Homeowner tastes vary from city to city. Here are some unique examples of what's selling, and where:
Hiding places
Arizona homebuilders and remodelers are getting requests for secret, hidden rooms for use as home offices, man caves, children’s play areas, game rooms, home theaters and safety shelters.
Like in spy movies, some of the rooms are concealed behind wall-to-wall bookcases that slide to the side to reveal an entrance to a hidden space. Others are tucked behind a stone wall or an armoire with a secret back door.
"People are realizing they're not just for the movies; anyone can have one," Steve Humble, president of Creative Home Engineering in Arizona, told CNN.
Humble said about 30% of the requests, which have multiplied over the past few years, are for safety shelters with bulletproof walls, alarm systems and surveillance.
The secret square footage can add to a home’s value, and can cost upward of $10,000 to build. Redfin has reported that from 2010 to 2014, homes with secret rooms sold for a median price of $409,400. That compares to $235,000 for the typical home.
Off the grid
In Houston, custom builder M Street Homes is experimenting with a newfangled “micro-trigeneration system,” which operates like a “mini power plant” and allows the homeowner to live off of the electricity grid.
The system was created by Houston-based M-CoGen and won the U.S. Department of Energy Zero Energy Home Innovation Award last year. It was installed in a 4,500-square-foot M Street Homes dwelling.
The unit has a 22-horsepower engine that is fueled by natural gas, propane, solar and wind power. It reportedly generates six kilowatts of electricity a day.
“If we have another Hurricane Ike, this house will be lit up like a Christmas tree,” M Street Vice President Randy Erwin told The Houston Business Journal. “We think this is disruptive technology. It’s really a game changer.”
Lift-off
As more central Ohio homeowners opt to live their golden years in their family homes, demand has spiked for elevators in two- and three-story houses.
“It’s becoming more and more of a sought-after appliance for homes,” John Festa of Twinsburg, OH,-based Gable Elevator, told The Columbus Dispatch. “It’s more for people who want to stay in homes; it makes a two- or three-story home work like a ranch-type home.”
The price of an in-home elevator has dropped by about one-third—to around $20,000 in a new home—over the past few years, Festa told the newspaper, making the product more affordable for senior citizens. He said it’s easier to install one in a new home than in an existing dwelling, which usually requires an addition to accommodate the device and spikes the price to around $50,000.
Most elevators are hydraulic, but electric models are also available.
Including an elevator in a new home plan can allow the contactor to rein in a sprawling ranch-style design and instead build a two-story structure, which, in some cases, costs less.
Packing materials
Eight Phoenix families soon will live in shipping containers—but not because they’re homeless.
Scottsdale, AZ,-based architecture firm StarkJames is developing an eight-unit apartment complex that will be built on a former used car lot from 16 shipping containers.
Each one-bedroom unit will measure 740 square feet and will rent for about $1,000 a month, architect Brian Stark told The Phoenix Business Journal. A waiting list for the apartments already includes 135 potential tenants.
Called Containers on Grand, the project is being promoted by the architects as an “avant-garde” experiment. It will be among the country’s first shipping-container housing developments.
Weather-weary
The latest must-have new-home feature in Texas and Oklahoma is a sturdy storm shelter designed to remain standing even under attack from deadly tornadoes like the ones those states have endured over the past couple of years.
Once a luxury for wealthy homeowners, safe rooms have become standard fare and can cost anywhere from $5,000 and up, reports Dallas TV station WFAA-8.
"I've been doing this since 2002," Russell Mims of Family Safe Texas told the TV station. "In 2002 I might have sold a dozen. Now we do 200 to 300 a year. "
Mims says about 60% of his business involves installing storm shelters into existing homes.
Keeping room
A throwback to Colonial times: The $1 million-plus homes designed and built by Basheer & Edgemoore in Centreville, VA, about 25 miles from Washington, D.C., feature a “keeping room.”
Once the warmest room in the house because it was next to the kitchen, the keeping room was where the home’s main source of heat—the stove—was located, so families gathered and sometimes slept there.
In these suburban Washington homes, the keeping room—also next to the kitchen and open to it—has its own dual-sided fireplace and also is a gathering place for family and friends who want to be close to the home’s chef during meal preparation.
Affordable luxury
A $60 million, 159-unit apartment complex in Mount Vernon, NY, will feature large floor plans, huge picture windows, finished oak floors and stone kitchen countertops, but they won’t sell for a luxury price. Instead, the units are being billed as affordable housing for the New York City suburb’s working class.
The “luxury workforce” apartments will rent to families and individuals who earn no more than 60% of the area’s median income. The building will feature a gym, cinema room, playroom and rooftop terrace, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Mount Vernon officials and local developers are hoping the high-quality affordable homes will be a springboard to a planned redevelopment of the city’s downtown and will attract other developers to build similar projects.
“We regard this project as an economic catalyst for the city,” Peter Fine, chief executive of Atlantic Development, told The Journal.