“We continue to invest in new products and services and maintain our long-term commitment to the home building industry”, says Dexter Salna, President of Constellation HomeBuilder Systems.  As the largest software company dedicated to the homebuilding industry, Constellation continues to provide excellent support and services to help our customers successfully run their business now and in the future.  We welcome the customers and employees of BuildTopia to the Constellation family.

Constellation’s suite of homebuilding solutions include Software as a Service (SaaS) and hosting alternatives, in addition to solutions that builders can install on their own hardware.  In many cases, builders are choosing SaaS and hosting alternatives to get started quickly and avoid the upfront costs associated with purchasing hardware.  In addition to our fully integrated sales, production, accounting, and warranty solutions, Constellation also provides quick-start home builder websites with built-in best practices for online marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and security.

About BuildTopia
BuildTopia delivers comprehensive web-based construction project management software solutions for residential home builders delivered as a SaaS solution.  BuildTopia streamlines and integrates all core construction business processes in one powerful yet easy to use solution to increase production efficiency, reduce errors, maximize each sale, and provide excellent customer service. Builders, developers, and trade partners of every size rely upon BuildTopia to dramatically improve the effectiveness, efficiency and profitability of their businesses.

About Constellation HomeBuilder Systems

As the largest home building software company in the industry, Constellation HomeBuilder Systems has helped more than 2,400 builders manage their information technology costs with integrated software solutions to run their business from dirt to warranty. From planning to homeowner services, we have land development software, new home sales and marketing software, production, purchasing, scheduling, accounting, warranty, electronic homeowner manuals, vendor portal solutions, and web site solutions designed exclusively for the home building industry. Constellation’s product suite includes BuildSoft, Builder 360, Constellation CRM (CFT), Constellation Web Solutions, FAST, NEWSTAR, and Sales1440.

Media Inquiries
Cathy Kotsopoulos
ckotsopoulos@constellationhb.com
(888) 723-2222

Having said that, here is some aggregate analysis for lead distribution by Day of Week and Time of Day.  If you look at the charts and imagine how this fits in your prospective home buyer’s day, you should be able to decide when you want your sales staff available to answer questions by e-mail or phone and schedule appointments for your sales agents.

Lead Distribution – Day of Week

1. husband/wife procrastination factor “can you look up that house we saw last weekend?” it looks like it takes a couple of days for the husband/wife to get around to it.

Lead Distribution – Time of Day

1. Look for homes online around lunch time
2. During afternoon meetings, before leaving the office, they look for more homes
3. Driving home and eating dinner, so no looking for homes at this time
4. Look for more homes after dinner around 7pm.
5. From 8PM to 10PM, put the kids to bed
6. Kids are in bed, time to look for homes again.

Note: Although 8AM, doesn’t look like a prime time for leads, there is some opportunity on Monday mornings as you’ll see below.

Lead Distribution – Day of Week and Time of Day

1. Around noon on Sunday, they look for homes online
2. They might be driving around looking for homes in the neighbourhoods they like between 1 and 5pm on Sunday.
3. Around 6pm they look up the homes that they saw on their Sunday drive
4. At 8 AM on Monday, they get to work and look at more homes.
5. At 4 PM on Monday they look for more homes before leaving work
6. On Tuesday at lunch and towards the end of their workday, they look for more homes.
7. They look for more homes on Tuesday around 10 PM, then they forget about it until Friday as they prepare for their weekend.

We’ll cover many recent enhancements in our home building software solutions and offer product training sessions as well.  For a detailed agenda and registration information, please click on the link below.

Register Now

We have an exciting show planned with many experts available to answer your questions about our products, recent acquisitions, and real-world best practices. To register for these sessions, please click on the session name in the schedule below.

Over the past year, we have seen huge changes in our industry and technology in general. While many builders were focused on their business and making many tough decisions, we were focused on providing world-class customer service, enhancing our products, and developing or acquiring new technologies to meet the needs of the changing home builder, home buyer, and home owner.

