Catering to women keeps this homebuilder busy

MAKING A HOME: Sarah Fisher, of h.a. Fisher Homes, shows off the porch of one of the
MAKING A HOME: Sarah Fisher, of h.a. Fisher Homes, shows off the porch of one of the "woman- centric" homes her company is building in North Kingstown. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

Hugh Fisher in 2006 sat in the back of a conference room in Tennessee with his arms folded and his mind made up that his trip to learn about “woman-centric” home design was one big waste of time.

“I said to myself, ‘What could a woman ever teach me about building homes,’ ” Fisher told Providence Business News.

But after listening for a while to the female homebuilders talk about the practicality of designing homes specifically for women, he became intrigued.

“I called my foreman and told him to stop construction and when I got back [to Rhode Island], I redesigned the homes and we redid them all,” Fisher said.

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Fisher, owner of h.a. Fisher Homes based in Warwick, has since sold more than 400 condominiums and houses driven by a philosophy of “woman-centric design,” and his company has exclusive licensing rights to the homebuilding approach in Rhode Island.

Fisher claims the vast majority of all home purchases are made or primarily influenced by women, which if true gives weight to his approach. The play to one sex could sound like he’s shutting out roughly 50 percent of the market, but when asked whether he worries about alienating men, or same-sex couples, Fisher responded by saying, “People usually get it.”

“We’ve built homes for single men … and with any couple there are differences of opinion and there’s a dominant personality,” Fisher said.

Kathleen Vaillancourt, who’s been connecting homes with aspiring homeowners since receiving her real estate license in 2006, currently works with Armory Properties. She says she hasn’t tracked any hard data, but anecdotally speaking when dealing with buyers in opposite-sex relationships, “It’s usually the woman making the most calls, with a few nonnegotiables from the guy.”

When it comes to same-sex couples, Vaillancourt said, the overall decision-making dynamic doesn’t change.

“The strongest couples I’ve known complement each other; one is more reticent and one more expressive. One concerned with the number-crunching and the other with aesthetics, one the exterior and landscape and the other the floor plan and décor,” she said. “In a partnership, that seems to work best, and it’s not exclusive to gender.”

Women and men tend to care about different aspects in a home and although Fisher says men lean more toward home features, such as garage and basement getaways, or a place for a flat-screen TV and a couch, a recent national survey suggests some deviation to these trends.

According to the National Association of Realtors 2013 Home Features Survey, gender roles continue to play an influential role in real estate, but some of the survey results contradict longstanding institutional trends within the industry.

For instance, 38 percent of single, male respondents said a walk-in closet in the master bedroom was “very important,” versus just 29 percent of single, female respondents. The percentage of single men who responded saying granite countertops and kitchen islands were very important, more than doubled the percentage of single women who responded to the same question.

Historically, more women than men have found the aforementioned features more important, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.

On the flip side, more single women – 13 percent – said a fully or partially finished basement is “very important,” which doesn’t quite match men – 16 percent – but it closes a gap within a category that’s historically been more important to men. Women place a higher importance on having single-level homes and more men say new kitchen appliances are more important.

The woman-centric construction is especially popular right now in North Kingstown, where h.a. Fisher Homes is building 41 single-family house lots and 42 condominiums – all woman-centric – in the first phase of the development project Reynolds Farm on Morningside Drive.

The women-centric approach is based on the belief that some home-features and amenities are more important to women than others. Fisher says it could be big things, such as more space to drop off keys or groceries, or smaller things like having a backsplash in the kitchen without outlets or switches. Women also sometimes want features specifically designed for men, Fisher adds, saying a heated garage floor is popular among women who have cigar-smoking spouses who don’t want to have to smoke outside in the winter.

Fisher says they have already collected 53 deposits on the homes and the single-family homes range from $344,800 to $599,000.

“It’s been very exciting and [our customers] are always pushing the envelope, saying ‘Let’s try something new,’ always adding something to their homes, and we put the best ideas into our repertoire,” he said. •

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