“Proper Luxury”
These days, it seems many builders are moving into the “luxury home” market. Luxury
houses are popping up all over the place. I suspect this is partly a reaction to the intensity
of the K-shaped economy and the lingering “lock-in effect” from the Federal Reserve’s
actions in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic.
While many of these new luxury houses are well built and well warrantied, as I visit them,
I’ve noticed that a few small touches are routinely missing.
I have a theory that there is no such thing as a luxury home. There’s only a proper luxury
home and an improper luxury home. To truly be a luxury home, you have to build a house
that is something more than just a nice-looking building. My theory is that you have to
successfully touch on three points:
- You must have a practical floor plan that is finished and trimmed well.
- You must build a house above code minimum with excellent construction standards
and practices. - You must build a house that caters to practical, everyday living.
I try my best to touch on all three of these points. The truth is, the first point is the easiest to
address. If you have a good floor plan designer and a good interior designer, plus two brain
cells and a neuron, you can achieve point one by simply doing what they tell you to do.
Points two and three are where things become a bit more challenging. In particular, I’m
fascinated by the engineering side of construction, systems implementation, and properly
planning for the four control layers of a home. However, I have found it quite difficult to get
people’s attention when it comes to the quality upgrades I prefer to make.
A great example is the mechanical system. I love a well-designed HVAC system. On a home I recently built at 1004 Sycamore St in Durham, I have two upgraded systems—one system per floor—using Trane
Hyperion air handlers paired with 17 SEER outdoor units. The air handlers are well
insulated, the cabinets operate under positive pressure rather than negative pressure, I
have proper air filtration at the return plenums, and the systems operate at multiple speeds
for more consistent air distribution and temperature control, along with better
dehumidification during the summer.
However, a basic 14 SEER single-stage system will still heat and cool a house. It may not be
as efficient. It may not do things quite as well, but it will still work. Many people don’t look
past that single point. I’ve come to realize that only when people truly fall in love with a
house and begin seriously considering purchasing it do they actually care to hear about
these finer details
Point three is a bit simpler. We all understand how frustrating it is to not have enough
outlets in a room, run out of storage space, or have a garage that isn’t deep enough to
actually park your vehicle in.
As I go through the design and construction process, I try to imagine living in the home with
my wife and three kids. I try to imagine things that would be a slight improvement over the
status quo, as well as elements that become annoying when they are overlooked.
A great example would be the outlets in the primary bathroom having USB and Type-C ports
built into them. The reason I installed those is because of my beard trimmer. In my
bathroom, I would have to either go get a charging block to charge my beard trimmer or
take it into my bedroom and set it on my nightstand to use my phone charger, only to find it
leaving beard trimmings all over my nightstand. I found that to be deeply annoying, so that
inspired me to make sure my owners would not have to deal with a similar issue.
Another example would be detachable showerheads. My wife and I stayed at an Airbnb in
Blowing Rock last year. The primary bathroom in the house had a shower with only a fixed
showerhead. While I’ve used showers like that in the past, for some reason, the
impracticality of having only a fixed showerhead really resonated with me in that house. So
that was another adaptation that went into our company SOP: no bathrooms with fixed
showerheads only. Nothing earth-shattering, but cumulatively, little things like that can
make a big difference at the end of a project.
Anyway, I’ve yet to build a perfect home. Perhaps I never will. But I’ll always put my best foot forward to deliver the best home I can.