Ever wish you could walk through your home before it’s built? This week on Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio, host Carol Morgan chats with Mark Brown and Mary Atchley, co-owners of Walk Your Plans Atlanta. Discover how their 4,000-square-foot interactive floorplan experience helps homebuyers, builders and designers bring blueprints to life.
Imagine walking through the blueprint of your dream home – that's the experience that Walk Your Plans Atlanta offers at its 4,000-square-foot warehouse in Roswell, Georgia. The company works with residential and commercial clients to provide full walkthroughs of all kinds of real estate. The warehouse also features two elevation walls to help clients visualize elements such as appliances and cabinetry.
“All we really need is a PDF of those architectural plans that has some architectural scale on it, and then we kind of take care of the rest,” said Brown. “When you're in our facility, we run the technology, but the facility is yours to use.”
Bringing Walk Your Plans to Atlanta
Atchley says the idea for Walk Your Plans Atlanta came right after touring homes with Brown’s parents. They were frustrated while trying to visualize a portion of a particular house, and when she checked social media later that day, Atchley saw an ad for Walk Your Plans in Cleveland, Ohio. Together with Brown, they contacted the founder and opened an Atlanta branch last year.
Many homebuyers struggle to visualize their dream home, whether it’s the dimensions of a room or appointments like windows, cabinets or doors. Walk Your Plans Atlanta closes that gap with real-time walkthroughs of the home’s blueprints.
“There are folks who work in plans and blueprints and designs all day, every day and so it's really easy for them to visualize these things,” said Atchley. “If you're somebody like me, you know you tell me something is 10 feet, and that just doesn't mean much to me. This is a tool to help them visualize their space before construction begins.”
Walk Your Plans Atlanta is a great tool for home shoppers, but also for builders and architects looking for a faster “yes” from prospective buyers. Brown describes the experience as buyers finally “feeling the size of the rooms,” allowing them to discover what feels right at scale, while the builders can communicate their thoughts as well.
“It's a collaborative environment, and that's what gets everybody kind of talking,” said Brown.
Make Changes Now, Save More Later
As clients walk through their home plans, changes are often brought to the builder’s attention. Atchley estimates that 10 to 20m changes are brought up in each session, which adds up quickly and saves clients more than $20,000 in the long run.
Atchley said, “We like to say, if you make one change while you are on site, your session has paid for itself.”
Scale is often the client's biggest “aha” moment when they walk through their home plans. Whether it’s a secondary bedroom taking up too much space or a closet barely large enough, a Walk Your Plans Atlanta session is an excellent opportunity to discover those issues and pivot.
Commercial Spaces
Walk Your Plans Atlanta has worked with commercial clients, including medical facilities, restaurants and offices. During a restaurant walkthrough, the group brought along the head chef and quickly realized that it needed to reconfigure the kitchen. After making plans to remove an unnecessary wall, the group discovered that it could expand the dining area and accommodate more seating. Similarly, when a pediatric dental office booked the warehouse, it brought a stroller to ensure parents could navigate the hallways.
Walk Your Home Plan Today
Subscription packages are available for tradespersons – builders, architects and designers – that include tailored experiences. The more hours a client buys, the more they save, so tradespersons are encouraged to purchase packages instead of individual appointments. The company proudly offers flexible scheduling to ...