If you are searching for a new home, you’ve likely visited homebuilders’ model homes and/or explored their floorplans online.
Are you part of that small percentage of buyers who immediately fall in love with a floorplan? Congratulations! For most of us, that home probably doesn’t’t exist. Yet.
Most of us seek a mash-up of floorplans — this kitchen, that master bath and the model-home courtyard garden that stopped us in our tracks — even if we don’t recognize that’s what we’re thinking.
The truth is that buyers rarely luck into the perfect new home because, well, we don’t live in a perfect world. But that doesn’t mean the industry can’t help potential clients create dream homes. Read on for more on why customization is crucial for modern homebuilders.
What’s customization?
In the homebuilding industry, customization means tailoring a new home to its clients’ specific lifestyles and needs. Think extra closets. Wider hallways for folks with special needs. A dreamed-of infinity pool. Yes, customization can mean homes tailored by money-is-no-object budgets. But these homes also must fit the same criteria — and clients’ specific lifestyles and needs.
Not all builders customize
“I know very few builders who do,” says Don Wilford, president of the Custom Home Division for ICI Homes. “It takes too diversified of a team to customize.”
As ICI Homes’ customization guru, Wilford spearheads the company’s longtime commitment to giving potential clients exactly what they need and want in a new home. ICI Homes has built all over the state of Florida for almost four decades, so our builders, designers and architects know that customizing a floorplan not only sells more homes, it reaps more happy home owners.
“A builder can’t go in there and design custom homes the way he wants them,” Wilford says. “You have to listen to the customer.”
Many Florida builders build certain floorplans over and over — with some variations — but with little leeway. Stopping a construction schedule to adjust blueprints, to order extra materials or to schedule additional workers, means holding up the overall show. It also means spending more money and risking more mistakes because craftspeople are asked to do something different, rather than the same, well-honed thing over and over.
Modern customers require modern customization
Today’s home buyers are a demanding bunch! Aging Baby Boomers and the rise of Millennials have shifted home-buying demographics in the United States, with the result that buyers now come from many different age groups, with different priorities and needs.
Millennials tend to be keen pet owners who want a doggie spa for Fido. Many mature adults want to help house elderly parents or adult children who need a landing spot after college graduation.
Builders willing to tweak existing floorplans to fit buyers’ needs, will score big with today’s home buyers.
Wilford cites a frequent example in today’s market: pet owners amazed that ICI Homes can add space for a Great Dane’s crate in a laundry room, or tuck an extra dog run in a back yard.
Their reaction?
“‘I can’t get that anywhere else,” Wilford says. “‘I gotta buy this house.’”
Ready for your customized ICI Homes experience? Talk to us here.