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Livability in a D.R. Horton home comes down to style and smart use of space, while customer feedback translates into ever-higher levels of quality.
D.R. Horton Homes’ Redwood model has proven a popular choice in the Las Brisas neighborhood at Cabezon Communities in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. The flexible design includes a third-car garage, which can be converted to an extra bedroom or a home office.
The family room opens to the kitchen but is visually shielded from visitors entering the front door. Thoughtful window placement gives homeowners options for furniture arrangement.
Affordable housing needn’t be bland. D.R. Horton’s Las Brisas homes bring in semicustom touches such as solid-surface countertops, ceramic tile floors, and furniture-like cabinetry with staggered depths and heights.
This midpriced D.R. Horton home carves out room for a formal library behind glass doors. The house incorporates quiet spaces for reading as well as game rooms upstairs next to the kids’ bedrooms.
A true master suite offers a private, intimate getaway.
This spacious retreat has its own fireplace to beckon the adults for late evening chats or morning coffee.
This article first appeared in Autumn 2008 Su Casa
Family homes are what D.R. Horton does best. With an eye toward comfort intertwined with affordability, this national builder has found a niche market that currently accounts for about one-fifth of all new homes built in the Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, New Mexico, metropolitan area.
Even so, this 30-year-old company that made inroads into New Mexico a dozen years ago is hardly resting on its laurels. The company’s home designers continue to tweak existing floor plans to come up with the little changes that make each home just a bit more livable. Despite its size and motto as “America’s Builder,” D.R. Horton listens to customer feedback and then takes action, according to Mark Ferguson, the division president for New Mexico.
One result of this relationship with buyers is D.R. Horton’s successful series of homes named after national parks. From the single-story Yellowstone model to the largest Mount Rainier model, this Scottsdale style home series appeals to families and retirees alike. Eight varying floor plans in the series are being built in D.R. Horton’s Las Brisas neighborhood in the master-planned Cabezon Communities in Rio Rancho. Las Brisas, translated as “the breezes,” is the most upscale of D.R. Horton’s three active Cabezon subdivisions. Elsewhere in the metro area, another five D.R. Horton communities are underway with homes priced from the $110,000s to the $400,000s.
The two-story, four-bedroom Redwood model is a featured home in the 2008 Homes of Enchantment Parade, which is sponsored by the Home Builders Association of Central New Mexico. D.R. Horton is a Featured Builder in the Parade.
The Las Brisas homes, ranging in size from 2,141 to 3,558 square feet with prices starting from $259,900, have proven particularly popular with families. Among the roomy two-story models, the Redwood has been a crowd-pleaser.
“It’s a home that families can grow into, rather than out of,” Ferguson says.
The division president’s enthusiasm is contagious as he leads visitors through the model. Modestly shrugging off his staff’s praise for his own design sense and influence, Ferguson says it was customer feedback coupled with a talented design team that resulted in floor plans that place space and function where buyers need it most. One option moves a laundry room upstairs with the added benefit of increasing the size of a breakfast nook on the first floor. Customer feedback is actively sought and over the years has resulted in floor plans that are functional and attractive. Buyers appreciate that windows are positioned for optimum furniture arrangement and that flexible room options such as the inclusion of a utility or “toy” garage can be added to hold bicycles, store lawn tools, or serve as a hobby room.
“Why not do it right when you see an opportunity to make it the best it can be?” Ferguson asks.
The resulting Redwood model slowly and deliciously reveals its surprises. Enter from the spacious covered porch and you’ll get a sense of the home’s design and functionality, but not its every secret—at least, not all at once. The heavily massed arches beckon visitors to a formal living area. The staircase with two broad landings for an easy climb invites guests to an upstairs game room. The heart of the family home—the open kitchen and family room—retains visual privacy from the foyer even as guests instinctively know it lies just around the corner. This is a home with details and treasures to be discovered and savored.
The biggest surprise, perhaps, is the Redwood’s price. In a struggling national market where construction materials and labor costs take frequent leaps upward, these D.R. Horton homes still are being sold for about $100 per square foot. Affordability and high-quality have been a big part of D.R. Horton’s success story in New Mexico and elsewhere.
