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Real Talk with Sterling Real Estate Group is your go-to resource for all things real estate. In our episodes, we break down the latest market trends, share insider tips, and provide expert insights to empower your property journey. Whether you're buying, selling, building, or investing, we're here to help you navigate the dynamic world of real estate in New York's Capital Region and beyond. If you have any questions or topics you’d like us to cover in a future episode, we’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us at info@sterling518.com.
Lisa (00:37)
Welcome to Real Talk at Sterling Real Estate Group. Today I'm very excited to introduce Mark Johnson, President of DeGraff-Bloom Custom Builders, one of our premier builders here at Sterling Real Estate Group. Today we're going to talk about what goes in in the design process of building a custom home. Welcome, Mark. Good afternoon, Lisa. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm excited to have you here. I really am. ⁓ I know you're out there busy in the field working, so pulling you out of the field coming here, I appreciate your time.
So let's get started. Tell us, how do you start the design process if someone wants to build a true custom home? Really, you of just start with an interview process. We bring them into our office. We have a little conference room, showroom, and just really sit down and start talking about what their wants and desires are. Talk about budget. big part A very big part.
⁓ you know, explaining to people that, you know, everybody has a budget. It doesn't matter if you're building a $600,000 house or, you know, $25 million house. Everybody has a budget and you have to work within that budget. A pain point. Yeah. mean, it's a pain. It's not not pain, but yeah. Yeah. Everybody has a budget. So we kind of, you know, get a budget ⁓ and then we just start interviewing them and.
talk about ⁓ lifestyle and family and entertainment and ⁓ what's important, what are the important points to a house? How do they live? It doesn't matter how much what I live. ⁓ It's really how the client wants to live in their house. So what are some of the questions, more specific, really drilled in questions so you can get a really good handle when it comes to
you know, working with the architects and, you know, the design team to develop this, brand new home. you know, we're asking about, you know, family life, you know, their children's age. We work with a lot of right-sizers, downsizers, whatever term you want. We talk about kitchens. That's a huge portion in a house. ⁓ you know, some of our clients, they want a really nice kitchen.
you know, very good cooks, someone in really nice kitchen, they never turn the stove on and eat out every night. But you're trying to figure that out so that you can get the right size for the kitchen, the right space, the right selections for that. So when you talk about some of the major focus in the house, like the kitchen, I think we all agree the kitchen, do you think the kitchen is the most important focal point of the house?
I think so. I mean most people, you know, if if you're entertaining, you have your family over, I mean, you're not hanging out in the primary bedroom, right? You're hanging out in the, in the great room kitchen. Most designs today are, are open floor plan with a kitchen, great room, kind of connected. For that entertaining purpose. So we spend a lot of time.
you know, developing that space. ⁓ you know, some clients want that, you know, the primary bedroom is important. I would say maybe the primary bathroom can be important to some people. A lot of our clients, they, you know, they have, you know, the second bath or main bath, you know, they'll kind of downsize that a bit. Yeah, because it's just not important. you know, it's not, especially if they don't have kids.
their kids are grown and gone, they're going to spend the money on the primary and the kitchen. More of the guest bathroom, guest bedroom. Yeah, that's kind of... They're usually nice, but they're not full-tiled. Not like 27 Wineberry at Luther Woods, that bathroom that was in showcase. a nice one. ⁓ That was sweet. That whole house was incredible. That was an incredible house.
the garage barn, I don't even know if you call it a barn. The barn, yeah, we call it a barn. Okay, all The great room was all timber trusses. It was an awesome house. that was great. The landscaping, everything. Yeah. was just phenomenal. That was fun project. that was good. So let's talk about design trends. What's one thing in common that you think you're seeing doing all these custom builds right now? Because you've been doing a lot.
the last couple years of the true custom builds starting from a piece of paper. Yeah, you know our company is, ⁓ you know, we started kind of production type housing. We've kind of moved into, you know, custom design and, you know, our clients ask, can we customize it? And we pretty much customize every plan that we have now.
It's pretty rare that somebody takes our plan. We have a plan book, you know. yeah. And, you know, it's pretty rare that somebody grabs a plan and builds exact same house that's in that plan. You're always changing something. We're always changing something. And we actually like that. It's not an issue for us. That's what we do. ⁓ So we kind of like that. ⁓ It does add, you know, some challenges because we're, you know, every house is different. Yeah.
design trends, your question, I got off track there a little bit. It's OK. It happens.
