A rose by any other name may smell as sweet. But would the Highlands of Olney development sell as well if it were peddled as “K2”? Probably not. And therein lies the reason most builders believe naming their subdivisions ranks right up there in importance with quality construction. They also find the chore to be a traumatic event that one builder once compared to “trying to name your firstborn.”
But now there's a bit of science that shows just how much a couple of key words can add to the typical developer's bottom line. Not just any two words like “Valley” or “Mews” or any of the old saws they like to use, but the old standbys “country” and “country club.”
According to a study by two researchers at the University of Georgia, homebuyers pay an average of 4.2% more when the community has the word “country” in the name. And if it has the term “country club” as part of its name, buyers will pay an additional 5.2% on top of that.
That's a total of almost 10% more that people are willing to pay just for the prestige associated with the term “country club.”
A joke? Not hardly. The study, the results of which were published last year in the Journal of Real Estate Research, is a serious investigation of sales in the Baton Rouge, La., area over a 15-year period. And it carefully controlled for such variables as location, number of bedrooms and baths, and days on the market, among others.
“This is the first study to find through empirical research that buyers are willing to pay more for certain property names, with all other attributes of a house being equal,” the paper said. “In fact, buyers of more expensive houses may be willing to pay more for a name that conveys prestige than they are willing to pay for a good school for their children.”
No wonder, then, that the naming process is often a psycho-drama, with builders and their marketing teams becoming more hung up over what they will call their communities then the copy of a $10,000 full page ad in their local newspapers.
But there is no tried and true naming method. The Fifield Cos. took an interesting approach in naming K2, its new 34-story apartment tower in downtown Chicago. One, K2 is one of the tallest mountains on Earth and the building, while certainly not the tallest in the city, will have “the highest level of amenities, architecture and finishes.”
And two, K2 is one of the most difficult peaks in the world to climb—it has the second highest fatality rate—and the building was one of the most challenging financing deals the developer has ever had to put together. It took a consortium of five commercial banks to fund the project.
Less imaginative builders resort to the old standards—station, park, commons, woods, village, farms, hunt, square and gardens, just to name a few. Some look to history for a name, while others use location or a characteristic of the property. And a few pick a name that immortalizes themselves or their loved ones.
Reston, one of the country's original new towns in Virginia, takes its name from the initials of its founder, Robert E. Simon—as in RES town. And the Irene, an apartment building in Chevy Chase, Md., by Abe Pollin, who went on to own Washington's professional basketball and hockey teams, was a tribute to the developer's bride.
The nearby Elizabeth also was named for its builder's wife. Glad he didn't use the more familiar form of her name, though. Somehow, “I live at the Betsy” doesn't sound nearly as chic.
Then there are the guys who—no kidding—have named one project after their wives and the next after their girlfriends. One even had the chutzpah to name the same community after both his wife and his lover.
Simplicity often rules the naming process. But sometimes the simplest name doesn't work. For example, a place that was originally called Crimson Oaks had to change its name to Crimson Oak when it was discovered there was only a single oak on the property. Hey, the tract wasn't exactly wild with foliage in the first place. But Orchard Pond never did have a pond.
