Hot Selling Neighborhoods Defy the Housing Slump - Design, Community Projects, Sales, Modular Building, Best-Selling Communities

Every Inch Counts: The elimination of wasted space, as well as ample use of natural light, makes the relatively small units at Naomi Place feel more spacious.

Credit: Robert Frazier

In The Niche Of Time

Customizing homes to tap an unserved market pays off in Texas.

In the early 2000s, Lanterra Homes was doing what most other Texas builders were doing—building McMansions. Then, its president, Carlos Bazbaz, identified a large, unserved niche—the 70,000-plus employees of the largest medical center in the world, the Texas Medical Center. He learned that 60 percent of the employees earned at or below the area’s median income of $59,000, but that homes around the medical center started at $200,000. “ A lot of these people were stuck in apartments because they couldn’t afford a house,” Bazbaz says.

Economy of scale was critical in making Naomi Place both affordable and livable for renters who were ready to become homeowners, Bazbaz says. Units average a modest 1,300 square feet with plans that “really focus on the use of space. We had to make sure we had minimal wasted space on the site and in the house itself. ”

Each unit includes a one-car garage and an adjacent parking pad. That configuration allowed the builder to offer a fenced backyard and 11 feet between the units.

Credit: Robert Frazier

“That’s like in the suburbs,” he says. “Most people shopping in the inner city don’t find that.”

Floor plans were equally smart, trading unnecessary corridors and walls for extra square footage in bedrooms, bathrooms, and storage areas. The first floor is essentially two big rooms—a living room and an eat-in kitchen.

Bazbaz says his biggest battle was convincing buyers that they could live comfortably in such a small footprint. Model merchandising played “a huge part” in helping customers visualize how spaces could be designed to live large.

“We had people who told us that when they saw the square footage, they weren’t even going to visit,” he says. “Once they saw it, they couldn’t believe how big it was.”—P.C.