Last fall, Lois and Harry Cohen considered buying a townouse at The Princeton Club, a Lexington Homes development in Glenview.
But there was one drawback: Instead of showing the Cohens a model home, the salesperson pulled out a pen to guide the couple through rudimentary floor plans for a 1,526-square-foot, 2 1/2-bedroom design called the Oxford Plan 41.
“Their diagrams were as clear as anybody else’s,” said Lois Cohen. “But my husband and I have difficulties perceiving a finished product from blueprints.”
They’re not alone.
Envisioning three-dimensional space from two-dimensional drawings-especially an overhead perspective-is difficult. But more and more, builders are encouraging buyers to do just that. Because a subdivision with houses up, or under construction, attracts more attention than a bare site, builders are eager for buyers to commit.
And, in fact, buyers often are willing to decide on a design without seeing a model because of significant financial incentives that builders offer to get the project rolling.
But it’s a daunting proposition for many prospective buyers.
“People are attuned to looking at photographs, where they’re not attuned to looking at a drawing,” said Dirk Denison, an architect and associate dean for academic affairs at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture.
“It’s mostly the line quality of a drawing that makes it harder to read, as opposed to the planar quality of a photograph, which depicts things in volumes as opposed to edges.”
Moreover, details can be misconstrued by a person looking only at drawings, according to Glenn Williams, head of Envision Studios, a computerized drafting, design and animation firm in Harrisburg, Pa.
“When you are looking at blueprints and are told there is a marble fireplace, you may have a mental picture of a marble fireplace that you once saw in a museum,” Williams said. “But the builder might be describing a little slab of marble on the hearth.”
To counter such misunderstandings, Williams and a few builders around the country have begun using computer-assisted design, known as CAD, to create photo-realistic pictures of fully furnished rooms and elevations (that’s builderspeak for vertical renderings) of details, such as marble fireplaces, to show prospective buyers.
Many builders in the Midwest use CAD for accounting and estimating, but few have ventured into the system’s imagery capabilities.
“Right now (computerized visualization) is in the crawling stages,” said Ed Fitch, editor in chief of Professional Builder Magazine in Des Plaines. “The software is pricey, and it takes an incredible amount of work just to create one image on the screen.”
Fitch predicts that Chicago-area builders will begin adopting the technology in the next few years to make it easier for prospective buyers to commit to a design before models are built.
Lexington Homes, a production home builder based in Arlington Heights, is one of them, says spokeswoman Haley Hacker. But for now, Lexington will continue showing customers floor plans and sketches of the inside and outside of houses before models are built.
Lexington trains its sales staff to “verbally create visual images of each room, closet and hallway,” according to the builder’s literature.
But even the best “imaginary tour”-a phrase coined by Lexington-doesn’t always convince buyers uncomfortable with drawings.
Such prudence is tantamount to a fear of the unknown, according to Lexington. “The reason for this apprension is primarily the inability of buyers to touch, smell and see a fully constructed house,” the builder says in the literature it gives potential buyers.
One way of addressing this fear is to offer a preconstruction deal, available only to buyers who commit before a model is built, in which the builder agrees to discount the house, primarily to jump-start a project, says Joyce Molenaar, director of sales and marketing of Primus Corp., a semicustom builder based in Oswego.
“Everyone watches a new community,” said Molenaar, whose company has developed several planned communities in the western suburbs over the past 12 years. “The more homes that go up, the more buyers are attracted.”
Buying a home from blueprints can be a smart investment, said Dennis Henderlong, executive vice president and general manager of Harley Snyder Homes and Communities in Valparaiso, Ind.
The further a builder gets into a new development, the higher the prices can go, Henderlong explained. In the blueprint stage, in addition to discounting the base price of a home, the builder may offer thousands of dollars in upgrades for home furnishings such as carpets, cabinets and windows.
Once models are open, those incentives and discounts usually are phased out.
There are reasons other than financial incentives that people opt to buy from blueprints. Getting in a development at ground zero can guarantee a choice lot and a chance to settle in before the start of a new school year.
If you find youself buying a home from blueprints, do some homework beforehand, suggests IIT’s Denison.
Classes in reading blueprints and construction are available through continuing education programs at many high schools and junior colleges.
But “the average person might not have the (endurance) or the desire to get to the point where they start looking at the building specifications,” such as the size and frequency of the spacing of the studs, or the quality of the insulation, Denison says.
If you are interested in checking these issues, you may want to hire a consultant to analyze the blueprints for you.
For those who wish to forgo self-education and expert advice, Denison recommends you at least compile a list of basic questions to ask the builder.
Most of the time, all you will be shown is a reduced plan-which provides little information other than square footage of the whole house and some room dimensions-and some elevations, Denison says.
He suggests a potential buyer make sure the builder shows a “straight elevation,” drawn in a manner that gives a better sense of the home’s actual proportions.
Ask about the functional amenities. Find out the ceiling heights in different parts of the house. If you plan to finish off the basement for an office or spare bedroom, for example, make sure the ceilings are high enough.
Find out what quality materials the builder will use.
As a layman, you may not understand the different grades of materials-such as the 12 levels of quality and finishes of a wood-shingle roof-Denison says. But you can gauge whether the structure is solid based on the durability.
Guarantees usually will indicate a product’s longevity.
“What’s working in the homeowner’s favor is that builders guarantee their homes,” says Denison. Builders who want to protect a long-germ reputation want to be sure their houses are well built, he says.
Denison cautions buyers to watch out for a grade of basic materials and appliances called the “builder’s line.”
“They are always cheaper and less soundly built,” he says.
