Transcript
Dean Wehrli:
Welcome to New Home Insights the John Burns Reals Estate Consulting podcast about the U.S. housing market. I’m your host Dean Wehrli. Today we have the two people who are leading the charge to figure out what new homes will look like, what they will feature and how they will function in the future. We have Jenni Lantz and Mikaela Sharp, they track the new home sector and they head up the New Home Trends Institute here at JBREC, and they’re going to tell you a bit about them and about that in just a minute.
Dean Wehrli:
But today, our topics are going to be pretty varied and pretty interesting, I hope. It’s going to be health and wellness, we’re going to talk about. We’re going to talk about privacy, which I know is increasingly a concern well beyond homes, but it has applications there too. We’re going to talk about the burgeoning work from home trend and how that might play out, and also, we’re going to end with some thoughts on the future of kitchens, always foremost in folks minds. Before we get to that though, Mikaela and Jenni, why don’t you first give yourselves a little bio and introduce yourselves and talk about the New Home Trends Institute for a hot minute.
Mikaela Arroyo:
Sure, I’ll go first. I’m Mikaela Sharp. I’m the manager of trends and innovation here at John Burns Real Estate Consulting. I’ve been here about six years, worked in the demographic side of the business and then started on as our teams first trend tracker and then evolved from there and now I lead up our consumer trends research.
Dean Wehrli:
Trend tracker, by the way … Hold on, I’m sorry Jenni. Trend tracker is an extraordinarily cool title to have. That’s very cool.
Mikaela Arroyo:
It is. It is.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay, Jenni, top that as a title.
Jenni Nichols:
I was going to say Mikaela has a much cooler title than I do, but so I’m Jenni Lantz. I’m senior manager of Design Lens and Mikaela and I work together on the New Home Trends Institute. Actually when I started with John, I started on our consumer research and then took over Design Lens, which is our kind of trend tracking website that looks at great homes and communities around the country. And then as of the beginning of this year, we really kicked off our New Home Trends Institute, which not only gives you inspiration for hey, what’s great around the country, but also looks at the data behind it. So the plan is to give you kind of what’s great, but also pair it with the data that you need to prove your point beyond the gut check.
Dean Wehrli:
And it’s already been great. You’ve had webinars and I’ve learned new things every time. So I’m loving it.
Jenni Nichols:
Well good.
Dean Wehrli:
That is good isn’t it. You know what, I just totally say, “You know what, its super lame, but let’s move on.” Let’s start with something that has really become incredibly important to folks, which is healthy homes. Health and wellness were already surging in interest among home buyers before the pandemic, but now more than ever it’s kind of top of mind. This is particularly true for young buyers and young families. How are builders and developers meeting these demands? What does it mean to you to have a healthy home?
Jenni Nichols:
I think to start, the physical health became something really important last year with COVID and 2020, so the obvious things were indoor air quality, became a little more important as we were inside of our homes more. Low chemical materials and that active lifestyle amenities for communities. So trails were a way people could get back out and enjoy nature. Then if we go kind of the other side of it, we did some research on not just physical health, but mental health and really looking at if we’re stuck inside our homes so much more than we used to be, we need to think a little bit more about sunlight in the home and communal spaces and self-care and when we want to be together and when we want to be apart.
Dean Wehrli:
Can I put you on the spot real quick, Jenni? Low chemical materials, that’s more than lead, isn’t it? That may not be confusing to some folks. What is that briefly?
Jenni Nichols:
So that would be like low VOC paints and then carpet. I know there was a lot of sensitivity on off-gassing and carpet’s a pretty toxic material sometimes. So people are getting more sensitive about the carpets they are choosing, the paints they’re choosing in their houses.
Mikaela Arroyo:
And I think something interesting that we’re finding with how the healthy home is going to evolve over time, is that yes, the low VOC is very important, but we’re also coming to this place where the view of the healthy home is much more comprehensive. And we did a survey where we talked to homeowners and the professional builders, Utopia brands, they did a survey on builders asking them, “What do you think is important in a healthy home?” We compared the results and we found that there’s this really interesting discrepancy in what our industry thinks is a healthy home and what homeowners think makes a healthy home. It really centered around designers our industry tends to think of the healthy home as the parts that go into it, so it’s the low VOC, it’s the organic materials. Whereas the homeowner, they think of things like, “Is my bedroom designed to maximize the sleep I get every night? Is it in a walkable community? Does it have a home gym?”
Dean Wehrli:
So I mean, are there things that, like we just talked about organic materials and low VOC, is that something that there’s a disconnect on as well between consumers and builders?
