improving Lakewood by micromanaging rental properties
Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 9:41 am
Mayor and others at the city - congratulations - this is a good first step. Rather than work with landlords like Gray, though, let me suggest that the city just purchase the properties outright. Then, you can have city workers or city-hired contractors convert the doubles. If you need funding, just create or increase a tax for it. I know money is tight now at city hall, after removal of the cappuccino machines.
Doug
Lakewood tired of seeing double on its streets
Planners map out a course to rehab duplexes
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Kaye Spector
Plain Dealer Reporter
Lakewood -- Saturated with rentals and hoping to increase the number of single-family homes, the city is looking for a way to thin its legions of double houses.
As a pilot project, Lakewood city planners recently drew up architectural plans at no cost for a local rehabber to convert a Cook Road two-family colonial into a single-family home.
The hope is to develop a standard plan for others to renovate duplexes into singles without pricing the houses out of the market.
The local rehabber, Jonathan Gray, is having the plans priced out to see what the conversion would cost.
One contractor recently submitted a bid of around $50,000, which was almost twice what Gray expected.
Gray figures that if he buys doubles for around $140,000, he could invest about $30,000 to still be able to sell the converted homes for profit.
Lakewood's pilot project is the latest effort -- among others being made in area communities with a high number of duplexes -- to stave off the decline that doubles are feared to bring.
Duplexes had their heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, around the time Lakewood and other inner-ring suburbs were developing. The double homes were ideal for first-time homebuyers with a small cash flow. Typically, the owner lived in one part and rented out the other to help pay the mortgage.
But after World War II, families increasingly wanted homes with more privacy on large, suburban lots. As the owner-landlords moved out, absentee landlords took over many of the properties.
Half of Lakewood's duplexes don't have live-in landlords. City officials in Lakewood and other communities worry about absentee owners who minimize maintenance to maximize profit.
Lakewood officials are worried, too, that the selling price of many of the city's doubles have fallen from around $150,000 several years ago to around $120,000, city Planning Director Thomas Jordan said. Nearly 200 duplexes are on the market, he said.
Among larger cities in Ohio, only East Cleveland, Cincinnati and two college towns -- Bowling Green and Kent -- have a higher percentage of renters.
Lakewood Mayor Thomas George said one of the goals in a recent Grow Lakewood task force report was to "create aggressive incentives for owner occupancy of doubles."
"With so many rental properties in Lakewood, a lot of the two-families are obsolete," George said. "This is a real opportunity to capitalize on their large square footage and good location."
In 2004, the First Suburbs Development Council, a 14-city group formed to reinvigorate older Cleveland suburbs, paid for a project that gutted an 83-year-old up-and-down duplex in Cleveland Heights and turned it into side-by-side condominiums with owner occupancy as a goal.
The condos went on the market in late 2004; one side as yet remains unsold, said Rick Wagner, Cleveland Heights housing program manager. It might have helped if more similar condos were on the street, he said.
"It's hard for one to be a pioneer," Wagner said.
The city of Euclid has converted some side-by-side doubles into condos as well, said Kathleen Ruane, a Cleveland Heights vice city manager involved with the First Suburbs group.
Cities with two-family houses are looking for ways to bring owner-occupancy back, Ruane said.
And in Cleveland, 13 historic two-family homes dating from 1910 are being converted into single-family, for-sale residences on East 105th Street between Wade Park and Ashbury avenues. Famicos Foundation, a community development corporation, is handling the project.
Lakewood's Jordan said the First Suburbs' experience with the Cleveland Heights double inspired him to come up with a different approach.
"I didn't think the Cleveland Heights model would work," he said. "I am very interested in getting a model that we can use with very little public assistance."
After talking with real estate agents, Jordan believes that homebuyers are extremely resistant to buying duplexes.
"No one wants to go back to a double," Jordan said. "Everyone starts in a double."
The city chose Gray, in part, because he owned a duplex that was on a street with other single-family homes, Jordan said. The goal is for the new single-family home to blend with the rest of the neighborhood. "We're bringing some nice single-family living back to the city," Gray said.
When completed, the home will measure 2,000 square feet, with 2½ baths, an in-law suite, a great room, a master bedroom suite and a deck. Gone will be the roofed second-floor porch that marks the 1909 home as a double.
