A housing development first dreamed up in a Miami office 71 years ago finally is rising from the sandy soil of southern Leon County near here. And though the cozy houses aren’t exactly going for 1926 prices, they’re designed for first-time home buyers on a tight budget.
The 63-lot development of homes prices from $59,000 to $64,000 is a public-private partnership that has been cobbled together in the last few months. But the team, consisting of county and city officials, Barnett Bank, the Tallahassee Lenders Consortium, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a new construction company called Blackjack Enterprises, is moving quickly to fill a void in the Tallahassee housing market, the partners say.
“This really hasn’t been done quite like this before,” said Blackjack co-owner David Draughon.
“This” is Capital City Estates, a neighborhood first platted by a Miami development company in the mid-1920s, when Tallahassee was just a town of 2.3 square miles that was home to about 10,000 people.
Then, as now, the development actually lies outside the capital city. Though some of the roads, and houses alongside them, were put in long ago, part of the neighborhood remained a forest.
Draughon and his partner, Rick Register, aim to change that. The first of the houses that will complete the neighborhood is already up, a light-blue model home on a 50-foot-wide lot.
They have 62 more to go, but with all the help they’ve been getting and all the demand for affordable homes, Register and Draughon expect all those houses will be spoken for within a year.
That won’t be the end of it, they say. With an eye on similar properties elsewhere nearby, Register and Draughon say that niche is big enough to keep them busy for some time.
There are plenty of houses for sale in Leon County. The problem is that most of them are going for at least $90,000. For house hunters on a budget, the pickings are slim.
The affordable housing market is drying up, said Lucy Shepard, the county’s director of housing and human services. Two years ago, the $60,000 per year the county spends on its down payment assistance program was gone in a flash. This year, the money has only just run out–at the very end of the county’s fiscal year.
“The reason for that is pretty clear,” said Shepard. “People who’d like to buy houses can’t find anything in their price range.”
So when Draughon and Register came knocking in June, offering to buy a handful of lots the county owned in Capital City Estates, light bulbs went on in the County Courthouse.
Under the name Blackjack Enterprises, the pair already had arranged to buy the bulk of the undeveloped lots from local businessman Lex Thompson. When county officials learned of the plan, they saw an opportunity to launch an affordable housing project.
Draughon, who owns his own masonry business, and Register, owner of Big Bend Septic Tank Co., were receptive. Undertaking their first large-scale development, they were happy to have a hand.
This was the deal that was struck: County officials offered to get the project hooked up to city water lines, and to use their weight to help line up financing with Barnett Bank. The county benefited by encouraging development and shaping the project through its input.
The development will feature mostly three-bedroom homes of 1,060 square feet priced at $64,000. Smaller two-bedroom homes at $59,000 will be also available. The county’s down payment assistance program and the Tallahassee Lenders Consortium will offer financial and technical help to low- and middle-income buyers.
Barnett, which is financing the Blackjack project, has done something to make the houses even more affordable.
Capital City Estates is just inside Capital Circle, a line beyond which area home buyers may qualify for the Rural Housing Loan Program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture program finances 100 percent of new homes for eligible low- to middle-income home buyers. At the request of Barnett, the Department of Agriculture adjusted that line a tad so that Capital City Estates falls within it.
So why have Draughon and Register–whose biggest project to date has been a stretch of eight townhomes– chosen this as the first real test of their new business?
“There’s a market for it,” said Register. “There’s no one doing it.”
There’s a good reason for that, builders will tell you.
Nobody can make any money at it. It’s only due to special circumstances that Blackjack can make a go of it, the owners said.
First, they got the lots at a good price–about $7,500 apiece, well below the $12,000 appraisal. And, because the development was platted so long ago, they don’t have to observe many of the building requirements passed since then–including sewers, sidewalks and larger lots. That will save Blackjack about $100,000 over the course of this project, they estimate.
“The reason we can make this work,” said Draughon, “is the cost of the property.”
Draughon and Register say they’re committed to building on the south side. Both are longtime south-side residents, and named their company after a type of oak tree–the blackjack–that thrives in the sandy soil of southern Leon County.
Already, the men have set their sights on another project, the Pine Ridge mobile-home park off Crawfordville Highway. Draughon and Register said they are talking with businessman Thompson, who also owns that land, about buying those 200-odd lots and putting in the same type of homes that will soon line Oleander and Hibiscus avenues.
“I think there’s a need for this type of thing,” Draughon said, “and not that many people try to do it.”