Mikaela Arroyo:
I think homeowners think it’s very important. I think builders think it’s more important than the homeowners actually do. So we over emphasize its effect, and I think a lot of that has to do with buyer education though. If you just say, “This is low VOC,” it doesn’t have that same importance as if you describe what that means to them, you show how it matters, you show what your life will look like before versus after.
Dean Wehrli:
But it’s going to have to be both ways isn’t it though? It’s going to have to be the builders educating their buyers. You might want to think about this, because it’s important, but it’s also going to be the buyers educating their builders, “Well yeah, that’s great, I do think it’s more important now, but listen to me about these other items.”
Mikaela Arroyo:
Exactly, yep.
Dean Wehrli:
How about smart tech specific to health. We’ll talk about smart tech in a minute when we talk about privacy, but here specific to health. Things like touchless everything and better sensors. Is that something folks are looking for?
Mikaela Arroyo:
Yeah, so touchless is something we’ve heard a lot about, at least on our side. So we definitely did go and ask homeowners what they think about it. And we do think that there’s runway here. We asked, “What products would you consider touchless worth paying extra?” We found about 50% of homeowners would pay more for touchless specifically with the faucets and actually toilets, interesting enough. If we look at who is actually installing touchless right now, it’s far under 50%, so definitely runway here.
Dean Wehrli:
Honestly, I’m surprised that’s not 100%. I imagine that’s because of the whole would you pay more for it. Do you think things like touchless are going to be something where it’s just going to be something where you the builder have to have. It’ll be 100% because folks are going to insist upon it, whether they pay more or not? Do you think that’s where the runway goes?
Mikaela Arroyo:
Yeah, I think some of the hesitancy is just with how far along the technology has come with touchless. When touchless first came out, it was very cumbersome, even some of the touchless faucets now, you’re accidentally turning on the water when you don’t mean to. You’re accidentally turning it off when you’re right in the middle of something. So as the technology continues to get more advanced, I think it’s going to move from that, “I’m not sure if this will work for me,” to an, “oh, I definitely need this,” type of mindset.
Dean Wehrli:
We’ve all been to those faucets in restaurant where it turns it on for about a millisecond before you take you hand away and it goes off immediately, and that’s no bueno. How are you going to wash? And I’m obsessive compulsive so that really affects me. I’m upset. How about embedded sensors? Things like health tracking types of technologies is that something people want to see, want to see more of?
Mikaela Arroyo:
Yeah, so we thought that was an interesting thing to poll homeowners about. We found that the health tracking sensor, so something like a mirror that can take your temperature and tell you that you’re sick, people have a little hesitancy about that. I think a lot of that comes from data privacy issues, but we also asked about maintenance tracking sensors and that has a huge runway for growth. We’re seeing similar adoption potential to the Alexas and the Siris, the voice assistance there. So we definitely think that’s something that will be on the rise. And those are things that can track your water for example and tell you that you have a leak before things get out of hand.
Dean Wehrli:
That’s kind of, the whole mirror thing by the way, just seems very Disney-esque to me, doesn’t? There will be a Disney branded mirror some day. Where you mess with … Mirror, mirror on the wall, do I have any diseases? How about, so with things like Alexa and Siri, I mean, that seems like you see so many models now with that embedded into the system. Is that something you think has a lot of runway as well? Using those to track yourself and track your home?
Mikaela Arroyo:
So we asked about Alexa and Siri, “Do you have one now, do you want one?” I don’t remember the exact numbers, but there is still a chunk of people who are interested in that technology that don’t have it yet. So I think there will be a little bit more growth there. But the maintenance tracking sensors, there’s an equivalent amount of total people, if you add together who has it and who wants it, but if you look at who actually has it, the maintenance sensors is just a tiny sliver because there are not a lot of products out there that meet this need.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay. Are you tracking if anyone is naming their children Alexa anymore. because I’m thinking that’s dropped to zero.
Mikaela Arroyo:
I think you can change your Alexa to call it something else, if you do have an Alexa child.
Dean Wehrli:
I think it’s just easiest-
Jenni Nichols:
Seriously, because that would be painful if you had a daughter named Alexa or Siri?
Dean Wehrli:
It would be horrible. Yes. Yeah, you’d have to spell their name out and they’d say, “Daddy, I’m two, I can’t spell yet, who did you call?” So that could be dangerous. Let’s go with privacy, something again, also is very top of mind right now. Privacy has been more of societal concern for a long time, particularly with respect to tech. But as homes get smarter and tech becomes more integral to homes, privacy has become a home issue very much, now more than ever. Are homeowners becoming more nervous about the tech in their homes, do you guys think?
