Custom Home Talk... All Square Footage isn’t Created Equal

When you compare an Acura with a BMW, you may ask the salesperson for the horsepower rating, the wheelbase, or the interior volume. These are valid metrics for helping you determine which car best meets your needs.

Counter-intuitively, custom homes are not comparable with a similar metric – the price per square foot. It would be more like holding a bottle of Yellowtail Shiraz in one hand and an Oreno Toscana in the other, and asking which has more volume.

mar’s chief concierge, Andrew Bottomley, rescued Higgins a year ago. Soon after, the hotel was looking for a new face for the program, and Higgins’ was the clear choice. Now the hotel pup is ready to dive into his responsibilities, paws first. “His main role is to greet our guests, both our four-legged ones and our two-legged ones. I’m still debating which ones are more important,” Bottomley says in his British accent. The pet-friendly Kimpton hotel allows guests to bring furry friends

As with wine, all volume in a home is not created equal. So when custom home buyers ask, “How much can you build my 3,500 square foot home for?” we ask, “What’s in it?” That’s because cost is much more a function of design and content than volume. For instance, a 10 x 10 room is more cost-effective than a 50 x 2 space, in part because of the size and bricks needed to construct the exterior walls (40 feet around the 10 x 10 compared to 104 around the 50 x 2). And flat exterior walls are much less expensive to produce than balconies, bay windows, and other elements with in-and-out movement.

So size and shape are half of the cost equation. If you build a triangle, it costs more than a square. Boxes are the easiest shape to build quickly, which is why we see so many cookie-cutter, boxy homes. The other half of the equation is content. Footage added to an empty closet is cheaper than footage added to a kitchen with expensive fixtures. In order to meet price-per-square-foot price points, concessions must be made that lower the resale and livable value of your home, like increasing volume in the closets and bedrooms, while decreasing the size of kitchens and bathrooms. with them free of charge. “The idea behind the pet friendliness is really to create the idea of home,” Bottomley says. “People are so busy nowadays that they travel and bring their whole family and pets.” Although Higgins is on hand to greet VIPs (very important pets), don’t expect him to be at the front desk handling your checkin. “When he is on property, we just like to walk him around. He is very personable with people and with other dogs,” Bottomley says. “People really flock to him because he is absolutely adorable.” As Higgins’s owner, Bottomly may be a little biased, but there is no denying the dog’s charm. People slowly trickling into the lobby stop and coo at the pup, and even get on bended knee to scratch him behind his floppy ears. In addition to greeting guests, Higgins and the Palomar concierge offer to arrange pet sitting, grooming, veterinary services and walks. Higgins’s British themed coming-out party in June benefited Paws in the City and kicked off the Palomar’s new “WAGS” package. The package includes discounted room prices and a “wag” bag for your furry traveler. Traveling solo? Try the hotel’s “guppy love” program, in which the hotel will “send up a pet goldfish to keep guests company during the visit,” says Andrew Wright, general manager of the hotel. If fish aren’t quite your style, you can just pet Higgins. We’re sure he won’t mind. —Tally McCormack

What we prefer to do (and it’s the reason we write this column every month) is to educate consumers so they understand how the dollars add up. We don’t decide the value of your footage. You do, based on the design and content you choose. We’re here to help you maximize your investment, for market value, and for the way you want to live.

Would you like a preliminary dollar cost breakdown of your dream home? Call us at (214) 823-0033. We’d love to hear from you.