Excitement & Nerves - A Show Home Launches

As a house builder, it is always exciting to launch a new show home, particularly after the many months it takes to put it together (as you will have seen in the feature on these pages last week). 

But even with the most careful planning, and the utmost effort to understand the needs of the house-buying public, it is not until you open a site for sales that you really find out whether you have got it right. 

So if you were in Swaffham last weekend, you might have seen several nervous members of the Abel Homes team with fingers crossed – because that was when we opened for business at our Swan’s Nest site on the southern edge of the town, the largest site we have ever built. 

You know pretty soon after launching a new site whether you have got all the details right.  Is it in the right place?  Is the design of the new homes appropriate and attractive to buyers (and the local community, which is equally important)?  Have you satisfied the aspirations of buyers, whether that is energy efficiency, layout or space?  Above all, have you got the ‘feel’ of the show home right? 

Buyers who are committing at this stage really have to trust you, because they are buying ‘off-plan’; in other words, the home they are purchasing doesn’t actually exist yet – or at any rate it isn’t finished.  The advantages of this for buyers is that they can specify fittings and finishes to really make the home their own.  But it is an act of faith, which is why the quality of the show home, and the reputation of the builder, are both paramount. 

At Swan’s Nest, we have gone for a more contemporary design, combined with very high levels of energy efficiency, with solar panels on every roof, triple glazing and much higher levels of insulation than we are required to fit.  These are all choices made in the planning stage, many months before customers get to decide whether they want to buy your new homes or not. 

This is where understanding the local market is so important.  Trying to build the same ‘off the shelf’ design in Swaffham as you are building in, say, Southampton, as some national builders do, won’t really cut it with discerning local buyers. 

Launching our show home, southwest Norfolk MP Liz Truss said she was pleased to see a local builder working sympathetically within the community.   

Fortunately for us, visitors to the new site seemed to agree.  In the first two days of sales, we sold three houses, indicating that we have got it right.  Once again, local knowledge has delivered great results.