The paradox of choice and one home builder’s solution (A long Medium article I posted yesterday)
Everyone loves choices. But people like limits on their choices, even if they don’t admit it. Imagine choosing a job opportunity. Say you only have three choices. Further, all three choices are in Fargo, North Dakota. Would you want more options? I know I would. But now imagine you have 1,000 different locations where you can work, and 1,000 different job opportunities in each location. Doing the math… one million choices. Some people, maybe most people, would become completely overwhelmed. Having options is great. However, research says most people are comfortable with about 8 to 15 choices at a time. Any more and it can get overwhelming, less and you can feel limited… cheated.
So what to do when ultimately, the choices are unlimited? It becomes important that they are laid out methodically. Group the decisions in manageable chunks. Make the most important choices first. And keep going until you are happy.
I pondered this today when I read an old reddit snippet on Eastbrook Homes stating, “…Eastbrook where the only ‘custom’ aspects (are) like colors and flooring materials.” Clearly, this guy didn’t have a clue. Our Eastbrook experience offers an excellent insight into how to layer choices methodically.
Show it
Driving, driving, and more driving. We toured many subdivisions where houses are currently under construction. Some were particularly devoid of variety. Marshmallow houses we called one such subdivision. All were off-white boxes, each looking so very much like the others. A couple subdivisions had cosmetic variety… different siding colors, combined with a mixture of two and one story homes… basically just a few repeated clones.
Not so at when we toured Hathaway Lakes. No clone wars, no marshmallows here. Dozens of different base models. Even repeats, are well disguised with different roof lines, architectural styles, colors, and spaced apart. Definitely not a tract home development look.
First contact
We met with Martha Thomas, an Eastbrook Homes broker, last August. Eastbrook has 40+ different communities in Michigan, several in our preferred location sweetspot. We had self selected Hathaway Lakes as our top choice.
Then we learned they have ~50 different choices for base homes. Oops, too many choices? Nope. Walking in the door, you probably know you want a home of a certain size. One story or two. Just those basics will bring your choices down to a manageable level.
We knew we wanted a maintenance free, stand alone condo, or one with a single shared soundproofed firewall. A house, without the maintenance of a house. We narrowed it down to one plan choice. Accomplished during first contact with Martha.
Selected a fantastic lot quickly too. Another dozen choices narrowed to one swiftly.
The next layer
Then came the home itself. In past years, we had built with a national builder. There were options beyond colors and materials… but they really wanted to build “cookie cutter” houses. Moving a wall or adding rooms was highly frowned upon… and they made it cost prohibitive. Not so with Eastbrook. They encourage choice.
But Martha was cautious in pouring out the plethora of options. When pressed a little, she did mention “a couple thousand popular options” and that they were “open to additional further customizations.” She then steered back to discussing the most impactful popular choices for our condo… adding a Michigan room with two sided gas fireplace, a Euro shower, upgraded countertops, floors, etc. She seemed to be hitting that sweet spot of presenting 8 to 15 choices as a group. Was this consciously intentional? Or based upon her years of professional experience? Regardless, rapidly, we had a solid base picture for our new home. For some people, this could have been a stopping point, until picking out colors & flooring. An HBR article points out:
More of it (choice) requires increased time and effort and can lead to anxiety, regret, excessively high expectations, and self-blame if the choices don’t work out. When the number of available options is small, these costs are negligible, but the costs grow with the number of options. Eventually, each new option makes us feel worse off than we did before.
Makes tremendous sense. Don’t overwhelm your potential customers into decision paralysis. Don’t offer choices customers don’t really need… and price them out of the market.
But we wanted more options. We had the time, inclination and vision to push the choice envelope.
Our first “what if?”
Thus far, we were building a 1,500 square foot, one bedroom, one and a half bath condo with a flex room / office. “Crazy that this can’t be a two bedroom and two full bath with this space,” I wondered to Martha.
“Oh, but we can do that! Flip the laundry room with the mud room and half bath. Thus create a full bath where the laundry room was. Turn the former mud room / half bath into a shared space laundry room / mud room. Then make the flex room a true bedroom with the new full bath right next door.”
A significant enhancement with minimal cost. We loved it, and rolled it into our plan.
Back to the choices
Walking away from that meeting we were pointed to their website. We then began reviewing Eastbrook’s online feature gallery. Many thousands of photos which could be filtered to drill down to small groups of choices. Change the filters and repeat. Over and over chasing favorites without being overwhelmed. We also toured their models in more detail. Researched many other websites too. More and more ideas came to our minds. Organized into chunks. What did we like most in shower designs? Second and third bathrooms? Rec room layouts. On and on, we created likes and dislikes list. How could we make our new home perfect for us?
Feeling comfortable and deep into the choices we pushed Martha, “What exactly is this massive option list you had mentioned?”
