Why Does It Cost So Much?!

Hi!
This is Suz Godfrey writing the blog today. I thought that I would write the blog since I am new in the land development business (Ronnie’s been doing it for years & years). I was simply amazed at the costs and studies involved to develop land and get approval from the City of Glen Rose. So here goes - hold onto your hats and calculators!

In an earlier blog, Ronnie wrote about getting the Preliminary Platt approved through Planning & Zoning (P&Z). Here is what we needed for the first of the four approvals (P&Z, City Council, P&Z, and City Council):

   1.      Engineering – this has to be done by a licensed engineer and costs about $2,500

 We asked a professional to design the following – he priced it at $8,000

   2.     A Streetscape
   3.     Conceptual Floor Plans -  gives a concept or idea of what the floor plans will be like

   4.    Plat with rooftops, trees, parks, etc
   5.     Deed Restrictions

 As a result Ronnie spent many, many hours learning how to create the streetscape and plat with rooftops. Ronnie already draws his own floor plans so that was not a big hurdle. And he has experience writing deed restrictions. I contributed by coloring in the plat with rooftops using Photoshop. This was also a learning experience for me since I needed to make it transparent enough to be able to see the rooftop lines on the plat.

 Then there was the $125 fee each time we had to appear before Planning & Zoning.

 Ok, so we got approved through P&Z and City Hall. Then we went back to P&Z on June 18th for their second approval (which we got – but don’t forget the $125 P&Z notification fee). On July 9th we are scheduled to go to City Council for their second and final approval. That will make 4 approvals in all!

For the July 9th City Council meeting we will need the following studies done by a licensed engineer for about $12,000.

 1.  Drainage Study - determines where the rainfall will go
 2.  Utility Layout – determines where the sewer line & water line need to be installed
 3.  Road Cross-section – specs on the road

 Let’s not forget the surveyor who initially surveyed the land and will do some of the preliminary work for the engineer reports at a cost of $3,000.

 So as of our final approval, we will have spent $15,250 and we haven’t even done any physical work to the land – like putting in the street! Don’t forget this number could have been $23,250 had we hired the professional to do our streetscape and floor plans!

 Ok, so once we actually put in the street, here is the breakdown of those costs:

 1.  Road work - $50,000 to put in the actual road which will only be about 200 feet long with a 100 foot long cul-de-sac
 2.  Dirt work - $2,000 to fill in some uneven spots in the land
 3.  Utilities –$20,000 to bring the water and sewer lines to each lot

 Putting in the road and utilities will cost about $72,000. So altogether the cost to develop the land that will have only 10 lots will cost $87,250! This does NOT include the price of the land or putting in sidewalks (which is done at the time the house is built). So maybe now you can understand why the price of lots costs and housing is so high! I know it was an enlightening experience for me!

Bluebird Park Update

Slowly but surely we have made progress getting approval for our new community - Bluebird Park.  The process to get a zoning change and community development approved in Glen Rose is a bit lengthy. First you need approval from the Planning & Zoning (P&Z) Committee, then City Council then back to P&Z and finally back to City Council.   So far we have gotten the first approval from P&Z and City Council. We are scheduled to go back to P & Z on June 18^th. . Each time we go to P&Z there is a $125 processing charge.

The property is getting cleared of tree branches and other unwanted articles left on the property by the previous owner.  Once we have final approval from the city of Glen Rose, hopefully on July 9^th, we will put in the utilities and the road.  We plan to start construction on houses in mid July. If you know anyone that might be interested in purchasing our energy efficient cottages, please tell them about our new community Bluebird Park.

Thank you for visiting!

Ronnie G.

Energy Star Builder

Bluebird Park

It has always been my fondest hope to put in an extremely affordable housing community in the city of Glen Rose. At last it looks like this may become a reality.

Many months ago we were able to purchase a small parcel land on Gunshot Road. This is the road right off of Highway 67. A Texaco station is on the corner. We are in the process of getting the property re-zoned to a planned development (PD) and readying the land to build new homes.

I am drawing the floor plans. The new houses will be from about 1000 square feet to 1400 square feet. We are hoping that the new houses will cost under $150,000 so that they will be affordable for firemen, police officers, and teachers and other people that serve our community. Naturally they will be energy efficient! Thereby keeping the utility bills low.

Below is the site plan. You can see that we plan to plant an orchard. Right now we are considering Pear trees, Pomegranate trees, and fig bushes. Nothing is definite or planted as yet. But there are about 13 native pecan trees in the open community area.

We invite you to go to our website to learn more. We will be posting the progress of the development both on here and on Facebook.

Here is a link to Bluebird Park.

And here is a link to our Bluebird Park Homes  Homes:

Thanks for visiting! Come again soon!