To meet these demands, we have released major enhancements to our core production, accounting and sales solutions, completed two significant acquisitions, developed two new products, and offer many of our products in hosted configurations. Our track record with new acquisitions demonstrates Constellation’s commitment to customers with world-class service and ongoing product support and enhancements. This means that home builders can rely on Constellation for stable products, dedication to the industry, and proven expertise. With more than 100 employees focused on homebuilding software, and over 2,400 customers we are the largest software company in the industry with the resources to deliver mission-critical solutions for home builders of all sizes.

With several booths at the show this year, please be sure to stop by to share some stories, or just ask our experts a few questions. We would like to learn more about your business and offer our assistance in any way we can.

See you in Vegas.

Constellation Booth Schedule

*if you are unable to attend any of the scheduled events, please contact
sales@constellationhb.com.

For most builders, the time is right to make this improvement.  There is some optimism in the market, websites have probably been neglected, more potential home buyers are getting their information online, the length of the new home buying process has increased, and many large builders are attributing their recent success to a better website sales process.

Builder G will make the following changes:

1. update their existing website so that it is easier for prospects to obtain community/lot/model/upgrade details and provide contact information
2. utilize one employee to follow-up with all internet prospects immediately to provide friendly information and schedule sales agent appointments
3. utilize their existing sales system to track each prospect and ensure that only qualified prospects are provided to sales agents

Builder G hopes to obtain the following results:

1. obtain more prospects from their existing websites (pre-registration and existing communities)
2. ensure that all prospects are the responsibility of one person and that their marketing database is properly maintained for future prospect campaigns
3. use the software from Constellation to follow industry best practices and track every prospect from start to finish

We’ll let you know how it goes.

In this presentation, Mike does a great job talking about the changing habits of new home buyers and explains some practical approaches builders can follow to increase the number of new home sales.

To summarize, it’s all about:

1. providing quick, personal follow-up for all online prospects
2. ongoing periodic communication (e-mail, phone calls)
3. bringing online prospects into the sales office

Fortunately, Constellation has sales and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to help with this.  We can bring prospect information from your website into your sales system automatically, provide website redesign services, and even help builders go live with a new website very quickly. For example, Kaplan Companies and Stylecraft Builders have used our services to create some amazing websites that are optimized for search engine results.

We would like to thank Mike for conducting the webinar. He speaks with authority about the conversion rates a builder can expect and best practices that can be implemented to boost sales from internet leads. He is also the author of Browsers to Buyers:Proven Strategies for Selling New Homes Online, the home building industry’s authoritative guide on internet marketing, lead generation and leads management.

To learn more about Mike and how he can help your organization, you can visit www.doyouconvert.com.

Direct link: Online Marketing and Prospect Follow-up Best Practices

Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 1 PM EST –
Presenter: Mike Lyon – Do You Convert?

Click here for your video invitation to this event.

With more and more new home buyers going online to begin purchasing their new home, home builders need to consider the following:

• Search engine results and rankings are critical
• Websites need to be organized to capture more prospect information
• Prospect follow-up needs to happen quickly
• Sales staff need to be accountable for every prospect
• Prospects that are not motivated now can become motivated at any time, so ongoing communication is important

The session will be presented by Constellation HomeBuilder Systems and Mike Lyon and will feature a detailed presentation, product demonstrations and an opportunity for questions.

Important Registration Information

After you register for this session, all participants will receive an email confirmation via WebEx confirming your registration with an event URL and event password.  If you do not receive a confirmation, please contact Cathy Kotsopoulos via email or by phone at (888) 723-2222 ext 6140.

With the HST announcement by the Ontario government in March the great unknown was how this would affect our clients?

I have attended the various seminars and workshops put on by the OHBA and BILD hoping to get definite answers to all my questions as to how the HST will be applicable to Homebuilders.  At these sessions there have had experts from both the private and public sectors.

I did get some information but all the rules have not been defined by Canada Revenue Agency or the Ontario Finance department.

Things You Should Know about HST – HST will be implemented on July 1, 2010

According to the Ontario Ministry of Finance the HST will be revenue neutral.  It will reduce the amount of tax paid by Ontario businesses.  That prior to the announcement there was a 2% o 3% RST (Retail Sales Tax) component already factored into the Home Sales price.

To take the Ontario New Housing Rebate the house must be the Primary residence.  The same rules and conditions as the GST rebate.  If the sale is “grand- parented” then there is no Ontario New Housing Rebate.  The Ontario New Housing Rebate can be claimed by the Home Buyer or can be assigned to the Builder.

