Active-adult communities sell a dream
Older baby boomers find new ways to live, learn
One of the attractions on a recent day at Seasons at Laurel Canyon was an exhibition tennis match.
Donna and Curtis Finney are swept up in a social whirl where "everybody wants to meet everybody, and everybody loves everybody," said Curtis, 59.
With hundreds of retirees and early baby boomers now moving into metro Atlanta's new active-adult communities and even more communities like them on the drawing board, a new blueprint for life after 55 is taking shape.
Active-adult communities are suburban subdivisions whose residents must be 55 or older. Typically, these developments contain such home designs as master suites on main floors, and optional services, such as housekeeping and lawn maintenance, that appeal to people who want to spend less time with taxing chores. These communities also offer coordinated leisure activities geared to social interaction and physical fitness.
The prototypical active-adult buyer is swapping decades of equity and savings to realize pent-up dreams. With life expectancy increasing and baby boomers set to enjoy a healthier retirement span than any previous generation — not to mention the largest intergenerational transfer of inherited wealth — developers are probing their habits and appealing to their preferences to capture housing and leisure dollars.
"What we try to do is create a lifestyle," said Bob Rademacher, Atlanta division executive for Levitt & Sons, the developer of Seasons. "It's how you're going to live. Once you've decided that [lifestyle] fits you, we can find you a house."
The first phase of Pulte/Del Webb's the Village at Deaton Creek in Hall County is 80 percent sold in 12 months and, despite a slumping market for other types of housing, sales remain brisk.
According to real estate database Metrostudy, Deaton Creek was the top-selling active-adult community in a metro Atlanta market that currently contains a 5.2-month supply of unsold new homes. More than half those homes fall into the same price range as the homes in the Village at Deaton Creek.
Jan Cooper, vice president of operations in Georgia for Pulte/Del Webb, the nation's largest builder of active-adult communities, said the Village is experiencing 25 to 30 closings per month.
"It's doing what we anticipated it would do," Cooper said. "We based a lot of our demand on the local population."
As with the Village at Deaton Creek, Pulte/Del Webb's Sun City will kick off its sales with a series of "lifestyle seminars" at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, May 24-26.
Currently, the company's lead bank contains 11,000 names, said David Vitek, president of Pulte/Del Webb's south Georgia division. Sales at Deaton Creek were launched with lifestyle seminars at nearby Château Élan last year.
Plans also are under way for a third Pulte/Del Webb active-adult community in Greensboro, east of Atlanta on Lake Oconee.
The national home sales slowdown has affected active-adult sales slightly, but that segment is feeling less of the pinch than other sectors of Pulte's market, said Dave Schreiner, national vice president for active-adult business development at Pulte/Del Webb.
"Interest in our [active-adult] communities, judged by the level of traffic and lead generation, has stayed very high, and we're not seeing any signs of interest waning," Schreiner said.
Florida 'halfbacks'
Cooper said a majority of the Village's residents moved from other parts of the Atlanta area.
A few of the new residents are retirees from the Snow Belt and a few are "halfbacks," people who retired to Florida but came back a little farther north to escape high housing prices, skyrocketing insurance costs and hostile weather.
The Finneys, who previously lived in Gwinnett County, considered retiring to a Del Webb community in Florida but changed their minds when they learned of the plans for Deaton Creek.
Their decision was confirmed while they were visiting friends near Orlando in February, when a line of tornadoes devastated the community where they were staying.
"Atlanta and the Southeast generally are a very bright spot for us right now," Schreiner said.
Rademacher of Levitt & Sons said the new active-adult strategy is to bring these lifestyle communities closer to the urban centers where retirees spent their careers and family life, maintaining established connections. Earlier lifestyle developments concentrated around resort areas, but now companies like Levitt and Del Webb are bringing the resort sensibility within easy reach.
"Now, it's around the corner and it's local," Rademacher said.
Same stage of life
Uniformly, the new residents of metro Atlanta's active-adult communities said they were attracted to their developments by the prospect of spending time with people at the same stage of life. That sort of self-selection is common.
But how they're spending that time is changing previous images of grizzled geezers in rocking chairs. Contemporary retirees are more likely to rock with their guitars or climb over rocks with rappelling gear.
Cooper said more than 20 interest clubs have already formed among the residents of the Village at Deaton Creek, including a singles club.
The Village's line dancing club is already rehearsing for a performance at the grand opening of the community's clubhouse later this year.
Jim and Nancy Davidson are recent additions to the Village, having moved from their home in Lawrenceville at the end of March. The Davidsons have friends who live happily in Del Webb communities in other parts of the country, and they decided several years ago that the active-adult concept suited their vision of how to live after retirement.
"We knew this is what we wanted. It was just a matter of where to do it," said Nancy.
So far, Jim, 65, and Nancy, 61, have joined the Village book club, walking club and a bunco card group. They attend luncheons and the endless variety of community seasonal celebrations, such as the upcoming Cinco de Mayo party on Saturday.
And they are looking forward to the clubhouse opening, when even more activity opportunities will open up.
"The activities are almost unlimited," Nancy said. "If they don't have it, just ask and they'll start it for you."
In addition to the outdoor leisure pool and the indoor lap pool, the clubhouse will contain 8,000 square feet of space devoted to fitness including yoga and tai chi as well as a billiard room.
The full-time activities director is coordinating group trips to Braves games and the Georgia Aquarium. Plans for a residents group tour of Australia next year are under way.
Quick friendships
Pulte/Del Webb's Vitek is directing the development of Georgia's first Sun City community in Spalding County. The 3,400-homesite community — roughly half the size of the mammoth Sun City Anthem near Las Vegas — will include a 38,000-square-foot amenity center, a championship golf course and a softball field.
At other Sun City communities, Vitek said, the well-drilled softball teams "are so competitive that they end up playing in the local leagues."
For the new residents of Seasons at Laurel Canyon, a Levitt & Sons community near Canton, community life started in the sales office, long before the moving vans arrived.
Judy and Charlie Dollar, formerly Cobb County residents, encountered a number of their future neighbors as they worked out the details of their new houses. "By the time we moved in, it was like old home week," said Judy, 66.
Bruce Morgan, 60, moved to Seasons from Athens after his daughter graduated from the University of Georgia.
"I loved Athens, but [the neighborhood] was a much younger group of people," Morgan said. Finding companions for social activities was difficult during the day, or even on weeknights when parents were helping kids with homework.
But Seasons has put him into a whole swirl of activity he can join according to his own schedule and preferences.
He started with tennis lessons, even though he's never played seriously before.
"It's like we're 13 years old again and starting all over," Morgan said.
No comments:
Post a Comment