Tag: homes
Real Estate Trend Sees Bigger Homes Built On Smaller Lots

Real Estate Trend Sees Bigger Homes Built On Smaller Lots

By Alan J. Heavens, The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)

PHILADELPHIA — Despite the lingering downturn and the “tiny house” craze, mostly upscale suburban buyers continue to favor larger new houses on ever-shrinking building lots.

The age of the buyer doesn’t seem to matter.

About 43 percent of 2,000 adults surveyed nationally would prefer homes bigger than what they live in now, the real estate search engine Trulia found.

Baby boomers preferred bigger by a narrow margin while millennials and those considered Generation X favored larger in even greater numbers.

“Would-be downsizers outnumber upsizers only among households living in the largest homes,” said Trulia housing economist Ralph McLaughlin.

Nationally and in the Philadelphia region, most builders cater to the luxury-home market, said Quita Syhapanya, Northeast regional director for real estate media firm Hanley-Wood’s Metrostudy in Philadelphia.

The average square footage of a home nationally in 2014, 2,467, was 13 percent higher than the 2,174 in 2005, before the housing bubble burst, Quita said, but the 2014 figure grew by 11 percent from 2010 — considered the depths of the real estate recession.

That is 812 square feet more than in 1975, even though family size has fallen from 3.42 to 3.13, census statistics show.

“Obviously, the numbers are skewed to be higher because of the market segment these builders are going after,” Syhapanya said.

The suburban trend has its counterpart in the city high-rise luxury condominium market, where buyers combine two units into one to boost square footage to 3,000 or more.

John Westrum, president of Westrum Development Co. in suburban Philadelphia, calls them “buyers of choice, who want a big house with lots of features in prime locations and are willing to pay for it.”

“This product is the only kind that might make a builder money, and they have a guaranteed buyer,” Westrum said.

Anthony E. Maras, regional president of real estate company K. Hovnanian Homes, pointed to Doylestown Greene, a 25-home development the company is building in suburban Philly, as an example of this large house/small-lot phenomenon.

Doylestown Greene’s estate homes will top out at 4,946 square feet — 60-foot-wide houses on 80-foot-wide, one-third- to one-half-acre lots, he said.

“People are using their homes differently” and “don’t want large lots to maintain,” Maras said.

“What we are seeing with the high-end new construction buyer is a home in the 4,000-square-foot range on a maintenance-free type of lot with an open family room off the kitchen where they spend most of their time,” said John Duffy, broker/owner of Duffy Real Estate, another Philly-area firm, in confirming Maras’ observation.

“Extensive research” shows upscale buyers want large kitchens, family rooms, and bedrooms; a den/library; and scaled-down living and dining rooms, Duffy said.

The Philadelphia suburban experience differs somewhat from the rest of the country, Syhapanya said.

While builders here, too, market to affluent buyers, square footage is increasing more slowly — just two percent since 2009 to 2,431 from 2,383.

“Builders locally are not just building large homes for the sake of building larger homes,” he said. “They are building homes in prime locations and getting the most dollars per square foot” — $199 in 2014, compared with $183 in 2011, and $188 in 2013.

Land — in short supply and expensive — appears to be a major driver.

Builders look for prime locations, and “when we find them, the best way to maximize the return is to maximize the offering to the customer,” said Rob Fluehr Jr. of the Goldenberg Group, based in the Philadelphia region.

This means builders must put the largest house possible on a site, Fluehr said, and are aided by zoning laws “set up to give bonuses for providing larger contiguous areas of open space when you cluster the development.”

Mark Semerjian of Semerjian Builders, also in the Philadelphia area, said the custom homes he’s been building for high-end clients in recent years ranged from about 8,000 to 10,000 square feet.

His clients “are looking to maximize and leverage the value of the land they are purchasing by building larger residences.”

When vacant land is not available, “I’m usually involved in identifying, negotiating and handling the purchase of teardowns in order to build these homes as well,” he said.

Factors other than land, including development expenses, and “the approval process,” as Fluehr added, contribute to the increase in square footage costs.

Construction expenses have risen 15 percent or more over the last two years, said Bruce Paparone of Bruce Paparone New Homes, based outside Philly.

“However, some of this cost is related to an increase in the included features that we offer today as well,” he said.

“Some of these have been absorbed by the builders, offering as much value as possible in a new home versus a resale.”

In the large custom homes, those features are often designed to “minimize the cost of maintaining” them, including geothermal and hot water radiant heat, Semerjian said.

Still, land, especially prime locations, remains a defining factor, Paparone said, “so it pays to drive an extra exit or two off the highway for a better value sometimes.”

While Fluehr said Goldenberg was getting some feedback that “smaller may be better,” it is coming from people who still want to pay $800,000 and up for new construction.

Builders agree the day of the entry-level new home that built suburban America — now costing $200,000 to $400,000 — is history since houses cost far more than that to build.

Even when they build entry-level, the houses don’t go like hotcakes, no matter how they’re loaded.

Charlie Kojeski of Kojeski Builders built a 1,650-square-foot, four-bedroom, 2.5-bath with a walkout basement and all the bells and whistles last fall.

For $220,000. “With no takers,” he said.

Photo: Dean Terry via Flickr

Baby Boomers, Flush With Stock Gains, Drive Record Vacation Home Sales

Baby Boomers, Flush With Stock Gains, Drive Record Vacation Home Sales

By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Bolstered by stock-market gains, affluent Americans bought more than 1.1 million vacation homes last year, according to an annual trade group survey — up 57 percent from 2013 and the most since the survey began in 2003.