Insist on a set of plans with the furniture drawn in. “Bells should go off if no furniture is shown,” Denison says. “That means there is no real scale and no real understanding of the way the house might be used.”
When Denison designs a home, he draws a couple of room configurations with the client’s furniture to test the versatility of the space.
“Someone can picture in their mind the size of the dining room table for eight people,” Denison says. “They can see there is room in the plan for a couple of sideboards and an area to walk around. Or in the family room, a set of couches with a coffee table and an entertainment center.”
Henderlong’s firm does not draw furniture in its floor plans. Instead, Henderlong takes customers to an existing home and illustrates the size of a room’s dimensions. “If a customer asks, `How big is 12 by 10?’ I will show them a room that size,” he says. “You’ve got to do those physical things-that’s the old-fashioned way.”
Denison suggests you also measure space with a tape measure in your own home or backyard.
Primus’ Molenaar agrees. She says people commonly misjudge spatial dimensions in a blueprint and expect spaces to be larger than they actually are.
The next level for making an informed decision will require analyzing the blueprints.
Examine the mechanical drawings. Those are the stacks of jumbo-size blueprints, detailing placement of everything from electrical outlets to piping in the house. If you do not know how to read blueprints, bring along someone who does, Denison says.
“There is no purpose to look at a set of working drawings if you don’t understand what they mean,” he says. Blueprints are “not really client-oriented. They are meant to be between the architect and the builder.”
If you don’t have a friend or relative you trust in the construction business, hire a consultant.
Dension says municipalities usually keep lists of architects and tradespeople. He suggests calling the local building department for recommendations, adding that architectural schools also maintain such lists.
Typically, the consultant will assess the home buyer’s needs and see if those are matched to features offered in the blueprints, Denison says.
But not all builders will serve up their blueprints for inspection before the ink is dry on the contract. Some builders consider the plans a form of intellectual property. Some, like Primus, will allow would-be buyers to look at the plans on-site, but won’t allow them to be taken out.
In reality, plans for homes in a planned community or subdivision are public record and can be viewed at the local building department. Most likely, by the time you visit the sales trailer at a new development, the builder will have obtained a permit to start construction on the model, so the plans will be on file.
When the Village of Cary, for instance, issues permits, its building department requires the builder to submit two copies of the structure’s blueprints. One of those copies remains on file at the building department and is catalogued by permit number, according to Michele Locascio, department secretary. The other set is kept at the site.
Before setting off for the local building department, obtain the permit or lot number for the model. Those numbers will be posted on a two-by-four staked on the building’s future site, Locascio says. The number written on the wood indicates the lot, and a copy of the permit is stapled to the pole.
Since architects use blueprints to communicate their designs to builders, the detailed instructions for constructing the structure are coded. With a little fortitude, you can become fluent in reading these symbols, Denison says.
“When I sit down with a client and go through all the electrical and telephone outlets-after an hour they can get the symbolism down,” he says.
Each page of the set of blueprints is identified by a letter and number. “A” is for architectural drawings. “P” is for plumbing. “E” for electrical. Heating and ventilation fall under “M” for mechanical. If it’s a small set of drawings, mechanical, electrical and plumbing will be combined, Denison says.
Each drawing on a page will also have a title and number, because other drawings throughout the document will refer to it.
When first reading a blueprint, Denison suggests you page through the entire document to familiarize yourself with the scope of the project. Typically, the largest scale portion of the house-plans and elevations-are depicted at the beginning of a set of drawings.
“Upon cursory review of the drawings, you’ll be able to tell how much the project has been thought through,” Denison says. “It will be able to show you how much detail there is.”
But Denison cautions that production home builders are an exception to his outline.
Since production companies are building hundreds of the same homes, they develop a shorthand with the trades doing the work. If they are not indicated on the blueprint, ask the builder for a list of its building standards.
“A lot of what your eye starts to do is move around and see what it recognizes,” Denison says.
When looking at diagrams of walls, for instance, you can see that an outside wall is much wider than one on the inside. You also can calculate this mathematically by looking at the wall’s dimensions, which are indicated by lines with numbers.
When an arrow is touching a section of the blueprint, it means there is a blow-up of the area in another part of the drawings. To find its location, look for a “signifier”-a circle with a horizontal line in the center. The page number is under the line and the section above it.
A signifier with a square around it indicates that the area will be represented with a vertical elevation.
The blueprints should have elevations for the kitchens, bathrooms and any other place there is a built-in. To get a sense of the materials being used, ask to see samples of the cabinets, hardware and sinks, Denison suggests.
“Grab onto a cabinet door. If it’s hollow, you’ll feel it,” he says.
To find out the materials used on the doors, windows and floors, for instance, look at the schedules page. “This information is worth 20 pages of drawings,” Denison says. “Every door in the house is listed-the size, construction, door type, material, size and direction of the swing.”
Armed with this information, you can decide whether to close the door to the deal.
But even thus armed, some prospective buyers decide the financial incentives don’t outweigh the uncertainty about what the finished product really will look like.
In the Cohens’ case, even the carrots of $10,000 in preconstruction savings and another $10,000 in upgrades could not persuade the couple to invest early based just on drawings; instead, they waited until the model was built.
As it turned out, the Cohens’ wait-and-see attitude paid off for them-and perhaps for Lexington, too. Upon viewing the completed Oxford Plan 41, the couple decided it was a lot smaller than they had envisioned from the diagram. Now they are considering the Princeton Club’s larger (and more expensive) model-a 1,744-square-foot duplex called the Manchester Plan 42.
But if they buy, the Cohens will pay full price.