Housing Design trends

Updated Ideas in New Home Design

By Ronnie Godfrey

Multi-generational Homes is a new term I’m hearing more often these days. It is driven by the need to combine different generations of a family into one home. This happens as adult sons and daughters provide housing for aging parents or where they have bounce-back children. Children whose careers have stalled or just not gotten started after their schooling has finished.

Some of the design trends in Multi-generational Homes are:

·        First floor master suites and dual master suites.

·        Living space above the garage or in an extra garage bay.

·        Separate entrances.

·        Second kitchens.

·        Private spaces for each generation.

·        Rental apartments either within the home or detached but on the same lot.

The current economic conditions are driving this as the retirement funds of many of the elderly have dwindled. Also, this happens as freshly graduated young folks are not finding work or have returned home for other reasons. Using home health care instead of nursing home care for the elderly is another. Additionally, we have more immigration from cultures where this is a common practice.

A similar occurrence is seen in many towns but for a different reason. Austin, Texas is one, where the city allows home owners to build, either attached or detached rental units on the same lot as their home. The benefit to the city is increased tax base, using existing infrastructure (no new sewer or water lines and no new streets). And it generates rental income for the property owners. I wonder if we could do that here.

Right sizing your home is another term getting a lot of play now. This doesn’t mean building a smaller home although you may after going through this process. It means thinking strategically about how you use each room and how big it needs to be.

Many homes today are being built without a seldom used formal living room or a formal dining room. The trade-off is a slightly smaller home with a larger family room and breakfast/dining area. If you pare 2-3% off the size of a new home it may save thousands on the purchase and continue to save on utility bills.

This process will help you to eliminate wasted square footage and make small spaces feel larger. As mentioned in a previous article, we have software to generate a floor plan and then digitally place your furniture in each room to see how well it fits. This will help you to decide just what size a room needs to be.

You can email or call me if you would like for me to go into more detail on the things we covered here. Reach me at 817 988 0149 or ronnie@rgodfreyhomes.com.

What’s New in Housing 4

What’s New in Housing 4

Mixed topic

By Ronnie Godfrey

While attending this year’s Builders Convention, we took in several seminars and visited every booth. This is part of the training we go through every year to try to stay on top of latest trends, construction methods, codes, and products. Herewith are some notes generated from that trip.

Paint Colors:

I wished that I could say that the new colors for the coming years will be red or blue or some well defined palette. Not so easy. Did you know that there is someone who makes a study of this and tells all of the designers what they should be using. This person’s name is Jackie Jordon, CMG. She works for the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company and is the Director of Color marketing.

During her presentation she gave us a brochure labeled COLORMIX two-thousand-eleven. I have it sitting here on my desk. There are four palettes on this, with the primary color of each palette and their supporting players. I’m not going to attempt to name them are tell you what emotions each is supposed to elicit, (really?) but recommend that you go to www.swcolorsamples.com and see for yourself.  Some look like the pastels of the 50’, while others look like the Mod colors of the 60’s, still others have an industrial look.

I’d hate to have the job of naming all the colors those folks sale. I can tell they have problems with that too as one of the blue paints #SW6800 is called Something Blue.

Energy Efficiency:

I will hit this topic again, maybe several times in fact, but for now let me tell you about the Solar Decathlon. This is a competition between universities to try to build extremely energy efficient homes. Better yet let me put it in U.S. Department of Energy’s words: “The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon challenges 20 collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency.”

The competition will take place Friday, September 23 at 8:00am - October 2 at 6:00pm and will likely be on the Mall in Washington D.C... The various schools, including some from other countries, will build full-sized, operating houses on the grounds of the nation’s capital and will be opened to the public. You can preview these on the Decathlon’s web site: http://www.solardecathlon.gov/index.html

This competition drives technology, and educates both the participants and all who attend. Some of the ideas brought forth during this will be what we will be doing in our home building soon.

Floor plan designs will be discussed in my next article.

I mentioned in a previous week’s newspaper article that I would have a URL for you to see our pictures from the Extreme Makeover Home Edition tour and in another article I talked about the walk-through feature of our floor plan software and how you could look at your home before it is even built. Go to:

rgodfreyhomes.blogspot.com/

And on the lower right hand side you will find a small picture of a floor plan. Just below that there is a link to click to view the short walk-through video. Then in the left hand, you will find the link to the Extreme Makeover tour under “links to our videos”. While at our blog you might want to look at some of our other videos as well.

Extreme Makeover Tour

by Ronnie Godfrey

I was like a kid in the candy store with a pocket full of change when I found out that the Redhead and I were going to get a VIP tour of an Extreme Makeover Home Edition jobsite. Wow! It was fantastic. We’ve met some of the celebrity designers before but never thought we would be getting a tour and watch them do what they do.

