Elite Homes takes over development of Villas of Rock Springs by By Kevin Eigelbach, Staff writer
A new developer has brought a new vision to a stalled housing project in eastern Jefferson County.
Elite Homes Inc.has taken over the development of The Villas of Rock Springs, a new section of the Rock Springs subdivision, which is about two miles northeast of the Gene Snyder Freeway on Brownsboro Road.
Elite Homes plans to build 70 garden homes along the three streets in the new section.
The home designs are updates of designs for similar homes that Elite Homes has built elsewhere in town, said company president Joe Pusateri. The design will be tweaked to reflect the Craftsman style reflected in other sections of Rock Springs.
“They’re going to be killer,” he said.
Pusateri sees turnaround in market
Pusateri believes that the local real estate market has bottomed out and is starting to take off, in defiance of statistics from the Greater Louisville Association of Realtors.
The association reported last month that members sold 5,207 houses in the first half of 2011, a 16 percent decrease from the first half of 2010. The number of homes for sale continued to grow, with 9,313 homes listed for sale as of June 30, a nearly 30 percent increase from a year before.
One reason the 2011 sales have not measure up to 2010 was because of the effect of last year’s Homebuyers’ Tax Credit, said the association’s executive vice president, Lisa Stephenson.
She doesn’t know whether the market has hit bottom, but she said she expects that the numbers for July 2011 will be better than July 2010, which is what Realtors were hoping for, she said.
The Villas of Rock Springs is one of several local real estate developments that fizzled after the financial meltdown of 2008 but since have been resurrected with new developers.
The project originally was designed for 78 patio homes, which are connected single-family homes similar to condominiums, Pusateri said.
Roads and infrastructure were built for The Villas of Rock Springs, as well as two buildings that contained four homes apiece, he added.
Development owners approached Pusateri
But in the three years since the buildings were completed, only two of the homes have been sold, he said. Since the financial meltdown, financing for condominiums also has dried up, he said.
The development’s owners — Caldwell Tanks Inc. president Bernie Fineman, Neace Lukens insurance brokerage chairman John Neace and Louisville investor Carl Hafele — came to Pusateri and asked him how they could get it moving again, Pusateri said.
He thought it would be perfect for his company’s third garden home development. Garden homes have the same appeal as condominiums, with residents paying for someone else to keep up the lawn, but they aren’t attached as patio homes are.
“To live attached to another house is a pretty dramatic lifestyle change,” Pusateri said.
The partners, who have owned the property since 2007, agreed to give Pusateri a one-quarter share in the development in exchange for his labor and building expertise, he said.
Since the economic downturn began, the patio homes concept has not worked well in Louisville, Fineman said. He thinks the new concept will appeal to a broad range of buyers.
Last month, Elite Homes began construction on the first four garden homes, which did not yet have buyers, and on rerouting the sewer and electrical lines for separate homes.
Less competition for garden homes
The target market will be young professionals and empty nesters. For the latter, the homes will have features such as doorways wide enough for wheelchairs that will allow for residents to remain in their homes as they grow older, Pusateri said.
Other features he hopes will attract buyers include the homes’ energy efficiency and their price. The first homes will sell for $249,000, with the price rising with the sale of each lot of four homes until it reaches $284,900.
The homes all are about 1,700 square feet in size, Pusateri said.
Similar homes in other East End developments would sell for as much as $350,000, Pusateri said. To keep the cost low, Elite Homes asked its materials suppliers to cut their prices by 5 percent, which they agreed to do to get the sales, he said.
As opposed to patio homes, which are abundant in the area, there is little competition for garden homes at that price within a 10-mile radius, he said.
