Choosing a homebuilder can seem like a complicated and daunting task. Asking the right questions can make that task easier. John Friesenhahn, Division President of Beazer Homes, discusses building homes with flexible floor plans, energy efficient features and a choice of mortgage options to provide customers with the home of their dreams.
What makes Beazer Homes different from your competitors?
Friesenhahn: We’re building homes that will be the standard in the future. We look ahead at what is available today that we can incorporate to make the total cost of homeownership more affordable for the owner. So many people get focused on the house payment alone, and they don’t take into account the long term utility operating expenses or maintenance or work durability of the home.
We have three pillars that we focus on. We have Surprising Performance which covers energy efficient building aspects. We also have Mortgage Choice to choose a lender and we have Choice Plans which gives the homebuyer options in room layout.
Let’s talk about Surprising Performance. What does Beazer Homes provide under that banner?
Friesenhahn: We use high performance building techniques, which saves energy and money. Beyond that, there’s a lot of detail taken into protection against moisture intrusion, and that creates long term durability. There’s comfort aspects that go into it, improved indoor air quality. It encompasses a whole building system versus focusing on individual parts and pieces.
We build homes from a place of sustainability with our materials which lowers carbon emissions and conserves energy and water.
We’re now able to pretty seamlessly integrate in the Department of Energy Net Zero initiative that’s being rolled out. And we’re there now in all the new communities that we’re launching here in San Antonio that will be certified in that program.
What is your Mortgage Choice program?
Friesenhahn: We have created a competitive environment between some vetted lenders with our Mortgage Choice program. And here in San Antonio, we have four in our program. So the prospective homeowner can fill out a common application and those four lenders can then compete for the business by providing proposals to the customer and they can then pick the winner for their mortgage service.
What is the flexibility that Beazer Homes offers with its Choice Plans?
Friesenhahn: Within home plans we design an area within our Choice Plans, typically the kitchen and the primary bath, where there’s an A and a B choice. So in a kitchen for instance, we will typically have an island with a kitchen sink in it, but there will be an alternate version that may have an island but the sink is placed on the exterior of the kitchen. Two different configurations that a customer, at no additional cost, can pick how it best fits their lifestyle.
For a primary bath, we may have a tub and a shower separate or as the alternate, maybe just a large walk-in shower, with no tub. So it gives them [the] choice to allow some customization at no additional cost to more fit the customer’s lifestyle and the way they live in the home.
What does the future hold for Beazer Homes?
Friesenhahn: For San Antonio, we have a plan laid out to really focus on the areas where people are showing that they want to live; the west side of San Antonio up to the I-35 corridor into New Braunfels. We are looking to add quality neighborhoods that have a lot of livable characteristics to them which we can incorporate these high performance homes into.
Interested in learning more about Beazer Homes? Go to beazerhomes.com.
The above story was produced by Community Impact's Storytelling Multi-Platform Journalist Victoria Schaefer with information solely provided by the local business as part of their "sponsored content" purchase through our advertising team. Our integrity promise to our readers is to clearly identify all CI Storytelling posts so they are separate from the content decided upon, researched and written by our journalism department.