We’ve just returned from Florida and the International Builders’ Show (IBS), formerly known as the Builders’ Convention. We had a full slate of exhibits that we planned to see and seminars to attend. It would be a grueling 3 ½ days. However it didn’t open until the morning of January 12 and we were in Orlando on the 11^th because of the invitation we received.

We were told it was going to happen and when, but not where as they had not told the lucky folks who would be receiving the makeover. Late Monday the invitation confirmation email came through. The Jobsite was just a few miles east of Orlando. We drove to our designated starting point, signed releases, given official T-shirts, name tags, and then bused to the location.

They woke the lucky family Friday morning and tore down the old home on Saturday. By the time we arrived on Tuesday they had placed the foundation, framed the structure and were roofing and dry-walling. Like ants crawling oven a dropped jelly sandwich, workers covered the construction. There must have been at least a hundred workers at any one time on the site. And half that many eating lunch or building items to haul over to the home later. 

They worked 24 hours a day, rain or shine. Lights on extendable poles were set up to allow the workers to see and for the cameras to capture the progress. Several cameras were mounted in semi permanent locations to shoot time lapse, and then there were folks carrying cameras everywhere. I talked with Brady Connell, one of the producers, and was told that they would video 200 hours and then boil that down to 41 minutes for the TV show. I got to see inside the command center and saw the 14 monitors with live action being recorded constantly.

As we walked around the job site in our hard hats I noticed that there were a fair amount of folks who were helpers, toting boards and picking up trash, and then about as many skilled craftsmen. They had all sorts of heavy equipment, trailers, and trucks moving about no-stop. I guess it was to be expected as they were collapsing 4 or 5 months of normal construction activity into a week. The logistics to pull this off were phenomenal.

They have an advance man, Johnny Piccioni, who also served as our tour guide since he was more or less caught up with part that he plays. He hits the ground running a couple of weeks prior to the actual construction and works through getting the neighbors on board with what is about to happen, about how they are going to be invaded with an army of workers, security, show production staff, celebrities, and invitees like us.

We didn’t get to meet Ty Pennington, the team leader, as he was starting another makeover at another location. They overlap the makeovers so that they have 2 going at the same time. They split the celebrity designers between job sites. The site we toured had Eduardo Xol, Paige Hemmis and Michael Moloney adding their special touch. We did get to see Ed Sanders at the IBS. We’ve met him on a couple of occasions. He gave Suz a kiss on the cheek.

Celebrity designers get to express their style preferences as well as take on special projects. The special projects which might include exotic, one-of-a-kind furniture pieces or decorator items, are built in a tent dubbed Art World. This was set up in the celebrity motor home parking area in some neighbor’s backyard.

The show is produced by Endemol USA; and is a 2 time Emmy Award winner. They film 22-25 shows each year with an estimated USA TV audience of 16 million viewers. The shows are dubbed in various foreign languages and shown around the world with a total audience is about 1 billion.

I wish that I could pass on to you the atmosphere of the place and the attitude of the folks there. All of the staff that I met was friendly and eager to answer questions and show us their piece of the activity. Our guide said “they create the spark and the community does it. What happens is a mini miracle; it affects everyone who works with it.”

We have posted a short slide presentation to show a little of what we took in. Take a look at the link in the side bar: labeled Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

Xanadu

Never say Never, Maybe

By Ronnie Godfrey, CGB, CGP, president, R Godfrey Homes

Do you remember when World War II ended and builders got busy building small, frame homes 700-1,000 square feet in size. Neither do I. I was only one year old after all. A lot has changed since then. The national average home in the last few years has been over 2,500 square feet. Now a change is occurring across the country. Builders and buyers are rethinking their housing needs.

Just when folks were saying build it bigger the trend changes. What’s more it is happening to Suz and I. We sense the need to downsize. When I found our lot on the Brazos and showed it to Suz, she said we would die here, that we would never live anywhere else. And I thought that we would be watching red, sunburned folks drift by on the river for the rest of our lives.

Here’s the thing, we don’t have to sell; we want to sell. Why would anyone want to move from the river? In our case there are multiple reasons. We have livestock and we keep them on land not far away, but we have to go there twice a day. It would be mighty nice to walk out the back door and take care of the herd. Our needs are such that we could make do with a little smaller home. It’s easier to keep, the utilities are less, insurance, taxes…Well you get the picture.

We’ll sell our Xanadu (that’s what we called it before we built it) and find some land to build our new home on the range with room for horses, goats, and chickens. Perhaps 15-50 acres will do. Maybe you could help us if you know of some land like that.   

My fondest hope is that someone with teens in the home will buy here and enjoy all that the river would offer them. Spend some time watching the eagles, peregrines and osprey cruise by in early winter. Keep the bluebird nest boxes clean after every fledgling and bird seed out for the cardinals.