Return to Virginia Business - June 2004

Big, alone, doesn’t cut it anymore for upscale buyers. Sure, some people want mammoth four- and five-car garages, and spacious bathrooms and kitchens are expected in homes that begin in the $500,000 range. But what tips the scales these days on a home sale are the custom touches.

While high-end buyers always have been willing to splurge for sensational views, good locations and ample square footage, today’s discerning customer is more apt to go gaga over built-in bathroom scales, stylized lighting and personal wine cellars. “People are looking for details that separate one house from the next,” says Albert H. Small Jr., president of Renaissance, a home-building company in Reston that has been building luxury homes in Northern Virginia for 20 years. “In many instances it isn’t the size or even the materials. It’s putting together the parts and the pieces that clearly are a little bit better.”

The typical upscale buyer, Small says, wants a move up. “In most cases, they’ve lived in a single-family house. They know what they want.” For instance, some people find that they don’t use a living room but would be better served with a library. Or they might want an elegant chandelier or in-home gym. Such changes can be accommodated in the building stage or customized in an existing house.
Water — whether it’s an ocean view or an indoor waterfall — remains high on the wish list of luxury-home seekers. Indoor pools seem rather pedestrian next to the personal natatorium of today, which might include a spa or overhead movie system. And lighting has never seemed more important with mirrored skylights, walls of glass or Palladian windows becoming expected inclusions.

Good views always add value — and dollars — to a price tag. But the desire for privacy and seclusion is what draws buyers, particularly those looking for second homes. In pastoral Nelson County, Joe Kincaid, a broker for Wintergreen Real Estate Co., says many buyers seek mountain views or acreage with a river or stream. But while buyers are willing to shell out for a home and land with a bucolic setting, they want to remain connected to the fast-paced world they so eagerly seek to escape. “The rise in the number of telecommuters as well as the growing number of home-based consultancies has made the need for high-speed Internet an assumed necessity,” says Kincaid. So even in the hinterlands — especially in the hinterlands — wiring for high-speed Internet access is becoming a standard item in newly built homes.

In the 1990s real estate agents noticed that people wanted a designated workspace at home, and so the computer “niche” was born. These days such niches are becoming passé, giving way to larger areas that stop just short of room size, but include enough room for two or more users. People want entertainment areas as well. Savvy high-end builders now include pre-installed entertainment systems. In fact, at least two Richmond companies include in the cost of the home a 42-inch plasma TV with Surround Sound audio system piped throughout the house. That way there’s no bill; it becomes part of the mortgage.

Home technology, as a rule, tends to push aesthetics aside. Frequently to get decent computer access, wires snake on the floor behind the television, tangle beside the PC or, in the best of cases, twist behind closet doors. Upscale buyers want something more attractive than this metallic mumbo jumbo, and they can get it. Instead of dealing with cords and wires, they can hide hardware or bring it on with the touch of a button. “We have to make the electronics eye-appealing,” says Richard Ward, director of operations for Pro-Lynx LLC, a Richmond-based company that provides customized planning, design and installation of home technologies. “We’re becoming as important as interior designers.”

When creating full-home entertainment systems, Ward designs systems to hide anything that looks like it could contain a speaker or a motherboard. A popular beard for big-screen TVs, for instance, is artwork. It can be the owner’s artwork, or a piece specially designed to fit. With the press of a button, the art goes up and the screen comes down. “All you see is a wireless remote,” says Ward. But that unpretentious little remote has six-inch LED panels that operate every major system in the house, from HVAC to lighting to computer networks.

Luxury homebuyers of the 21st century are also interested in space for leisure activities, whether it’s under their own roof or central to a community. Instead of waiting for a home on the golf course to go on the market, people moving up can choose to locate in a community with its own golf course. For instance, at River Creek in Loudoun County — a gated community where attached town homes cost between $650,000 and $900,000 — residents won’t have to share the course with outsiders. Nor will they have to scramble for a foursome. Sixty wide townhouses — another 21st century customization — are situated around the 18th hole, which overlooks the Potomac.

The wide townhouse is finding its place among financially set “active adults,” a market niche that covers people with active lifestyles, aged 40 to 70. “We’ve taken a product and geared it towards a segment of the market that likes the simplicity of townhouse living,” says Small, pointing to Renaissance’s Kensington Square in western Fairfax County, where course-side town homes sell in the $550,000 to $750,000 range. In a standard town home, restricted by width, people moving from a single-family home often encounter problems getting dining room furniture to fit. The wide-built town home spreads 3,200 to 3,600 square feet over two floors instead of three or four, allowing for a full living area on one floor. “They’re townhouses, but they live like a single family house,” says Small.

Whether it’s speedy technology or a mountaintop view, buyers don’t necessarily have to sacrifice one for the other in this buyer-takes-all market. If you can’t find what you want in an existing home, you can build it. And if you can’t build it, chances are you can add it. These days, if you can imagine it, you probably can have it.

Return to Virginia Business - June 2004