Thursday, December 24, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
PLACE Opens Ventura Housing project
Congratulations PLACE on Giving the Gift of Home for the Holidays … the WĀV project in Ventura, California is complete.
The Title is a link to a Business Week article that came out this week about our WĀV project. Working together with the City of Ventura PLACE has touched many individuals and families, taken dozens of people off the streets and putting them into healthy, green homes.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Adopt-A-Family for the Holidays
The holiday season is here and for families struggling financially, this can be a very stressful time. Parents want to treat their children with special holiday gifts, but also need to support the practical needs of the family. In Orange County, Families Forward extends special programs to families in need in order to help alleviate this burden from their lives and bring hope and cheer to their homes during the holidays.
Continuing its commitment to helping deserving families and children through charitable efforts, Kovach Marketing supports Families Forward, the Irvine-based non-profit organization that helps homeless families help themselves. We salute their efforts and ask you to help support their cause and consider Adopting A Family.
There are many ways to help, please contact holidays@families-forward.org for more information or visit their website at www.families-forward.org.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Hope, Vision and Value Creation Book Signing on Friday, December 4th in Laguna Beach
Real Estate Industry Veteran John Martin to share lessons learned from housing cycles, community development and residential design at a special book signing in Laguna Beach.
The real estate industry is in a severe economic recession; John Martin offers his prospective on how-to accelerate the recovery by three to four years so the industry can go back to work creating great places for people to live.
His new book, Hope, Vision & Value Creation, is about hope ~ beginning the recovery; vision ~ seeing future opportunities, and the imagination to design the homes and communities that create value.
The purpose of this book is to identify market niches to satisfy the needs and wants for today's buyer; to attract and convenience the financial community to return to and invest in new projects, so the industry can once again, thrive and prosper.
A special book signing will be held on Friday, December 4th at Art for the Soul, 272 Forest Street in Laguna Beach, CA. For more information please visit www.martin-associates.net.
Martin & Associates are dedicated to assisting those who design, develop, market and manage communities and neighborhoods by providing vision, strategic thinking and positioning and by implementing action plans through research and analysis.
The real estate industry is in a severe economic recession; John Martin offers his prospective on how-to accelerate the recovery by three to four years so the industry can go back to work creating great places for people to live.
His new book, Hope, Vision & Value Creation, is about hope ~ beginning the recovery; vision ~ seeing future opportunities, and the imagination to design the homes and communities that create value.
The purpose of this book is to identify market niches to satisfy the needs and wants for today's buyer; to attract and convenience the financial community to return to and invest in new projects, so the industry can once again, thrive and prosper.
A special book signing will be held on Friday, December 4th at Art for the Soul, 272 Forest Street in Laguna Beach, CA. For more information please visit www.martin-associates.net.
Martin & Associates are dedicated to assisting those who design, develop, market and manage communities and neighborhoods by providing vision, strategic thinking and positioning and by implementing action plans through research and analysis.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Shea Homes is the First National Builder to Launch Applications for Iphone and Ipod Touch
Our clients are staying in touch with their customers.
CORONA, CA – November 17, 2009 -- Because of Shea Homes’ success with Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and by listening to their customers, the company continues to embrace technology and is now the first national home builder to release a dedicated “App” for the Apple iPhone. As the iPhone continues to gain market share and more and more people are turning to their Smartphones for information, Shea Homes is pleased to announce, “They have an App for that.” The App is compatible with iPhone as well as the iPod Touch, and is a free download from the iTunes AppStore 
What does this mean for Shea Homes’ customers, Realtors®, and TradePartners®? The Shea Homes Southern California iPhone App provides users with easy access to important community information. Some of the benefits and features that users of the Shea Homes App will enjoy include:
Finding detailed information about all of Shea Homes' communities
- Easily browsing all of the plans available at each community and sharing them with friends
- Seeing pricing, square footages, exterior elevation images and floorplans
- Instantly calling, emailing or getting driving directions (GPS enabled) to any Shea Homes community
- Staying informed with frequent updates about communities, specials and limited-time opportunities
- Instant access to Shea Homes’ Facebook and Twitter pages
According to Gartner Research, the “iPhone OS had 8% of the Smartphone market in 2008” in spite of the fact that the iPhone 3G wasn’t released until July 2008. With the release of the recent upgraded model this past summer, Apple is expected to dominate this sector. The iPhone and iPod Touch combined hold the top spot for mobile browser market share at 30.5% from August to October of 2009. With over 50 million iPhone and iPod Touch customers and over 100,000 applications available, Apple far exceeds any of their competitors. To date there have been over 2 billion AppStore downloads with availability in 81 countries. All this is amazing considering the iPhone has only been available since the summer of 2008.
