The State of the Multifamily Value Add Rehab

Consider the closet, the bath, and the kitchen. These are fairly recent residential accouterments. The Armoire used to play the role of the closet. Wash basins and chamber pots were used in place of the bath. And the kitchen might consist of a table or two near the fireplace. With the 18th century proliferation of running water and sewers the kitchen developed into a separate room. By 1892 Friedimir Poggenpohl conceived the fitted, built in kitchen. The water closet was popularized in the Great Exhibition of 1851 where special closets with flushing toilets cost one penny to use, the origin of the expression ‘spend a penny.’ Armoires are bulky heavy things. And while moving them may not be a concern for a large household with servants it was impractical for the increasingly mobile middle class and gave way to the built in closet.

For one reason or another the great bulk of furnishings one used to have to lug around has diminished. And yet perhaps owing to the inertia of tradition - while people no longer lug around kitchen, bath, or closet cabinetry - they are still accustomed to lugging bulky sofas, tables, beds, bookcases, and chest of drawers.

Distinct from the logistics of transportation there is the question of aesthetics. Apartments are necessarily designed without taking into account the possessions of any one tenant. As well most tenants lack the time and training to coordinate their furniture with the layout of their apartment. Apartments dwellers tend to makeshift where they live. Tenants look more like they are camping out in their apartment than really living it.

Frank Lloyd Wright saw as his mission to correct this state of affairs and he completely reworked residential architecture. With a Wright residence, the tenant need never buy a stick of furniture. Everything is builtin. The furniture is fitted to the space. The space is designed around the furniture. Each design element is coordinated with every other. The result gives the tenant a great sense of repose, of great delight being in the residence which explains why Wrights residences are visited by millions. In that sense the marketing data is in: People like the organization and built in look and feel of a great Wright space. The question is simply how to price it, of determining what kind of rent premium they will pay for all the practical advantages and aesthetic reward afforded by such a space.

There are property renovators who do kitchen renovation. There are others who renovate bathrooms. And there are even those who renovate closets. The renovation business is fairly rigidly partitioned - in keeping with the tradition of the rigidly partitioned Victorian house. Wright was able to transform the partitioned yet unorganized Victorian into the open plan, highly organized modern living space. It remains for renovation services to catch up, to approach renovation with the same principles of the unified coherent whole. In this way they will finally produce results which Wright termed a ‘Total Work of Art’,

There are hopeful signs. A construction and renovation company called Katerra is bringing all trades under one roof as well as automating mill work with 4th generation smart factories such as are offered by Biesse and SCM. It should soon be possible to hand them a Sketchup model from which they work up a time and cost estimate, create all shop drawings for cabinets, create blueprints to pull permits and guide installation.

Multifamily value add rehab is often limited to cosmetics: Contractors shine up the kitchen with granite and stainless steel and perhaps do the same for the bath. All well and good. But it does little to simplify and enhance the lived experience of the tenant. Moving remains an extraordinarily disruptive proposition. Whats needed is a 'disruption' of the whole apartment paradigm so that the stresses of moving and the unsettled and tentative life typically experienced by most apartment dwellers give way to the ease and repose of fitted form and function.