Housing Giants - March 1, 2009 - (Page 11) FEATURE Lennar’s Martin Another Kosco Fan It’s time to focus on Gen Y, Dave Kosco says. Listen to the frame of mind he keeps when designing for this generation. History Repeating? Today, we face another recession and many of the same imperatives to trigger home sales. To get off square one, builders need smaller, smarter, greener, more affordable homes for entry-level buyers. But to really kick recovery into gear, they need to find that hot button that will give move-ups a reason to jump back into the market and buy a new home. And once again, Bassenian/Lagoni is doing focus groups and Dave Kosco is drawing new house plans. “This time around, it will be different,” Kosco says, “because we are no longer designing for the baby boom generation, and practically everything we’ve built since the 1970s has been aimed at boomers. Now the target for entry buyers is Gen X and Gen Y. Combined, those generations are bigger than the baby boom.” The oldest members of Gen Y are now in their mid-20s and entering the ownership housing market, Kosco points out. “We’ve had Gen Ys in our recent focus groups and uncovered some fascinating differences that we think will influence where production housing needs to go. “This is a computer-savvy, digital generation,” Kosco asserts. “They want houses that reflect who they are, not just outside, but inside the home. They want to make a statement, and they lean more toward contemporary and modern architectural styles than toward traditional homes with historical antecedents. They don’t want to pull up to Grandma’s house. “I have a 15 year-old daughter,” says Kosco (now 45), “and what she wants in a house is totally different from what I wanted at that age.” Kosco says the first thing builders need to accept is that the market of 2004 is gone forever. “It’s going to be a much tougher business,” Kosco asserts. “They’ll never again make the kind of margins they made in the early 2000s. And more density is unavoidable.” Density Rising Even in Southern California’s Inland Empire, Kosco believes the 50- by 100-foot standard lot is a dead duck. “We may see 50 by 80 Tom Martin is vice president of strategic marketing for Lennar Communities in Southern California. He collaborated with Kosco in the mid-1990s on many move-up and luxury projects that changed industry perceptions of both Lennar and Bassenian/ Lagoni, including one of the first to sport the Tuscan style. “Bassenian was known back then as the leader in detached price-point products and density,” Martin says. “But Dave and I collaborated on a number of high-design, luxury products that helped kick the moveup market back into gear in the mid-1990s. One was The Cortile Collection in our planned community, The Bridges in Rancho Sante Fe (Calif.). The Plan 3 was a courtyard home that won just about every design award possible. Very authentic Tuscan. It really looks like it’s built out of stone.” Dave Kosco taught Martin to sketch. “Young architects coming out of school today are so used to working on computers that they can’t sketch,” Martin says. “But Dave taught me, because sketching is central to how we collaborate. We sit down and sketch what we want to achieve. And we now get done in one or two days what used to take weeks. Martin also points out Kosco’s absence of ego. “He’s incredibly talented,” Martin says, “but he has a real ability to get everyone involved, and the designs belong to the team, not to him individually.” 11 03.01.09 HOUSING GIANTS www.HousingGiants.com http://www.lennar.com http://www.thebridgesrsf.com/cortile.html http://www.thebridgesrsf.com/home.html http://www.thebridgesrsf.com/home.html http://www.HousingGiants.com
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