Jenni Nichols:
I was going to say, well, that’s a hot button question.
Dean Wehrli:
It is, yeah.
Jenni Nichols:
I think for sure. I mean, I think there is a sensitivity on having those virtual assistants in our house. But I think there’s another side where people are really willing to embrace tech in the home for privacy and security and that would be more … The Ring doorbell I know has been really great during COVID, because you could see who was coming to your door. You didn’t have to answer it, or you could. It gave you a little bit more freedom. I think there’re some places where people are more willing to dive into tech in the home and not worrying about it invading their privacy in other places that are a little gray area.
Mikaela Arroyo:
And I think the threshold for a lot of that, that I’ve heard is whether or not the data tracking helps you or not. So with the maintenance sensors, there’s an obviously benefit in that you’re getting feedback that you have a leak and you’re saving money. Or with your Fitbit, it’s tracking your data, but it’s also telling you about your movement and if you’re being healthy. So if they see the direct connection between, yes, we are keeping track of your data, but also here’s what you’re getting back for it, it’s a lot easier of a pill to swallow.
Dean Wehrli:
Health though is such a private issue. I mean, we’re hearing, there are toilets now, that will kind of give you a clean bill of health so to speak after use, or has that potential technology. Is that something though, you think, where folks get nervous about?
Jenni Nichols:
Oh, we were actually just talking about that, and I know one of the big toilet makers came out with a toilet, like you said, Dean, that tells you how you’re doing after you go to the bathroom. Somehow, I feel like that is crossing … At least for me, that’s a little too invasive. But, some of the other stuff, I think is a little … Yeah, I agree with Mikaela. I think it’s, do the benefits outweigh the sort of negatives and invasion of your privacy?
Dean Wehrli:
If your toilet tells you you have IBS, you may be … I don’t know if that’s what you’re going to want to hear from it. Maybe someone else should tell you that.
Jenni Nichols:
Or that you need to eat more protein or-
Dean Wehrli:
There you go.
Jenni Nichols:
Or less protein, right?
Dean Wehrli:
How much fiber did you get? So yeah, that’s something that will be an issue we’ll see. Now let’s move over in terms of privacy still, about home configuration and design elements that play into privacy concerns. Let’s talk with how that’s evolved. How did the subject of privacy come about as a topic for what homeowners are interested in and how it affects their homes?
Jenni Nichols:
So when Mikaela and I were talking about what consumer surveys we wanted to do, we obviously started with work from home, because we started last fall, and that was at the top of the mind for us. But one of the other things that we talk about a lot internally, is privacy between homes and within the home. Because on Design Lens, I’m constantly looking at homes around the country of different sizes and densities and communities and that privacy between homes came up a lot. Then we realized it didn’t necessarily come up in our larger industry quite as much as it came up internally. So we wanted to really dig into it and get into, “Hey, what are people looking for in their homes and how much do they want to connect with their neighbor?” Or how much do you worry about privacy between homes, because we think about it a lot, but we realized that people didn’t necessarily, in our Industry, I should say.
Dean Wehrli:
Oh industry yeah, because I won’t say where it was, but I remember touring the models in an extremely high priced location and they had these very close, small lot detached and they had the bathroom windows, I kid you not, were exactly lined up one to the other, so you could both jump out of the tub and say hi to each other. It did not do well.
Jenni Nichols:
Yeah, I remember one of my friends it was an older house and her kitchen window lined up with her neighbors kitchen window, so when they’d go wash the dishes, she said, after dinner they’d be both washing dishes and it’s weird because they’re staring at each other, so she’d always wave and the neighbor would close the blinds. It was that moment when you’re like, “Okay, well I’m trying to make the best of this weird situation.” But yeah, speaking of windows, I think with our results, that was one of the big things that came up as people’s biggest concern, is you’re right, we don’t always consider how homes line up and it is a little awkward when windows line up and you’re looking straight into your neighbor’s house.
Dean Wehrli:
What else did you think about when you were talking about the evolution, though? Were you talking to family and friends, were you talking to colleagues?
Jenni Nichols:
So I mean, it really came from Design Lens and then talking to our friends. Like I said, my friend with the kitchen window that lined up. Then we did preliminary research where we dug into how people’s lives were changing during COVID and then that led to us doing a deep dive survey about privacy between neighbors, sense of community, natural light, kind of getting a sense of, “Hey, what do people want and what are they missing and what do they need?”
