Riffle & Schilling | Summit Collective at Simply Vegas
I tour a lot of new construction in Las Vegas.
After a while, you get pretty good at separating what looks impressive in a model home from what a buyer is actually getting. Beautiful staging is one thing. What comes standard is another. And there is usually a fairly healthy distance between the two.
So I wasn’t necessarily expecting to walk into Signature Estates and be surprised.
I was.
The first thing that struck me wasn’t one dramatic feature. It was how thoroughly these homes had been considered. The ceiling heights, cabinetry, appliances, bathrooms, doors, technology, outdoor living—it felt like someone had actually gone down the list from top to bottom and asked, what are buyers going to want to change immediately after they move in?
And then included a surprising amount of it from the beginning.
I toured two of the plans, Overture and Quartet, and they’re worth a closer look.
Overture is the five-bedroom plan, and what I liked most about it was that the square footage isn’t simply devoted to making rooms larger for the sake of being larger.
There is real flexibility here.
The home can be configured with Bedroom 5 as an office with an additional 30 square feet, Bedroom 6 in place of the dining room, or Bedroom 4 configured as a den. There are options for a wet bar at the office, wine cellar, prep kitchen and multi-gen living, depending on how you want the house to function.
And then there is the indoor-outdoor component.
Optional multi-panel sliding glass doors can be incorporated at the office, great room, dining room and owner’s suite, with an extended covered patio also available. A courtyard wall and faux entrance at the courtyard can further change the arrival experience.
For buyers who need serious garage space, Overture can also be configured with a four-car garage or RV garage.
That’s a level of customization that matters because a five-bedroom house doesn’t necessarily need to function as a traditional five-bedroom house anymore. An office, multigenerational space, entertaining areas and additional storage can be every bit as important.
Both plans begin with a substantial list of included features, including:
10–12-foot ceilings
8-foot doors throughout
8-foot insulated garage doors
Solar
60-inch built-in refrigerator
48-inch eight-burner range with double oven
Under-counter microwave
Modern cabinetry with 6-inch cabinet pulls and soft-close cabinets
Quartz countertops
12 x 24 modern tile
Tankless water heater
5½-inch baseboards
Moen plumbing fixtures
Undermount sinks
Backlit mirrors
Covered outdoor living
A technology package including a Ring doorbell, Ecobee smart thermostat, MyQ garage opener, smart electrical panel and electric-vehicle outlet
Those are the kinds of details I pay attention to because they’re also the things buyers frequently end up paying to upgrade.
Quartet shares many of those same standard features, but the options take the floor plan in a different direction.
This is where buyers with multigenerational households should pay attention.
Quartet offers multiple ways to configure the home, including Multi-Gen and Multi-Gen 2 options, a kitchenette at Multi-Gen 1, sliding glass doors at the Multi-Gen 2 bedroom and a walk-in closet option for Multi-Gen 2.
There’s also the ability to add a hidden pantry or butler’s pantry, something I particularly liked because those are features that make a kitchen function differently—not simply look prettier.
Other available configurations include a five-foot-wide kitchen island, wet bar in lieu of the flex room, spa bath, second toilet room, super den, courtyard, alternate garage entrance, RV garage and second washer/dryer at the laundry room.
Quartet can also dramatically increase its connection to the outdoors with optional multi-panel glass doors, including a 12-foot opening at the owner’s suite, 9-foot opening at Multi-Gen 1 and 12-foot opening at the den, along with a multi-panel door at the great room.
There are also several ways to trade covered-patio space for additional interior square footage, including bedroom, den and walk-in-closet configurations.
That kind of flexibility is important because two buyers could start with the same Quartet floor plan and end up building homes that live very differently.
It wasn’t any single checkbox on the feature sheet.
It was the cumulative effect.
The tall ceilings and doors give the homes scale. The appliance package feels appropriate for the size and positioning of the homes. The cabinetry and countertops felt considered. The bathrooms didn’t feel like an afterthought. And options like prep kitchens, hidden pantries, multi-gen spaces, oversized sliders, RV garages and extended patios allow you to change how the home functions rather than simply spend money decorating it.
And frankly, the finishes were better in person than I expected them to be.
That’s what surprised me when I walked through the door.
There are plenty of model homes that photograph beautifully. These were homes where I kept noticing the details as I moved from room to room.
New construction is one of those things I don’t think you should buy from a floor plan—or from Instagram, for that matter.
A photograph doesn’t show you what a 10- or 12-foot ceiling actually feels like. A rendering doesn’t tell you whether the kitchen works when you’re standing in it. And a list of upgrades doesn’t tell you which ones are actually worth paying for.
Overture and Quartet are worth walking.
If you’re considering new construction in Las Vegas, reach out to me before you visit the sales office. I’ll take you through the models, help you compare the floor plans and available options, look at current homesites and pricing, and help you separate the upgrades that make sense from the ones that simply look good in a design center.
Because with this much flexibility, the interesting question isn’t really which house do you like?
It’s which version of the house would you build?
Kristen Riffle
Riffle & Schilling | Summit Collective
Simply Vegas
702.497.0730
KristenRiffle.com
@kristensellsvegas
