At the May meeting, Weidner updates the builders. He says the fire chief has approved the buried tank, but the supervisors may need to take a formal vote at their next meeting, June 13. Bob Harsch, the township engineer, retired several months ago, and his replacement wants to do things by the book. Electricity is usually the last utility to be installed in a subdivision, after all other excavation is complete, and because of the delay in paving the streets, that operation, too, has been held up. The utility company is currently digging trenches and burying cables next to the streets. “How soon are they going to be done?” asks Bob Eager, who is NV’s land manager and oversees its relations with developers. A couple of weeks, says Weidner. “I sure hope so,” replies Eager. “We can’t put the driveways in until they’re finished. That’s cutting it really close.”
Timing has become a major issue for everyone. Both NV and Ryan have already canceled settlement dates with the first home buyers and rescheduled them for late June, which is only four weeks away. If all the pieces don’t fall into place, the township won’t issue occupancy permits, and people will not be able to move into their new homes. What happens then, I ask Oliveira. “Not much. Contractually, we have up to two years to deliver the house. But in the meantime we have to bear the carrying costs, which are ninety to ninety-five percent of the house price.” Do purchasers ever walk away from their deposits? “I have heard of buyers walking away when their houses are not available on time, although it’s never happened to me,” she says. “But there’s a lot of threatening, and it can definitely get unpleasant.”
26
Hard Sell
How builders sell houses — traffic, qualified buyers, and guest cards.cards
Ever since Seaside, it has been common practice in neotraditional developments to build the first houses in a close group, in order to give buyers a sense of the neighborhood atmosphere that is TND’s chief selling point. That is not happening at New Daleville. When I visit the site in May 2006, there are eight houses in various stages of construction. The four model homes are near the entrance, on both sides of the 150-foot-wide boulevard, but since they are so far apart, they don’t really form a cohesive group. Two Ryan houses are going up in one far corner, and two NV houses in another. All are on edge lots. “We and NVR decided to give their sales personnel more freedom to sell around the site in a softening market,” says Jason Duckworth, adding that, in hindsight, this may have been a poor decision. The scattershot appearance makes it difficult for people to see exactly what they are getting in return for putting up with smaller lots, back lanes, and narrow streets.
The model homes are fully landscaped, with grass, shrubs, and front walks, except for the Michener, which is still under construction. As soon as it’s finished, Kristi Oliveira has been told to sell the Melville. “I wanted to keep it so bad, since half of my buyers are interested in the smaller models,” she says. “But it was a corporate decision. They don’t want more than one model home per development. I’ll try to make an arrangement with the buyer so that I can take people through it from time to time.”
The Carroll, which was to have been a model home, has been sold to a private buyer and is locked up, but the Melville is open, so I take a look inside. It is what builders call a white model, that is, undecorated and unfurnished. It really is white: Ryan paints the interior walls of all the houses the same color — called Cool Platinum — a builder’s version of Henry Ford’s famous pronouncement that Model T buyers could have any color “as long as it’s black.” But optional extras are much in evidence: the living and dining rooms that flank the foyer both have hardwood floors, crown moldings, chair rails, and bay windows, and the entry to the living room is accented by round columns.
The empty rooms are not large, but they feel spacious, thanks to the high ceilings. All the Ryan models at New Daleville have nine-foot ceilings on the first floor, and all except the Sheldon also have nine-foot ceilings on the second floor. Although American houses traditionally had tall ceilings, the earliest production builders, such as the Levitts, limited ceilings to eight feet. They did this to save money, but in the postwar period there was also a feeling that high ceilings were old-fashioned and wasteful — Wright’s Usonians typically had low ceilings. Today, as a result of the popular interest in historic preservation and older houses, people have come to like the feeling of space, and buyers demand taller ceilings: nine feet has become the new standard, and ten feet is increasingly common in more expensive homes. The tall ceilings make the three bedrooms in the Melville feel light and airy. The master bedroom, or “owner’s bedroom,” as Ryan calls it, is even taller, open to the rafters with a so-called cathedral ceiling. Bedrooms have not changed much in design over the years, except that they are larger, a master bathroom has become standard, and there is more storage; in the Melville, all but one of the bedrooms have walk-in closets.
The basement is another part of the house that hasn’t changed. The Levitts dispensed with basements to save money, but builders have long since discovered that, for the marginal added cost of excavation and concrete, the basement offers inexpensive extra space.* The basement in the Melville model home has a large finished space that most people would use for a children’s playroom or a media room, an unfinished room that could be turned into a bedroom or a study, and an unfinished area containing the furnace and water heater. In addition, there is a half bathroom.