Dean Wehrli:
Do you think that’s something that’s going to last past COVID? Is that something that has some legs?
Jenni Nichols:
Absolutely.
Mikaela Arroyo:
Oh yeah.
Jenni Nichols:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think some of the stuff was really interesting that came out of it. I mean obviously windows were key, but then one of the key places inside the house, not between homes, was the owner’s or primary bedroom. I mean, that was a sense of people wanted that to be the most private space. So, it needs to be separate from common areas. It needs to have a separation from the secondary bedrooms, and also even within the suite, you want the bathroom to be a little more separate from the bedroom so that if one partner gets up early to go to work, the other partner isn’t woken up at 3:00 in the morning or something like that. There was a lot of nuance that we learned that was pretty interesting and thoughtful window placement and things like that.
Mikaela Arroyo:
Yeah, and this is all stuff that we’ve been talking about from way before COVID and stuff that we’ve been calling for from before COVID. While it’s definitely magnified right now, all of the results we’ve found are pretty in line with things that we noticed in our own lives. “Hey, wouldn’t this be nice if it was a little bit more private?” And it turns out that most homeowners do feel the same way. A lot of the results actually did depend on life stage, especially that interior privacy piece. So when you ask people, “Do you wish you had more private spaces in your homes?” The young families are raising their hands, “Heck yes, we do.” Then we also asked-
Jenni Nichols:
Not so shockingly.
Mikaela Arroyo:
… about neighbors, that one was pretty interesting, because we have all this conversation right now about feeling disconnected and wanting to connect more. And we were thinking to ourselves, “Yes, of course we do.” But, I don’t think it’s this, everyone needs a front porch where they can have long conversations with their neighbors, idea that some people have. It’s more, “I just want to wave to my neighbors.” Smile and wave, that was the number one option people chose. A smile and a wave to the neighbor and then, “On my own terms I do want to have a community event where I can get together with everyone.”
Dean Wehrli:
By the way, that result was one of the most surprising things I’ve seen out of the surveys we’re talking about, because you talk to land planners, community planners, a lot of builders and developers, they think that being able to interact and having lots of places and lots of focal points where folks can interact, is everything. It’s absolutely critical. But, the survey says that’s actually a pretty small minority of folks that want to do that on a regular basis.
Mikaela Arroyo:
Yeah, definitely. Especially with those young singles and couples. It’s very predominantly, “I just want a quick wave. I want to say a quick hello and then I want to get about the rest of my day.”
Dean Wehrli:
Do you think it’s because they want to control that? They want to control that interaction? They don’t want to have sort of forced interaction?
Mikaela Arroyo:
I think that’s why we see some of the differentiation by life stage. With the family groups, you see a little bit more, “I want that prolonged interaction.” I think it’s because those people tend to be living around other families. They want to make some friends for their kids to hang out with that are close by. They can just let the kid play in the front yard with the neighbors. But with the young singles and couples, I think they tend to have their own friend groups that they already do things with. They don’t necessarily want to expand that to their neighbors. But Jenni, I think you were going to say something.
Jenni Nichols:
Oh, I was just going to say, it’s not like people don’t want parks or gathering areas in the community. Don’t feel bad land planners and community developers. People still want those parks and trails. But that’s people getting, as Mikaela said, “It’s having a choice of when you deal with your neighbors.” It’s not like you never want to get together or see people. It’s more going to the park, you’re making anybody choice to go out and see people and be around others, or that kind of stuff, or on trails versus what we’re talking about is when you enter your home, you don’t necessarily want to have to interact with people. You want to have the option to do it a lot when you do it, or not and have the option. I think that’s the key is having the option about it.
Dean Wehrli:
Having that control and getting online as soon as you get home. That’s the key of course.
Jenni Nichols:
So you can connect to people virtually.
Dean Wehrli:
Yes, absolutely. How about, so we talked about bed and windows … I’m sorry windows and things like that. What about the size of home, how does that play into privacy?
Mikaela Arroyo:
So size of home did matter, but surprisingly, there were a few key places where it didn’t matter as much as we thought it would. First starting with where it absolutely does matter, the bathroom windows was one place. We asked people between natural light and then the privacy you know you need in the bathroom, what kind of window best meets both of those needs? And for most homeowners, they actually did select those small bullet windows placed above sight lines. That is what they said was ideal for them. It was only when we got to those 4,000 square foot plus homes, where we started to see people say, “No, I do want that really large obscured window over the tub.”