The strong sales of second homes contrasted with a weaker year for purchases of principal residences, and also a decline in sales to investors.

Vacation home sales represented a record-high 21 percent of all home purchases in 2014, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday.

California witnessed a contrasting trend, with the percentage of vacation home sales falling to just five percent in 2014 from six percent in 2013, according to a tally by the California Association of Realtors, which said sky-high housing prices impeded the sales.

Lotus Lou, a spokeswoman for the state group, said the methodologies of the surveys were similar.

The national lobbying group’s survey of about 2,000 homebuyers calculated that 2014 purchases by investors fell about seven percent to just over one million, and purchases by owner-occupants declined 13 percent to 3.2 million.

Aging baby boomers boosted the sales, buying homes they plan to retire to, often with help from investments in stocks whose value has jumped in recent years, said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the real estate association.

“The steady rise in home prices has likely given them reassurance that real estate remains an attractive long-term investment,” Yun said.

The Realtor group said the typical vacation-home buyer in 2014 had a median household income of $94,380, up from $85,600 in 2013.

The median vacation home price fell 11.1 percent to $150,000. Yun attributed the trend in part to higher sales of condos and townhomes versus single-family homes.

Buyers also increased their purchases of distressed properties, and of homes in the relatively affordable South, while vacation home sales fell throughout the more expensive West and Northeast, the survey showed.

Photo: one2c900d via Flickr

U.S. New-Home Sales Soar To 6-Year High In August

U.S. New-Home Sales Soar To 6-Year High In August

Washington– U.S. new-home sales soared 18 percent in August to their fastest pace in more than six years, an encouraging signal amid mixed housing market reports, official data showed Wednesday.

Sales of new single-family houses surged to an annual rate of 504,000, from a revised July rate of 427,000, the Commerce Department reported. The July pace was previously pegged at 412,000 homes.

The August sales pace was the strongest since May 2008.

Analysts had estimated a more modest sales increase to 435,000 new homes in August in the often volatile monthly report.

Year-over-year, new-home sales were up 33 percent.

The median sales price of new houses sold in August fell 1.6 percent to $275,600. It was the first pullback in prices in four months.

Inventory of new houses for sale was 203,000, representing a supply of 4.8 months at the current sales rate, tightening from a 5.6-month supply in July.

Barclays analyst Michael Gapen noted that upward revisions to prior months had put the three-month average pace of new-home sales at 450,000, modestly above the second-quarter average of 430,000 and the first-quarter average of 431,000.

“Altogether, this is a much stronger report than expected and suggests housing demand has stabilized in recent quarters,” he said.

The data came after Monday’s report of an unexpected August slowdown in sales of existing homes, the lion’s share of the U.S. housing market.

Sales of existing U.S. homes fell 1.8 percent in August after four straight months of gains, the National Association of Realtors said Monday.

AFP Photo/Paul J. Richards

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Do We Need A Place Called Home?

Do We Need A Place Called Home?

There’s this scene in Shakespeare where the straight-talking Rosalind tries to make sense of Jaques, a guy who travels all the time and is plagued by melancholy.

“I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men’s,” Rosalind says to him in As You Like It.

“Yes, I have gained my experience,” Jaques responds gloomily.

Rosalind then offers her tough verdict: Your experience has made you sad, she says to him, “and to travel for it too!”

We all know people whose bags are perpetually packed. Airports are their gateway to excitement. Every spare moment and unallocated dollar goes to exploring a new place.

Wanderers on tight budgets forgo investments in cars, homes and furnishings, squirreling every last cent for travel to distant islands and other continents. On one hand, this sounds admirably post-materialistic. On the other, it sometimes seems as if home life is not valued so much as seeing other men’s lands.

There’s the phenomenon of “senior gypsies” — retirees who dump their homes and possessions and use the proceeds to travel all year-round from one high adventure to the next.

Of course, they have every right to spend their time and money as they choose. Travel is broadening, and most of us need a change of scene now and then. But there are downsides to trading in the thing we call “home” for life on the road.

We see the Facebook posts of friends on perpetual around-the-world tours. They share photos of themselves on mountains, in country villages and among ancient ruins — along with bubbling commentary of their exploits.

You wonder whether you should be jealous and also whether your itinerant contacts are showing off. You also wonder whether they are really your friends — outside of social media — never being around for coffee or to see your puppy or to engage in the town’s civic life.

Most of all, you wonder whether they are really as happy as they purport to be. Don’t they feel lonely on, say, a Sunday, when the locals are home with their families? Do they mind knowing that the natives regard them as tourists who will soon move on and so figure, why bother getting to know them?

Entire books and college courses explore the “meaning of home.” For these purposes, home is simply about having a physical and emotional perch, an ongoing relationship with a place and people in it.

A rented apartment can be as much a home as a farm. The concept applies equally to city, suburban and rural living. This is about not money but the “familiar.”

You have a history with the mail deliverer, plumber and next-door neighbor. A local gas station that looks ugly to outsiders might be a welcoming beacon of light to you as you head home at night in the rain.

At a certain point, we all become fragile, needing medical care and other help. Perhaps the senior gypsies assume they can return to the communities they abandoned years before. They can rent a place, spend an afternoon picking up cookware, and they’re all set.

Or perhaps they’ll settle in another country and come to experience that new place as home. Almost 400,000 Americans now receive their Social Security benefits at a foreign address, a 40 percent jump from 10 years ago.

What’s important is having relationships with people that go deeper than the commercial trading of money for services, which is the usual traveler’s experience. These things take time and nurturing. And that’s why a life of always passing through can make a person sad.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

AFP Photo/Paul J. Richards

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