Real estate developer Lee Schaefer is hovering over a model of his company’s latest swinging-singles complex in Nashville. As he surveys the scene, complete with bikini-clad quarter-inch-figures frolicking by a pool, he plucks out a tiny plastic figure from a reject pile — a senior citizen with white hair and a cane.
“That’s really not our target demographic,” he says.
Schaefer’s Bristol Development Group is pitching the project, Velocity, to twenty- and thirty-something professionals willing to trade space (as little as 535 square feet) for affordability (as low as $165,000) and a chance to live in a hot urban neighborhood.
Developers across the country are appealing to young buyers — many of them single, almost all without children — with buildings that promise not just an affordable first home but also a great social life. The amenities tell the story: video game lounges and outdoor fire pits, rooftop soaking tubs, on-site bars and poolside drinks.
But it’s not so easy to control demographics in the open market. Some of the buildings are drawing unexpected buyers: people old enough to be the parents of the kids down the hall. And that’s leading to territorial conflicts, social snubs — even boardroom coups.
Such concerns are multiplying as the new buildings fill up with a mix of residents who range broadly in age.
In Denver, about half of the units in the recently completed Glass House sold to empty nesters, despite youth-oriented amenities such as a video game lounge and a Web site that promises “cool bars” and “a fresh vibe.” When Viridian opened last October in Nashville, most locals expected the high-rise to draw young buyers looking for a chance to live downtown.
It did, but it also attracted people like Julie Lammel, a speech pathologist in her early 50s who moved there from a suburb where most of her neighbors were in her own age group.
Lammel says that while the atmosphere at Viridian has been largely cordial, the building has already developed “cliques” and there have been some tensions. Lammel describes the pool scene, for example, as an “animal house.”
“One time I went up there and the twentysomethings had the whole place monopolized,” she recalls, “and I thought, Well, not today.”
The new developments are a throwback to the sort of singles-oriented complexes that were popular in the ’60s and ’70s. But unlike those rental projects, the latest iterations are geared to young people hankering to buy.
Developers see opportunity in the demographics. According to a study by the National Association of Home Builders, “echo boomers” — those born after 1978 — are twice as likely as people ages 46 to 64 to be house-hunting in the next two years.
At the same time, as Americans marry and have children later, the purchases of first-time buyers are more likely to be townhouses and downtown condos than suburban ranches. Married couples now make up 61 percent of buyers, according to the National Association of Realtors, down from 70 percent a decade ago.
And many of the young buyers want their neighbors to be more like them. Ricky Florita, a 29-year-old mortgage banker in Nashville, says he avoided buying in Viridian in part because he heard it was attracting “an older crowd.”
Instead, he signed a contract for a $160,000 condo in Icon, another project by Bristol Development, that will feature a media lounge and a pool plaza with “grilling cabanas” when it opens next year. “I really think it’s going to be a singles scene,” Florita says. “Every time you were in the sales center, you saw really attractive women buying these condos.”
Regardless of who’s signing the contract, many of the condos targeting singles are selling. Atlanta’s Novare Group says it has sold more than 4,000 units throughout the Sun Belt since 2002, most of them for less than $275,000, and all of the buildings have sold out within a year of opening. The 417-unit Icon, Bristol’s first such development in Nashville, sold out in two weeks. And Lifestyle Communities in Columbus, Ohio, says it sold nearly 500 condos last year, even as area sales slowed overall. Two-bedroom townhouses start at $119,000.
It’s 11 p.m. on a Friday night and the crowd at the Goat erupts as Jamie Blackford, 31, pulls off a rare 7-10 split in the bar’s bowling video game. The Goat is located in Preserve Crossing, a complex developed by Lifestyle Communities in a suburb of Columbus.
Many homeowners there say the scene at onsite facilities such as the Goat, the pool and the volleyball court was a big draw. “That was half the reason I moved here,” says Mike Prozy, a 27-year-old mortgage broker. “To meet people and have a great bar down the street.” Many of the complex’s residents are in their 20s and 30s.
But seated at the bar not far from the bowling game is John Heck, a 54-year-old senior district manager for Waste Management who says he visits the Goat at least once a week. “I think I know my place,” he says. “I’m not out looking to hit on the women.”
Many younger residents, however, say they chose to live there precisely because there wouldn’t be a lot of people Heck’s age.
Beth Paumier, a 29-year-old school psychologist, considered buying a place in other developments that attracted older residents. “They just kind of had that depressing feel,” she says.
