The New New Home, The: Getting the house of your dreams with your eyes wide open PDF
Preview The New New Home, The: Getting the house of your dreams with your eyes wide open
The NEW NEW homE Getting the house of your dreams with your eyes wide open boyce Thompson The NEW NEW HOME The NEW NEW HOME Getting the house of your dreams with your eyes wide open boyce Thompson S Dedication To my wife, Carol Anderson, and our children, Christopher and Ethan Thompson, who don’t seem to mind detours to look at new homes t Text © 2013 Boyce Thompson Photographs © 2013 by James Wilson except where noted on p. 250 All rights reserved. Pp The Taunton Press, Inc., 63 South Main Street, PO Box 5506, Newtown, CT 06470-5506 e-mail: [email protected] Editor: Peter Chapman Copy editor: Diane Sinitsky Indexer: Jay Kreider Jacket/Cover design: Rosalind Loeb Wanke Interior design: carol singer | notice design Layout: Amy Griffin Cover photographer: Peter Aaron/OTTO The following names/manufacturers appearing in The New New Home are trademarks: 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty®; All American Homes®; Andersen®; Apple®; Ashton Woods Homes®; Beaulieu®; Big Wheels®; Bluetooth®; Centex®; Clapper®; Craftmark Homes®; Crossville®; David Weekley Homes®; ECO by Consentino®; Energy Star®; General Electric®; Habitat for Humanity®; Harley- Davidson®; Home DepotSM; Hulu®; IKEA®; iPad®; iPod®; Irvine Company®; KB Home®; Kelly-MooreTM; LivingSmart®; Lowe’s®; Mannington®; Meritage Homes®; Microsoft®; Netflix®; Next GenSM; Nexus EnergyHomesSM; Pardee Homes®; Partners in Building®; Pulte®; Radio Shack®; Room & Board®; Shaw®; Shea Homes®; Sherwin-Williams®; SpacesTM; VerizonSM; Walmart®; WaterSense®; ZigBee® Alliance; Zillow®. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data in progress E-Book ISBN: 978-1-62710-937-6 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Acknowledgments I ACKNOWLEDGE THE MANY BUILDERS and architects who shared their hard-earned trade secrets and enriched me with their ideas through the years. The list starts with people who designed and built my show homes, especially the late Barry Berkus and Tim Eller, who designed and built the first one, shaping the program in the process. I’m grateful to several builders who took big chances on these “concept” homes, particularly Ian McCarthy, David Weekley, and Craig Perry, who hold the distinction of each building a series of three; Chris Stuhmer, Charles Clayton, and Mike McGee for each building one that sold for the price of three; and Steve Glenn, who took on the highest-risk project, a modular home that had to be put together on a show floor in three and a half days. Every journalist has a network of friends who become his or her most important sources of information and inspiration. A short list of mine would have to include Mike Woodley, Carson Looney, Larry Webb, Geoffrey Moeun, Peter Simons, Bill Kreager, Andres Duany, Wayne Speight, Steve Alloy, Joyce Mason, Tony Green, Dave Steinke, Barb Nagle, David Pace, Glenn Cardoso, Tom McCormick, Eric Brown, John Wieland, Tom Wade, CR Herro, Don Jacobs, Gonzalo Romero, Pete Osterman, Debra Falese, Don Anderson, Marianne Cusato, Bill Devereaux, Ken Neumann, and Sandra Kulli. They were all there when I needed them, especially when I was working on this book. I also thank the talented group of writers and edi- tors I’ve worked with through the years, many of whom brought the projects in this book to life through print, especially Denise Dersin, Jenny Sullivan, Carolyn Weber, James Wilson, Rich Binsacca, Rich Schwolsky, Nigel May- nard, Debby Leopold, Matt Power, and Cati O’Keefe. Finally, I thank my wife, Carol Anderson, who read every word of this book, offering critical suggestions to improve its tone and content; Peter Chapman, who took a chance on a first-time book author and guided me expertly through the process; Warren Nesbitt, the publisher of Builder maga- zine and my show-home partner for 15 years; and my two sons, Christopher and Ethan, who when they were young, after listening to my stories about the show homes I was building, thought I was a builder, not a journalist. Contents introduction 2 cHAPtEr on E A New BegiNNiNg 4 cHAPtEr two LessoNs from the fALL 18 cHAPtEr tHrEE home BuiLdiNg’s mixed record oN iNNovAtioN 34 cHAPtEr four spAce pLANNiNg comes of Age 47 cHAPtEr fivE greeN goes mAiNstreAm 68 cHAPtEr six performANce tAkes ceNter stAge 102 cHAPtEr sEvEn the Quest for Net Zero 114 cHAPtEr EigHt uNiversAL desigN mAkes A Lot of seNse 130 cHAPtEr ninE geNerAtioNs joiN uNder oNe roof 143 cHAPtEr tEn New homes get more AffordABLe 153 cHAPtEr ElEvEn Buyers Better BewAre 162 cHAPtEr twElvE coNtemporAry desigN LeAves its mArk 178 cHAPtEr tHirtEEn the rise of iN-towN LiviNg 185 cHAPtEr fourtEEn moduLAr mANiA tAkes hoLd 200 cHAPtEr fiftEEn smALL wiLL remAiN BeAutifuL 211 cHAPtEr sixtEEn whAt