If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out via email: aaron@foreverhome-us.com
You can find the Forbes article here.
Hey guys, we've got a lot of questions. Aaron Murphy, sorry, here at Forever Home. We got a lot of questions about our Forbes interview. So I just wanted to give you a couple of highlights on that discussion topic. We were talking about aging in place for Forbes.com and they created a magazine article based on our interview and to other people in other parts of the country.
And they're asking about designers and architects, which I am, what are we seeing in the design world related to Aging in Place? So here's a quick sneak peek or review of what we talked about with Forbes. So they asked us, there's been a 5% increase in architects seeing Aging in Place design considerations for their home projects. Are you seeing that? And yeah, we definitely see that.
We're outside of Seattle, Washington. We've been doing aging in place and universal design for the past 15 years. So we've become our local expert on aging in place. We are synonymous with the term in our Tri-County area. About a third of what we do at our architecture firm is aging in place related work. So a third of our gross annual revenues are specifically associated with that.
We try to talk to people about is this your forever home? Because most people under 40 don't contact an architect. What that really means is that I can ask them the question, is there any chance you'll live here in 30 years? And because of the way I phrased that question, the answer is always yes. So we talked to every client about universal design and aging in place and what it might be like to be 70 in the home.
Then Forbes asked me what are the most common requests. Most of our clients who have a forever home outlook or some multi-generational or multi-chapter of life thought process tend to be thinking about maybe having an adult move in with them, whether it's a caretaker moving in with a parent or you bringing a parent in to move with you. Typically we see the primary bedroom on the main floor is a goal. We see larger master bath. We see curb less zero threshold showers, bigger and better laundry layouts, just more usable space. Kitchens and countertops that have multiple heights for multiple people types. Those are the kinds of things that they know to ask for or have read about in the news.
But once we get started, we can share all the different things that matter, color, lighting, materials, edges as notifications for safety, things we can do for fall prevention. And that's how you get to age in place. You get to stay home longer when your house is prepared for you. They asked me if there were any newer aging-related questions coming at us as an architecture firm.
I'd probably suggest that easy use and maintenance was most of my response. People don't want to maintain. They don't want to paint. They don't want to stain decks. And then they're thinking about energy efficiency. They're thinking about the operation costs as you move into a fixed income phase of your life. And then for some that have bigger budgets, we start to talk about smart home features. There's ways to make your house, gosh, they have all sorts of things. There's doors that open automatically, like auto slide. There's ways to get your blinds to understand the sun and help with sun and shade in the home and open and close at certain times. So you can get as tech as you want to get, and that's the newer stuff that's here kind of on the horizon, increase in accessibility specifically.
We see a lot more than the 1% that they're seeing nationally, because that's our unique sales position. That is what we push and discussion is aging in place when we do residential architecture. So we see more than that. I've done 2 million square feet of public spaces, so I understood the ADA and that you should be able to use the bank bathroom with a wheelchair.
We're taking what we know from ADA and ANSI and HUD and all the kind of code book rule side and bringing that into residential architecture because nobody's doing that well. And so that's what we're doing. And you're in a house that, you know, we've been doing housing pretty much the same since we came out of World War II with the GI Bill. But back then,
At 1900, we lived to age 47. Today, we live to 78. Kids today are being told to live till 120. So we have to be thinking about house differently than we did back then. My grandmother, that's how I got started in this. My grandmother was trapped on a hospital bed on the main level of a split-level home in Portland, Oregon, osteoporosis, and eventually Alzheimer's.
I didn't want to know about grandma's hygiene, but I sure understood that her house was broken with stairs everywhere. When you take eight steps to get to the front door from your driveway and then you're on a landing and you still have to go up or down on stairs, the house was broken. So other architects are seeing a small increase to entries and exits specifically. And I just kind of mentioned that with grandma's house.
That's the tough part. That is one of the harder things is curb the door because your spec builder inherited a lot that has got topography and they're trying to sell as many square feet as possible. So that's one of the things we really have to focus on. And we talk about visit-ability because visit-ability is about having your friends over. It's not about me telling my mom she's less able. So that is a great angle for conversation.
But at the end of the day, we have a spec house situation that was designed not for where we are today. So they asked me a little bit about what's my favorite product and like I said, autoslide and some of those things that really help when grip and mobility and physical ability are changing. Those are the kinds of things we implement for you if you wanted help with your home modification design. But anyway, just wanted to give you a little insight on what we talked about with Forbes. The article's longer than that. We can put a link to the article in here. And actually, the photo that's in there is kind of a cool photo. You can see the stairs going down, but there is a stone column and a door. The picture's taken on the second floor. And the door is actually the elevator. And you would never know that. But anyway.
For lots more about what we're doing to make your nation and your home accessible, go to foreverhome-us.com and get a hold of us if you have any questions. And we're here for the homeowner to help you age in place successfully so you can thrive where you live and stay where you love. Talk to you soon. Thank you.