The focal point of the Melville, as of all Ryan houses, is the combined kitchen and family room that stretches across the entire rear. The carpeted family room has a gas fireplace and lots of light coming in through six-foot-tall, double-hung windows with low sills. The kitchen, with cherrywood cabinets and stainless steel appliances, includes an island and a sit-down counter. Extending from the back of the house is a low wing containing a laundry room and the morning room. The latter, with windows on three sides, feels like an old-fashioned sunroom. A door leads to a covered porch and the backyard. The Melville has an unusual option: a finished room over the garage, reached by an exterior stair. The room is surprisingly large, about fifteen feet square, with an adjoining bathroom and a closet. It would make a nice guest suite, teenager’s bedroom, or home office.
The two-car garage, like the sides and back of the Melville, is covered in vinyl siding, although the front of the house is brick, carried around the corner, following Mike DiGeronimo’s suggestion. He has told me that he is pleased with the review process so far. “It’s gone more smoothly than I thought it would,” he said. “I haven’t had any meetings about the houses with the township, but I’ve had many with the builders. I’ve been impressed by their concern to do things right. Most production builders just roll out their plans. I think that Ryan and NV are more creative in terms of design.” What does he think of the houses built so far? “They’ve turned out pretty well. Even the dentil molding, which I was worried about, looks better in the field than it did on the drawings.”
Ryan has included more intricate details than is usual for a production builder. The porch roofs are metal, and the porches have eye-catching Doric columns. The fronts of the basements, as well as porch piers, are covered in brick (the sides are concrete, molded in a brick pattern); the shutters are not operable, but at least they are sized to the windows; and the tall windows and protruding bays are generously dimensioned. The Melville, with its brick front, delicate dentil molding, white keystones, and arched Georgian entrance, looks a little too fancy for its rural location, but it has none of the flimsiness that bothered Tim Cassidy. This may not be authentic Chester County architecture — Ryan’s advertising describes it as “Colonial-style” — but it is a cut above the plain-vanilla houses that most developers, including Ryan, build in this area.
Despite Cassidy’s earlier objections, there is a lot of plastic. The porch columns are some sort of plastic, and the porch floors and steps are made out of a wood-and-plastic composite. The railings are vinyl, the windows are vinyl-covered, the shutters and trim are vinyl, and so is the
siding. Builders like vinyl siding because it’s easy to install and inexpensive — cheaper than stucco or wood, and much cheaper than brick. Unlike wood, vinyl doesn’t require painting; unlike aluminum, it doesn’t chip or dent. Most architects sneer at vinyl siding as inauthentic, but middle-income home buyers like it because it doesn’t rot, isn’t susceptible to termites, and never needs repainting. Vinyl siding has a useful life of about forty years, but the material has a major functional shortcoming — the color fades in sunlight. That is why standard vinyl does not come in dark hues. Buyers at New Daleville have a choice of white, cream, two shades of gray, and Desert Sand, that is, beige.
Ryan and NV have made an effort to improve their designs, but they are production builders, and it shows. The houses are handsome, but since they all come from the same Maryland factory, they are handsome in the same way. The details used by the two builders are similar, many of the materials are identical, even the windows are made by the same manufacturer. With so few houses, the lack of variety is not disturbing, but it will become more noticeable as the development fills up. When I ask Jason Duckworth about the houses, he admits that, in hindsight, a lot of the effort he put into the design guidelines has not borne fruit. “We’re working with several different national builders, and NVR is by far the best, but they’re still a bureaucracy,” he says. “Many decisions can only be made by the head office. Since they’re using stock plans, they’ve been able to make only minor adjustments, so the idea of having a local style hasn’t really worked out.”
I haven’t spoken to Tim Cassidy for several months, so I call to ask him why Londonderry hasn’t been more active in reviewing the houses. “The bottom line is that the design guidelines have no teeth, and Arcadia can, more or less, build whatever they want,” he responds. “I also believe that we were given a false sense of security about the design of the houses. There were supposed to be several local builders to provide variety, but in the end what we got was Henry Ford. When I looked at those NV drawings, there were sixty sheets for a single house model, with all sorts of features that had nothing to do with New Daleville. That’s when I realized it was over. My last-ditch attempt was to e-mail Mike DiGeronimo and put a shot across LRK’s bows. But really, at the end of the day, there was nothing more I could do.
“People have busy lives and only so much energy,” he adds. “At a certain point they have other stuff to worry about.” The “other stuff” that has consumed the planning commission for the past year has been a controversial proposal to build a subdivision on a large tract down the road from New Daleville. The landowner has challenged the township zoning that prohibits community sewage, and after many heated public meetings — and a contentious supervisor election — the matter has ended up in court.
Cassidy remains critical of New Daleville’s architecture. I think he was hoping for something less conventional; instead what he sees is the kind of commercial housing that he doesn’t like. He thinks the way the brick wraps around the corners and suddenly stops is clumsy. And there’s all that vinyl. “I guess I would have to say it’s probably what I expected, because I expected to be disappointed,” he concludes. “I know that the houses are not as bad as what is built by most developers around here, but I just wish they were better still.”
