Many of you have likely heard the news already, but I feel an occasion this momentous (to us) deserves an official launch post. Postgreen Homes’ new website has finally been released into the world and with it comes the ability to customize our homes. After months of development, content writing, graphic creation, testing, and whining about all the work, www.postgreenhomes.com is finally ready for the Internet. More importantly, we are ready to build the homes that you design in our new online tool.
The customization process is fairly straight forward. Everything from flooring to landscaping to house numbers is open for upgrading and adjusting. Each option has associated pricing to lead to a final total cost for the home you design.
There are two basic ways to use the site. You can either customize a home in one of our existing projects, or you can start from scratch, customizing a model without the restraints of objective reality.
Project customization is for those interested in actual homes and realistic costs. It allows you to pick one of our ongoing or upcoming developments, select a specific lot within that project and customize a home that fits the lot and the project constraints. The end result is a home we can actually build in the near future with an accurate price including your customization choices. Take the final result to your Realtor, sign an agreement of sale, and we will build your house.
Model customization is for those who simply want to play around with the customization tool. This allows you to choose any model and any facade without concern for the lot size or style limitations of a project. The pricing in this section is based on an average lot in one of our E. Kensington projects, but it is purely speculative and shouldn’t be seen as an accurate representation of any actual property. Any home designed in this way could vary in price drastically based on where it is built.
Customization Options
We offer plenty of options in our customization process and those options will keep growing and changing as we find better products and new applications. There are some things, however, we don’t let you customize.
Building Envelope: We don’t let you change the walls, roof, insulation, windows or doors because we have spent a lot of time determining the best options for each. These are the elements that make our homes incredibly energy efficient, and like them or not, they are there to stay.
Toilet: If another high quality, stylish, low cost dual flush toilet becomes available we might eventually offer an option in this category, but for now you are stuck with the Kohler Dual Flush we like best. Of course, when I say “stuck with”, I mean “privileged to have.”
Shower Head: Low flow fixtures are important, but so is getting wet when you shower. We have noticed that many low flow shower heads forget this. Our research has led us to the one that doesn’t. Great performance and excellent water savings is what you will be getting no matter what.
Mechanicals: Like the building envelope we have worked hard to design the most efficient and healthy mechanical system we can. This is an area in which we simply won’t compromise.
The rest is pretty much fair game. There are nine different customization categories including Model, Facade, General Interior, Kitchen, Bathroom, Landscaping Packages, Landscaping Details, Alternative Energy and Miscellaneous. Each of these categories has a growing variety of sub-categories and options. For more detail you will have to check it out yourselves.
The goal of the site is to give a considerable amount of control to the home buyer without attaching the high cost that control often seems to bring with it. Since we design and build relatively simple, pared down homes, it was important to us to allow people to inject some of their own taste and personality.
So, what do you think? Does the site work? Is there a place for this kind of site in today’s real estate market? What options are we missing? How can we improve? What did we do right?
Hit those comments hard.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Random questions & suggestions:
1. Do you have a link to the gray shower surround material?
2. Is the OSB floor just the subfloor with a couple coats of poly?
3. Many of your buyers don’t already have a realtor. Don’t encourage them to get one. Should a buyer have professional advice? Yes. But give them a list of attorneys that will advise them for $1000, not 3%.
4. The Web was supposed to change the way people buy homes. It hasn’t for two reasons:
a. Realtors still jealously guard their information.
b. People feel more comfortable with an experienced “advisor”.
Postgreen has nailed this niche, and websites like this will help change the homeselling paradigm forever, at least for new homes.
5. Tell us more about “additional mobile closets that can be used to create custom rooms”! Sounds awesome!
The Toto Aquia is a better toilet than the Kohler Persuade, for what it’s worth. Same price point, same modern aesthetic. The Kohler has parts that are expensive and hard to find while the Toto uses readily available components. Toto is also well known to manufacture the best performing toilets. If you go to Terry Love’s site and do a search for the Kohler Persuade, you will find a lot of negative experiences. I have installed the Aquia in 3 houses now and they work great.
What is the width of these designs?
I don’t see any dimensions on the floorplans which makes it hard to put them in context for my lot.
The Kohler one looks very nice indeed, excellent high quality grade material.
A few comments and questions.
-Please provide details about the basement option. Type of construction (ICF?, prefab?), wall height , etc.
-In the kitchen – why a side-by-side Bosch frig? Aren’t they less efiicient that a bottom or top freezer?
-How about an option of an exhaust hood over the cooktop?
-Provide more detail like counter lenght, size of sinks, etc.
-In the bath – why is fiber cement option $1,000 more expensive? Looks like it would be simpler than tiling.
-How wide is the vanity? From the picture it doesn’t look wide enough for two people to use at same time.
-A shower enclosure instead of a tub would be a nice option to add in the furture.