Mikaela Arroyo:
But then a few places that we didn’t see the home size matter as much was first asking people in general, “Do you worry about neighbors being able to see in your home?” Yes, the very, very small homes we saw more worry, but when we got over that 2,000 square foot threshold, it was a pretty consistent amount of people who were worried at some point that their neighbors were able to see into their home or into their yard. Then the other place that we didn’t see home size matter as much as we thought it would was the interior privacy. We talked about before, that’s very much life stage driven and not size of the home, whether or not you need a lot of privacy within the home verus not.
Mikaela Arroyo:
Then the last thing actually that I’ll touch on is that a lot of the privacy conversation really depended on the stories within the home versus the overall size. If you had the three story home, you have that natural between floor separations. So they said things like, “We want more space dedicated to common areas versus bedrooms, because you have that inherent separation.”
Dean Wehrli:
Going back to the … So people in larger homes are a little more concerned about the privacy and their neighbors being able to look in on them. It seems like there’s going to be a preceding variable there that explains that. It seems a little bit counter intuitive. Do you have a sense of why the larger home environment leads with those kind of concerns? Is it the people or is the environment itself?
Mikaela Arroyo:
The larger homes don’t have more privacy concerns, sorry. What we found there is that in a home under 2,000 square feet, you definitely have more privacy concerns about neighbors seeing in, but then once you get over 2,000 square feet. It’s an equivalent threshold. So if you’re in a 2,000 square foot home, or if you’re in a 4,000 square foot home, you’re pretty equally worried about neighbors seeing in.
Dean Wehrli:
Gotcha. Okay, so-
Jenni Nichols:
And Dean, I think that really comes back to, it’s lot size and then location on the lot. If you’re lining up windows, you’re worried about, even if you’re on a 4,000 square foot home, if you’re not strategically placing it on the lot to provide privacy between homes, or have enough of a buffer between homes, then people are still concerned even if they have that huge house.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay, that makes sense. Now, let’s go to the next big thing, work from home. I mean, obviously the next big thing is kind of currently a smaller thing, but it’s still a thing. Some I don’t know, shift in the zeitgeist or some technological change or some societal trend compels it to the top of the agenda. That’s kind of what happened with healthy homes. Health and wellness was very much a big thing. It’s a much bigger thing now with the pandemic. The same can be said for work from home, even more so if anything. Kind of slogging along, it’s gaining traction, but nothing dramatic. Then suddenly, the pandemic hits and everybody’s working from home. Everybody has a Zoom closet and they realize how often the dog barks. So, let’s talk about some numbers first. How big is it. How many households are working from home right now, do we think?
Mikaela Arroyo:
Work from home is an interesting one. We have a lot of confidence that that is going to continue into the future, because like you said, it was something that was already growing beforehand, its just COVID accelerated it to a huge degree. We went about asking homeowners if they are going to continue to work from home. I know everybody has their own estimation for how many people are going to work from home after COVID. It was part of the reason why we did this, because everybody used a difficult baseline. It was what share of workers? What share of workers who earn this much money?
Mikaela Arroyo:
So the way we did it is, we figure our industry needs to root things in households, so we’re going to base this in households, and then, we’re going to talk to households that owned with homeowners earning at least $50,000 a year. Trying to base this in somebody that could be a rough proxy for a potential new home shopper. What we found is that it’s going to be about a quarter of those households that are planning to work from home after COVID. The bigger share of those are going to be more than 10 hours per week. Then a smaller share of that, about four million households will be less than 10 hours per week.
Dean Wehrli:
So part-time. But folks are generally, I believe the survey that you guys have done, show that work from homers, really want to continue to work from home.
Mikaela Arroyo:
Yeah, I think it was about 60% of those working from home right now, will continue.
Dean Wehrli:
How much of that is aspirational? They think they will continue to work from home because they want to work from home. Do you think it’s really going to be that big of a share?
Mikaela Arroyo:
We split it out. We definitely agree that it’s part your decision and it’s part not your decision. So we didn’t say, “Do you want to work from home?” We actually said, “Do you plan to?” And then, we gave them a scale from completely, definitely won’t, unlikely to, not sure, likely, very, very likely. We only looked at people who said they were likely to very likely.
Dean Wehrli:
I mean, I even think part of that could be impacted by desire as much as expectation, right?
Mikaela Arroyo:
Oh definitely. Well, and you’ve seen the trend over time. I mean, when we first went home, everyone was saying, “I’m so productive. I’m definitely going to do this forever.” As time went on the issues started to come out and you had more people saying, “I’m not sure. Maybe I do want to go back to the office or do some sort of hybrid model.”
