An Innovation by Richcraft - Mix-And-Match Fusion Homes

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It's a new concept - here in Ottawa, at any rate. If it seems surprising that no one thought of the idea before, they may well have done, but then decided they couldn't manage the demands of semi-customizing homes. And yet it's an obvious option to offer buyers who can't make up their minds which home to buy. Some builders may seem inadvertently to place all sorts of hurdles in the path of prospective buyers rather than finding ways to make it easier for them to buy (which, after all, is the very essence of good marketing). Unsatisfying floor plans are only one of them. And everyone's got a different idea of what they want. So if a builder can get that hurdle out of the way by providing more designs to choose from - or more communities, or more types of homes, or more variety in the designs (in other words, more choice), they should have an advantage over other builders. Richcraft began as an Ottawa builder two decades ago, neither cautiously nor modestly like most home builders who start up in business. Providing more choice appears to have been their marketing style from the beginning. Richcraft currently have more communities or projects than any other home builder in Ottawa, and far more designs to choose from. That's why their popularity and sales have surged since they started up in business here. In short, proprietor Kris Singhal understood the market place concept from the start (where buyers come to buy and sellers go to sell - and where buyers can make choices from an abundance of options). Ironically, new information technologies and online search systems have changed all that. The market is no longer "out there" - now it's at home on your computer screen. (Or you wouldn't be reading this!). Richcraft currently builds homes on approximately 20 different sites in Ottawa, and offers over 300 different designs (if you consider that every different price represents a different design). But the number of design variations that their "Fusion" concept adds to that, increases the total on offer by about another 40.  The basic designs in the "Fusion" package consist of The Amherst, The Stanford, The Fullerton, The Foxborough and The Filmore. Each of them can be partly customized to fulfill your needs, or that of any buyer, by offering you other choices for the upstairs or downstairs layout (according to which floor you like and which one you want changed).  Clearly their design ingenuity must take into consideration matching both floors at the staircase, and providing practical and economical plumbing and electrical solutions. And of course the width and other dimensions of each house must be able to be combined faultlessly - including load-bearing walls. Whether that ability to make choices satisfies the creative needs of some buyers who like to get more involved in the process, we have still to discover. Nor do we know the proportion of "Fusion" designs that sell, compared with Richcraft's total number of designs for 2-storey detached houses. And there's no way of assessing their popularity by the number of those designs available in their inventory - since they must be made to order. In fact, during Ottawa's recent housing boom, most builders took the opportunity to build only after receiving an offer to purchase - reducing market risks and avoiding carrying costs wherever possible. Nevertheless, if you click on the New Homes Search link (above), you will find a limited number of inventory units under some of those names. The "Fusion" name and concept can add to the confusion. (No pun intended!) Perhaps "Mix-and-Match" describes it better. For example, the Amherst option starts off with a traditional ground floor plan #1 with a 2-car garage, a living/dining room, a family room with fireplace, powder room, laundry, island kitchen, and a breakfast room. There is a covered front porch. The foyer is straightforward and a staircase climbs straight up at the end, to what amounts to two possible alternative upper floor designs. Both include four bedrooms and offer a total of 2263 square feet of finished space. And there are the usual two elevation designs to choose from. The Amherst can also be purchased with an alternative ground floor plan #2. That plan can be matched with any one of three upper floor options. Ground Floor #3 can be combined with either one of four alternative upper floors. And you can choose any one of three different elevation designs. That means five different elevations, and you've barely got started on all the "Fusion" options. Similar alternative choices are offered for all the other "Fusion" designs, which are mostly more elaborate in layout and luxury features, and larger. Home building in Ottawa - or anywhere else for that matter - has long been a case of follow-the-leader. And yet, as far as we know, no other builder has copied, for example, Minto's innovation of a 24ft wide townhome, despite the fact that the value to townhouse buyers is clearly evident. And Minto must have found a way to compensate for the reduced revenue on one row unit in five (had they built five 20ft wide modules in the row instead of four 24ft towns). Even so, builders can build and sell plenty of the 20ft kind as residential prices continue to rise and make them the only home that many people can afford to buy. If we put aside Barry Hobin's individual "style" for the moment, the Open Concept he and Uniform Developments likes to offer is already provided by several other home builders than Uniform. But that is where design features, materials, even colours and good taste, play their true role in producing a well-designed house for which you can feel pride-of-possession. Famous nineteenth century geologist Sir Charles Lyell commented that the more prolific gradually make themselves "master of the ground." So it is no accident that Richcraft are already well on the way to constructing their latest innovation - the biggest residential complex ever in Ottawa. Place des Gouverneurs is described as Ottawa's first master planned community. (We will be describing it in a later article). Land banking, development and construction is a high-risk business with consequent high profits too - if you can stay the course. Many try it, many fail. Kris Singhal bought his first site twenty years back, when most builders and developers were still desperately trying to unload theirs after a severe slump in the economy and the highest borrowing costs of the century. Apparently he knew what stockbrokers are always telling us - that you get the best purchase price during an economic downturn. All his speculations so far have had spectacular results, and we expect his "Fusion" innovation will be no different.

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