Developer/builder Surge Homes last week announced it broke ground on the first three of nine new Houston communities whose homes, company Chairman Ben Lemieux said, will be exactly what potential buyers want.
How does he know they're what his customers want? Because they told him so.
The builder asked prospective homebuyers, owners of existing homes in the communities, real estate agents and architects to post their preferences for floor plans, interior finishes, exterior architecture and other new-home details on the Surge Homes website. Then, the company’s designers incorporated that input into the layouts of the new projects’ single-family homes, townhouses and condos.
More than 3,500 people shared their ideas with Surge Homes, both online and in person, Lemieux said in a press release.
“Many more people participated than we would have imagined,” he said. “Houston buyers and neighbors want to be heard when it comes to the size, style and design of their homes.”
The homes are not custom-built, but the standard floor plans and detailing in the dwellings were influenced by the consumer input.
Drawing a crowd
Surge Homes’ use of that input is a form of crowdsourcing — the growing practice of asking the public to share ideas, pitch in with the work or supply materials as an alternative to going the traditional route of hiring experts or buying items. Surge Homes, a new company, tweaked the concept to use the “crowd” for an open brainstorming session and welcomed input from anyone who logged onto its website.
Throughout the history of mass housing production, builders, of course, have asked past and future customers for input on various aspects of their businesses. For example, most builders of any size routinely conduct customer-service surveys of new buyers, often administered by impartial third parties. And many convene small focus groups with members representing the various demographic groups the builders hope to sell homes to.
A few builders, like Surge, however, are casting a wider net by opening the conversation up to anyone who happens upon their websites and expresses an interest in new homes.
Customer-made
Scottsdale, AZ,-based big builder Taylor Morrison is tapping the design savvy of the populous for something different: In May, it launched the myModelHome Project to allow visitors to its website to vote on which products and styles it should use to decorate its model homes at some of its Texas and California communities.
All summer, participants have viewed photos of lighting fixtures, patio furniture, flooring, cabinetry and wall paint, for example, and voted for their favorites. Taylor Morrison interior decorators are incorporating the winning pieces into their model home layouts and posting photos of the finished online rooms so voters can see if their picks were among them.
Stormy Rasmussen, Taylor Morrison’s national marketing manager, told the Phoenix Business Journal that the process, which the company said is a first among large production builders, keeps the builder in touch with what potential buyers like.
Graham Hughes, Taylor Morrison’s vice president of sales and marketing, said the idea piggybacks onto consumers’ growing use of the Internet to get design ideas for their own homes.
"We thought, 'Why not take that a step further and actually have consumers help design our homes?'" Hughes said in a press release. "We've always believed asking homebuyers what they desire in their next home is the best way to deliver a home that creates a connection with a buyer.”
Asked and answered
Surge Homes’ initial call for feedback came late last year, when the builder scrapped plans for an 84-unit condominium building on a 1.4-acre parcel in Houston Heights and decided instead to construct seven single-family homes.
Before settling on designs, it posted a request for input on its website. Within 23 days, 48,000 visitors had viewed the site, and 3,000 of them had offered their contact information so the company could send them more information.
Those who registered with the Web site by selecting specific floor plans, exterior and interior designs, and home types were invited to put down $1,900 to become VIP members of their preferred communities in exchange for first choice of lots and a discounted home price. More than 30 of them accepted on the first day of presales.
The builder then did what the participants asked. At two locations slated for condominium buildings, for example, they altered their plans because potential buyers said the sites were better suited for townhomes.
In other cases, the builder enlarged yards, packed more bathrooms into small townhouses and added windows.
Surge Homes eventually will build 450 luxury homes that will populate its new communities. Prices will range from $170,000 for a midtown condominium to $1.52 million for a single-family house in Houston Heights.
“The process allows us to tailor the [homes] we will build according to the design preferences and budget of future residents,” Lemieux said at the time. “Normally, in volume production, buyers cannot be given that chance,” especially in a hot market like Houston’s Interstate 610 loop.
Unique approach
The result, the Houston Business Journal reported, is “some of the most unique floor plans in town.”
And the process the company used might not be unique for long.
“We believe that giving prospective buyers and neighbors the opportunity to share their vision of how the community should be built is the future,” Lemieux said.
His partner, Surge Homes co-owner Louis Conrad, agreed. “Over our 26 years in this business, we have learned that we should not assume what people want,” he told the Houston Business Journal. “We had positive feedback and some negative feedback, too. But it’s all constructive criticism. We listened to everyone.”
