Call it a cross between a townhouse and a single-family home. For Joy Schulz, 38, and her husband Scott, 42, buying a duplex home is getting the best of both worlds.
The Schulzes are among the growing number of suburban Chicago buyers opting for two-unit attached housing, either to simplify life or to trim new-home costs.
“We have an almost 3,000-square-foot home now and my husband spends a lot of time out of state, so I end up doing a lot of the maintenance,” said Joy Schulz.
Initially, the couple looked at townhouses and smaller single-family houses, but they bought a duplex because it provides the space for Joy Schulz’s two youngsters from a previous marriage, will take less to maintain and because “we felt comfortable with the fact they started under $200,000,” Schulz said.
Pressed by rising land costs and municipal requests, Chicago-area builders are showing a growing array of an old alternative that is becoming new again: the duplex home, a two-unit attached style unit that allows people to have more privacy and green space than the typical townhouse at an affordable price.
It was popular years ago, as Americans realized that if two households share a piece of property and one wall, they could save money.
Gradually, the concept fell out of favor. But duplexes are seeing a strong revival among empty-nesters and younger families.
About 40 developments in the metropolitan area are offering the attached dwellings, a number sharply higher than five years ago when “there were only a handful,” said housing consultant Steve Hovany.
The style is reappearing because “single-family home prices have been escalating in the Chicago area. The gap between the prices of townhouses and single-family homes is widening,” said consultant Erik Doersching, vice president of Schaumburg-based Tracy Cross & Associates, a real estate analysis company.
Builders have found ways to get greater density in townhouse projects and now often put eight units where six units used to be built, Doersching said.
Meanwhile, “lot sizes are inching up a little bit” for new single-family homes, he said. The higher costs of land plus materials and labor are pushing house prices beyond a growing number of buyers.
To reach those buyers, builders of new home developments are adding duplexes to provide a progression of prices and sizes in their model lineups.
Nowhere is the trend more apparent than in suburbs at the fringe of the metropolitan area.
“In essence, you are building two homes for the price of one,” noted Doersching, who added a duplex can be built on a slightly larger home site than a house and “you can spread the building and development costs. There are economies of scale.”
In addition, there are minor cost reductions for siding and windows because there is one less wall, said Peggy Taheri, vice president of sales and marketing for Wheaton-based Smykal Associates, which is building duplexes in southwest suburban Channahon.
Further, some municipalities are asking for the inclusion of duplexes, builders maintain.
“From our experience, municipalities are sensitive to density,” said Jeanne Martini, director of sales and marketing for Edward R. James Homes, Glenview.
Local officials prefer a two-unit building surrounded by landscaping to six units on the same spot, she said.
“It gives more of a neighborhood feel. It has a lot of character to it,” said Martini, whose company has planned 12 duplex units at the Waterbury Place development in Buffalo Grove.
Laura McKay, marketing manager for the Illinois division of Centex Homes, said Joliet officials asked Centex for duplexes in the Sable Ridge development because “they were interested in having a product appealing to empty-nesters and active adults because those people don’t add any additional people to the school system.”
Doersching said the market for duplexes is “bipolar” because there are two main buyer groups: those on a tight budget, such as first-time homeowners or single-parents, and mature homeowners downsizing to a simpler lifestyle or less maintenance.
Hovany, of Strategy Planning Associates, Schaumburg, who tracks suburban Chicago new-homes sales, credits aging Baby Boomers for a large part of the duplex re-emergence.
“It turns out the duplex is a very popular move-down option,” he said. “The homes can be large and have lots of light because they are like two end units of townhouses.”
He said a duplex home typically is more expensive than a townhouse and bigger.
There is room “for more stuff” which appeals to buyers who have accumulated possessions for years, Hovany said.
Most developers have learned to downplay the term “duplex,” preferring to use such labels as villas, village homes, carriage homes or country homes.
“When people hear the term duplex, they think older and boring. In a couple of our communities, the homes really don’t have any resemblance to anything built 30 years ago,” McKay said.
The look of the homes varies from side-by-side one- and two-story models to combinations of ranch, raised-ranch and multifloor residences, some designed to look like single-family mansions. Ranch-style homes or floor plans with main-floor master bedroom suites, often with second-floor bedrooms for visiting family or guests, are particularly popular for mature buyers tired of climbing stairs.
Most duplexes are sold fee-simple; so the buyer owns both the unit and the land on which it sits. That means no condo-style association fees–and no one to do exterior maintenance or cutting the lawn.
While that would seem to contradict the appeal to buyers looking to downsize, in fact there are buyers who don’t mind doing a limited amount of yard and exterior work to avoid monthly maintenance fees, said Doersching.
“It may not sound like much, but it adds up and some buyers would rather not pay it,” he noted.
For the builder with the right design and price, there are immediate rewards.
Smykal Associates opened three 1,600-to-1,800-square-foot models in Ravine Woods in Channahon in mid-February. Although duplexes were new for the company, it sold 26 units in the first four weeks.
“It took our breath away,” said Taheri. By June 1, the company had sold 35 of the planned 72 homes.
In addition to downsizers, young families, single parents and working couples, most from within 20 miles of the development, bought the homes, she said.
“The woman who bought the unit next to us is a single mother with a young child,” noted Joy Schulz. She hopes the neighbor’s child might be a playmate for her own children, whose father has purchased a single-family house in the same development. “It was very good for the kids. They can run back and forth,” Schulz said.
Ironically, Smykal had “tested the market [for duplexes] three years ago and it was such a single-family market that we decided not to do them.”
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