Got a housing problem? Play double or nothing. That`s what developers and architects sometimes do.
The duplex, an infrequently seen type of housing (and even less frequently heard, since marketing directors hate the word) often can bail builders out of a tight spot.
And recently, the flexibility of the duplex has made it more popular. It is being used to capture not only entry-level, price-conscious buyers, but also affluent empty-nesters-generally under some delicately perfumed name like ”villa,” ”manor home,” ”garden home” or ”attached single-family.”
In a fall builder survey by Professional Builder magazine, reported production of duplexes went from 3 percent of new housing units in 1987 to 5 percent in 1988.
The problems builders can solve with duplexes-which basically are two housing units attached at a common, or ”party,” wall-can range from economic to esthetic. A duplex unit can help buyers turn a corner financially; it can help site planners turn a corner in a tight cul-de-sac.
”The duplex has a number of inherent advantages allowing you to deal with issues like density and affordability,” said Tom Barton, an architect and Chicago regional director for the Philadelphia-based Martin Organization, one of the nation`s leading residential architectural firms.
”We couldn`t afford a single-family detached home (one residence on one lot) in this area. No way,” said Paul Erickson, 31, who last December moved with his wife, Karen, a schoolteacher, into a duplex at Cambridge Country in Mundelein. ”It`s nice when you`ve been renting to be able to have a chance to own your own home, and with land costs as high as they are, this seems an interesting idea.”
Erickson said he planned to live in the duplex five to eight years, and regarded it as a stepping stone to a detached home, where he could have a larger yard.
The classic duplex, sort of a long box with two doors in front or at the sides, was unabashedly promoted as cheap-ownership housing.
”Back in post-World War II days, it was pretty common to see a duplex marketed as a whole unit, where you would buy the whole thing and rent half of it out,” said Bruce Johnston of Johnston Associates, Inc., a Park Ridge-based architectural firm.
While buy-one, rent-one duplexes have pretty much vanished, affordability is still the key appeal of many duplex developments, said Johnston, who himself has designed duplexes in two developments in Buffalo Grove for the low-end market.
He pointed out that the key savings on duplexes are in land. Builders can consume about 15 to 40 percent less site area per unit than with a comparable detached single-family home. The price ends up being 10 percent lower than for a similar detached unit.
In a prosperous metropolitan area such as Chicago, where land prices have been rocketing, any way of increasing density and economizing on land can tempt a builder.
”The price of land and construction has gone up so high,” said Cambridge Homes president Richard Brown, ”and it has raised the cost of a detached single-family home so much, that we felt the entry-level buyers were being priced out of their range.” Cambridge Homes has recently been an area leader in production of duplexes.
Typical affordable duplexes in the Chicago area start from around $70,000 at Greater Midwestern Development Co.`s Eagle Trace subdivision in Aurora and go up to the $90,000-$110,000 range in Cambridge Homes developments in Carol Stream and Mundelein. Comparable entry-level detached homes in similar communities will typically range between $90,000 and $130,000.
A very different version of the duplex is being marketed to the empty-nester and retirement groups, segments of the population that homebuilders have been wooing with increasing fervor over the last few years.
The upscale duplex, a housing type almost nonexistent in the Chicago market 10 years ago, can range in price from $130,000 to more than $250,000 and embody the latest in style and design.
These duplexes are basically an outgrowth of the luxury townhouse boom that has gained impetus from older buyers moving down from larger detached houses.
Like today`s luxury townhouses, they are often in already built-up communities, areas where the move-down buyers have lived their lives and want to stay. Land commands a premium price in these communities, causing a need for high-density building.
Like the townhouses, these units purport to offer elegance and flair along with convenience and freedom from maintenance. Marketing experts call them ”lifestyle” homes-generally meaning there aren`t any children around to interfere with your life or your style.
Also like townhouses, they are often sold condominium-fashion, with the land under common ownership of all residents in the development. Entry-level duplexes are almost always sold fee-simple-because the first-time buyer is driven by the deep urge to own land.
The advantage of duplexes over townhouses is that they get light from three sides; in townhouse complexes, interior units have two sides blocked off. Interior units are historically the least popular sellers in townhouse buildings. Duplexes are a logical solution to that problem.
Builders often find they can solve site or marketing dilemmas with duplexes, particularly in high-density projects. It is not uncommon to find them where a developer originally planned to build something else.
At Arlington on the Ponds in Arlington Heights, for instance, the Mitroff Company is building a series of compact cul-de-sacs with small-lot free-standing homes along the sides and duplexes at the corners.
”If we continued with detached homes into the corner, we would have lost one full unit per corner,” said Gene Kripak, a Mitroff vice president. ”The efficiency factor was critical. It caused us to create a uniquely boomeranged- shaped building, split in half.”
Called the Glenbrook Villa, the duplex is 2,175 square feet with two bedrooms, a loft and a family room, base-priced at $214,900. The master bedroom suite is on the first floor, a common feature in housing for the graying market.
At the Timbers in St. Charles, a single-family/multi-family/commercial project, Westway Construction Corp. had planned 16-unit condominiums, but they attracted no pre-construction buyers. So Westway shifted to duplexes.
”With the price of the land and so much density around, we couldn`t afford to do single-families there,” said Chris Lannert, head of the Lannert Group, who designed the duplexes for Westway. ”And row townhouses with interior units weren`t desirable.”
Westway President Jim Urhausen added that the narrow widths of townhouse units produced a ”canyon” feel. ”Duplexes give you the ability to space plan in a more traditional single-family fashion. They give you room to move sideways.”
