Q. One of the unique things about Drees Homes is you’ll go outside your communities and build on an individual’s home site. What does the Drees On Your Lot process look like?
Tony: People like our architecture and our processes, but they may not necessarily want to build in one of our current communities for whatever reason. We’ve always had great neighborhoods over the last 90+ years, but we wanted to branch out and allow homebuyers the opportunity to build a Drees home — get that name, the reliability they know — on their own lot.
If you have a piece of land that’s been passed on for generations and you want to build a home on it, or if you’d like to build in another neighborhood that isn’t a Drees neighborhood, you can now build there with Drees, too. We’re expanding our footprint with Drees On Your Lot. It’s something we brought new to Cincinnati in the last two years as another means to help people build their dream home.
Q. Will you build on acreage? Do you require utilities to be close by? Will you build on 10 acres far outside of town?
Tony: We’re building anywhere from Springboro all the way down to Walton. We recently finished a home on 136 acres in the woods. We built a huge Crestwood on a family’s farm. We’ll do infill, too, or teardowns inside popular beloved neighborhoods like Montgomery. We currently have a home being built in the Fort Thomas community.
Mike: You don’t have to have utilities on the lot — we can handle that, too. We’re a one-stop shop.
Q. Inside your communities, you’re consistent with your start-to-finish timeframe. Do you see an expanded timeframe when it comes to Drees On Your Lot?
Tony: We still strive for the same 60-day contract-to-start time and we still use the same 155-day building schedule. For us, eight months is our goal, from start to finish. On rare occasions, there may be an instance that can cause things to take a little longer.
Q. What differentiates Drees from other large custom home builders?
Mike: We offer Custom+ Construct, where our buyers can customize their homes upfront, which other large builders don’t allow. But when it comes time to build we don’t allow changes.
We also bring to the table 64 floor plans within our local portfolio and hundreds of options for each home. So, you can build a Drees home and easily customize it to fit your lifestyle needs.
Also, with Drees On Your Lot, you’ll be informed of the price of your home upfront and in writing. We can carry the financing for the entire construction process through our in-house lender, First Equity Mortgage. We can also lock in your interest rate 210 days out.
Q. What do you think is the biggest misconception people have when they step into a Drees model home and want to start the process?
Tony: They think they will have to travel all over Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky to make their selections. They also worry about finding a lot and customizing their home.
We already offer an array of award-winning floor plans and a catalog of home sites they can choose from if they don’t have one in mind. We have three great salespeople who also track available home sites and follow the market. Additionally, all of our home selections are offered through a one-stop shop at our design center. There, homebuyers collaborate with a professional Design Consultant, who makes the design process both easy and fun.
Mike: Plus, we have model homes they can see.
Tony: All of our model homes are decorated. Homebuyers can walk through them and know exactly what they’re going to do with their furniture and decorations.
We have been family-owned and operated since 1928. Our commitment to excellence runs four generations deep, and we’ve always taken great pride in making dream homes easy for families across the tri-state.