Top Specialty Spaces for Luxury Buyers

The luxury real estate market is fiercely competitive, leaving sellers feeling pressure to keep their houses updated with the ever-shifting list top specialty spaces that reliably coax high-end buyers to whip out their wallets. This year, if you’d like to sell your home on the luxury market, purchase a luxury home, or just add new “wants” to the long list of features you’d love in your dream home, look no further. Parks Realty’s list of top 10 specialty spaces for luxury buyers highlights both continuing trends and new features that have helped houses get snatched up immediately.

Library

In an increasingly digital age, when homes are smarter with every passing year, creating a large, beautiful home library is a truly opulent choice. Sumptuous wood and rich leather furniture serve to perfectly highlight the innate beauty of soaring cases of well-made books, while well-placed lighting will work to accent the room’s artful layers of texture and softly illuminate the page for the reader.

Large home libraries will always appeal most to intellectual buyers, and will probably offer the most ROI in a university town, for example. The most important aspect of the home library may be ensuring that the installation perfectly matches the rest of the home’s built-in features.

Indoor Pool

While an outdoor pool is nearly expected by luxury buyers in some regions of the US, a few very wealthy buyers can afford to search for indoor pools in their new homes. While most of us will only ever dream about diving into a pool in our own homes, those who can afford an indoor pool room might not want them unless they’re avid swimmers. This upgrade is a bit of a gamble, but almost nothing says luxury quite like a heated indoor pool.

Wine Cellar

A wine cellar is quite practical for a homeowner who has invested both time and wealth into creating a significant wine collection. On a social level, however, having a spacious wine cellar further serves to signal wealth, taste, and an interest in the more sophisticated aspects of food and entertainment. A beautiful wine cellar, whether it hides behind heavy doors or advertises itself behind glass, thus adds immense appeal for the luxury buyer.

Full Home Bar

Once the dream of many homeowners in the 70s, the home bar has undergone quite a transformation since those days of high kitsch. Today’s luxury home bars can rival those of smaller high-end restaurants, and when paired with a full wine cellar and home theater, turn the home into an ideal venue for parties, whether for dinner guests, Thanksgiving with the whole family, or the Superbowl with friends.

Home Theater

With the ever-increasing role of media in family entertainment, often the first purely luxurious area people will splash out on isn’t the home gym or bar, but the home theater! Alluring to young buyers, families, and older adults alike, it’s safe to say that the home theater will remain a fixture in the luxury home for decades to come.

Expansive Blended Living Area

The trend toward open living areas has been building for decades, and it’s more widespread now than ever. From big city loft apartments to private cabins, buyers want soaring ceilings and blended living, dining, kitchen, and entertainment areas.

These unobstructed central living spaces create a feeling of immense space, especially in (typically large) luxury homes. Buyers want living areas with plenty of natural light, and they likewise want their homes to feel suitably grand.

In-Home Bowling Alley

While the idea of an in-home bowling alley may seem a bit over-the-top to many homeowners, it may be the most logical “fun” upgrade for the avid bowler whose town doesn’t have a bowling alley nearby. When done well, this upgrade offers an immediate “wow” factor, even to those wouldn’t opt for one personally.

Six-Car Plus Garage

In years gone by, having a 4-car garage was truly impressive in certain circles. Now, the bar for luxury has been set: a luxury garage parks no less than six cars. While an otherwise lovely house may be able to impress a well-funded buyer with four or five spots, a wealthy individual who enjoys cars is going to be much happier with six or more.

Massive Walk-in Closets

Gone are the walk-in closets that were only glorified hallways or small corners of bedrooms; luxury buyers today have been dreaming of creating a home closet that resembles a small boutique. If you have the space to create a closet that evokes a cozy high-end shopping experience, you’ll snag the attention of any wealthy buyer who prioritizes their wardrobe and appearance.

Folding Window-Wall

Perfect for further expanding on the idea of the spacious, open floorplans, the folding window-wall between the living or entertainment area and outdoor entertainment area is a new—and therefore attention-grabbing—upgrade.

Homeowners can enjoy a wall of beautiful windows and the natural light they provide year-round, but can easily collapse them to the side when they want to open their homes to their yards. Pool parties, barbecues, garden parties, and lazy Sunday afternoons in June are all excellent opportunities to throw back the window wall and embrace the outdoors.

As today’s luxury homeowner continues to recreate vacation-like environments in their everyday lives, it will likely prove prudent to stay focused on how upgrades are likely to contribute to or detract from this effect. A pool, entertainment room, sauna, addition of a mini yoga retreat or Zen garden are all examples of choices that would be likely to create feelings of well-being and happiness.

Our theory? That can only be a good thing when you’re appealing to this segment of the market. If you’re a buyer looking for a luxury home, look for key features like these in the listing. Alongside more common signals like price tag and location, the inclusion of features that are available nearly exclusively in spacious, fully modern homes will be a clue that this seller understands your lifestyle and real estate needs.