Curb Appeal—Builders and Architects Shed Light on Buyer Preferences

More than a third of builders who raised their curb appeal game during the past year did so by offering window options with more styles and frame colors or by reworking the elevations of their existing house plans. Other builders said they invested by hiring an architect or by using Revit and other 3-D modeling software.

But for every respondent like the Maryland custom home builder who is adding options “because customers are becoming more interested in rear yards, pools, and patios,” there were participants who are feeling squeezed, such as the Canadian production home builder who, to reduce his homes’ selling price, has moved away from using stone and fiber-cement materials, or the Illinois modular/manufactured home builder who offers many choices but sees clients sticking with basic exterior selections because “affordability is becoming harder to obtain.”

Almost 55 percent of participants in Professional Builder’s 2018 Curb Appeal Survey agreed that for selling new construction, it’s more important today compared with two years ago to offer elevations that incorporate multiple exterior materials. Eighty-eight percent of builders and architects currently build or design with multiple exterior cladding materials on individual homes. More findings are in the charts that follow.