After completing my M.DS in Architectural Design Studies for Human Health, over the years I have experienced real estate (RE) with different lenses. I am now pursuing an additional master's degree in business administration and am choosing to focus on a deeper consumer aspect of RE in regard to wellbeing.
I am interested in how the available product (residential spaces) currently are viewed from the consumers standpoint rather than the "corporate" numbers. From what I can gather, those in the RE industry from all B2B (business to business) aspects make their decisions based on sales statistics, recreating the consumers product including its faults. Unfortunately, this also may compromise the value of business professionals.
Instead of analyzing RE market data and quantitative specs, I would like to approach this fresh from a consumer's perspective to get qualitative data to compare the potential specs to validate the assumed actual consumer needs verses compromised specs based on what's available. Is the RE industry fulfilling the needs of consumers for the consumer's best interest? Is the RE industry building to meet unrealistic demands compromising product?
The beginning of hypothesis is that consumers sacrifice health and wellbeing to either follow trends or to meet the basic need of shelter, thus RE emulates and mirrors a customer's unhealthy sacrifice as normal, contributing to a housing crisis and its vicious consumerism cycle. Is it a customer mindset change we need or is it a RE industry design and mindset change?
Please discuss with me or answer the prompts from personal experience below:
Prompts:
What is your current living situation?
What do you want your living situation to be like? What is wrong/right with it?
Do you know what you want in your living situation? Who would you go to for help?
Do you consider your physical, mental, or social needs for your living situation? Why/Why not? Who would you go to for help?
Do you feel like you successfully compromise or prioritize wants/needs over others when making a decision? Like what?
I will start with the prompts:
What is your current living situation?
I am currently renting. I did own a home but through life changes, I was left looking for housing, uproot myself to anywhere, live with family, or be homeless.
What do you want your living situation to be like? What is wrong/right with it?
I would like to own a home. I want to have a place I call home. If I could, I would design and build my own home since remodeling the "perfect" home with the "right" good bones in my background would make it difficult to be more flexible. I don't have room in my current situation to have friends over, be able to practice my hobbies, or to be able to grow or be a family. Because I had to shop on affordability, I am living in a heavy crime neighborhood, but it is close to work. I picked a place with the least number of detailed bad reviews. There is a new management company, and I know the tenant/landlord law pretty well from previous employment. Cooking for myself is cheaper than eating out so I cared about having a functional kitchen. It isn't perfect and am having to do furniture modifications, but it works. I sacrificed not having a laundry mat or visitor parking. My pet is ESA and large, so I needed a balcony and a floor plan wide enough for the two of us. I have no family nearby, so my next biggest relationship is my religious community which doesn't matter where I go for that because it is the same everywhere.
Do you know what you want in your living situation? Who would you go to for help?
I would go to people I met in the RE industry that have the same care and mindset as I do. I like to understand so I would work with people who can be patient while I weigh my options. Handling it by myself is overwhelming so I would need to hire a team or trust those I am working with, with their own teams. But when it comes to making my home decisions, I know the weight of my own decision and finances. As a designer I know my options could be limited because of the different mindsets and will have to either make do or find and make enough to build what I need for my health: mentally, physically, socially, financially, and spiritually.
Do you consider your physical, mental, or social needs for your living situation? Why/Why not? Who would you go to for help?
I do because of my upbringing, academic background, and employment experience.
Do you feel like you successfully compromise or prioritize wants/needs over others when making a decision? Like what?
Yes, but unfortunately, I survival takes priority. Sometimes it is hard to be ok with less to survive financially when something could be better for my mental health like my art and art supplies (time, space, and money to do so).
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