Some real estate amenities are eternal—a sweeping view
across Central Park, for instance, or a doorman who knows your favourite
driver. Others, though, might prove unexpectedly faddish: What seems like a
must-have today could vanish in the developments of tomorrow. Here are four
surprising staples of the luxury real estate market that insider experts
predict could soon become obsolete.
The home theater
The home theatre market stateside stood at $1.4 billion
in 2015, up more than 50 percent since the same period in 2010, per Cedia, a
trade association for home technology companies. Of course, it’s no longer
enough to install a supersize screen and digital projector: True cinephiles can
build their own $1 million personal Imax theatre and sign up for Prima Cinema,
a Netflix-like service for the 1 percent that allows rentals of
first-run movies at $500 a pop.
It could prove to a short-sighted investment, though, at
least according to architect Duan Tran of KAA Design. “Our clients are
requesting fully immersive, VR environments because they’re super-busy and want
the highest forms of escapism,” Tran confides by phone from his office in Los
Angeles.
One current project, commissioned by a man the architect
calls “a real techie, who likes to geek out,” involved simply stripping down
the erstwhile maid’s room in his home, turning it into a 20-foot-by-20-foot
shell as the venue for his own personal Holodeck. “There, he can throw on
a pair of VR goggles and immerse himself completely. Imagine taking a walk on
the beach in the Bahamas, or a walk down to the Arc de Triomphe on Saturday
afternoon before dinner.”
Tech advances have propelled this blue-sky idea into brick-and-mortar
reality, such as the relatively affordable VR cubes and screens from such
companies as Virtalis. Tran explains that changing building codes in
overbuilt areas such as L.A. could also have an effect moving this
forward. “They’re starting to restrict the size of houses, so when clients
request bells and whistles—a 20-car garage, say—we need to be more efficient
with space,” he says. “Right now, you might need to have 1,000 square feet
dedicated to a home theater," but in the future, "it could be a
6-foot-by-6-foot room for the same programming.”
The master suite
Sprawling master suites were once the ultimate trophy
asset in a luxury home, but recent developments have begun replacing the
open-plan, loft-like rooms with a complex of private chambers, jigsawed
together around a smaller, cozy space that’s home solely to a bed. Douglas
Elliman’s Roy Kim points to Miami’s Rem Koolhas-designed Park Grove as an
example. “You’ll see an antechamber, like a study, or a library, plus a large
dressing area and a spa-like bathroom,” Kim says by phone from California. “You
no longer want to walk unceremoniously into a master bedroom and see the
bed—creating privacy is more important than ever.”
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Jonah Disend, founder of innovation firm Redscout,
explains further: “The concept of a master bedroom is becoming obsolete because
we have a different relationship with sleep now—we don’t hang out in the
bedroom the way we used to.” Disend notes that millennials are driving this
shift. Their relationship with privacy is radically different from those of the
generations preceding them—though digitally nonchalant, they’re prudish in
person.
“Millennials don’t like to get naked—if you go to the gym
now, everyone under 30 will put their underwear on under the towel, which is a
massive cultural shift,” he continues. As gym designers are adapting, so are
condo developers. “They want their own changing rooms and bathrooms, even in a
couple.”
The same instinct is driving the renewed boom in
so-called accessory apartments, typically a second, studio home purchased
by wealthy couples in the same luxury development where they live, so that
boomeranging 20-somethings can enjoy full privacy when moving back in with mom
and dad.
Even when they live with peers, these new privacy
preferences are changing the layout of apartments, according to Teresa Ruiz of
SB Architects. “We’re seeing a shift in household formation, with a lot of
co-habitation by renters,” she says by phone from her office in San Francisco.
For one local developer, Avalon, Ruiz says the average age of a renter is
30 years old, with an average income of $300 000. “The private space they want
may be smaller, but they want a larger unit as a whole, so we’re making two
bedrooms with a den and an extra bathroom.” Translation: They’ll share a sofa
but are squeamish if ever asked to split the sink.
The garage
According to the number-crunchers at McKinsey,
ride-sharing and driverless cars will reduce the space allocated to parking
vehicles by 25 percent come 2050, a reduction that represents more than 61
billion square feet of extra living room. And we’re already seeing
buildings that anticipate this shift, says Joel Dixon of real estate
startup Compass. For example, floor-to-ceiling heights in garages are
increasing, to make it easier to convert parking spots to office or
residential use at a later time. Likewise, footprints are shrinking so that
every corner receives natural light—again, essential for adaptive
reuse. Elsewhere, future-proofed buildings with flexible spaces that allow
garages to be repurposed are already appearing.
“Parking floors aren’t angled with ramps as they used to
be, either,” Joel adds, by phone from his office in New York. “Instead, they
use speed bumps to slow traffic, which is also much easier to adapt for future
reuse.”
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LA was a pioneer of this shift, thanks to the Adaptive
Reuse Ordinance of the 1990s. To encourage development of vacant commercial
buildings into housing, these rules exempted buildings from onerous minimum
parking requirements—and so prepped the luxury homes within for the
shared-ride boom. In Miami, Herzog & de Meuron’s 1111 Lincoln Road fuses
residential, office, retail, and parking in a single structure, the idea being
that as zoning requirements evolve, autonomous vehicle use increases, and behaviour
patterns shift, the building would be able to react. Likewise, at
Government Center in Boston, a 2,130-vehicle parking garage will be replaced by
two 500-foot luxury towers—with only 600 spaces open to the public.
Of course, as garages shrink, one related amenity is
expanding: With more vehicles lining up to wait or drop residents at home, a
lavish driveway is more essential than ever.
The showcase kitchen
According to Redscout’s Disend, elaborate, centerpiece
kitchens, like master suites, are another amenity on the endangered list in
high-end homes. In part, it’s because delivery services such as Blue
Apron or Amazon Prime Now will minimize the need to store anything but the bare
minimum at home, coupled with such new amenities as centralized cooking
and catering within a development. Take Rafael Viñoly’s 432 Park Avenue,
where Michelin-starred chef Shaun Hergatt will operate a residents-only
restaurant, providing the ultimate in luxury takeout.
Disend also identifies the rise of 3D printing as fundamental
to this change. “Soon—I’d expect [in] around two or three years' time—you will
be able to create specific housewares for a dinner party when you throw it,” he
says, minimizing the need for storage; Disend himself has even invested
directly in 3D printing startup Othr for exactly these reasons. If 3D
printers for food ever pass the gimmick phase, future homeowners may be able to
dispense with the cooking entirely.
And where would you put that printer? Well,
an "appliance garage," which Elliman’s Kim predicts will replace
the open-plan showcase kitchen. “We’re recommending appliance garages in our
upcoming projects, a place to put your espresso maker, juicer, and anything
that might clutter the countertop or cause smells, a bit like a mini version of
the chef’s kitchen.”