Custom Homes and Customizing New Construction
September 29,2011
New homes can be altered to reflect individual style
There’s good news for anyone who believes cookie cutters should be reserved for cookies, not homes. The opportunity to start with a standard home design and alter it to make it distinctively your own is not a pipe dream. In fact, it’s all part of the plan.
In today’s market, offering buyers flexibility and giving them a range of prices within any given floor plan is a marketing necessity for production builders, says Gail Payonk, sales and marketing director for Wheaton’s Next Generation Development, a privately-owned builder and developer in Chicago’s collar counties. “The days of a builder having 25 off-the-shelf plans and prices are fairly diminished,” she says. “There’s not enough demand, and there’s a significant cost overhead associated with carrying all those plans in the system.”
Observing the same trend is Jeff Harting, president of Northbrook’s FGH Architects, a custom-home architectural firm. “We’re encouraging production builders to be more open to slight floor plan modifications, not just variations in finishes, upgrades and materials,” he says. “Five years ago, a builder would put out a floor plan and say take it or leave it.
“Now, they’re more willing to work with homeowners to customize the home, and make it their own in floor plans and room modifications, rather than in finishes and materials.”
Build out options
Today, most floor plans have available build-out options, Payonk says. In a standard three-bedroom-and-loft plan, for instance, a builder may offer an alternate second floor plan providing two more bedrooms and a Jack-and-Jill bath option. In a floor plan with a standard kitchen with an ordinary island and free-standing appliances, an option might be a gourmet island with an unusual curvature and a veggie sink, and built-in appliances.
In these cases, the production builder is offering alternate floor plans that are standard within its system, Payonk says. “Even though it’s a change, it’s been priced out, engineered, and is probably the most cost-effective way for buyers to personalize their homes.”
One more example is addition of first floor space. A popular option at Next Generation Development has always been a sunroom or four-season room. Such an addition calls for significant modification of roof and foundation as well as windows and doors. “But it can be cost-effective because it’s already been drawn by an architect, pre-designed for the home, and it’s already been priced out,” Payonk says. “The cost analysis has been done.”
In the case of a semi-custom home, designing to buyers’ distinct preferences involves consultation, says Court Airhart, president of West Chicago’s Airhart Construction, building semi-custom and custom homes throughout DuPage County. “We have people who come in with photos, people who come in telling a story, people who have pulled some things out of a design book and say, ‘Can you take a living room from this and a kitchen from that?’ ”
Airhart has on staff a designer whose initial drawings are seen as more of a starting than an ending point, he says. As buyers work with the design and sales teams, the goal is to create a home as distinctive to their needs and desires as possible. It may be simply adding a bay, or a more complex transformation of several rooms into an in-law suite.
In the case of a custom home, the process begins with a blank page. “We started from zero,” says Anne Wanzenberg, who with her husband Matt is having Airhart Construction build a custom home in the western suburbs. “We had the lot, and restrictions on size based on lot size. We looked at other plans online, other elevations online and other homes in the neighborhood. Then we thought about things we wanted in a house, and how we would use the house. They started with those things and designed it from scratch.”
Among the home’s distinctive characteristics is that it has no formal living room, but does have a piano room. It also has a dog crate built into the mudroom. “And we have a very open kitchen and family room area,” Wanzenberg says. “We spent a lot of time designing the home. We’ve had a really, really great experience doing this.”
When the architects at Harting’s firm begin designing a custom home, they start with the front of the house, mindful that the presentation should represent the homeowner. Whether a formal Georgian or perhaps an Arts and Crafts style, “It should be about who this family is, and what they’re about,” he says. “They may say they like Colonial, but as you draw them out it becomes apparent they’ve always been attracted to red brick, white trim and green shutters, but not necessarily every aspect of a center-entrance Colonial.”
The takeaway? Even in a production home, it is possible today to give it a distinction that wasn’t available even a few years ago. Says Payonk: “In this market, the difference between new and resale is the fact you can personalize a new home, with greater economies than you could remodeling a resale home.”
