on ceiling. And the selected colors suit a wide variety of tastes–countertops are a smooth beige and brown granite, and interiors are done in a combination of cool blue-greens and some golds with white painted crown moldings. Upstairs you’ll find a beautiful guest bedroom and bath that has a little hideaway area–just room enough for a comfy chaise or a great play area for the kids.

The model is $503,000 with the Mediterranean elevation, and two other elevations are offered at $479,000 and $492,000.

If you’d like a chance to see the new Danielle model, make an appointment today.

As one of our premier builders, Mercedes offers both innovative and energy efficient homes that are suited to the buyers’ wants and needs. Mercedes offers homes that focus on happiness, comfort and self-expression. Mercedes Homes has won multiples awards and achievements based on construction, architecture, interior design and attention to detail.

The Watermark neighborhood offers 76 home sites on the eastern edge of Seven Oaks and features builders of custom and semi-custom single-family homes. See the luxurious appeal of a Mercedes home for yourself by making an appointment to visit the Seven Oaks community.

Here are our five favorite iPhone apps for real estate professionals:

Evernote

For busy professionals, this app is a necessary extension of your brain. Use this tool to jot down notes about a new listing, take a snapshot of a business card, take a video of a house, and even record a voice memo to remind yourself of an important market statistic you just learned. Use this app when you’re on the go, and sync it to your computer when you are back in the office. Price: Free!

RulerPhone

No need to worry about bringing along a tape measurer! RulerPhone is a great app that does measuring virtually, using your iPhone camera. It is as simple as taking a picture of an object, measuring it up against a credit card, and RulerPhone delivers the dimensions to you! And you don’t have to worry about remembering to bring your tool with you—just take out your phone and the job is done! Price: Free!

Around Me

This app is perfect for letting your clients in on area surrounding the listed home you bring them to. Quickly find the closest gas station, bank, bars, hospital, hotels, movie theatre, restaurants, supermarkets, theatres and taxi service. Use this app as your cheat sheet, and your clients will be impressed with your knowledge of the area. Price: Free!

Home Buying Power

A great tool to have to quickly help clients realize their spending power. This app features a Buy Power calculator to help you determine your client’s price range for a house based on income, desired monthly payment, or down payment; a listing detail view helps you estimate closing costs and easily email information on a listing to your client and save properties to a shopping list. It also has a sophisticated mortgage calculator.  Price: $1.99

Trulia Real Estate Search

Out with a client who wants to see if there are any other open houses in the area? With one tap, you see all homes for sale nearby and can browse through open houses to help plan your afternoon. This app allows realtors to scroll through color photos, get details on homes in the area, and scope out the neighborhood by viewing the results on a local map.  Price: Free!

Do you have another favorite iPhone app? Let us know!

For more information, sign up for our e-newsletter.

WaterGrass: A Place to Call Home

Excitement is building as Standard Pacific Homes puts the finishing touches on their beautiful Brookland model.  The model is located in the brand new Glenbrook neighborhood at WaterGrass in Wesley Chapel, FL.  The model will give you a perfect glimpse into the homes Standard Pacific has built since 1989. More than 10,000 families in the Tampa Bay area have come to know their attention to detail, design and customer service. Now you can, too!

A few of the many amenities and features include:

• 2,566 square feet
• Granite countertops
• Spacious yard
• Stainless steel appliances
• Hardwood floors
• Kitchen wide open to extended great room
• Oversized bonus room
• Walk in shower in master bathroom
• All Standards Pacific Homes are Energy Star certified

Be the first to view the decorated model during the upcoming Grand Opening on August 21^st by signing up on our appointment page.

One real estate professional from Keller Williams in Southern California offers a definition for realtors: “When the majority of the systems and the building materials are sustainable or recycled,” then rest assured you have a green home.

The National Association of Home Builders provides green building guidelines and says that when it comes to design, construction, and operation, green homes must “focus on energy and water efficiency, resource efficient building design and materials, indoor environmental quality, and must take the home’s overall impact on the environment into account.”

For realtors looking to avoid greenwashing, or falsely marketing a product as eco-friendly, the U.S. Green Building Council now offers realtors the ability to have homes LEED-certified, an internationally recognized green building certification system. When a home is LEED certified, realtors can assure their clients that the home is designed with energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and supervised resources and sensitivity to their impacts all in mind.

Real estate professionals may also participate in the National Association of REALTORS Green Designation Program, providing realtors advanced training in green building and sustainable business practices to enable realtors the ability to seek out, understand, and market properties with green features. There have been over 4,000-5,000 real estate professionals who have completed the 18 hour curriculum.