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. Yeah. And one thing we’re certain about is that whatever the amount of people working from home before COVID, it will be a much larger number even after the vaccine has completely eliminated COVID-19.
Mikaela Arroyo:
Definitely.
Dean Wehrli:
How about beyond that, things like designs, and locations? What kind of impacts does work from home have on those concerns?
Mikaela Arroyo:
I think design is the obvious one. I mean, people are planning on working from home, they’re going to put more prioritization on that work space. We did ask people if you do work from home, do you plan to remodel? Do you plan to move? We saw most people plan to just make minor adjustments. There were, I think it was 2.4 million plan to remodel and then 400,000 plan to move specifically to improve their workspace. It’s not a huge share that are going to move strictly due to the design concerns. I think the larger implication is the location.
Mikaela Arroyo:
So we asked people if they planned to move because they’re able to work from home. We asked our consultants about this, if they’re seeing this in their markets and they said, “Yes, definitely, a lot of the people are moving to more affordable locations, because they can, because they’re able to work from home.” That doesn’t mean exclusively work from home. So they’re able to move to the other side of the country. In all cases, a lot of the times it’s just, “I only have to go in two times a week, so a 30 minute longer commute is okay with me.”
Dean Wehrli:
I think that actually hits it. Affordability really is the real motivation here, and the work from home sort of untapped that massive latent demand for people who would love to get out the core area that’s near their work. Because I mean, literally, I’m in Northern California, where the price difference can be literally a third for a much bigger more spacious home, versus what they can do closer into say their core Bay Area jobs. It’s been a huge impact in markets like that. We’ll see how that plays out. How about maybe some opportunities for folks to change design, because of work from home?
Jenni Nichols:
We’ve found some great opportunities from the survey and some of it was a little bit more obvious like connectivity and great Wi-Fi. I mean, the last thing you want in the middle of your Zoom call is to have your call dropped. That was one of those things that we expected. And privacy and noise solutions, that was another one that wasn’t a surprise, but came up a lot. One thing that was a kind of a surprise, because we allow in our surveys for both quantitative answering just A, B or C, what answer do you have, but also write in questions. One of the things that was surprising, yet after the fact, not as surprising as we thought, was lighting. Is we didn’t ask a lot of questions about lighting, but boy, do people care about it. And it’s not a surprise when you really think about it, because you’re like, “Oh wow.” You get that witness protection look, where you have the window behind you and the black out body kind of aesthetic. So people realized windows and good lighting really mattered so much more than we ever thought about before.
Jenni Nichols:
That was one of the key takeaways, and like I said, privacy and noise solutions. Storage, people wanted space for their stuff. Then connectivity and things like that. Then as Mikaela has mentioned in the past, we like to dig into life stages, so this definitely varies for life stage in terms of what people wanted. Mature singles and couples, they didn’t care as much if their office was open to the rest of the room. If it’s two of you walking around the house, you guys can find … even if you’re both working from home, it’s easier to find a separate space, versus young families. Oh boy, did they want a door and sometimes that wasn’t even enough.
Dean Wehrli:
A lock on the door.
Jenni Nichols:
You couldn’t just have a barn door. You needed the door that closes that actually buffers the sound.
Dean Wehrli:
That is a huge concern, because all these folks. I’ve been home officing for a very long time, but I’ve felt it more, because people are home more now. Zoom rooms, yes or no? Go.
Jenni Nichols:
I’m going to say no. I think you need a space for Zoom calls, but I think creating a separate space is just … People are really sensitive on … It really comes back to, what do they need? What do they think they need? And what do they actually need? If we really dig into what they want their square footage for, do they really want to waste space for a Zoom room, that’s a kind of a close- in space. I always think of those WeWork spaces, Dean, where you have the open offices and then there’re these little pods that you can walk into and do your calls. Those are, they’re just so sad, first of all. I mean, they’re great for what they do with WeWork, but just do we really want something like that in our homes? Versus, I’ve seen … I think having a space for a Zoom call is definitely … An alternative space is definitely a must.
Jenni Nichols:
But I think creating a specific Zoom room is a little not mainstream, versus creating something that’s a flexible space that has a good background, that has nice light. Maybe that’s a primary bedroom retreat. Maybe that’s kind of a niche off of the main living areas. We’ve seen some cool solutions that create that alternative Zoom space without creating a really formal Zoom room.
Dean Wehrli:
So Zoom rooms are something that probably does not out last the pandemic. What else might we be doing wrong right now?