"It reflects what people need in the market today," Jordan said.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
kspector@plaind.com, 216-999-3904
Doug
Lakewood tired of seeing double on its streets
Planners map out a course to rehab duplexes
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Kaye Spector
Plain Dealer Reporter
Lakewood -- Saturated with rentals and hoping to increase the number of single-family homes, the city is looking for a way to thin its legions of double houses.
As a pilot project, Lakewood city planners recently drew up architectural plans at no cost for a local rehabber to convert a Cook Road two-family colonial into a single-family home.
The hope is to develop a standard plan for others to renovate duplexes into singles without pricing the houses out of the market.
The local rehabber, Jonathan Gray, is having the plans priced out to see what the conversion would cost.
One contractor recently submitted a bid of around $50,000, which was almost twice what Gray expected.
Gray figures that if he buys doubles for around $140,000, he could invest about $30,000 to still be able to sell the converted homes for profit.
Lakewood's pilot project is the latest effort -- among others being made in area communities with a high number of duplexes -- to stave off the decline that doubles are feared to bring.
Duplexes had their heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, around the time Lakewood and other inner-ring suburbs were developing. The double homes were ideal for first-time homebuyers with a small cash flow. Typically, the owner lived in one part and rented out the other to help pay the mortgage.
But after World War II, families increasingly wanted homes with more privacy on large, suburban lots. As the owner-landlords moved out, absentee landlords took over many of the properties.
Half of Lakewood's duplexes don't have live-in landlords. City officials in Lakewood and other communities worry about absentee owners who minimize maintenance to maximize profit.
Lakewood officials are worried, too, that the selling price of many of the city's doubles have fallen from around $150,000 several years ago to around $120,000, city Planning Director Thomas Jordan said. Nearly 200 duplexes are on the market, he said.
Among larger cities in Ohio, only East Cleveland, Cincinnati and two college towns -- Bowling Green and Kent -- have a higher percentage of renters.
Lakewood Mayor Thomas George said one of the goals in a recent Grow Lakewood task force report was to "create aggressive incentives for owner occupancy of doubles."
"With so many rental properties in Lakewood, a lot of the two-families are obsolete," George said. "This is a real opportunity to capitalize on their large square footage and good location."
In 2004, the First Suburbs Development Council, a 14-city group formed to reinvigorate older Cleveland suburbs, paid for a project that gutted an 83-year-old up-and-down duplex in Cleveland Heights and turned it into side-by-side condominiums with owner occupancy as a goal.
The condos went on the market in late 2004; one side as yet remains unsold, said Rick Wagner, Cleveland Heights housing program manager. It might have helped if more similar condos were on the street, he said.
"It's hard for one to be a pioneer," Wagner said.
The city of Euclid has converted some side-by-side doubles into condos as well, said Kathleen Ruane, a Cleveland Heights vice city manager involved with the First Suburbs group.
Cities with two-family houses are looking for ways to bring owner-occupancy back, Ruane said.
And in Cleveland, 13 historic two-family homes dating from 1910 are being converted into single-family, for-sale residences on East 105th Street between Wade Park and Ashbury avenues. Famicos Foundation, a community development corporation, is handling the project.
Lakewood's Jordan said the First Suburbs' experience with the Cleveland Heights double inspired him to come up with a different approach.
"I didn't think the Cleveland Heights model would work," he said. "I am very interested in getting a model that we can use with very little public assistance."
After talking with real estate agents, Jordan believes that homebuyers are extremely resistant to buying duplexes.
"No one wants to go back to a double," Jordan said. "Everyone starts in a double."
The city chose Gray, in part, because he owned a duplex that was on a street with other single-family homes, Jordan said. The goal is for the new single-family home to blend with the rest of the neighborhood. "We're bringing some nice single-family living back to the city," Gray said.
When completed, the home will measure 2,000 square feet, with 2½ baths, an in-law suite, a great room, a master bedroom suite and a deck. Gone will be the roofed second-floor porch that marks the 1909 home as a double.
"It reflects what people need in the market today," Jordan said.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
kspector@plaind.com, 216-999-3904