In solving its problem, Westway ended up with the top award in its category from the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago for one of the duplex models, the 1,230-square-foot one-story Brunswick. Lannert himself lives in one. The duplexes ranged in price from about $130,000 to $150,000 before they were sold out.
At the Woodlands of Fiore, a golf-course community in Buffalo Grove, the Zale Group used duplexes in the multi-family area-which also contains townhouses and fourplexes-to satisfy people who wanted a low-maintenance single-family-type home. The duplexes are the top end of the multi-families, with a 2,814-square-foot model base-priced at $232,900 and a 2,933-square-foot version for $252,900.
According to architect Johnston, who designed the multi-family area, the duplex offered a way to provide units of ample size without violating the esthetic balance of the overall complex. In addition, he said, golf-course views were opened up to the maximum number of homes.
”It was a nifty way of maintaining massing and consistency in the streetscape, while still giving every advantage of a single-family unit,”
said Johnston. ”It`s part of the total multi-family approach, and it fits the market.”
While the duplexes help maintain a unified look, they also help prevent monotony, Johnston contends. ”One of the charms of Fiore is that it`s a nice mix of duplexes with four-unit townhouses with fourplexes. They`re all different-shaped buildings.”
For all their advantages in certain situations, duplexes do have an image problem to fight. Builders know that the single-family home continues to be the most desirable housing.
”Given their choice, people buy single-family houses,” said architect Barton, who noted that small-lot products such as zero-lot-line houses-dwellings built right up to the lot line on one side-are a popular low-maintenance alternative to townhouses and duplexes in the move-down market.
The crucial issue is the party wall, a term some prospective buyers fear means that if there is a party next door they will hear every decibel of it. Fire is also a worry.
”We were concerned about the noise problem,” Paul Erickson said. ”We tested it out by having one of us in one unit and one in another, screaming and yelling. We couldn`t hear it. We didn`t see any problems.”
The occupant of the adjoining unit, Donna Powell, a design executive with a publisher, didn`t scream but thumped instead, and was equally satsified. She also said she had asked before buying about possible fire problems and was told by a salesperson that in another Cambridge duplex development, one unit had a fire and the adjoining one was untouched even by smoke or water damage. ”That reassured me,” she said.
Cambridge makes every effort to reassure prospects about the common wall, displaying a blown-up diagram of its construction in their Mundelein sales office.
Powell and the Ericksons agreed that they were neighborly, but not close friends, being in different age groups. The Ericksons are in their early 30s, and Powell is almost 50. ”We help each other out with snow-shoveling and lawnmowing,” Paul Erickson said.
Otherwise, he said, ”we`re not aware of her presence. We can`t tell if anything is going on over there, which is nice. I hope it`s the same the other way.” Powell affirmed that it was.
The Ericksons are typical of buyers at the Garden Homes of Cambridge Country, which is in the affordable category of duplex communities. (Both the Ericksons and Powell paid less than $100,000 for their units.)
An analysis of 139 contracts showed that the average age of buyers was 32.6 years, with the largest group-47 percent-being between 21 and 30.
Like both the Ericksons and Powell, 74 percent of buyers had previously been renters. In two-person households, 81 percent had dual incomes. There were 52 children among the households, mostly under 4.
At the other end of the spectrum of duplex owners is Jim Darow, who bought a $200,000-plus unit at Arlington in the Ponds with his wife, Betty, after the last of their four children had left home. For him, the purchase represented an exciting new departure in a changing life.
”We were bored with our old house,” said Darow, 54, a marketing manager for a printing and design firm who moved from a one-story ranch. ”We`ve changed in many ways. The kids are gone, our income has changed. We didn`t want the typical floor plan. We wanted something very drmatic.”
He said the high-style duplex, with its diagonal layout and loft overlooking a two-story living room, appealed to his desire for drama. ”Once you walk in, your head snaps back,” he said.
Being in a community targeted to empty-nesters has also brought personal dividends: The Darows have become close friends with the couple in the attached duplex. ”It`s coincidental, but we`re more friendly with them than with past neighbors,” he said. ”It`s a matter of values, age, income level and family. We have many things in common.”
If duplexes can solve some problems for buyers and builders, they can also present some design challenges. In poorly conceived duplexes, two can look twice as tacky as one.
Architects today disdain the post-World War II duplex design in which one side was a mirror image of the other-”matchbook duplexes,” Lannert calls them.
But they are still being built. Architect Johnston ruefully acknowledges that he designed duplexes in Buffalo Grove a few years ago that he frankly calls ”terrible,” but he blamed the developer for yoking together units that should not have been joined.
In one subdivision, he lamented, the builder ”cheapened things so much. He put the same unit with the same unit. It struggles to be symmetrical, but it doesn`t work. You can`t let the market dictate the mix. You`ve got to design each complete building. Otherwise you have a cookie-cutter approach.” Barton said the emerging design movement in duplexes is the ”mansion”
style, in which the building is made to look like one large home embracing variety in roof lines and exterior detailing.
Johnston`s Woodlands of Fiore duplexes and Lannert`s Timbers units exemplify that style. The Timbers duplexes ”look like one building in massing as well as roof-line definition,” Lannert said. ”It`s not matchbook or symmetrical. If you had a picture of either of the units from any side you would not be able to tell where the dividing line was. It`s a trend in most of the new duplexes.”
Another approach, followed by Cambridge Homes, is to stress the individuality of each unit. Cambridge`s garden homes look like two quite separate houses attached at the side. Each unit is painted a different color. Brown said his interior-decorating staff carefully coordinated the exterior color scheme, but the approach does not suit everyone. Garden homes resident Donna Powell, a commercial artist, complained about the streetscape created by the varying colors. ”It`s a sea of silly pastels,” she snorted.