“Shea Homes is very excited to be the first national home builder offering an iPhone Application which acts as a robust digital and interactive green brochure,” said Bert Selva President and CEO of Shea Homes. “With the increased use of mobile technology and the popularity of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, this was a natural transition. As we move forward into the future, Shea Homes is dedicated to utilizing technology to provide easy and convenient ways to instantly share information any place, any time, and best of all, it’s free. We are also currently working on applications that will be available to other mobile device users, and we expect to offer them by year's end.”
“We are extremely thrilled with the release of our Southern California iPhone App which provides a much needed solution based on numerous consumer requests,” stated Janet Benavidez, director of sales for Shea Homes Southern California. “In addition, it offers more functionality than we had originally thought possible. You have to download it today to see for yourself.”
For more information about the Shea Homes Southern California iPhone or iPod Touch App, visit http://itunes.com/apps/sheahomessoutherncalifornia.
The Shea Homes Southern California iPhone and iPod Touch App provides instant access to detailed information about Shea Homes communities in Orange and Ventura Counties and the Inland Empire.
In Orange County, they include Tapestry in La Habra; Latitudes North and Latitudes South at Vantis in Aliso Viejo; and Harbor Station, Pasadera, Birch River and Vista Vallarta at Glenwood in Aliso Viejo.
In Ventura County, Shea Homes is offering Meridian, Boardwalk and Reflections at RiverPark in Oxnard and Canterbury Lane in Moorpark.
Home buyers in the Inland Empire can choose from these Shea Homes neighborhoods: Tetherwind at The Preserve at Chino; Newbridge, Carmody and SPACES at Avonlea in Corona; Topaz at Eldorado in Menifee; Three-65 at Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga; and Meadowbrook at Adeline’s Farm in Winchester.
Complete details on those communities, including floor plans, driving directions and more, are also available by visiting the company's website at sheahomes.com.
Shea Homes Southern California is a division of Shea Homes Limited Partnership, one of America’s largest privately held homebuilders. As a member of the Shea family of companies, which celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2006, Shea Homes has won numerous prestigious awards for quality, integrity, innovation and customer satisfaction. Shea Homes’ pursuit of excellence is typified by Shea Superiology, the art and science of designing and constructing homes that offer homeowners superior value by maximizing their quality of life, minimizing their costs and making a positive contribution to the environment. For more information, please visit the company's website at sheahomes.com.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Solar Conference 2009 - Anaheim, California
We who have been in the homebuilding industry for awhile have seen solar go from the “less than attractive” to “how cool is that”!
One of our staff was luck enough to attend the solar conference earlier this month. It was very well attended with 900 exhibitors on the entire show floor of the Anaheim California convention center; more than 20,000 industry attendees from 90 countries.
Images showing use of solar panels – one on a custom home (Craftsman style) and one on a commercial building, really tell the story of its “come a long way”. Many of the commercial buildings are able to get government funded loans to cover the install, once they are up and running the extra energy generated by the panels is sold to the electric energy grid – the income generated pays back the loans.
For more information on the next generation of solar and the next conference visit, http://www.ases.org.
One of our staff was luck enough to attend the solar conference earlier this month. It was very well attended with 900 exhibitors on the entire show floor of the Anaheim California convention center; more than 20,000 industry attendees from 90 countries.
Images showing use of solar panels – one on a custom home (Craftsman style) and one on a commercial building, really tell the story of its “come a long way”. Many of the commercial buildings are able to get government funded loans to cover the install, once they are up and running the extra energy generated by the panels is sold to the electric energy grid – the income generated pays back the loans.
For more information on the next generation of solar and the next conference visit, http://www.ases.org.