Mikaela Arroyo:
I think office location is one thing that we see is changing. I mean, the office used to be this space that just checked the box. Does the house have one, does it not? Then that’s good enough. But as we have more people working from, or people just being more conscious about how important the office space is, I think it’s going to become more important that this is placed in a position that people really want and off the entry is actually not that spot, which is where we so frequently put it. So we asked people, where is the ideal spot for your home office and the answers across life stages were number one, it’s either upstairs, but not connected to that main bedroom. So separate from the main bedroom and upstairs. Then the second option from there was off the back of the house, ideally with direct access to the yard.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay. I mean, yeah, you almost always, when you walk into a model with an office, it’s almost always that first room on the left or the right as you walk in. Then-
Mikaela Arroyo:
And that wasn’t even in the top three, except for the mature singles and couples. They’re the only one who put that third. I think for the families, third was that main bedroom retreat and for the young singles and couples, I think the third was just in the great room somewhere.
Dean Wehrli:
And those are better options if you can’t do number one and number two separated from the upstairs or at the back of the house.
Mikaela Arroyo:
Exactly.
Jenni Nichols:
And another key takeaway, Dean, is a lot of times people will, like Mikaela said, it’s checking the box. It’s taking that space in the front of the house and you can flex it as a bedroom or an office. I think one of the things we saw is, and this is where we go back to that life stage, young families don’t want to give up bedroom space. That’s the last thing they want to trade off. As Mikaela mentioned, mature couples and sometimes the young singles or couples, they’re okay with giving up a bedroom, but families aren’t. So considering kind of our standard go to is that bedroom office flex space, maybe we need to reconsider and think about how can we option something that isn’t giving up a bedroom space. We saw one that you could get additional space in that main or primary bedroom suite, by giving up volume over the great room, versus giving up an extra bedroom, which we thought was a really great solution. So it’s giving you that wow factor with the volume over the great room. Or giving you that extra space in that primary suite. It’s things like that, that give you alternative solutions without going with your standard bedroom office trade off.
Dean Wehrli:
And because that extra space in the extra bedroom is now a mini gym, it’s a little mini fitness room, because we can’t go to the fitness center right now. How about, can’t you just shove … put a little chair back and a little tiny table somewhere in a kitchen niche and boom, problem solved? Does that work?
Mikaela Arroyo:
That’s another one we found actually through our kitchen report is we asked people, what do you prioritize when you’re designing a kitchen? We thought work from home is at its peak right now. We should see work from home pretty high up in the list there, and no, it was not. It was after pet spaces. It was of course after cooking, eating, gathering. It ranked pretty low. So homeowners, are not thinking about a workspace in their kitchen. And as we thought on that a little bit more, I mean, it really makes sense. You have more importance on a good workspace elsewhere, so you don’t really need that workspace in the kitchen if you have a great office somewhere else. Then a lot of the use of those offices are for bills or for meal planning and a lot of that is done virtually now. You have auto pay for your bills. You’re meal planning on your iPad on the couch. You don’t need that little spot when it could be dedicated to storage or cooking or something else that the kitchen is used more for.
Dean Wehrli:
It’s so true. I remember that used to be the little niche was like, “Oh, that’s where you write your checks.” I remember this was years ago, but seeing a kitchen with that little niche, with the little desk there, and they put a fake checkbook there for them. It was hilarious.
Jenni Nichols:
Or like you’d pull out your recipe books and you-
Dean Wehrli:
No one writes checks.
Jenni Nichols:
Well yeah, right. Or, I remember the old thing was you’d pull out your recipe books and you’d lay out the recipe books and plan your meals. I feel like now, even that’s gone away from, we still have recipe books, but a lot of it’s gone really virtual.
Dean Wehrli:
Absolutely.
Jenni Nichols:
You don’t need that big meal planning space.
Dean Wehrli:
We just have Alexa scroll it down on the little screen thing now. I can’t remember what it’s called, but we have one of those, and that’s exactly what we just did this weekend. That’s a good segue. Let’s talk about kitchens. I know we can only talk about kitchens briefly. Let’s do a little foray though into kitchens. What are people looking for? What are people looking for in improvements in kitchen space right now?
Mikaela Arroyo:
I think one of the interesting things that came out of our kitchen report is how different the young families use their kitchen and how different the kitchen matters to young families. They were not only the most likely to plan to remodel their kitchen, but we found that they have very different needs. I know everyone talks about the multi functionality of the kitchen, but we found that that actually does vary a lot by life stage with the young families truly using that kitchen as a hub that needs to meet a lot of different needs, whereas, the mature singles and couples, they tended to yes, use the kitchen for cooking, eating, gathering, but then use other parts of the home to do those additional things like crafts and laundry. We found that young families will definitely benefit from a great multifunctional kitchen. They’re looking to improve their kitchens. Then also, interestingly, they are the most willing to swap out products that still work, simply because they just don’t like how they look anymore. So more focused on the aesthetic of their kitchen as well.
