Buying Production

There is a great view of the park in this direction. Naturally, the developers put two tiny windows facing it. This is because the two tiny windows face another house eight feet away in all the other houses with this plan. And they decided not to change up the windows for this house. Damn production housing!

Ah, production housing. The words incite images of rows and rows of the same house, rubber-stamped onto every lot. Everyone hates it, and yet almost everyone buys one, if they indeed buy a new house.

The reputation is not without merit. There are some truly awful production houses. I own one. Built in the 1960s, it's popularly dubbed the snout house. The entire street is limited to two floor plans, each more the same than the next. All of the houses have the garage sticking out completely in front of the house, with the actual living area hiding behind it, as if afraid to look past the cars parked in the garage (or more likely, parked in the driveway as the garage is bulging with the storage of junk). My uncles and aunts own some. Built in the early 1990s, still suffering from the 1980s aesthetic. Lifeless stucco boxes with horrible post-modern foam trim doohickeys bandying about the gables and fenestration with no rhyme or reason as to why they're there.

And yet, people make homes out of them. They live, play, rest, and work there just fine, as much as it pains my inner architect soul to see these exist. Plus, it is just much more cost-effective to buy one of these homes than to buy land and custom-build a house.

Things have gotten much better. Newer production homes these days have a much better architectural quality, going back to classic styles with modern twists, or going with true modern styles without creating jigs and jogs for the sake of creating jigs and jogs. This is not a universal truth, as there are still some awful-looking interpretations of architecture, some the fault of architects that have lost their passion, some of the fault of penny-wise and dollar-stupid developers, and some (well, maybe even mostly) the fault of overbearing wannabe-architect city jurisdictions.

Nevertheless, production housing remains, well, production. A custom home fits the intended homeowner like a glove, or at least, it should, since the home is designed for that specific owner and site. Production housing is, by definition, housing that is designed to fit the most people in a given market at a given time, which is to say, fits nobody perfectly and will tend to be very generic.

The house elevation will look like what the architects designed it to be. The door knobs will be what the developer's purchasing personnel think looks good while being under budget. If one is lucky enough, the original owner will be able to pick certain finishes. If the purchaser happens to purchase a home from, say, Lennar, for example, well, all you can do is throw a penny into your favorite fountain and wish for something nice, because you're not likely to be picking anything though you may save a few bucks for the hassle.

Without getting too specific, my wife and I purchased a home in the Bay Area in the past year as housing prices were high and interest rates were rising, making us a few nickels away from being functionally bankrupt. It is a modern design, but as one would expect from any production house, it is pretty generic. The houses in the development are organized around a court and since I have connections to this builder through my line of work, I was able to procure my pick of lots, which we selected at the edge of the community, facing the brand-new park.

It is a nice home, in a much nicer neighborhood than we were in. Some things I wish were better, like the size distribution of certain rooms and the lack of windows facing the park. Still, the plan works well and the program fits what we need with our growing family.

Though a new house, there are many finishes that are, to put it lightly, not what we're looking for and need to upgrade. Some are easy, like door knobs, and some I'm not sure we will ever get to, like upgrading tan windows to dark bronze windows. Further, almost all of our furniture is cheap, sized for a small condo, and wouldn't fit in with the style of decor we will be pursuing. Almost all of our furniture will need to be replaced. With the money available (or more aptly, not available), this will be a continuous project for decades and probably not with frequent updates.

This is our journey of transforming this generic house into our own home.