Tuesday was another day of touring, this time with Pardee Homes. The program, which included stops at four communities, highlighted Pardee's very diverse portfolio of communities. You can get the down and dirty in pictures by clicking on the picture above or by clicking
here.
The day-long tour started out with a drive out to Lake Las Vegas, an Italian-themed luxury resort community located outside of the city on a man-made lake. When I say Italian themed, that's really an understatement. From a bridge loosely modeled after the Ponte Vecchio in Florence to a chic, Lake Como-style resort, it's all Tuscan all the time. The downside is that the community's master developer/owner Atalon put the project in bankruptcy this summer, a fact that no doubt poses additional challenges to selling homes.
After driving up a rather steep and windy hill, we arrived at Tremezzo, a super high-end Pardee community. The models were literally to die for--tasteful merchandising, luxury finishes, exciting outdoor spaces, and splendid hilltop views of the lake and community below. I particularly loved the courtyards and one model boasted a pool that reminded me of something you'd see at an upscale Miami hotel like the Delano and was more than inviting. The oversized Jacuzzi hot tub at another model was also unbelievable. Needless to say, this community targeted the über rich, but the softness in the housing market has brought average sale prices down to roughly $900,000, down from $1.2 million.
Down the hill was another Pardee community, Bella Fiore, which opened in September 2008. I'd label this community affordable luxury. Pardee started out with four plans in the community, but like many builders, retooled the product line, adding two plans with smaller footprints, to get to a lower price point. Plan 5 and Plan have average listing prices of $475,000 and $500,000, respectively, compared to prices between $700,000 and $800,000 for the four larger plans.
I thought the architectural styling of these homes was top notch. The plans were bright and light thanks to lots of windows and there was wonderful diversity in the materials used in the houses-lots of glass, stone, and brick. I'm also a sucker for outdoor space, so the plan's courtyards were a hit with me.
One thing that was interesting--besides the architecture--was the community's buyer mix. I would've imagined that most buyers in the community would've been out-of-towners looking for a vacation home. However, marketing director Kathy Hilty said that 65% of buyers were local players looking for primary residences. Even wilder is that the community was starting to attract families-despite that there are no schools in Lake Las Vegas, she said.
We left Lake Las Vegas and headed toward Town Square, an outdoor retail center. We kept up with the Italian theme, grabbing lunch at Brio Tuscan Grille. Pardee's vice president of marketing Joyce Mason, fresh off a presentation on green building at the convention center, joined us.
Happy and fat from lunch, we piled into the white Suburban and headed off to the community of Solamar at Vista Verde. The tour here was quick, as time was running short, but all the same, I want to highlight the Plan 4. This is truly a fantastic floor plan, perfect for people like me who love to entertain. At roughly 3,000 square feet, the two story plan has one of the best open kitchen/great room layouts I've seen.
I love the giant kitchen with the oversized island that is open to a generous dining area and living room. The added bonus is what I would call a party room nested in a corner of the layout. The room, which Pardee had furnished with a pool table, was semi open to rest of the home, creating a visual continuity, but yet had a separate personality. Tacked on to it was a wet bar. I could just imagine having a dinner party in that place. I could comfortably cook and care for my guests without feeling cramped.
The last stop on the tour was Horizon, a community in one of Pardee's oldest 
master plans, Eldorado Highlands. Here, we got a chance to check out some of Pardee's newest selling strategies. The electronic sales center was the first thing marketing coordinator Adrian Gonzalez demonstrated. Home shoppers or buyers can use the computer to research floor plans and elevations. The other really cool thing that the computer did was allow buyers to virtually populate the floor plans with furniture. I loved that people had a way to figure out how the room would look with their furniture in it or play around with different furniture configurations.
The second thing that was new and different at Horizon was the Simplified Option program. The program eliminates the need for buyers to go to a design center to select options and upgrades; instead, they choose from one of four design packages. The packages are tiered-Included (standard), Simplicity (first level upgrade), Abundance (second level upgrade), and Indulgence (highest upgrade). Option packages aren't necessarily new, but I thought this program was intriguing because it was very well marketed. It was easy to understand, and I thought the individual options for countertops, flooring, etc., were thoughtfully selected.
"This is an opportunity to test the scalability of the program," said marketing director Kathy Hilty, noting that the program is in place in two additional communities. "It's been exciting to see people accept this at this level."
At that, the tour wrapped up and we spent the next hour negotiating Las Vegas traffic. Back at the Las Vegas Hilton, I caught up quickly with Open Line PR's Rebecca Hardin before sitting down with the market intelligence community's who's who, which included Lisa Jackson of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, Tim Sullivan and Ken Perlman of The Sullivan Group, and Patrick Duffy of MetroIntelligence Real Estate Advisors.
From there, it was off to the Hearthstone Awards and Builder magazine 30th anniversary party, which was held in a funky movie studio slightly off the strip. The cocktail hour had me catching up with a diverse cast of characters. Keystone Custom Homes CEO Jeff Rutt and I talked about social media and its impact on the housing industry. John Thatch, a principal at architecture firm Dahlin Group, brought me up to speed on a design project he's working on with a university in California in which he's designing homes for the next generation. (Can't wait to see the final product!) Zvi Barzilay, Toll Brothers' president and COO, and I chatted about home builders and their relationship with their trades. Larry Webb, former John Laing Homes CEO, also was in attendance. When I asked Larry how he was doing, he replied, "The bankruptcy business is good!"
Needless to say it was a good group to have gathered to acknowledge both the industry's charitable acts and innovators.