I would say kitchens, you know, kind of, you know, style of cabinets. Three, four years ago, everything was white, white and white. Today we're seeing white with islands going to different colors. It was gray for a little while, blue. We're starting to see a little wood come back into the kitchen. Yeah. Gold? gold, like gold fixtures? Brass. Brass? Yeah, brass is back.
So that trend has come around again. So as far as that trend, I mean, the kitchen kind of is the most trendy. Right, where you see. ⁓ What about technology? Any technology trends that buyers are asking for? As far ⁓ we're starting to see a little bit more faucets that are touch operated instead of a valve. Right. ⁓
Just wave your hand, right? You wave your hand, you touch the button. They're kind of neat because you don't really have to kind of reach into the shower and grab the handle and get cold. God forbid. you know, God forbid. ⁓ you know, and that technology.
you know kitchen appliances, you know, have been getting a little techy. you know, it's not just a standard fridge anymore. ⁓ So we see a little bit of, you know. What about like smart home, like smart home technology, you know, controlling your lights from really anywhere you are, not necessarily at home, heating systems, all of that. So it's interesting. we don't, we don't get a lot. We get thermostat type
you know, I want to control my temperature from Florida or from you know, wherever but whole house Technology, we haven't had people request that a lot. Okay, the custom house on 27 that was super high-tech That had a lot of technology in it It was a little I think over the top for the homeowner just getting used to it. Oh, yeah and designing it. you know one day I went in at night to
check on something, I'm trying to turn the light on, I couldn't turn the light on Did you set off any alarms? So I called the guy who set it up and he's like, well, I have a five second delay on the switch. And I'm like, why would you do that? You have a flip to switch and then turn on the light. Meanwhile, you're tripping over everything. you know, I'm pushing it on, pushing it off. I'm not waiting the five seconds. ⁓ So yeah, the smart home, you know, if someone requests it, you know, obviously we can do it.
but we haven't had a lot of clients asking for that. They probably don't, a lot is, don't, my friends have it and they walk around with, I want to say an iPad for the control system. And they've been in the house almost two years and they're still trying to figure this out. Yeah. I mean, you need like a whole separate class. I'm not a big, I mean, I think it's cool. I mean, ⁓
If I built my house, I'd probably put a little bit into it. I probably would just do the thermostat. Being able to control your heat, monitor your house if you're traveling. Again, some of our clients are snowbirds, so they want to just make sure the heat's on in the winter. they're sitting in Florida and they see this 10 below zero here, they wouldn't make can check the house. They don't have to have their family or maintenance guy check the house.
So, you know it's funny you just said if I was going to build, you would. So I'm gonna ask you, if you were going to build a house for yourself, your family, what would you put into it? What would you do? What would I do? What would you do? ⁓ I'm a kitchen guy, so I'm gonna have a ⁓ real high-end kitchen, high-end appliances, you know.
you know, I look at a stove as a piece of furniture in my mind. So we would definitely have a 6 burner, 8 burner. you know, I would probably have at least a 6 foot stove. My wife probably is not that big into the stove. So you do all the cooking? Yeah, yeah. Well, we switch. would definitely, you know, put a lot of effort into that space between the kitchen, living room.
personally, we have a big family, our immediate family's 35 people, so we have dinners for holidays. We need big space and big. That is a lot of entertaining. Yeah, and it's not, I just, to me, it doesn't bother me. It's just a bigger pot. Yeah, yeah. You need space to cook. To cook, yeah, and put everything in, prep and. So I'm not a big primary bathroom guy. I would probably do that.
you know, I wouldn't do it as 27 Winterberry, that's beautiful, but I would probably put more of the dollar into the kitchen. to the kitchen, where you spend most of your time. Yeah, that's where we hang out, you know. I probably would do a little space for office, home offices, both for my wife and I. But besides that, I really would focus on the kitchen. How about a bar area? Somewhere you'd have like bourbon or...
Know your whiskey all lined up Yeah, that that's part of the kitchen. I mean we do kind of a wet bar and okay kind of design that into that space Right that's because all the entertaining you do I mean yeah, and then just using that space wisely, you know that that wet bar area would be a little off to the side of the kitchen because that you know that gets crowded right? So just to get the flow correct. Do you see a lot of people,
I see a lot, a lot of the houses we go in and out of, they have these coffee bars in their bedrooms. Yeah. you know, like the coffee machines are built in the wall. We haven't done one in the bedroom yet, we've done them in the kitchen a couple times. Yeah, this is kind of a little bit of a trend. I don't know. Again, would I do that? No, because I don't...
