It’s not the homes themselves, it’s the marketing machine I don’t like. There’s nothing wrong with an average quality home built on a mass scale. If the initial designs are functional AND if the different floorplans and elevations in the project complement each other then you can end up with a neighborhood that has some homogeneity.
The marketing machines are something else, though. Many of these builders treat their homes like they’re cars, offering a base buildout that almost nobody will accept at that price. Then they price their better finishes and buildouts as a separate profit center that allows them to jack up their average price by 10% and the homes with real options by as much as 25%. Those markups are outrageous in relation to their retail cost, let alone the wholesale costs the builder gets them for. It’s the classic bait-n-switch.
As for Bressi in particular….
I’m not feeling Bressi Ranch because they mix and match their elevations and floorplans to result in a disjointed “feel” for the neighborhood. I realize there are people who decry the idea of cookie cutter subdivisions that only offer 4 floorplans, each with the one elevation; but I also think it’s possible to offer 3 elevations of similar theme for each floorplan. Each of the Lennar projects at Bressi mix Tuscan, Ranch, and that wierd Traditional thing they’ve got going. I find that mix to very disorienting. Nobody could drive into that neighborhood and think of it as a neighborhood that matured over a 30-year period, so why try?
But that’s just me as a consumer. The appraiser side of me doesn’t care one way or another because…..we basically don’t care one way or another.