Taylor Morrison and Hanley Wood’s BUILDER will join in a year-long strategic collaboration initiative aimed at innovating customer care-driven design, living, and community experience for the 55+ buyer–the NEXTadventure Home. Set to break ground in June for development and construction at Taylor Morrison’s new Esplanade at Highland Ranch community, in Clermont, Fla., the NEXTadventure Home will be ready for the spotlight at the International Builders Show, January 10-12, 2017, in Orlando.
Taylor Morrison and Hanley Wood, are partnering with architect Deryl Patterson and her team at Jacksonville, Fla.-based Housing Design Matters–already a noted thought-leader in developing designs for Baby Boom-era buyers–to apply a series of exclusive insights gained from focus groups, surveys, and social network data toward design and function for homes and communities that both meet the needs and excites the minds and hearts of people who are moving into and through retirement.
Stay tuned here for news of further additions to the creative and construction teams, as well as front-row seats to the exclusive research–focus group, survey, and social. As well, we’ll share intimate detail and insight into the design and function features its team highlights to illuminate 55-plus new-home choices over the near-term and longer-term future.
Spearheading NEXTadventure is Taylor Morrison president and ceo Sheryl Palmer, whose pedigree in active adult community development extends back 20-plus years to strategic roles at both pre- and post-Pulte Del Webb divisions, as well as an 8-year stint as a division president at Northern California-based active adult community developer Blackhawk Corp. The 55+ opportunity is a big focus of both the Taylor Morrison and Darling Homes brands in multiple markets around the country.
“We’ve been at this a long time now, more than 25 years,” Palmer tells me. “And as much as we’ve learned about what people want, and what they value, and what they’ll pay for in this stage of their lives, we’re just starting to learn that for a whole new cohort of 77 million Baby Boomers. They’re more active, healthier, more youthful, social, and connected than any prior generation of retirees. It’s exciting to me that we’ve committed to the NEXTAdventure project as a way to discipline ourselves in improving how and what we discover about our customers, their needs, and how we can meet them. Our customers now and in the years ahead deserve that from us. They deserve to have homes and neighborhoods that inspire excitement as well as a sense of accomplishment and well-being.”
Personalization, healthfulness, flexibility, fun, connectedness, privacy, durability, safety, entertainment, relaxation and comfort, efficiency, practicality, vitality, ease of operation and maintenance, dependability, adaptability, even proximity to their children and grandchildren are among the customer needs and preferences Taylor Morrison will funnel into NEXTAdventure’s amped up conversation with customers, deriving inspired and bold visions, designs, and executions for each and all.
Innovation in listening to what these customers need and how to care for their ongoing needs is central to the NEXTadventure mission. The opportunity is to change how production home builders learn who their 55+ customers are and what they want as a driver of design, development, pricing, functionality, location, and neighborhood programming.
“This initiative we’re committing to aligns with our core focus on listening to our consumers,” Palmer says. “Hopefully, as we work creatively with our manufacturer and trade partners, we’ll be able to port a number of best practices in both learning what our 55+ customers want in their homes and communities, and serving those needs across to our divisions in Colorado, the Southwest, California, all of our regions,” Palmer notes.
The NEXTadventure Home will be part of a 1,500-home master planned Taylor Morrison community, Esplanade at Highland Ranch, a 25-minute drive from Orlando and its many entertainment options and attractions. The home is a 2,209 square foot palette for customization, including outdoor living features with a fireplace and summer kitchen, a big kitchen island, a super shower, a beverage center, a secondary bedroom more aptly called “a snore room,” and three pantry options.
Baby Boom household formations are projected to grow at 700,000 per year until 2024, where their total will reach 56.9 million, according to the NAHB. As a growing number of baby boomers enter their latter working and early retirement stages, their demand for inspired designs continues to grow.
“NEXTadventure teams up a major national top-10 home builder, several dozen manufacturers, and the industry’s leading national housing insight and data brands in a transformative venture that will leverage this unique collaboration toward a daring, vignette-driven showcase and program of discovery and excellence,” says Peter Goldstone, CEO of Hanley Wood. “What an amazing opportunity to show how customer care, insight, and data can drive design and execution for the 55+ home buyer!”
The team assembling around project strategy, planning, and execution includes an extensive line-up of high-level commitment from Taylor Morrison, Housing Design Matters, BUILDER and Hanley Wood sibling Metrostudy, as well as a number of Hanley Wood internal partners. We’ll be introducing each of them–in published posts, video, and social at a new microsite we’ve created to roadmap NEXTadventure and add insight to the project development.