I just make coffee. Right, you get up go to the kitchen and make coffee. Yeah, I use an old perc pot. It's kind of like perc coffee. But that's, you know, somebody likes ⁓ that type of setup. That type of, yeah. The coffee connoisseur We're closing on a house tomorrow that has a kitchen or a coffee bar area. ⁓ nice. Take pictures. We'll share them. we always do. Yeah, we'd love to share that. So how long...
does this whole process take? So you have a client comes in, right? They meet with your site coordinators. They pick a home site that they want to build on. Now what? Take us from that point all the way through to closing. Say, what happens? So obviously once we have the site, we sit down, we do the interview process, we start doing, whether they're taking an existing plan or we're developing it from
scratch or buying a plan off the internet. So the design process can take a week if they're organized and they don't have a whole lot of changes. It could take two months. Starting from scratch? Yeah. I mean, it takes some time. By time, the designer's got to draw that plan. I'd like to say that we're the only one he draws for.
you know, there's other people in line. So you have some time there, but you know, could easily be, ⁓ we're working on a custom house right now. We're about two months into the design and you know we have a design, but it took two months to get to that. And that was pretty much, we started with an internet plan that we bought and we kind of tore it apart and redrew it. ⁓ So we're about two months into that. The build cycle typically,
you know, it's 12 to 14 months again, depending on the complexity. From permit, yeah. Permit, depending on the municipality. yeah. You know, we don't work in city of Saratoga, which can be 12 weeks for a permit. Most of towns that we work, we get a permit in two to three weeks. Which is good. Which is good. How it should be. That's how it should be. Yeah. Not 12 weeks. Not 12 weeks. So do you, ⁓ I know you have your own interior designer on staff.
How involved is Erica with that? Does she offer to help maybe go pick out tile if they go off site and are not using something, go to the appliance store? We do. So Erica and Gail are site selection coordinators. Erica's trained in interior design. She's got a degree in that.
⁓ So they have the flexibility if they need to go with a client to Best Tile or ⁓ VP Supply for plumbing, Curtis Lumber for lighting. ⁓ They're more than welcome to go with a client. ⁓ Most of our vendors have similar people on staff, so we're more than comfortable. We send our clients to Best Tile and ⁓ our salesperson down there, she's awesome.
yeah. She'll design, you know, bathrooms and all that. So a lot of times our interior designers don't really have to per se attend those meetings because our vendors do it so well. They take care of it. What about clients that bring in their own interior decorator designer to help plan, you know, do the layout of the house and pick all the finishes and different things? Yeah, we welcome that. do you see a lot of that? We don't see a lot. We're doing one.
We have a showcase house right now we're doing. Very excited about that. it's beautiful. It's coming out great. So ⁓ there's an interior designer on that. ⁓ And we've worked with her before and she's awesome. ⁓ So we just coordinate with her. She's kind of the lead on that. She's picking colors out. And Erica's working on that house. They'll collaborate on the design and make sure everything
kind of flows together. flows all together. Do you think bringing in an outside person speeds up the process or slows it down? Because some can be very, well not a bad thing, because some of them have such a different take and an eye that they see something that maybe we don't see. So it's not necessarily a bad thing, but you're like, no, redraw this room. I don't know if it speeds up
speeds it up or slows it down. What I would say is that if we can keep it in house, we control it better because we're, that client is a hundred percent our focus of attention. if a client's bringing in an interior designer, that designer has other obligations to other clients. So we may not get an answer as quickly. As you'd like to. Yeah, as we'd like to. I prefer in-house control just because
Control. Control, you know, we you know I can, you know Erica and Gail's office is right next to my office. So I just rudely shout out, say, come where are we with this? Where are we with this, right? Do they work from home a lot? They don't. They do work from home a little bit. No, but I would rather control it in our office because that there's a lot of moving parts and. ⁓
you know, they put that all together. So they're monitoring all that product. Interesting. So I'm going to ask you about how you got into this business. You've kind of been in the business the whole time, but now you're the president of your own company. How did you get there? How did I get there? Why did you do it? I don't know. I mean, I've been...
I think like all builders, their family has been into the business somehow. My dad was just a part-time remodeler, kind of helped family and friends do projects. I was free labor and I went with him a lot to his little projects that he did. And just had an interest in that. I went to college and got a degree in
engineering and went out into the world and the corporate world for 30 years and was successful in that part of the world and then just decided that I always wanted to be a builder. I just got tied up in some new technology that was really exciting and 30 years later I was like you know if I'm gonna be a builder I better do it now and had an opportunity to buy out a business that
the owner was retiring and built it up, ⁓ added some other companies to it. You've been very successful, so it was a very good move. Yeah, knock on wood right here. Yeah, it's hard work. You get successful in your hard work. I deal with a lot of young kids in high schools and colleges and they always ask, well, how'd you get to where you are?
