By Emily Williams
Downsizing to a smaller home no longer means downgrading your lifestyle to fit in a smaller space. With the “jewel box” house trend taking over, buying a smaller home in a new community often includes an upgrade.
The trend toward smaller houses with quality materials and detailing along with custom built-ins has been growing steadily for more than a decade.
It is a style of homebuilding embraced by developers in Over the Mountain communities, where land is often limited but luxury is often expected.
One such company is Embridge Homes, which is developing two new communities in the Lake Wilborn area of Hoover, The Parc and Water’s Ridge.
Both communities offer homes ranging from three to five bedrooms that go all out on the interior finishes, while keeping lot sizes on the smaller side to promote walkability within the community.
“For this neighborhood (The Parc), in particular, probably about half of our buyers are downsizing,” said Kristi Parker, one of the three Embridge Realty real estate agents who serve the communities.
Parker, along with her fellow agents Karen Wallis and Kyle Forstman, has seen intense growth in the market for downsizers over the past three to four years.
“In the past, people were looking for the big home sites and bigger homes,” said Parker. “Now, that has kind of gone away because developers are developing with smaller home sites.”
While the sites are smaller, the homes are working overtime on the interior to give owners everything they want, as well as a few extras they don’t know they need, “because your kids still come home to visit,” Parker said.
Meet ‘Kellyton’
The Parc’s Kellyton home is the perfect example of a jewel box house.
Builders just finished their latest model for this floor plan, at 2989 Zilphy Street, which offers two ways to live.
“We’re not that cookie-cutter builder,” Wallis. “The homes may look similar on the outside, but inside customers get a lot of choices. They get to make it like a little jewel.”
The basic floorplan features main-level living with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. A staircase near the guest bedrooms leads to a second-floor attic space, which can be finished out to include a second den, as well as a fourth bedroom and third bathroom.
“It actually goes from about 2,100 square feet up to 2,800 square feet, if you choose to finish it out,” Parker said
Guests enter the home, passing through a covered front porch and into a foyer. The style is like a shotgun house, turned up a notch.
Past the foyer is a completely open concept along one side of the house. An open gourmet kitchen with space for a dining table leads to a large den with vaulted ceilings.
“We had about 30+ people in the home (on Jan. 9) and it just flowed so well,” Forstman said. People were able to mingle on the front porch, throughout the living space and spilled out onto a back patio – which features a built-in fireplace.
Two guest bedrooms, one bathroom, a laundry room and a master suite are private access, positioned along short hallways off the main living area.
“What I love most about this home is that this is a 3/2, but you have a flex room,” Parker said. Just slightly smaller than a guest bedroom, the flex room has a double-door entry off the foyer.
“You have the option for a dining room, an office, a study,” Parker said. “It could actually be a playroom. Whatever you needed it for, you’ve got an extra room right there.”
When it comes to creating a jewel, Wallis noted that it’s all about using the space to the max. That means offering plenty of storage and plenty of space in the bedrooms and bathrooms.
“In the end, those are the things that really add up for people,” Wallis said. “They don’t want an itty, bitty, tiny bedroom. They want a bedroom of decent size.”
By leaving the living areas one large shared space, there is more room to fit the walk-in pantry, walk-in bedroom closets and extra space in the bedrooms.
“In your master bathroom, it does feel like that luxury spa,” Wallis said. “We do the freestanding tub, the frameless shower doors and all of that. It may not be the largest in the world, but you aren’t skimping on that quality and that feeling, because you feel like a million bucks in here.”
Though there are plenty of upgrades that can be tacked on to a new build such as this, buyers who are looking to save some cash can expect luxury even at the home’s base pricing.
“Even paired down, you still get quartz countertops,” Wallis said. “You still get hardwood floors. You still get crown molding and a farmhouse sink, the spa bathroom.”
The three things that people typically upgrade are the kitchen, the fireplace and hardwood in the master, which Parker noted are all easy on the wallet.
Another included perk at The Parc is at the back of the house, where the two-car garage also includes a third space for a golf cart.
“If you have a golf cart, it’s perfect, because you can just bee-bop down to the park or the lake,” Parker said. “Not everybody has one, but you do have (a) lawnmower or equipment. Some people want a workstation. You still have people – a lot of men, mostly – who are looking for that tinkering station, and you’ve got a whole sector over there that you can use for that.”
Low Maintenance and Energy Efficient
Luxury that you can see is all good and fine, but the jewel box house offers much more that isn’t as tactile as high-end appliances and cabinetry.
“When someone is retiring, they are looking for something that is going to be their last home, their forever home,” Forstman said. “They are looking 20-30 years out and say, ‘I want to start afresh, so I don’t have any maintenance to do in the foreseeable future.’”
To get into a dream community, such as Homewood, Forstman noted, people looking to save some money while they downsize often lean toward older houses. They then spend a sizable amount renovating the space to get what they want, which is typically a more open concept and more energy efficiency.
New luxury builds like those that Embridge creates are built to be energy efficient and low maintenance, Forstman said.
Embridge, for example, uses a concrete composite form of plank siding, which helps insulate the interior. Low-emissivity windows also insulate by minimizing the amount of infrared and UV light that enters the home.
“My mom lives in one of our houses. I lived in one of our houses, and power bills and gas bills – all of that – they’re great,” Parker said.
“You will not find a room that is a different temperature than the other,” he continued.”
In many cases, Forstman, Parker and Wallis said, people are looking for things their last house didn’t give them.
”We have several plans where you can walk straight into the kitchen,” Parker said. “So, you park in the driveway and you bring your groceries right in. You’d be surprised how many customers have asked for that.”
One of Forstman’s customers was moving out of her tri-level home in Bluff Park, looking specifically for easy access from car to kitchen.
“She said, ‘I’m just so exhausted bringing groceries in,’” Forstman said. “She is widowed, so she was having to do things like lugging the groceries up the stairs all on her own.”
Sense of Community
A major draw, as well, is the sense of community that isn’t as easily obtained while living on a larger plot farther from neighbors.
Forstman had two customers last week who were searching for just that.
“One customer told me she just wanted to be somewhere where she could make some friends,” he said. “Where she is from, she lives on a large lot on a lake. It’s the resort life for her, but, because the lots are so large, people go and hang out on their pier on that lake they have. They don’t socialize with their neighbors.”
His other customers are a young family moving from Mountain Brook into a five-bedroom, four-bathroom house.
“The wife said she would absolutely not move anywhere that didn’t have sidewalks, because they want to be able to get out and walk,” he said. “The appeal for them was to be able to walk to the park. It’s two blocks from their front door to all of that recreation.”
Safety is a bonus for community members, as community spaces such as the park are monitored by cameras. There also are plenty of neighbors around to watch out for each other.
“Last night as I was leaving, there were kids riding their scooters,” Forstman said. “One kid was bouncing his basketball all the way down the sidewalk.”
It made him think about his own two sons. They don’t have the ability to do something like that, as Forstman lives on a busy Hoover street.
Parker noted that, while many of their buyers are downsizing, a multitude are not. Younger families tend to want some of the same things that empty-nesters do: efficiency, community and affordable luxury.