For the HST rebate calculation the existing GST rebate remains unchanged.  For the Provincial portion of the HST the rebate will apply to the first $400,000 of the purchase price.

With the “Grand-parented” sale the Home Buyer does not pay the HST only GST.  But the Builder is able to claim the Input Tax Credits on all costs paid after July 1, 2010 related to the house construction.  The Builder will pay 2% of the selling price times a factor based on percentage of completion on July 1, 2010.

One of the changes with the HST implementation that the Builder must be aware of is Disclosure.  What I mean by this is that the Builder must disclose if the Agreement of Purchase and Sale was signed between July 19, 2009 and June 30, 2009, whether the 8% Provincial component of the HST applies and if the purchase price is net of the New Housing Rebate.  If this disclosure is not made then the Purchase Price is deemed to include the 8% Provincial component of the HST.

A builder is considered a large business (annual sales above $10 million) then the PST component for the Energy (i.e. Gas, Electrical), Telecommunications (excludes internet services), Vehicles and  Food, Beverage & Entertainment  will be restricted from applying for the Input Tax Credit on the PST portion only.

Being an inquisitive type I started to do some research and — wow — was he right.  This new mandate for Ontario (and maybe some additional provinces) is going to have a significant and profound impact on our industry so I thought I would share some of what I have learned with you. 

First of all, it is a most interesting name – Harmonized Sales Tax – sounds pleasant… right?  Not exactly, based on what I could find out it brings harmony because in order to implement HST a builder is thrown into chaos bordering on pandemonium.  It is difficult to fathom how a builder, remodeler, or renovator can manage all of the requirements and continue to run their business.  For this reason, Constellation HomeBuilder Systems is making changes in our NEWSTAR Enterprise production and accounting system, to help the builder deal with the new tax rules and we’ll be ready when the rules come into effect.

Let’s cover a couple of the basics.  When? The new law goes into effect July 1, 2010, less than a year away.  Who is impacted?  All companies including builders, remodelers, and renovators are subject to the new regulations.  To further confuse you, some of the exemptions you had in the PST regulations no longer apply.  Not confused yet?  Well then, they will add some new exemptions for you to understand and keep track of.

You need to be planning for and understanding how you are going to comply with these new regulations.  One piece I read had some reassuring news… “The province acknowledges businesses will have to change their accounting systems”. 

With past regulatory changes Ontario builders have been able to rely on internal resources to address them.  This one is going to be a little tougher.  The transition rules for projects already under contract or under construction are likely to be more complex and require more information from your production system.  As an organization you can train your staff to learn the intimate details, or you can rely on your software partner to build these rules into their systems.  Constellation has a proven track record for doing this with Tarion requirements, GST calculations, payroll taxes, and other regulatory requirements in Canada and the United States.

HST is complex and I can show you how I came to this conclusion.  I “googled” HST and on the first page of search results I found some good information.  Here are a few of the links I found worthwhile.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/gst-tps/menu-eng.html
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/gst-tps/cnstrctn/menu-eng.html�
http://www.canadabusiness.ca/gol/bsa/site.nsf/en/su07017.html#a1

The reason I say complex… The first link I gave you above has no less that 17 additional links to find more information.    Are you equipped to deal with this?  To make matters worse these taxes add to the purchase price of your houses and construction projects.  So how are you going to do this?

It is time to rely on your software partner.  Let them (us) do the heavy lifting and make the changes to your accounting and production system.  It is your software company that should be responsible for these changes.  Constellation has been very involved with the local home building associations and we will continue to be involved to ensure that our systems will include the functionality our customers need. We have already made the necessary changes for GST/PST and TARION and as a Canadian company we have a better understanding of these changes than any other software provider.  So if you are managing these statutory changes outside your core software, it is time to make a change.  If you are sitting on the fence delaying a software purchase now is the time to decide.

It is not all bad news.  There could be a small buying frenzy created because of the new taxes.  A buyer will see savings should they purchase and close before Canada Day next year.  Leverage that information and create a sense of urgency in your buyers.  Show buyers how delaying their purchase will cost them more money.  If you have inventory homes or lots waiting for new homes your sales team can take advantage of this knowledge.  Sell a few more homes and ease the transition.  Now that is what I call harmony!