Later, I ask Tom Comitta the same question. “I haven’t attended any meetings in Londonderry since I last saw you at the plan approval meeting two years ago,” he says. “In the previous neo-traditional developments on which I’ve worked, I’ve been asked to stay and oversee the implementation of the ordinance, making sure that the developer is doing things right. I was a little surprised that the township didn’t ask me to get involved. So whether there’s been smooth sailing between the township and the builders, I don’t know.” He tells me that he hadn’t even seen New Daleville until a week ago. He’s disappointed that the houses are so spread out and don’t create a feeling of community. But on the whole, he says, he is pleased with the way it’s turning out. “I know how hard it is to get these TND ordinances through. When I drove in, I thought, great. They finally did it.”
Cassidy and Comitta are concerned about the appearance of New Daleville, but the dynamic of the project has shifted away from design guidelines and principles of traditional neighborhood development to something quite different: marketing. Kristi Oliveira, Ryan’s sales rep, is at the center of this activity. She is a lively blond woman in her thirties, who has been with the company for seven years, although she started working at New Daleville only six weeks ago. Her enthusiasm for the houses is not merely that of a saleswoman. She and her husband live in an NV neotraditional house, which they built on their own lot outside West Chester last year (NVR sells individual homes without land to its employees, though not to the general public). “The neotraditional models, like the ones we’re selling at New Daleville, are very different from our run-of-the-mill products,” she says. “The special details really stand out. They’re an easy sell. The hardest sell here are the tight spaces between the houses. People come to this area and expect large lots. We don’t advertise the sizes, but they always ask.”
The Ryan sales trailer is quiet. “Most people come on weekends,” she says. How do prospective buyers learn about the development, I ask. They see the weekend directionals, she says, referring to the roadside promotional signs that are posted at intersections all over the township. Buyers also use the Ryan website to find houses based on location, price, and model type. They see advertisements for New Daleville in the local newspapers and read articles in new home listings directories, which are distributed free in sidewalk boxes. In addition, they may receive a flyer in the mail. Ryan’s mass mailings usually target six to seven thousand likely buyers at a time, according to income, age, and family structure. The first mailing focuses on renters in the immediate area, people who have visited other Ryan projects, and owners of Ryan homes who might be ready to trade up. With feedback from this mailing, as well as information on who is visiting the sales office, future mailings are targeted more narrowly. According to Oliveira, the marketing effort for New Daleville has been greater than usual, which reflects the newness of the neotraditional product. There is no standard marketing budget, she says, in answer to my question. “Some projects don’t need any advertising, some need a lot.”
What about the slow sales at New Daleville, I ask her. “The main reason is that traffic has been so light,” she replies. Builders distinguish between “traffic” and all the visitors to a project. People tour housing developments for different reasons: boredom, curiosity, to get decorating hints. They are, in effect, window shopping. To identify serious prospects, or so-called qualified buyers, the sales reps ask visitors to fill in a questionnaire, officially called the Consumer Preference Survey but commonly referred to as the guest card. It includes personal information as well as the price range of the desired house and answers to questions such as “What are the most important features you want in a new home?” The card provides Ryan with statistics about potential customers and their preferences, but equally important, it is a sales technique. The assumption is that if people are willing to take the trouble to answer a questionnaire, they are more likely to be serious buyers. The back of the card contains the sales rep’s follow-up record. “After the first visit, I’ll make a thank-you call,” says Oliveira, “and two or three more follow-up calls. Typically, on a second visit we’ll walk the home site or do numbers. It usually takes three or four more visits before people come to a decision.”
Oliveira says that there have been two kinds of qualified buyers at New Daleville: those whose chief concern is the price and quality of the house, and those who appreciate the neotraditional concept and are attracted by having a smaller yard in a walkable neighborhood. Many of the latter are what she calls active adults, that is, people with grown-up children. That is why Ryan added the Fitzgerald, which has a first-floor master bedroom suite and appeals to older buyers. Oliveira tells me that, because active adults are no
t concerned about school districts, they tend to look at many different locations, and since they already own homes, they’re in no hurry and can take up to a year to make up their minds. This indecision affects her “conversion rate,” which is the ratio of qualified buyers who actually put a down payment on a house. According to Oliveira, Ryan’s national average conversion rate is 18 percent, although some of these sales are subsequently “lost,” because buyers are turned down by mortgage companies, they can’t sell their old homes, or they change their minds. This can happen often; both Ryan and NV have recently lost sales at New Daleville. Oliveira says that her conversion rate here is 13 percent, which is not disastrously low, except that the number of qualified buyers has been so small. It has been difficult to attract visitors without a furnished model. “I watch people drive into our parking lot, see the trailers, and turn around and leave,” she says. “We’re getting only six or eight qualified buyers a week. We’d like to see fifteen or twenty.” She confirms that February to June is usually the best period for selling. That doesn’t leave much time; it’s May. When should Ryan start worrying? “About now.”
Last Harvest: From Cornfield to New Town Page 23
