The Budget Room

The new trend to big modern homes comes at a price, but the full cost isn’t obvious. Sure, a big house costs money, but the hidden costs are in running it, maintaining it, and protecting it. It’s interesting to note that the people able to afford big houses have also been leading the stampede to reduce these costs. They’re doing it through quality, in everything from stone floors to customizable home insurance and solar panels.

The “upmarket economy drive” interestingly, isn’t based on being cheap. It’s based on quality:

• Things like stone floors are incredibly reliable, low-maintenance, and aesthetically high value, even for the upmarket price scales.

• Customizable home insurance is simply common sense, allowing policyholders to adjust their insurance to cover their home value issues effectively.

• Solar panels are trustworthy, and a hot water service alone can shave a lot of money off the power bill for a big house, which can be astronomical.

The simple marketing fact is that the upmarket of today is the mainstream of tomorrow. Things which are common for the upper income brackets invariably hit the mainstream markets within a few years. If you’ve been watching the evolution of digital TV, you’ll remember the fantastic prices for digital TVs a few years ago, followed by an equally dramatic drop in prices.

This situation is partly driven by technology, but it’s also driven by the market. The upmarket consumers invariably become the guinea pigs for technology of all kinds, whether it’s kitchens, phones, or different types of computer. This is where the big new homes come into focus as being the forerunners of the mainstream technology of the future, and it’s also why the economics of big homes are so important.

The world is just coming out of an era of throwaway, cheap home economics. Even the houses were basically “cut and paste” structures, similar designs, materials, etc. Those homes simply do not fit the modern culture. They’re totally out of date. The smart homes are coming in, in droves.

The fact is that CAD design spells the end of the old style homes. Those houses are not designed, nor are they able to take without massive renovations, the new technology coming into the domestic home goods market. CAD designer houses are rapidly becoming a different species of building. The twin drivers of technology and lifestyle are phasing them out, emphatically and finally.

The good news for consumers is that this sort of upmarket quality control is paying off in mainstream appliance quality and technology when it comes on the market. By the time a former “upmarket” technology comes into the mainstream, the bugs have been ironed out, the production has been simplified, and mass volumes lower the prices.

The big new homes are the real market research labs of the future. Everything you see now in the upper income bracket homes will be mainstream in a few years. This is so prevalent that you can see why adjustable contents insurance (paperless and online, of course) has become so popular. The policies have to be adjusted to match the hardware in the new homes.