Redefining Property Values

Ladera Ranch, a California planned community, is divided into myriad neighborhoods, including Surrey Farm, which features numerous small parks. (By Mark Avery -- Orange County Register)

This lofty mission has spawned all sorts of wild thinking among builders, one facet of which is the use of values-oriented surveys to design communities more deliberately, to foster a sort of social alchemy by affirming people's sensibilities.

There are fainter examples on the edges of Northern Virginia. Recently built subdivisions tend to project themes -- in Prince William County, Dominion Valley is country-clubbish with white columns and a golf course, and in Loudoun County, Brambleton has a more earthy, yet high-tech, feel with its rocky waterfalls, high-speed Internet connections and slogan: "Connect with life."

On the West Coast, however, the builders of Ladera Ranch, where house prices range from $800,000 to more than $1 million, have pushed the idea to a whole new level. And to hear Warrick explain it is to feel as though the Wizard of Oz has revealed himself at last.

"You write values questions people can agree or disagree to, and then you use some fancy statistical routines to be able to characterize who's in what group and how big the groups are," he said.

LaBelle, who bought his house because he liked it and as an investment, said he enjoys the sense of community that has somehow taken hold in Terramor -- the central paseo, for example, that encourages people to get outside and socialize.

To some extent, self-segregation has always gone on among people lucky enough to choose where they live. In the Washington area, it is no secret that liberal-leaning, vegan types tend to pick Takoma Park over McLean.

The difference, of course, is that out in the deserts beyond Las Vegas or the fields of Loudoun, developers are essentially founding entirely new towns from scratch.

"These things have always happened organically," said Robert Lang, a demographer at Virginia Tech who studies the exurbs. "What we don't have experience with is a contrivance of this, where it's engineered. . . . You target people, you catch a niche of preference in lifestyle, and it creates a community and intensifies the inward focus of the niche, like an island."

During the post-World War II building boom, market research was fairly uncomplicated: Millions of returning GIs needed a house, any house, and the results were the Levittowns -- vast, mass-produced subdivisions of sameness.

Since then, developers have typically sought out the basic demographics of potential buyers, such as their income and age, or simply built what sold yesterday. Particularly where demand exceeds supply, that is all they need to do.

But in the quest to entice people a few exits down the highway, developers are increasingly availing themselves of a type of research called psychographics, or some variation of it, to inform their decisions on whether to build colonials or craftsmen, dog parks or tot lots, to gate or not to gate, and in general, to decide how they want a community to "feel."

The concept, which assumes that people buy things because of their personality and values more than age or income, goes back to a 1959 academic paper describing the psychological differences between people who buy Fords and those who buy Chevys. It became popular among Madison Avenue types in the 1980s, particularly as computer technology enabled pioneering firms such as Claritas to merge vast amounts of census data with vast amounts of consumer data, creating dozens of personality-oriented market segments -- the "young digerati" or "money and brains" -- to describe the entire U.S. population.