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Building Green in a Black and White World--Chapter 1

The following is an exerpt from the book Building Green in a Black and White World.
Section 1; Chapter 1; Part 2; Knowing Your Market

David Ritchey Johnston
January 1, 1900
HousingZone

Knowing Your Market

No aspect of your customers’ lives is more value-driven than their decision to purchase a home. People want their homes to reflect their values. Since a majority of Americans consider themselves environmentalists, by choosing to build green, you communicate to your customers that you understand their values. Through building green, you can sell your homes on a more personal level. Rather than simply selling the ceramic tile in the foyer or the finished basement, you are selling health, comfort, and well-being to your customers and their children.

Even with the market demand, Building Green in a Black and White World isn’t going to pay off unless you also learn to market green. While your customers’ desires for health, saving money, and improving the environment motivate their purchasing decisions, you have to show them that your homes help them meet those goals. It is important to identify your market: Who is most likely to buy a green home? What is the best way to communicate with this segment of the population? What other values, besides green, are important to them? To meet their needs effectively, you need to know how they want to live, how their values influence their purchase decisions, and what they are trying to express to the world through their home. Taking the time to know the needs and desires of your clients leads to improved sales and greater customer satisfaction. Don’t assume that you know what homebuyers want based on past sales. It is always worth the effort to do some local market research.

For example, in Denver, focus groups on urban design features were conducted for the conversion of the old Stapleton Airport into a residential development project. The designers assumed that mimicking the traditional urban design of the surrounding neighborhoods, like putting the garage behind the house and adding front porches on the street side, would be a positive design improvement. The client, though, insisted on a market research test. A series of focus groups was conducted with past buyers, current shoppers, and realtors. The results were not what the designers expected.

The respondents fell into three distinct categories: the city escapees, the nostalgics, and the climbers. The first group, the city escapees, didn’t want anything that resembled their current neighborhood or the one in which they grew up. They thought of alleys as dangerous and didn’t like houses to be close together. Yards were not necessarily perceived as safe places for their children to play in. This group associated success with a suburban setting on a cul-de-sac. And the garage in front was definitely a status symbol.

The nostalgics had the opposite reaction. They missed the neighborhood they grew up in. For them, front porches added to a sense of community, and they yearned to be able to borrow a cup of sugar from their next door neighbor. Tall trees and shaded yards were valuable to them. Nostalgics wanted to walk to commercial centers and talk to neighbors along the way. The garage in front didn’t matter at all.

The climbers’ most pressing desire was for prestige, so they wanted a neighborhood with larger houses than their current home. They also wanted to display their new car in front of the house because the first impression from the curb was of prime importance. Open floor plans with large areas for entertainment pleased the climbers. They were not particularly interested in neighborhood social contacts and doubted they would ever use a front porch. Clearly, no single approach to site development would please all three groups!

All too often builders make the assumption that they know their market based on past sales. This can easily lead to dead ends and houses that don’t move as well as the houses across the street which include innovations that are more attractive to buyers. Conducting market research, as the above example shows, is key to the success of any new project. National market research is useful to get a sense of large-scale changes in demographics and consumer interest, but all markets are essentially local. You need to know what homebuyers in your area want. The end of this chapter shows you how to conduct your own local market research.

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