To say the real estate market is mercurial is an understatement. Depending on prevailing economic circumstances, it can be a buyer’s market or a seller’s market. There can be a shortage of homes on the market, or a glut. Mortgage interest rates can be low, like they were for many years, or they can be higher, like they are now.
One locally owned homebuilding and remodeling business faces the impact of these market fluctuations is Iris Building Group, founded in 1998 by brothers Devin, Shawn and Jason Cooper.
“Interest rates have absolutely affected the degree to which people are willing to sell and buy,” says Devin Cooper, Iris Building group president. “If they own a house and a have a good interest rate, they don’t want to give up that interest, so we are seeing people electing to stay and remodel their homes.”
Cooper says the company has built several “very substantial” new homes in the past five years, but they’ve done quite a few “substantial” remodels, as well as medium and small projects, despite the challenges posed by a bogged-down permitting process in the City of Denver, in former Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration and into the current Mike Johnston administration.
“A permit that used to take us six months to obtain now takes a year,” Cooper says.
Josh Hayton, Iris Building Group’s in-house architect, laments that months after he submits drawings for a project for permitting, they city comes back with required changes, which in and of itself is not unusual, but now when he resubmits the drawings with the changes, the project is put at the back of the line to go through the process all over again, and sometimes goes through several rounds of bureaucratic snarls.
Therefore, a homeowner looking to remodel or build a new home in Denver, especially, needs to be patient. Cooper says building a new house can take two-and-a-half years or more.
The most common remodeling projects — called “tenant finishes in the industry” — are kitchens, master bathrooms and basements, according to Hayton.
Many of the remodeling projects Iris does are in older homes, with closed-off individual rooms and a lot of walls. Homeowners want their kitchens to be opened up to the living areas for an open concept.
Hayton says kitchen and living areas are also being “opened up” to the outdoors, with walls of windows than can slide open in accordion fashion to create a seamless flow from interior to exterior spaces.
“A covered patio with radiant heaters in the ceiling, making it a three-season room adjacent to the indoor living area. You’ve got your barbecue, maybe fireplace and a TV.”
In kitchens, “we do all natural stone countertops, none of the fake stuff,” Cooper says, “with tile backsplashes from the countertop to the bottom of the cabinets.”
Hardwood floors are desired for kitchens and other rooms. “In kitchens, you would never use carpet, and in general, we’re doing very little carpet anymore,” Cooper says.
“We’re even putting hardwood in basements now. We have houses that have no carpet at all.”
In kitchens, stainless steel appliances are most common. Cooper says it’s about 50-50 between stainless steel for refrigerators and dishwashers and panels that match and blend into the cabinet fronts.
Ultimately, design choices are those of the client. Cooper says he and his colleagues encourage people to decorate in a timeless style, and not fall prey to current trends which may become outdated rather quickly, although he acknowledges there are certain elements of design that grow in and out of favor within the market.
In fact, Cooper and Hayton say they don’t even watch HGTV, the television network whose show largely showcase current trends.
Timeless style, to Cooper, means brick and stone on a home’s exterior, “which never goes out of style.”
On the last half-dozen brick houses that Iris has built, they’ve utilized used bricks, literally bricks from old buildings, not new bricks that have been tumbled to look distressed. “We get it from buildings that have been torn down right here in Denver.”
Iris also promotes maintenance-free exteriors — brick and stone facings and vinyl or metal-clad windows. “Then all you’re maintaining is a little bit of trim.”
Cooper advises, “Don’t overly personalize your house. You don’t want to have purple cabinets or something that the next guy, odds are, will not like.”
He says oak cabinets are no longer desired. “You can still do oak floors, but oak cabinets are dated, unless they are white oak cabinets.” Stained cabinets and painted white cabinets are equally desired, and cherry cabinets, once the gold standard a few years ago, have become dated, as have cherry wood floors.
“People also like a lot of glass, a lot of windows, and high ceilings, but not too high — nine- to 10-foot ceilings. No more eight-foot ceilings. You can do eight-foot ceilings on your second floor because we vault off of that.”
Cooper says that smaller four-inch recessed can lights are now desired, compared to six-inch cans, which are passe.
Hayton points out that they are moving to installing one-piece can lights, with the LED bulb incorporated into the can housing. They last about 10 years, at which point one can replace the whole casing.
For interior wall, Iris installs either smooth or hand-troweled walls and very little machine texture, commonly referred to as “knockdown.”
Even garages are being elevated these days with non-slip, non-porous epoxy-finished floors, fully drywalled, and even heated. “Frequently people want a hose bib, providing water in the garage so they can wash their cars,” Cooper says.
They are also putting in a lot of generators as a back-up in case of power outages.
Electric vehicle chargers are standard in Iris homes. Hayton says the electrical conduits and rough-ins for EVs are now required in every garage per City of Denver code, but Iris takes the extra step by including the entire charger.
“Most of our customers want it anyway.”
Denver also requires all new builds to have a passive radon system.
The watchword at Iris Building Group is “timeless.” Not only in design and decorating, but in construction.
“A lot of houses that are built or remodeled these days 10- or 20-year houses,” says Cooper.
“They start coming apart after 10, 15 or 20 years. We build houses like they used to build houses, which were 100-year houses — solid.”
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