The title for this week’s post: Don’t Build Ugly Houses, came from Merry Soellner, real estate broker in the western North Carolina area. The reason: she has a swifter sale and for more money when the houses she’s selling have been designed by an Architect.
Highlands, NC timberframe house designed by HOME ARCHITECTS ®.
For instance, of the houses her husband designs (Rand Soellner, ArCH, NCARB, Senior Staff Architect of HOME ARCHITECTS ®), one of those sold last year for around $3.4 million (see image above). So: there’s a lot of value in having a better-looking house. But that’s not the only advantage in having an Architect-designed house for sale. Merry has a hard time selling houses with poorly conceived floor plans, such as most “designers” (without licenses) tend to create. Licensed Architects do a better job at understanding logical functional arrangements that respond better to people’s Lifestyles. People looking to buy a house walk through it to see if it “feels right.”
What this means is: whether or not the house has the rooms, spaces and pedestrian travel paths in the house arranged in a practical manner that will make the house a joy in which to live. Architects are trained to do this early in their careers. It is difficult to do. It takes a great deal of practice and experience. That’s just one of the reasons an Architect-designed house is worth more.
For example: a garage and the main Kitchen for the house should be fairly close together. Duh. But you’d be surprised at how often unlicensed “designers” miss that critical relationship. Why is that important? Because groceries can be heavy and there can be a lot of them. So, of course, you ought to have those spaces near to each other to minimize the distance you have to walk when unloading your vehicle to carry the groceries to the Kitchen. That’s just one example. There are hundreds of spacial relationships that make living a joy rather than a drudgery. Architect understand these relationships and make sure they are logically integrated into each project they create.
Get it designed properly. Hire a professional. Hire an Architect.
tags: don’t build ugly houses, highlands, lake toxaway, cashiers, severville, telluride, aspen, hendersonville