If you follow me on Twitter, you know I tweet out a lot of industry information like housing starts, mortgage rate information, real estate statistics, and much more. Sometimes you may get a bleak outlook from those tweets. Although things aren’t exactly rosy, we do have several proverbial “irons in the fire.” We’re always looking for more though. If you’d like to build a new house, a Homearama contract, or look into a remodeling project, we’re here to help.

In the meantime, we thought we’d update you on a few of the current and future projects we have going. If nothing more, this should give you hope for a brighter day. Recently, Dave Ramsey, financial author and speaker, tweeted out that hope is the one thing no one can take away from us.

We’re currently:

• Finishing a custom basement remodel in Oldham County, which includes a bathroom, fireplace, media room, family room, laundry room
• Finishing a basement in English Station which includes a media room, hobby room, family room, and bathroom
• Working on a custom room addition in Plainview—this is an all-weather type sunroom
• Preparing to start a custom contract home we’ve signed in Shelby County on a 14 acre farm
• Finishing a custom basement with a media room, family room, and bathroom in Jtown
• Finishing a custom master bathroom remodel in Jtown
• Covered deck with enclosed custom screening in Jtown
• Beginning a commercial dental office addition and renovation—with this job we had a 13 month rezoning process
• Finishing master bathroom and bedroom remodel in Douglas Hills
• Finished a custom home in Shakes Run
• We’re bidding three custom contract homes
• We’re bidding another commercial build-out

As children, most of us heard it a thousand times. As parents, we probably even said it ourselves a time or two, especially when we wanted those chores to be completed: “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” You may be wondering what that has to do with today’s home building. Well, I’ll tell you.

Home builders are being faced with tough decisions right now. We are being asked to make changes that meet the needs and challenges of tomorrow’s buyers. We need to be aware of what the market is demanding, and how the market is changing. Thus, “don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”

It is well known in our industry that more than 87 percent of new home buyers (94 percent of buyers age 25-44) have visited a website more than 12 times before choosing the builder they are going to contact. It is important that we have good information for the buyer to review. It is also important to help educate buyers and give them as much information as possible to help them make an informed decision. That is why we blog, share articles and information on Twitter and Facebook, and keep our website up-to-date.

Today’s buyers are much different than yesterday’s, and ten years down the road future buyers will be even more different than now. We’re keeping up with how the market and its buyers are communicating so we can better communicate with them and hopefully gain their trust when they decide to build their custom home.

Check out our blog for an array of information-based topics about the housing industry, custom home building, Louisville neighborhoods, and more. If you can’t find a topic you’re looking for, let me know and I’ll do my best to address it.

We hope you enjoy the video.

When you’re in the market for a contractor, builder, or remodeler, you want to make sure you choose someone reliable and trustworthy. We’ve all heard about the horror stories of homeowners forking out big money up-front for a project and the next thing they know their contractor skips town.

While scenarios like that do happen, if you do your research, ask the right questions, and choose a qualified, registered builder, you should be just fine. That’s one reason why I wanted to write this post. I want to go ahead and answer some of those questions for you so you can get to know me a little better.

• My name is Perry Lyons and I’ve been building homes in Louisville for 37 years.
• Our business focuses exclusively on custom projects, meaning we listen carefully to your needs and work hard to accomplish your vision.
• We’ve never cut corners and we never will.
• I’m on the Board of Directors for the Home Builders Association of Louisville (HBAL)
• I’m also the Chairman for the Codes and Standards Committee.
• I teach the advanced estimating and specifications writing classes at the Home Builders Association of Louisville.
• My office is located in the oldest building on Main Street in Middletown.
• I live in Anchorage in one of many homes we built there.
• I’ve completed custom projects in many prestigious neighborhoods in Louisville including Fox Run, Glen Lakes Section II, Lake Forest, Douglas Hills, Plainview, Briar Hill Estates, Grand Lakes, and many others.

Would you like to learn more and see some of my custom building and remodeling work around Louisville? Contact me and let’s start a conversation. You can also follow along on Twitter and Facebook.

“The President’s Grand Award” for Best Integrated Internet Marketing Campaign was given by the Sales and Marketing Council of the Home Builders Association of Louisville.

We submitted to win the award back in the fall. The basis of our campaigns included content marketing via free reports and downloadable guides. It also included social media marketing and sharing via our Twitter and Facebook accounts. We spent a lot of time blogging and video blogging about industry topics, custom building tips, and showing actual site work.

We’ve also been developing a monthly e-newsletter which is set to launch this month. We’d love for you to join our email list today by entering your email address below. You’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription, and you’ll need to click on “confirm” in order to start receiving emails.

Thanks for your support!

Simplified Solutions LLC , an inbound marketing agency in Louisville, KY was proud to help with the strategy, the website updates, the blogging, and the social media coaching— but owner Perry Lyons embraced new media and ran with it. He deserves lot of credit as many scoffers have overlooked digital marketing.

P.S. I’m also Perry’s son in law. In case you didn’t know

Our part of the the story focused primarily on Twitter (micro blogging) and Blogging. It discusses how we keep up with producing content, engaging in social media and using our online presence as a sales and educational tool for customers— or prospective ones for that matter.

Online with Google— it really is the way most customers begin their search.  They vetted you there. They see if you’re up to speed on the market. They expect you to be involved in social media and blogging— engaging them with educational content and answering their questions. They want to believe you’re a thought leader in your field. They want to build trust with you online before they meet you offline. They don’t have time to drive around in cars pressing flesh (shaking hands) with 5 builders before they pick one. Yes we still meet people offline eventually, it’s just that the conversations often begin now on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, our Blog, through email or via our forms on our website. A lot has changed but the playing field is leveled to compete with those who bought attention through ads and direct marketing. It’s hard to do that now. The little guy can bootstrap his efforts now more than ever.

The article ran in this month’s Louisville Builder magazine. We are very honored by the award. We do a lot every day to make sure our work stands up to quality standards and to meet our customer’s expectations. This helps solidify our hopes.

Here is a really bad picture of a very nice award.

If you know of a better way to take a picture of a glass object, let us know in the comments.

My experience over the years has varied. We have been involved with architectural firms. individual architects, draftsmen, and drafting firms. All have a place in the market, and many times the project itself dictates the firm or person that should be used.

If you are thinking of working with a building contractor, many times it is wise to get their counsel first.

If you have already decided to work with; lets say a draftsman, look at some plans he has finished in the past. Ask for references. Ask if he does work for builders. Ask those builders how they feel about that particular draftsman.

DO NOT BASE you final decision solely on price. Some draftsmen do not produce a good detailed sets of plans, and it becomes apparent when trying to obtain building permits. It also allows for interpretations in the field, that should be detailed for field crews. Much like a successful business needs a business plan, your building project needs a good set of building plans.

A good quick check is:

Are the beams sized and the dimensions detailed, or does the plan have the notation: “verify in field”, or “builder to verify”,or even notes like “lumber salesman to verify”. Obviously this draftsman does not know what he is doing, or does not want the responsibility of detailing the plans. Do you really want him designing your project?

Contact us to take your home from concept to completion today.

We discuss a few of the standards on all P.L. Lyons custom homes like house wrap and Rub R Wall basement waterproofing system.

More shots to come from our custom kitchen remodel and our commercial buildout we started in November.