Looky-loos ‘fess up

DANNY VACA of Norco Hills loves his 2-year-old house, a beefy 4,700-square-foot home with a view, a pool and a third-floor game room.

So why is he spending a sunny Saturday morning perusing a new model home a few miles away?

“I just like to look for anything that strikes me. Our basic interior is done, but you always see these little knick-knacks that make you think, ‘Hmm,’ ” Vaca says as he strolls through a $1.1-million KB Home model in Sienna Ridge, part of the Retreat, a Corona master-planned development. If he sees something particularly snazzy, he’ll return with his wife so she can look too.

Home builders know looky-loos cruise their models and chalk it up as part of doing business. They hope to occasionally hook one and make a sale.

But builders are out there too, looking at the looky-loos to figure out what appeals to them or what might turn off prospective buyers.

“I do it all the time,” says Brooke Warrick of American LIVES, a marketing and consumer research firm that helped create Ladera Ranch.

Typically, the looky-loos fall into several categories, Warrick says. One group wants to check prices to see how their own houses stack up.

A splinter group is made up of those who just closed escrow and are still wondering whether they overpaid.

Then there are the Danny Vacas -- those who use model homes for decorating ideas.

Close cousins are a subgroup -- no doubt HGTV devotees -- whom industry insiders call “the re-designers.” They critique floor plans and design and are a goldmine of information. “They’ll say, ‘There should be a pocket door here,’ ” says Randall Lewis, executive vice president of the Lewis Group of Cos. “ ‘Why didn’t they put a closet there?’ ”

Lewis pops into model homes several weekends a year just to eavesdrop. Why? “To see where they spend their time, which rooms capture their attention and to hear their feedback,” he says. “Model homes are a great laboratory for anybody in the business.”

How’s the neighborhood?

Increasingly, Lewis has noticed that people scrutinize more than just the houses.

“They’re interested in a sense of community. They’re interested in the street scene ... the neighborhood,” he says. “They want something that when they drive in, or their friends drive in, they say, ‘This looks great.’ ”

Even model home decorators play up community themes as they help potential buyers “imagine” their families living in the community. If the nearby high school is known for its water sports, that will be reflected in the teen room decor, says Yolanda Flanders, partner and design director of Town & Country Design Studio in Sierra Madre, which specializes in model home interiors.

Golf course nearby? You can bet golf art will be on the walls.

One model Flanders is working on is designed for a fictional family with a 14-year-old boy who’s wild about basketball, a preteen girl whose “kind of a cute retro flower-child girl” and a little brother “who’s into reptiles and bugs so his room has more of a science theme.”

Never mind that the kids don’t exist. The rooms look awesome, are fun for visitors and match the demographics and socio-economic status of the buyers most likely to be drawn to that model.

Builders have long paid careful attention to the market, hoping to build what singles, families and empty-nesters will want to buy. Tougher to determine is how many of those folks poking through Southern California’s myriad model homes are not the buying kind. Some in the industry put the figure as high as 90%, although others estimate it’s lower because sometimes people who say they’re just looking are in fact in the early stages of shopping and in a year or so may end up buying.

Not so hard to figure out is why some people like to look. It’s fun for many, a satisfying hobby of sorts.

“I’m just happy when I come here,” says Robin Wherritt of Corona del Mar, as she tours for the fifth time a 4,626-square-foot model in Shea Homes’ Costa Azul development in Newport Beach.

With 6 1/2 bathrooms, three bedrooms with design options that could make it six, a garden courtyard, a wine cellar and two covered loggias with ocean views, it’s easy to be dazzled.

But Wherritt isn’t buying the McClain Residence, as it’s been dubbed by marketers and which is priced, depending on lot location, between $3.7 million and $4.3 million. She’s remodeling.

Wherritt lives in nearby Corona del Mar Highlands, a cluster of 45-year-old homes with ocean breezes and views but no new-home gloss.

Wherritt likes to check out the decorators’ work, in this case a family room done up in a beach palette of blues and browns. “They make it all look so easy, don’t they?”

Designs on the designs

Debby and Gary Price haven’t the remotest thought of buying the 5,696-square-foot Plan 4 of the Estate Collection in Corona. But they still ogle.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” says Debby, of Redlands, taking in the towering foyer linked to the second floor by a spiral staircase.

Then she shakes her head. “I can’t help but think what it would be like to heat, cool and clean this place,” she says.

Does she ever return home from these outings hankering for a palatial master bathroom suite big enough to merit its own ZIP Code? On the contrary. She and her husband take one look at the dollar signs on today’s listings and are grateful to have bought their house 19 years ago. They’re happy just to borrow decorating ideas from the fresh-faced models.

They say one of their best ideas came from a model home -- carpeting cut and installed in a circle, then surrounded by wood flooring.

Not content just to peek at the plush model home digs is their son’s girlfriend, Sue Park, tagging along for fun but with a dreamer’s eye.

A newly commissioned Army second lieutenant and recent graduate of Norwich University in Vermont, Park is awaiting orders and doesn’t know what sort of housing to expect in her immediate future.

But she’s not thinking about that as she pulls out her camera phone and snaps pictures of the great room with its wet bar and massive flat-screen television. “Someday,” Park says.

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A model is more ‘lived in’ than it looks

Is a model home a good deal? It can be, but the buyer should take into account that thousands of people have traipsed through it, said Tom Stevens, president of the National Assn. of Realtors.

“Those extra features? Yeah, they do add value,” Stevens said. But remember, a model has “a little wear and tear on it.”

Before closing a deal, Stevens recommends buyers get an independent home inspection with special attention paid to heating and cooling systems, which may have been running almost nonstop for a year or more, and any appliances that were used, such as a refrigerator where cold drinks for visitors were stored. And a home warranty should always be included, he said.

Model home prices are typically nonnegotiable, but Stevens said that in some markets there might be room to bargain. “It’s to the buyers’ advantage right now if they’re willing to negotiate hard.”

-- Dawn Bonker