Vern Haugen of North Peak Construction Has Bet that a Slew of Home Electronics Will Help Sell Both High-end Homes and Condominiums. It Has.

You won't find Vern Haugen, owner of North Peak Construction in Scottsdale, Ariz., building a typical home. Haugen goes all out, even building a 9,000-square-foot, $6 million spec home with about $300,000 worth of home electronics in it. This baby has everything from a complete Crestron home control system to a Vantage lighting control system to a home theater, whole-house audio, plasma televisions, and security systems. In fact you name it, and it's probably in this house.

The world of cutting-edge electronics shines brightly amid this gracious, rambling mix of old-world decor and southwestern textures and tones. An LCD touchscreen is embedded in a traditional hearth-like wall of stone in the kitchen. Televisions can be viewed from a built-in ceiling box above the breakfast counter. Earth tones and grand views of desert mountains give way to a home theater and high-definition plasma screens.

But Haugen doesn't save the high-tech stuff for the higher-end homes. He's prewiring condominiums for technology in his laVerné Luxury Condominium development as well, and showcasing flat-panel 50-inch high-definition plasma TV screens and iCEBOX kitchen Internet appliances in the development's models. He is even building a high-tech clubhouse for the condo owners, and giving the development its own Internet and television head-end.

The reason for this builder's love affair with home technology? "I like one thing: having an unfair advantage," Haugen says. "If our product is way better, it will sell faster in the market."

That's the idea with the high-end homes. North Peak has about nine homes ranging from 6,000 to 10,000 square feet on the design table and ready to go, and Haugen has a definite idea of the clientele his company serves. "I believe you need to give people value. I'm sick of going into a $5 million home, and finding it's only prewired. You have to give them something for their money."

CSI Automation & Design of Scottsdale, Ariz. (www.csi-ad.com), is the custom electronics installation company that installs the technology in nearly all Haugen's homes. "Vern Haugen is one of the guys who is setting the standard," says CSI vice president Doug Greenwald. "He's open to new technologies. He's aware of what it takes to do high-end homes, and the importance of automation."

Haugen realizes that convenience technologies such as automated lighting control systems are often considered necessities in large luxury homes. "You get into big houses, and you need a dimming system so you don't have to walk around shutting the lights off," he says.

He also believes that high-end homebuyers expect high-end technologies. "They like us because everything is ready when they move in. A lot of these wealthy people like all the bells and whistles, but they can't even fathom [how to get it into their homes]," he says. "It's always been our market to just bring your toothbrush."

For this market, Haugen and his interior-designer wife, Donna, offer turnkey homes by completely furnishing them as well. All the art and furnishings are for sale. "Usually buyers of big fancy homes are older, so they want us to make things really simple for them," Haugen says. This also saves seasonal residents in the Phoenix area from having to spend time furnishing the homes themselves.

Custom touches include natural materials such as Turkish travertine floors that are acid-washed, bead-blasted and polished with wire brushes to show a smooth but not glossy finish, walls of cultured stone, barn plank floors, and lighting fixtures and moldings not found elsewhere. The Haugens find that the furnishings, art and materials combine to make their homes show well.

"In large homes, people can be overwhelmed space-wise. If they go into a bedroom and see the furnishings, they can see the scale of the room and how they might live there," he says.

The same can be said for the technology, which when combined with all the other custom touches, gives North Peak's buyers complete homes, ready to go. "I call them private resorts," says Haugen. "We've made a niche in building art. These homes are like paintings."

Art on a Smaller Scale There's only one problem with building big luxury homes such as these. The market for them in the last couple of years hasn't been great. "I don't know if the big-house market is dead, but it's off about 70 percent," Haugen says. So he's focusing North Peak's direction on building condominiums and "smaller" homes in the 6,000-to-7,000-square-foot range.

The 1,100-to-1,500-square-foot condos, priced between $210,000 and $250,000, will feature some of the same materials used in the high-end homes, such as granite countertops and marble floors. But buyers will have to pay extra to get hand-distressed cabinets. And each condo will be prewired with RG-6 video cable, Category 5e wiring, and multimedia jacks on all sides of the master bedroom, kitchen and great room.

But the biggest high-tech draw may be in the development's clubhouse, which includes seven TVs, a home theater with high-definition television, Crestron control through touchscreens, and a lighting control dimming system. "Nobody has a clubhouse like we have," says Haugen.

To complete the Haugens' one-stop home shop, the clubhouse will also house a design office to help homeowners select everything from their wall colors to the linens on their beds.

He's also planning on building the development's own head-end to deliver high-speed Internet, telephone, security, satellite TV and video-on-demand and television service to the 260-unit complex via a state-of-the-art, fiber-backbone system.

What's the return on the large investments North Peak puts into its homes for its buyers, especially the investment in technology? Haugen won't reveal his numbers. He only says that his customers are willing to pay for quality products. "Someone told me once that you only have to excuse yourself for price once in the sales process," he says. "But if you screw up on quality, you'll be apologizing forever."

Big-Home Background

Haugen says he has always had a sense of what people want in large homes, having grown up in several of them. And when he and Donna built their first home, they learned about all the home technologies available. "We had to get into it by necessity. The first house we built had a dimming system and eight remotes," he recalls. "Then we turned around and bought three to four more lots and started building homes."

The technologies never bothered Haugen. "I'm a toy guy, I like gadgets," he says. He will go so far as to attend Consumer Electronics Shows (CES, held each January in Las Vegas) and Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association (CEDIA) Expos, held each September, to check out what's new in video projectors and the like. "To be successful you need to be able to change with technologies," Haugen says.

One of his favorite high-tech features is video switching, which lets users start a movie in the home theater or family room and then finish it in the bedroom, without having to take a DVD with them. He also likes the idea of homeowners, especially in large homes, being able to use laptop computers and other devices to control their home systems from anywhere in the house.

The Haugens will also travel to Mexico and elsewhere to find new materials and employ unique craftsmanship for their residential works of art. "If you go down there and take your ideas and work with them, they can do some very creative things," says Haugen. "In this way, we go way above and beyond."

At least that's the plan for a 6,000-square-foot home. Done in a contemporary ranch and villa style that will feature Donna's trademark design for a large kitchen opening to a great room. The design is meant to let families cook and interact together and enjoy as many views as possible. In this particular home, two perpendicular glass walls will open to create an indoor/outdoor great room space. Materials from Mexico may include Cantera stone for the fireplaces, Mexican red bricks, light Durango and sandy-back travertine, even a straw material put into the ceiling between exposed beams for authentic texture.

Haugen is thinking of cutting back a little on the home's electronic technologies. This home's price will likely be under a piddlin' $3 million. Basically, he says, the profit margin won't be great on this luxury spec home. "But we're definitely going to prewire everything. Depending on the economy, we'll decide whether to put in the technology. I usually put it in."

We have a feeling he will.

Steven Castle is the senior editor for TecHome Builder's sister publication, Electronic House, and a luxury market expert and consultant. You can find his company at www.truthaboutluxury.com.