Realtors: Custom rooms wave of the future
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Beata Santora and her husband Frank were staying in more, especially while raising two school-aged kids and working from home.
The couple moved to the Green Hills area of Nashville six years ago from Brooklyn, New York, in hopes of settling down in a more family-oriented community with more acreage. Beata Santora teaches ballet from home.
“During COVID, I taught my lessons in my children’s playroom with a portable little barre,” Beata said. “It was just a clutter of different things happening at the same time.”
It wasn’t working. The four family members were running into each other trying to accomplish different things in the same rooms in what’s become a common problem for many families not only in Tennessee, but across the nation.
The solution: custom rooms. When building or house-hunting, families are now seeking them out to fit their lifestyles, Realtor Jake Watson said.
Watson, of the Fritz Team in Nashville, said many contractors are leaving houses unfinished. Then, they’ll finish the build to meet a buyer’s need, he said.
The Santoras began the process with Build Nashville on their custom home, a treasure of a place with five bedrooms and six-and-a-half bathrooms.
Every day, Beata Santora steps into a custom 21-by-18-foot room, where she is greeted by bright lights, hardwood floors and floor-to-ceiling mirrors with custom ballet barres for balancing and training.
A tale of two rooms
The insulated room imparts a quiet calm that allows Beata Santora and her students to focus on their craft. It’s a far cry from the portable barre that was set up in the children’s playroom before.
“I create all my choreography in that studio, and it’s also where we stay fit, and you try to stop the aging process,” she said.
The grace and beauty of ballet is juxtaposed in the next room by Frank Santora’s man cave, which features a full wet bar and a custom-built golf simulator inside a sprawling 25-by-20-foot room.
For her husband, a round of golf may take six to seven hours, Beata Santora said. The simulator lets him play any golf course in the country, and he can play an 18-hole round in a little more than an hour. There’s no travel time. It’s all about relaxation for buyers. “Zen dens” could be the wave of the future, Build Nashville co-owner Jamie Duncan said.
“Instead of using these bonus rooms for playrooms, they want a Zen den that is a wellness retreat for them in their finished basement, and so I think that’s going to become more and more popular,” Duncan said.
Then there are the indulgences.
A cigar room in the country
Anyone who enters Rick McKinley’s upstairs cigar room can’t help but notice the lack of smoky cigar aroma. The warm toned leather room emits a smoky vanilla scent that instantly translates into a relaxed feel, thanks to a portable air purifier. When the machine turns on, it clears the smell of smoke within 24 hours, McKinley explained.
From comfy leather couches that envelop one’s body when seated to a large projector screen television playing the latest sporting event, the space functions as McKinley’s escape.
With its tobacco-stained ceiling, open space and perfect view of the backyard, it’s easy to see why this room has become his favorite.
McKinley and his wife relocated from Memphis after they became empty nesters. With both their children enjoying their own careers, and after many visits to Nashville, the couple chose Franklin. One of the features he knew he absolutely needed in his new home was a cigar room.
As a frequent visitor of the popular upscale restaurant and exclusive club The Standard, he said he wanted to recreate the relaxed feeling of chatting with friends over a cigar at home.
“When you have a cigar, it just causes you to pause, and you sit there for an hour and a half talking,” he said. “When you mention you have cigars, everyone comes over.”
Maximizing space
Like McKinley, more buyers of newbuild and existing homes are looking to get the most bang for their buck.
Watson, the Nashville Realtor, said using space under staircases for dog rooms, reading nooks or wine cellars is helping homeowners take advantage of every square foot.
He said his agency has worked with contractors who have built hidden studies behind walls or an infrared sauna.
The profession has changed over the years as more high profile buyers are coming to Tennessee to settle down, he said.
“The most unique is a salt room,” Watson said. “It’s just a room that all the walls and the floor is like Himalayan salt. And that is kind of like a therapeutic room that you are able to sit in and just soak in the presence of salt.”