We asked for it, and got it. One hundred and fourteen pages, all specifically for our condo! Every popular option for our particular home with prices on each one. The “thousands of options” that could overwhelm mere mortals. But still, broken out in chunks by area. We were up to the challenge. I read every single page. Created spreadsheets of potential choices and questions. Lots of little things… making the concrete drive wider, adding windows, a gas line outdoors for the pizza oven I desired, better cabinets, other kitchen tweaks….
Home Creation Studio Tour
Eastbrook has a full design center where everyone chooses their interior and exterior house options including materials and colors. So as not to overwhelm, they sign you up for a tour. Just to preview the more choices to come. Again, intelligently grouped in small areas. We left the tour knowing we had much more work to do. Many many choices, but with the means to group and drill down.
It was here, we were also given access to yet another tool. A proprietary site to further define desired options and pricing.
What overall style?
An important consideration after you have chosen the basic floor plan is what do you want the interior and exterior to look like. Contemporary? Mid-century modern? Farmhouse? Scandinavian? Ultra modern? So many choices. Eastbrook designers ask you to fill out a questionnaire to help define your style, and how your existing furniture would fit.
We skipped that step. We had given away most of our possessions when we minimized and moved to the beach. Our last house full of stuff, all 3,800 square feet, was condensed to a minimalist 1,100 square foot apartment.
We would build up from scratch. Modern coastal style became our style of choice.
More Space
We had planned to leave a full basement untouched. Perhaps our son-in-law and daughter would help us finish it later. That thought ended when they signed to build their own Eastbrook Home, with a huge basement that they would finish themselves. Suddenly we realized… if ever we would utilize the space, it had to be now.
Eastbrook made it financially attractive to add a bedroom, full bath, and rec room… with plenty of storage space remaining. We returned to a model in a nearby subdivision and paid more attention to the finished basement. The one thing we did not like was the tiny full bathroom. Amazing how they crammed everything into only 35 square feet. Tub, toilet and vanity so close together. And the tub! Pretty standard now in America, but built for a toddler. An adult in that tub would have to choose which body part to get wet… no plunging fully underwater. Not ideal at all when you have a wife who loved jetted garden and soaker tubs in our past homes.
What if?
I studied the lower level layout. Which walls could we push easily? I had a few ideas. The best, seemed expensive. Move the bathroom completely. Eat up a small chunk of the plentiful storage. Almost triple the size of the bathroom. The numbers started to concern me. It would mean moving many things from their normal design. And a potential load bearing wall issue.
I plunged ahead. Let’s do this right and see what it will cost. Plenty of space for a 120 gallon jetted tub. We’ll move the toilet to the far side, behind a knee wall. And oh… wait. Let’s add a five foot wide electric fireplace built into the bathroom wall. I knew the standard 40 gallon water heater simply would not do. Needed it to be 75 gallons. Also needed a heater for the jetted tub to keep all that circulating water toasty warm. Our natural gas home came with only 100 amp service, but I bumped it to 200 amps.
Prep for the design review
We knew the bathroom idea would chew up time at our first design meeting. Plus, we were trying not to have a second meeting. So we came prepared. I developed a three page spreadsheet with each option and associated cost. We also knew which materials we desired. Had our color choices mostly locked in. We planned to use the designer to just tell us if anything we wanted to do might look silly. Some choices were easy… like the flooring decision. Some strangely excruciating… the main color for the walls. We definitely were not going white. Neutral blue all the way for our costal modern look. But which blue? How blue? Then the accent colors. The choices did overwhelm us for awhile.
Design day
I emailed our designer my spreadsheets of options, materials, and colors beforehand. We arrived and almost immediately focused on the custom bathroom. She brought a coworker down to help in the discussion. They had given it some thought and shared a couple possibilities. I showed my low tech drawing. We zeroed in on one of mine, and much to my delight they were enthusiastic.
Mechanicals were moved and upgraded. Walls changed, the huge jetted tub chosen. Fireplace added. My wife and I braced for the total cost. Substantial, but reasonable. The custom bathroom expansion was a go.
Four hours later, mission accomplished. The designer had offered many tweaks that helped tie everything together. We left happy. A few weeks later, our final plans passed architectural review. Now months later, our home is under construction.
The paradox of choice… navigated
How do you appeal to today’s new home buyers? Some people are happy with almost all the choices made for them. Less really can be more. The more choices you give, the more you distract customers from the goal. You can scare away customers by bombarding them with too many choices. Or, later… buyers remorse as people look back and regret things they failed to upscale (dang, I shoulda gotten the new blue stainless steel countertops).
So Eastbrook Homes layers the choices. Parcels them out over time as customers ask for them.
For the most part, they don’t upsell. “Laminate has come a long ways, it can be an excellent value choice for countertops” was heard during our design tour. They offer homes with what the consider a standard level of quality construction. But, if you want upgrades and more choices, they have them at the ready… just not all at once. Want to move walls? They’ll do that too.
Choices without being overwhelmed, when done right… more is more.