Realtors, put yourselves at the forefront of the green movement. Help your Crown Community Development clients take small steps to create a big impact by staying up-to-date on energy efficient technology, green ratings, design, incentives, and the endless advantages to green living.

For more information on Crown Communities, sign up for our e-newsletter.

One Month Before Moving

• Schedule the mover
• Arrange for transportation of vehicles and pets
• Submit change of address forms to the U.S. Postal Service
• Contact new schools and arrange for transfer of records
• Notify your doctor and get referrals for new doctors
• Give the landlord notice in writing, if necessary
• Compile a list of important new phone numbers
• Get recommendations for banks, lawyers, and religious institutions in your new area
• Donate unwanted items to charity or hold a garage sale
• Begin packing items not used often

Two Weeks Before Moving

• Arrange for changeover/disconnection of utilities
• Coordinate with newspaper companies to cancel old deliveries and start up a new subscription
• Measure your new home, and start to determine where you’ll place furniture
• Fill and transfer prescriptions
• Find out about your new state’s driver and auto licensing procedures, if applicable
• Inquire about changing your voter registration
• Keep packing!

One Week Before Moving

• Keep packing!
• Inform friends and relatives of your new address and phone number
• Get cleaning supplies ready
• Confirm arrangements with moving and storage companies, as well as auto and pet transportation companies
• Transfer bank accounts, if necessary
• Pack items to be carried in the car
• Pack yard and shed items. Don’t forget to drain fuel and oil from lawnmowers and power equipment and dispose of all other flammable items
• Drain water from garden hoses

One Day Before Moving

• Clean refrigerator and defrost the freezer
• Set aside fragile items and valuables for special handling
• Pack a box of basics for the next 24 hours. This might include medicine, toiletry items, all-purpose household cleaners, food and water.
• Finish packing!

Moving Day

• Take movers for a last-minute walk through and identify items that require special handling
• Double-check to make sure windows are closed, closets are empty, lights are out, and doors are locked
• Leave keys and garage door openers for new owners or tenants
• Supervise placement of boxes and furniture at your new home in WaterGrass
• Make sure utilities and phones are working at your new home
• Let family and friends know you’ve arrived safely
• Begin unpacking

Remind your buyers that moving doesn’t have to be intimidating. With the help of these tips, moving is now a breeze.

For more information, sign up for our e-newsletter.

Why Social Media? Attracting sellers who want to list their house on the market, and buyers searching for a new home is the primary goal of a realtor using social media. Allowing realtors to connect easily and effectively, many real estate companies who utilize social media are seeing an increase in revenue. Social media generates more quality traffic back to a company’s main website, where visitors are spending more time browsing the site.

Turning Fans and Followers into Buyers and Sellers. Realtors can take advantage of social media by simply being available and open. Creating a Facebook and Twitter profile are the first steps, but in order to be fully accessible, why not create a YouTube account to showcase walkthroughs of listings; a Flickr account to display a gallery from inside a home; or get on Foursquare to show your clients your current schedule of Open Houses, or to leave neighborhood tips. Realtors can use social media not only to be everywhere their clients might be, but also to actively participate in it. Check out the Crown Community presence on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.

Showcase Your Expertise. In addition to creating the standard social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, there are many websites that have been designed with realtors in mind, allowing them to lend their expert knowledge and connect to one another. Here are four great examples:

1. Trulia. A real estate search engine that provides buyers and sellers listings, maps, and comps, all in one place with free, full access to advice, opinions, and news from local experts. Real estate professionals are encouraged to use the site to market listings, view real estate data, and promote their own services.
2. Zillow. A leading online real estate marketplace dedicated to helping individuals find and share vital information about homes, real estate, and mortgages.
3. WellcomeMat. A video platform to publish and distribute hyper-local video content used by over 13,000 real estate professionals, filmmakers, and A-list real estate firms. This platform provides all the resources, support, and technology that real estate companies need to publish, brand, and distribute videos of listings, neighborhood tours, market/news segments, school tours etc.
4. ActiveRain. One of the largest social networking sites for realtors that is looking to provide real estate professionals with technology to supplement their business model. The network strives to aid agents in creating business relationships within the real estate industry, as well as with consumers.

Using these four sites and incorporating other popular social media resources, realtors can promote themselves, their business, and their expertise on the Web.

What success have you found using social media? Do you have any tips for other realtors looking to create a social media presence?

For more information, sign up for our e-newsletter.