Dean Wehrli:
How about things like, I mean, the kitchen has become so prominent and you want to do everything in the kitchen and it became very cluttered and very busy. Are people looking to move away from that right now?
Jenni Nichols:
Yes. Storage is key right now, I mean, especially as we’re stock piling … Well, last year when people were stock piling supplies, they really needed a place to put them. So the desire for that walk-in pantry or additional storage really grew. We asked a lot about layout of kitchen and types of cabinetry. It was definitely a focus on storage. And aesthetics are great, but open shelving is less functional. So be strategic when you’re including open shelving where it’s like accent shelving or kind of around the oven. That’s cool, but people don’t want to give up the storage space and the functionality. And then-
Dean Wehrli:
That’s interesting. Go ahead. But I was just going to say real quick, Jenni, you do see a lot of that in models now. You do see suddenly, you saw tons more open storage and presumably those folks weren’t really asking their buyers what they wanted.
Jenni Nichols:
Well, I think aesthetically it’s cool looking. I mean, I read Dwell magazine and there’re tons of cool fun homes that have open shelving. I think the idea of it’s really cool. But the function of it. I mean good God, what do you put there. So if it’s little-
Dean Wehrli:
Cans of beans.
Jenni Nichols:
Yeah, totally, that’s exactly what I want my visitors to see is cans of beans, Dean.
Dean Wehrli:
You put all the fake stuff that you’re not really going to eat, but you want to pretend that you eat. That’s what you put there.
Jenni Nichols:
Well, I always think spices. If you’re talking open shelving around your oven, it becomes kind of a cool aesthetic functional thing, so the olive oil and the … You can look very cool and hip and have your spices out, but then it hides the cans of beans from the rest of the group.
Dean Wehrli:
Jenni’s going, “Let me just grab my saffron and I’ll whip something up.” Right.
Jenni Nichols:
Yeah, that never gets used, but of course you have just to make it look cool and pretty. Then one of the other things we saw, Dean, so continuing that storage and separation was, we reached out to our architect clients and really picked their brains on, “Hey, what are you seeing? What changes are you seeing with the buyers?” Obviously storage came up with them as well, but that’s secondary back, or dirty kitchen, is really coming up, or coming back, especially in the larger or luxury homes. So those back kitchens give you a chance for extra storage, sometimes an extra fridge, but also extra prep space or so you can tuck stuff out of the way and have your main kitchen be a little bit more entertainment friendly.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay, before we leave though, give us a hint, if you can, about some of the topics that you might tackle next at the New Home Institute. Like, I don’t know, accessory dwelling units, ADUs. Are you going to look at rental spaces or BFR or more smart home stuff? Any sense, can you tell us?
Mikaela Arroyo:
All of the above there. We’re looking at bathrooms next. That’s going to be our next report coming out this month. We’re going to tackle ADUs. Getting into the multi gen space. What do you want out of one? Who’s going to rent one in the future? We’ll talk about build for around like you mentioned, exteriors. We’ll have a great architect survey that we’re working on right now to give the crystal ball of what’s coming next. We’re going to try to hit on all kinds of things.
Dean Wehrli:
ADUs especially, it’s like I know city planners want them, but does anyone else? I’ll be interested to see what the reaction is for that. How about haunted houses? Can we do that? Can we like ghost types and how scary are homes? Are most ghosts at home scary or friendly? And should they have a say in your kitchen color scheme? Will you do that, will you, for me?
Jenni Nichols:
Oh, that’s should-
Mikaela Arroyo:
We’ll pencil it in for October.
Jenni Nichols:
I was just going to say that, Mikaela. We should add it in for October.
Dean Wehrli:
100% should. I can’t wait for that. So seriously, honestly, New Home Trends Institute is already a tremendous source of insights and we’re just going to build from there. You guys are doing a phenomenal job making it better every day, so thank you for being my guest on the New Home Insights podcast.
Mikaela Arroyo:
Thanks for having.
Jenni Nichols:
Awesome. Yeah, thanks, Dean. Thanks for having us.
Dean Wehrli:
Thank you. This has been the New Home Insights podcast with me Dean Wehrli, with Mikaela Sharp and Jenni Lantz. Thanks for listening.
