Smart and Cheap and Good... for the Current Housing Market

Is anyone else frustrated by the fact that just about every 'new, affordable home' is a cookie-cutter look-alike house that looks like 5 other homes on your street, its called a 'modern craftsman', is largely outfitted with plastic materials, and there is the same white trim everywhere??  


As former home builders, my husband and I have dealt with this issue from day one.  My background is in modern interior architecture.  I was mentored by a master of sophisticated, modern interiors and architecture - Garret Cord Werner.  If you've never heard the name, do a quick Google search and check out his work - its 15 minutes well-spent.  While everything that I collaborated on or made contributions toward, was for the elite class of wealthy business owners and executives, I could never help myself to think how could this or that be value-engineered for the masses.  Why is it that 'good design' is so hard for the bulk of our population to reach?  It wasn't until Target started advertising Michael Graves and some other modern designers of small, useful objects that people even really knew what it was they were missing out on.  


Here's where I'm going with this... I recently read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, as part of a book club read.  Its one of the best reads I can think of ever having in my hands.  I was especially moved by Steve's appreciation for the Eicher community he grew up in, in California, and how he applied that passion toward his eventual product.  I am a student of interior design and history of architecture and knew exactly what he felt when he expressed, "Eichler did a great thing.  His houses were smart and cheap and good.  They brought clean design and simple taste to lower income people."  Well said, Steve.


I am no longer a practicing designer.  I am a real estate broker.  I help people realize their dream of home-ownership or moving up from their current residence.  I am in more than a dozen homes every week.  I see many people move through spaces in a home and they don't even realize why it feels good or why it doesn't.  I notice all of the small things that work or don't work in a home and try to help educate people as to what those might be, what they could make changes to or what to run the other way from... But my ultimate passion is bringing good design to the general public, in an affordable way, to compete with the product that companies like Quadrant and D.R. Horton are pumping out daily.  My husband and I will continue to collaborate with people who can help us realize this dream and bring it to fruition... its on its way...