You just get up at 5 in the morning and you go to work. And when your buddies are off playing, you're working. You're working. But it pays off. And it pays off. Yeah, especially if they get in it young. obviously we both sit on the board of directors for Saratoga Builders. I know you do a lot. This week we're at the teaching or... Yeah, the girls' construction camp they had. That's a great little camp. I mean it's a fun... I volunteer for the day.
And I'll give Matt Whitback a plug. He does a great job on that program. And it's just fun. It's their 7th and 8th grade girls. They start using power tools. That's great. I love it. at first, they're really nervous about it. And then they get very comfortable. And this year, they did 2 weeks. And so the 2nd week was kind of more advanced. And I was there Thursday. They formed up some.
chairs out of concrete and then when they actually built Adirondack chairs and really I tell you what they hustled they it was there was not a whole lot of idle time it was because they enjoy it they enjoy it yeah see what they're constructing yeah right yeah getting them in the trades because you know we all you know yeah and and women that's great yeah you know and then you know I volunteer you know we do some local talks at the technology um technology classes at um all the local
junior high schools. Which is important. Not everybody, Doctor, lawyer, accountant. It's not. The trades, our tradespeople, they make a great living. They They work hard. There's a lot of opportunity. And I look at it, I mean, I look at myself in the mirror, right? I'm young, but there's...
you know there's a lot of opportunity for young people to get into the trades right now. Because if you look at the average age of our labor force, it's up there and somebody's got to come in and fill that gap. And they start retiring now. houses. I mean, yeah, you know, one year we may not build as many as the next year, but there's always something going on. always something going on. Yeah. That's good. Before we wrap up,
Is there anything else that we didn't cover in the design process that we didn't touch base on? No, I think it's just a matter of just timing and, you know, most people, you know, it's just finding out what they, what their number 1 priority is in the house and kind of just try to build that vision. We do use some technology with that, you know, software and 3D modeling. So one of the hard things I think clients are is like,
You show them a print and it's 2D, right? It's a piece of paper and they can't visualize that. People in the trade, like I look at a plan, it's in my head in 3D. Yeah, you can see it. I can see it. But I've been doing this for 35 years. So we try to use software to 3D model that we can walk through. The technology is easy today. You can walk through a house and show people that, you're standing in your...
you know, kitchen and you swing around and you can see your great room. This is what it's going to look like. And they like that. That really helps them envision what the house is going look like. I'm kind of playing around. One of the colleges I work with, have 3D printing. So we may 3D print a house. Really? Yeah, a little like a small quarter scale model. Right. And that just to get more of a visualization. So we're kind of playing around with that a little bit.
I would be interested. can't wait to see that. Yeah, it's something we're kind of poking around with. That would be good. That would be fun. It'd be fun. Huh. 3D modeling scale. All right. Interesting. ⁓ I just had a great question I was going to ask you and it just whew, because that's what happens. great. It really was. I'll probably remember what it is as you're walking out the door. There you go. All right. Before we wrap up, tell me a fun fact about yourself.
A fact about. fun fact or something people don't know. Maybe you don't want to share that, but something fun. something fun. I'm an avid fly fisherman. Maybe a lot of people don't know that. I used to be a guide. I had my guide's license for a long time. See, now that I did not know. I know you like to fish, but I did not know. I used to teach fly fishing kind of back in the day. All right. So, yeah.
But you still fish, right? And whenever you have free time. I'm still active in the fly fishing community. Fun fact, I mean, we both like bourbon. I'm a bourbon guy. Yeah. Yeah. I always say I'm trying to find a bourbon I don't like. I was waiting for you to I didn't want to say it. That's my line. was waiting. Yep. was waiting for you to say that. you know, I mean, taste different ones. Right. Right. So yeah, that's about it. Besides that, I'm pretty boring. That's good.
No, you're not. You're far from boring. You're far from boring. All right, well, Mark, ⁓ why don't you tell our listeners how they can contact you? ⁓ degraffbloom.com ⁓ My cell phone is 518-688-7227. But check our website out, give me a call. We'd be happy to sit down and put your dream together. Wonderful. Wonderful.
So that concludes our latest episode at Real Talk with Sterling Real Estate Group. Be sure to follow us and like and comment. Thank you.