Aging with style: active-adult homeowners are paying for luxury products and materials that allow them to grow old in place - Feature

Building Products, March-April, 2003 by Sharon O'Malley

THE TYPICAL 60-YEAR-OLD BUYERS OF A TOLL BROTHERS HOME IN THE builder's new active-adult community in Haymarket, Va., want more than bedrooms on the first floor and extra-wide hallways. They want luxury--and they can afford it.

"They are folks who have a lot of equity in their homes, good retirement portfolios," says Paul Eberz, Toll Brothers' assistant vice president in charge of active-adult communities. "Folks who are buying in this marketplace are schooled in buying homes. They're wise and frugal, but they will spend. They're not afraid to purchase what they want. And they're going to get what they want."

Sean Patrick, a spokesman for Pulte Homes, concurs: "They're buying conservatively on size, but they're upgrading as far as options go. They'll go from a 3,000-square-foot home to 2,000 feet, but they'll go with granite countertops and marble floors."

Indeed, says Doug Fenichel, director of public relations for K. Hovnanian Cos., those who buy into the builder's age-restricted communities are far more likely to ask for high-end upgrades than for extras that will make it easier to get around the house once the aging process starts to take its toll.

Still, baby boomers who opt for the low-maintenance, country-club lifestyle of the active-adult community are welcoming products that marry domestic elegance with the reality of aging--products like walk-in showers with pullout seats; decorative grab bars next to the toilet and in the bathtub; and door levers and cabinet handles that take the place of hard-to-grab knobs.

"The baby boomers have seen enough of [the needs of aging homeowners] just by virtue of taking care of their aging parents," says Rick Millard, vice president of sales and marketing for Comfort Design Bathware, which makes acrylic walk-in showers and bathtubs with transfer ledges in 20 colors. "They're getting smarter. They're saying, `Hey, I'm going to plan ahead and make sure that everything I get is not only beautiful but it's also functional over the long run.'"

Manufacturers are listening. Until just a few years ago, admits Michele Villalta, vice president of marketing communications for Schlage, "we would provide any lock you wanted as long as it was bright brass." Today, the company's door handles and locks come in satin nickel, bronze, and chrome to "tie in and match the design and decor of one's home," she says. "It fits in with the motif of each room, and it's still easy to operate."

WHAT THEY WANT

When polled on their preferences, seniors pointed to surprisingly few in-home amenities in a survey conducted by the NAHB Research Center and the federal Administration on Aging. More than products, they expect to be able to move around comfortably in their new homes, even if they're sitting in a wheelchair or pushing a walker, notes Charlotte Wade, who manages the seniors program for the research center. That includes wide hallways and doorways, reinforcements in bathroom walls so they can add grab bars later, single-floor living, large showers, and extra lighting in the kitchen.

Seniors also said they wanted light switches at both the top and bottom of staircases so they wouldn't have to climb steps in the dark, and they asked for energy-efficient HVAC systems and windows.

"We don't have anything to say definitively that older people are more energy-conscious than younger people, but from what was listed in that survey, energy [efficiency] is important to them," Wade says, noting that retirees usually have less money than they did while they were working, so they're more careful with it.

In a demonstration home designed to show strategies for "aging in place," the NAHB covered floors with nonslip, matte-finish sheets that don't reflect the glare of overhead lights--a help for someone with cataracts. The builder constructed a pedestal for the dishwasher so the user wouldn't have to bend over so far to load it. Closets were fitted with low-hanging racks that a wheelchair-using resident could reach easily. And kitchen cabinets came equipped with pullout shelves to put an end to reaching blindly for hard-to-get-to dishes and spices.

"With the hardware that's available today, it's very easy to make a kitchen work a little easier for you," says Wade.

That's true for bathrooms, too, says Tom Luce, of Luce Custom Remodeling and Design in Melbourne, Fla. He says most of the customers who ask him to make their homes more accessible want him to start in the master bath.

He starts by enlarging the room, if he can, so that a wheelchair can turn around in it and widening the doorway so that a wheelchair can fit through it. Then, he replaces the doorknobs with levers, adds grab bars, and hollows out the space beneath the vanity so that a seated user's knees can fit comfortably.

THINKING IS KEY

With a little bit of thought, builders of new homes can make life a lot easier for the mature market, says Millard. "They want things that are beautiful and functional--and adaptable," he says.

In Pulte's active-adult homes, for instance, electrical outlets are high on the wall instead of near the baseboards so the homeowner doesn't have to bend over to reach them. Air intakes for the furnace are low on the walls so it's easier for the user to reach the filter when it's time to replace it.