How can Constellation Web Solutions help make the most of my marketing dollar?

As we come out of the downturn, the methods and means we use to communicate will change and in many cases change dramatically. We will all need to be able to do more with less and the best way to accomplish this is by leveraging the power of the internet.  This was a diving force in our decision to add Constellation Web Solutions to the family of products at Constellation HomeBuilder Systems. We can help you extend your financial, construction, scheduling, sales office, marketing automation and other software offerings from Constellation to the web and your homebuyers through a customized web site from Constellation Web Solutions.

Utilizing homebuilder industry specific services from Constellation Web Solutions can reduce the costs of your online marketing presence. Traditional outreach sources (newspapers, billboards, mailers, and flyers) are more expensive and less effective today than in the past.  Builders and realtor agents will need to jump to the head of the line and use the power of applications developed specifically to market to the “new” buyers.

It can be difficult to market to the needs of a broad group or demographic.  How do you leverage technology to provide what buyers are looking for?

The days of generic information are over!  The prospects and buyers of homes have become used to technology providing them with the information they want in the way the want it.  The builder can not afford to lag behind in providing prospects and buyers the exact information they want.  This means the builder’s web presence will need to have intelligence to go from general to specific information and Constellation Web Solutions is here to help the builder accomplish this complex task.  The ultimate in specificity allows the prospect/buyer to select models and assess build options for their home from the website.  Our interactive floor plans change the drawings the prospect sees based on the specific options selected from the website.  Imagine the competitive advantage the builder has when the buyer compares their home built their way with the help of the builder’s website to other properties.

Mobile web sites provide immediate, location independent access to interested buyers on the iPhone, Blackberry and other handheld devices. We are living in a time when we all expect “information now” that is being driven by the latest in communication technology.  The builder must be prepared to again, communicate with the buyer/prospect using the method preferred by the buyer.  The adoption rate of texting and using handheld devices (apps) to transmit and gather information is staggering.  Any builder that is not conveying information or preparing to convey information on mobile devices is at risk.  The builders that adopt the technology the buyers use and expect, will recover from the downturn faster and more profitable than those that stick to “conventional” technologies.  Constellation Web Solutions has a proven track record in leading builders to the newer technology.

Talking/Texting/SMS yard-signs provide information when you are away from your models and sales office. This is all part of information now.  We live in a 24/7 era where buyers and even browsers see something and want more information.  The beauty of using an application that communicates (texting or talking) is that you are providing instant access to your information.  The greatest benefit is that you are identifying who is asking for the information and you immediately have a way to follow-up with them.  This completely changes the approach you can take in your sales operation while at the same time being responsive to the needs and wants of the buyer.  I would hate to face talking houses of competitors if mine just sat there.

How will my Company, communities, models and plans get the most on-line exposure?

By syndicating your new home web content to new home destination websites such as Move.com, Zillow.com or Trulia.com or your local newspaper web site as well as integrating your information with social networking avenues, blogs, and new media such as YouTube.com.  The old adage in real estate is location, location, location.  It is equally important when it comes to getting your message out.  Let us help you get your message out to these new sources.

How do I begin working with Constellation Web Solutions?

Builders interested in our web sites and related products should call our sales team at (888) 723-2222, or send a quick e-mail to sales@constellationhb.com.

We are your technology in the homebuilding business.  We know the industry and we know technology, can you afford not to work with us?

About Constellation Home Builder Systems

As the largest home building software company in the industry, Constellation HomeBuilder Systems has helped more than 2,100 builders manage their information technology costs with integrated software solutions to run their business from dirt to warranty. From planning to homeowner services, we have land development software, new home sales and marketing software, production, purchasing, scheduling, accounting, warranty, electronic homeowner manuals, vendor portal solutions, and invoice workflow solutions designed exclusively for the home building industry. Constellation’s product suite includes Constellation CRM (CFT), FAST, NEWSTAR, BuildSoft, Builder 360, and Constellation Web Solutions.

Media Inquiries

Cathy Kotsopoulos
ckotsopoulos@constellationhb.com