Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Nice Try but…

Everyone knows local home sales are in a slump. If you are trying to sell an age restricted unit, you know, one of those “active adult” homes, the slump is even worse. In the not too distant past, homebuilders were flooding the market with this product. The inevitable finally occurred, and now supply has far outpaced demand.

Not surprisingly, one the developers of age restricted or active adult housing came up with a solution. Brantley Development Group, developers of three of these types of communities in Howard County sought to amend Section 103.A of the Zoning Regulations to allow up to 20% of the units in an age restricted community to be sold to people under 55.

Last night, the county council said no deal. According to this story by Larry Carson in The Sun, ZRA 108 “was defeated by a unanimous Howard County Council Monday night after strong opposition from older residents.”

I think Councilperson Courtney Watson summed it up nicely when she said “I cannot find any redeeming qualities in this bill.”

Nice try anyway. I guess this proves that developers don’t always get their way despite what some people think.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, Greg Fox summed it up better by pointing out the many concessions made to developers particularly in this type of building/housing recently.

It'll happen. This developer lacks the 'connections' that others enjoy and the timing was bad. But it'll resurface and it will pass.

Nothing has changed, and nothing has reversed or been proven by this vote.

Anonymous said...

What needs to be reversed or proven?

Anonymous said...

I am not surprised to see the "This developer lacks the 'connections'" excuse. Next will come one that says the developer didn't contribute enough. After that will be one that says their lawyer must not be Richard Talkin or Sang Oh.

Anonymous said...

Why do people who live in homes in developments hate developers? Why do some people want to close and lock the door to a community AFTER they got in?

All lawyers, developers, politicians, reporters, etc. are not crooked the same way all community activists are not annoying gad flies who only focus on the negative and treat anything positive as abborations that can be excused away.

Mary said...

Nothing's changed. Keep watching the ZRA hopper in August and February.

PZGURU said...

The reason why this bill should not have passed, and I'm glad it didn't, is that for anyone who bought a house in a 55+ community, they did so BECAUSE ITS AN AGE RESTRICTED COMMUNITY. For the developer to go back and modify the nature of the development after people bought into the development would cause negative impact to those buyers. It's tantamount to breach of contract. The developer should have to get unanimous consent from every owner in the development.

Above and beyond that, these 55+ communities do not get tested for APFO housing unit allocations OR traffic studies under the same parameters as regular (non-age-restricted) developments. For example, 55+ communities are basically presumed to NOT have any school-aged children so they have no impact on local school capacity. They are also presumed to generate LESS traffic than normal developments (even though people over 55 still work, travel, etc).

So, to suddenly allow people under age 55 to buy into those developments could cause overcrowding at schools or traffic problems. At the least, to allow such a change, the County should require the developer to go back through APF approval.

Unknown said...

Well, the developers should do something to attract more buyers. With the recent decline in house sales, a lot have been affected by it. Despite this, the Charlotte retirement homes continue to excel with their services to keep the renters and attract more retirees. Since the economy now is moderately rising, it will be helpful to add new promotions and advertisements to help the adult communities. Charlotte, NC is a fine city to retire.