Traditionally, a home search might begin by narrowing down floor plans according to criteria such as bedrooms, bathrooms, exceptional lifestyle amenities, and aesthetic touches.
However, the 2025 Virtual Concept Home by NewHomeSource demonstrates that flexibility should be the top trending feature on a homeowner's radar because it enhances functionality, helps affordability, and creates usable space without increasing square footage.
The concept home, created by BUILDER magazine's 2023 Builder of the Year Ashton Woods and powered by Zonda Virtual, was unveiled at the International Builders' Show on Feb. 26. House hunters can tour it virtually and see firsthand its nimble design, which includes solutions and options that make sense in the real world of homeownership.
“We think first about how people live in their present and how their habits and needs will change in the future. This approach shows them (homeowners) a different perspective on how they can live better,” says Valerio Muraro, vice president of design at Ashton Woods.
The versatility of this concept home will particularly pique the interest of homeowners considering using part of their home to generate income or who want to keep options open for multigenerational or blended family living.
Shifting family dynamics and affordability are constant challenges for modern house hunters. Every dollar spent on a home investment carries significant weight, fostering the expectation that a home must do much more than provide shelter and be a place to put down roots.
Although homeowners need more from their homes, having a larger home to dedicate to multiple, simultaneous purposes counters affordability. The answer is not to go bigger but to reframe what usable space means within a designated footprint.
“Gone are the days of uber-defined spaces,” says Leigh Spicher, national director of design studios at Ashton Woods. “We are trying to dissolve labels and help people define their vision with creative space making.”
It's this thinking that was the impetus behind the design of the concept home. With tags such as “one home, full flex” and “all yours, or yours to share,” the home is “essentially three homes in one,” says Jay Kallos, senior vice president of architecture at Ashton Woods.
“There is an accessory dwelling unit located over the garage, there's the main house, and then there is an attached, rentable space integrated with the main house,” he says.
Homeowners can consider this virtual home a series of separate but connected living spaces, versatile for different uses throughout their homeownership tenure. Instead of moving, they can transition fluidly from one space to another.
If homeowners are inclined, they can occupy the entire space right from the start or rent portions as they wish. That doesn’t just mean renting a room—a multitude of apps allow homeowners to rent everything including parking spots and swimming pool access.
“This is an opportunity to say, think outside of what you see,” says Spicher.
These possibilities are made more transparent for homeowners in touring the Virtual Concept Home immersively and interactively, thanks to proprietary technology from Zonda Virtual, with the power to modify what they see on the fly. Multiple layouts are available room-by-room, along with swappable furnishings and fixtures.
Beyond the ability to reconfigure the layouts to address rental or multigenerational potential, the rooms and spaces within the central living areas shift quickly to display several trending, lifestyle-supported spaces, including flex space for bedrooms, a mudroom, a coffee bar, a dedicated pet area, and a dirty kitchen, which is the open-concept floor plan's hardworking neighbor.
Homeowners can try on aesthetics with different mood palettes. Various products from the concept home's sponsors are placed throughout, with four façades to choose from.
Sponsors include Masonite, GE Appliances, Moen, Propane Education & Research Council, Shaw Builder + Multifamily, Sherwin-Williams, Wellborn Cabinet, James Hardie, Lennox, Liftmaster, Kwikset, Schneider Electric, and Windsor Door.
What this virtual home does very well, in addition to offering features in an organized way to help homeowners understand spatial relationships, is address the nuance in design that sometimes gets lost when you move into a virtual environment: interplay of light, shadows, and color acuity.
Building a new home provides a blank canvas that is empowering, but it's also daunting.
“We provide a canvas that people can project their lives on, and each homeowner is going to create a completely different image of their life on our canvas,” says Kallos.
Considering the potential lifestyle, emotional, and financial cost of making a retrospectively unsuitable decision is a lot of pressure for homeowners.
That's why guided inspiration, with the framework of flexible design and immersive virtual reality tech, is more than a fun, terrific way to search for a home. It helps homeowners articulate their wish lists more accurately and mitigate buyer regret.
“Guided inspiration provides peace of mind,” says Spicher.