Part of the D.R. Horton price advantage at Cabezon Communities, of course, comes from the scale of the project. Las Brisas consists of 81 homes and is but one neighborhood in Rio Rancho’s master-planned Cabezon Communities of 900 acres, which includes an extensive network of landscaped hiking, biking, and pedestrian trails linking homes, neighborhoods, schools, and parks. This past summer residents enjoyed the opening of a new community swimming pool. D.R. Horton’s neighborhoods are diverse, evidenced by the neighboring Astante Villas featuring “paired” single-family homes.
D.R. Horton has maintained its 20 percent share of the market in the Albuquerque metro area (including Rio Rancho), according to Houston-based Metrostudy, a national market research and consulting firm for the new home industry. The company keeps tabs on all new housing starts and closings throughout the Albuquerque metro and Santa Fe area.
“It’s a pretty compelling story,” says Metrostudy’s New Mexico and Colorado director John Covert of Denver. He attributes D.R. Horton’s success to good land positioning as well as savvy management focusing on the “middle ground” even during the heady days of the real estate boom. D.R. Horton never strayed from keeping its production homes, prices, and locations affordable to the bulk of its buying pool, which is “paying off in spades now,” Covert adds. “D.R. Horton has also been successful in demonstrating to potential buyers that this is still an excellent time to build a house if you’ve got good credit.”
“Home buyers today are trying to maximize their dollars,” concedes Kathryn Rhoades, D.R. Horton’s senior vice president of sales and marketing. With spiraling gas, entertainment, and restaurant prices, many new home buyers are content to simply nest at home, Rhoades adds. But in return for staying home, the buyers demand a home loaded with amenities ranging from a TV entertainment center to a game room where the kids can shoot pool. Buyers want outdoor spaces and floor plans for entertaining.
At Las Brisas, D.R. Horton makes sure clients get what they want. Rhoades and Ferguson call it “livability.” Really, it boils down to style, design, scale, and smart use of space. With its open floor plan, the Redwood model offers both social and private retreats and flexible spaces that can serve different functions for different families. An example is an upstairs loft large enough for both a pool table and a foosball table. Lose the equipment, and it can become a secondary family room.
More unusual is the home’s third-car garage that supplements the standard two-car garage. In various floor plan options, the smaller garage can house a third vehicle or it can be modified into a bedroom and bath or even split in half to create a utility garage from the exterior as well as a home office addition from the interior.
D.R. Horton prides itself on luxurious touches that might be expected in semi-custom homes, according to Ferguson, who has seen the excitement of buyers as they enter the master suite and find an adjacent secluded retreat. The 15 x 12 foot hideaway has a fireplace, vaulted ceiling, and ample room for overstuffed chairs and a coffee table. The luxury continues throughout the 18 x 18 foot master suite with balcony access, a luxury bath, and oversized dual closets.
Still, D.R. Horton’s featured home maintains the practical amenities that its middle-class buyers hold dear. Sensible design reigns. There is little wasted space, and storage is tucked into every nook and cranny—under the stairs, in a second pantry, in a shelf-filled utility room, and in roomy walk-in closets. Ceilings reach a comfortable nine feet tall. Ceramic tile graces the floors in the foyer, kitchen, dining nook, and baths. Solid-surface countertops promise durability in the kitchen.
The luxury shines through in the details. Buyers appreciate stone accents, wrought-iron banisters, built-in nichos, and two-sided kitchen island storage. Elegant Variance plaster wall finish livens up the formal living room. The kitchen’s maple cabinetry takes on a furniture-like appearance with staggered depths and varying heights. These well-thought-out details, many incorporated from suggestions from previous buyers, generate the “wow” factor.
Finally but not least is D.R. Horton’s attention to energy-efficient building. Windows throughout the Las Brisas homes are double-glazed and low-E. Insulation values in exterior walls range from R-13 to R-19, while ceilings are R-30. A refrigerated air system and gas forced air system provide the heating and cooling.
Altogether, this roomy home exemplifies the virtues of any D.R. Horton house: practicality, flexibility, sensible design, and attainable luxury.
Freelance writer Jane Mahoney resides in a fixer-upper in Albuquerque’s South Valley and frequently writes about home builders and real estate issues for the Albuquerque Journal.