Cleaner way to access custom fields in code?

I would write a function to handle the monotony of this task.

function my_print_meta($id, $key, $alternate="")
{
    if($value = get_post_meta($id, $key, true))
        echo $value;
    else
        echo $alternate;
}

Notice in the function that I only call get_post_meta once and store the value in a variable so that two separate database queries don’t need to be made. With this function set, I would then call it in a template file using:

my_print_meta(get_the_ID(), 'survey_home_type', 'No Home Type');

Now, realize that this function, with the way that it manages the “alternate” text might not work for your template, but this is just an idea to get you going