HBA Newswatch
March 27, 2008
BUILDERS ADD AMENITIES IN CHALLENGING MARKET
By Eileen Dallabrida
Business Ledger Contributing Writer
In addition to new homes, builders are structuring packages to attract buyers in a challenging real estate market. They're cooking up custom kitchens and serving up hardwood floors, on the house. Most of all, they're making it easier for consumers to pay their mortgages.
In a market where sellers are competing for buyers, builders also are emphasizing features that set the new home market apart from resale properties.
Wayne Megill of Megill Homes, a West Chester-based builder of luxury homes in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland, says there's a growing trend toward making energy-efficient amenities standard, including insulated-glass windows and tankless hot water systems.
"You aren't going to find those features in resale homes," he says.
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EAC PLANS TO INSPECT, PROTECT TREES AT REEVES PROPERTY
By Brian McCarthy, bmccarthy@phoenixvillenews.com
SCHUYLKILL — The environmental advisory council plans on conducting a tree walk of the Reeves Property Friday, April 11, to see what trees would be removed and which should be saved for the proposed 51-lot subdivision on the property.
The EAC will accompany representatives from applicants Pohlig Builders on the walk after normal business hours when members of the EAC will be available. The date was also chosen, EAC chairwoman Marlou Gregory explained, as new members of the EAC would be officially appointed by then.
Prior to the EAC’s scheduling of the tree walk, supervisor James Morrisson presented the EAC with photos and a map he had created of trees within the site of a proposed bridge that would span the northern and southern sides of the development.
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ROADWORK CLOSES DENTON HOLLOW FOR ONE WEEK
The supervisors passed a resolution adopting a sewer district within the township for the Toll Brothers/Sheeder Tract development as well as a few adjacent businesses along Pocopson Road and Routes 52 and 926.
The area includes all of the 150-plus homes in the development as well as roughly 40 other commercial sites, including Simon Pearce, Brandywine Hardware along Pocopson Road and the Shoppes at Lenape along 52.
"This is an ordinance regarding the Toll Brothers Plant allowing the township provisions to bill the customers so they can pay for their sewage treatment and reimburse the plant," said board member Lauressa McNemar. "It took our existing sewer ordinance and created a temporary sewer district to cover that development and allow that billing to occur."
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OLEY CONSIDERS AUCTIONING OPEN SPACE
By Jennifer Hetrick, Special to The Mercury
What once was saved as open space could become room for more homes.
Rep. David Kessler, 130th Dist., spent two years negotiating with the DePaul Group of Blue Bell to save land bordered by Friedensburg, Old State and Rieff roads in the township.
The DePaul Group started out with 190 acres, Kessler said. His efforts finally convinced the group that on the three dozen acres it retained, the land would best be used as a community for people beyond age 55, and DePaul donated 160 of them to the township in 2006. The DePaul Group originally planned to build houses on the bulk of those acres.
The agreement Kessler catalyzed was a huge success in terms of preserving the area and not commercializing more land, but now the township supervisors want to auction it off for homes.
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