September 29,2011
New homes can be altered to reflect individual style
There’s good news for anyone who believes cookie cutters should be reserved for cookies, not homes. The opportunity to start with a standard home design and alter it to make it distinctively your own is not a pipe dream. In fact, it’s all part of the plan.
In today’s market, offering buyers flexibility and giving them a range of prices within any given floor plan is a marketing necessity for production builders, says Gail Payonk, sales and marketing director for Wheaton’s Next Generation Development, a privately-owned builder and developer in Chicago’s collar counties. “The days of a builder having 25 off-the-shelf plans and prices are fairly diminished,” she says. “There’s not enough demand, and there’s a significant cost overhead associated with carrying all those plans in the system.”
Observing the same trend is Jeff Harting, president of Northbrook’s FGH Architects, a custom-home architectural firm. “We’re encouraging production builders to be more open to slight floor plan modifications, not just variations in finishes, upgrades and materials,” he says. “Five years ago, a builder would put out a floor plan and say take it or leave it.
“Now, they’re more willing to work with homeowners to customize the home, and make it their own in floor plans and room modifications, rather than in finishes and materials.”
Build out options
Today, most floor plans have available build-out options, Payonk says. In a standard three-bedroom-and-loft plan, for instance, a builder may offer an alternate second floor plan providing two more bedrooms and a Jack-and-Jill bath option. In a floor plan with a standard kitchen with an ordinary island and free-standing appliances, an option might be a gourmet island with an unusual curvature and a veggie sink, and built-in appliances.
In these cases, the production builder is offering alternate floor plans that are standard within its system, Payonk says. “Even though it’s a change, it’s been priced out, engineered, and is probably the most cost-effective way for buyers to personalize their homes.”
One more example is addition of first floor space. A popular option at Next Generation Development has always been a sunroom or four-season room. Such an addition calls for significant modification of roof and foundation as well as windows and doors. “But it can be cost-effective because it’s already been drawn by an architect, pre-designed for the home, and it’s already been priced out,” Payonk says. “The cost analysis has been done.”
In the case of a semi-custom home, designing to buyers’ distinct preferences involves consultation, says Court Airhart, president of West Chicago’s Airhart Construction, building semi-custom and custom homes throughout DuPage County. “We have people who come in with photos, people who come in telling a story, people who have pulled some things out of a design book and say, ‘Can you take a living room from this and a kitchen from that?’ ”
Airhart has on staff a designer whose initial drawings are seen as more of a starting than an ending point, he says. As buyers work with the design and sales teams, the goal is to create a home as distinctive to their needs and desires as possible. It may be simply adding a bay, or a more complex transformation of several rooms into an in-law suite.
In the case of a custom home, the process begins with a blank page. “We started from zero,” says Anne Wanzenberg, who with her husband Matt is having Airhart Construction build a custom home in the western suburbs. “We had the lot, and restrictions on size based on lot size. We looked at other plans online, other elevations online and other homes in the neighborhood. Then we thought about things we wanted in a house, and how we would use the house. They started with those things and designed it from scratch.”
Among the home’s distinctive characteristics is that it has no formal living room, but does have a piano room. It also has a dog crate built into the mudroom. “And we have a very open kitchen and family room area,” Wanzenberg says. “We spent a lot of time designing the home. We’ve had a really, really great experience doing this.”
When the architects at Harting’s firm begin designing a custom home, they start with the front of the house, mindful that the presentation should represent the homeowner. Whether a formal Georgian or perhaps an Arts and Crafts style, “It should be about who this family is, and what they’re about,” he says. “They may say they like Colonial, but as you draw them out it becomes apparent they’ve always been attracted to red brick, white trim and green shutters, but not necessarily every aspect of a center-entrance Colonial.”
The takeaway? Even in a production home, it is possible today to give it a distinction that wasn’t available even a few years ago. Says Payonk: “In this market, the difference between new and resale is the fact you can personalize a new home, with greater economies than you could remodeling a resale home.”