to Ask for iN A New home 223 cHAPtEr sEvEntEEn future-proofiNg your home 234 indEx 248 crEdits 250 Introduction FOR DECADES, homes provided a financial bedrock for American families. They functioned like an annuity, steadily rising in value even as they provided creature comforts and a place to raise a family. Tax and finan- cial systems encouraged the American dream of homeownership, even the dream of steadily trading up to better and bigger homes and one day har- vesting all that equity for retirement. By 2006, at the height of the housing boom, households had about $22.6 trillion in equity in real estate, slightly more than half of their wealth. With values steadily rising and seemingly no threat they would ever fall, new homes could be bought and sold based on diversions such as whether dining room windows afforded a nice view of woods in the backyard or the dream of spending cool winter nights luxuriat- ing in a hot tub. No one, not even Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, thought the party would end, that home values in this country would ever decline. The housing boom brought on legendary excesses. Brokers made second mortgages (home-equity loans) to homeowners even as they wrote them first mortgages. The rise of “no doc” and “liar” loans meant that buyers didn’t even have to prove income levels or job status. As television shows like Flip This House proliferated, Americans thought of their homes as investments rather than places to live. “Animal spirits,” a term popularized by Yale econo- mist Robert Shiller, took hold as people, fearing they might miss out on the next great investment, like the dot.com stocks of 2000 to 2001, rushed in to get their piece of the action, bidding up prices. Builders encouraged investor behavior by building ever-bigger, overfeatured homes, sometimes in suspect locations that didn’t matter much to investors. As demand for housing outstripped supply and prices in some areas rose 20 percent a year, buyers neglected the basics of housing investments, such as where the home was located, how well it was built, and what their utility payments would be. Then, starting in 2007, what no one thought would happen actually did—home values started a long, 33-percent decline that lasted through 2011. Prices fell steeply in most cities throughout the country, especially in places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and southern Florida, where many new 22 homes had been built during the previous decade. The collapse in housing values wiped out 18 years of gains for family wealth, and it eventually led to the decline of the entire American economy. Roughly 5 million borrowers lost their homes in foreclosure and another 2 million walked away from them in short sales. The housing bust proved conclusively that there is a downside risk to housing investments, the biggest purchase that most people ever make. By 2012 household equity had only recovered to $17.3 trillion, according to Fed statistics. The five-year housing downturn produced dramatic changes in the design and construction of new homes. The few people with the guts to buy during that period demanded homes that were more space efficient. They refused to pay for a bedroom that wouldn’t be used. They questioned whether they wanted to pay for utilities to heat and cool a volume-ceilinged great room. They looked for hard evidence that builders would provide qual- ity construction. Builders who managed to survive the housing recession had no choice but to comply. The most progressive of them designed and built better, greener, and more space-efficient homes, finally incorporating long- proven methods to optimize construction. I like to think that they created a new generation of homes—what I’ve called The New, New Home—that may hold their value even if property values fall again. This book is dedicated to the idea that lessons learned during the hous- ing recession should not be forgotten. Many of them need to inform buying decisions under all economic conditions. Buyers need to focus on what used to be secondary considerations—things like how well a home is built, how much water it consumes, and whether its energy consumption can be moni- tored. As you go into the search process, keep one eye peeled on the future. Think about how a home will work for you as your needs change—where an elderly parent or jobless college graduate could live, whether the home accommodates advancing age—and how the home may be perceived by future owners. With some careful planning, a new home should be flex- ible and durable enough to support your family’s needs throughout your lifetime and retain its value should you need to sell it. Let’s hope that as the real estate market improves, American homebuyers and builders don’t repeat the mistakes of the recent past. 33
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