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Village Square remains largely incomplete IMO because zero lot line homes at $500,000 were a passing fad and when the same money buys you a custom resale in Cary Park on two to three times the lot size these days there is simply no buyer base for that concept. It's hard enough to sell a $500K home of ANY type these days let alone one with no property or backyard privacy.
The rest of Amberly sold out very quickly-it is simply an issue of the product offering in Village Square not aligning with the marketplace.
FYI - there are no $500,000 homes for sale in Amberly Village Square. And, they are custom homes.
Pulte is planning on building in the land currently owned by the Carpenter family on Green Level Church Rd north of McCrimmon Pkwy. There are no known or public plans to build in the undeveloped portion of Village Square.
Sheesh, doesn't anyone around these message boards do any kind of Googling for 5 seconds before posting "I think I heard...."
To be fair to h2ohzrd, I heard the same thing about Pulte trying to buy some of the unsold lots in Amberly from a Pulte agent. And I know Pulte is trying to buy the lot next to Weycroft since I live there and have been involved in a few of the town meetings.
Actually a majority of Amberly is already built out.
Nice try though.
Guys, no ill intentions here by the post. I found this comment above to be interesting. Have to admit, I am not blind, but some of you might miss the areas around these streets in Amberly, and this is the reason for my post:
Mountain Maple
Chalk Maple
Overcup Oak
Sand Pine
Bluff Oak
etc.. etc.
There must be at least 100 open lots (probably more, based on the size of the lots).
Thanks for all your inputs. I hadnt heard about some of the other comments provided.
FYI - there are no $500,000 homes for sale in Amberly Village Square. And, they are custom homes.
FYI-
I never disputed that they were Custom Homes. They many not be anywhere near $500K anymore, but I was in the market in 2007 for a home in that price range and in fact bought one, but not in Village Square. At that time the neighborhood was priced either side of $500,000 for the square footage I was seeking-I walked thru quite a few such homes in Village Square. I stand by my assertion that those homes were overpriced out of the gate and that led to the extremely slow sellthrough in Village Square relative to every other section of Amberly with the possible exception of The Peninsula (which carries a different set of liabilities). Some of the first run of parade homes in Village Square along the South side of McCrimmon Parkway took YEARS to sell-those homes were permitted in the fall of 2006 and were complete in Q2 2007-most were unsold and unoccupied well into 2009.
The single family section Village Square was a flawed concept at the original price point. The developer and builders were very slow to adapt to a changing market and lost any traction they may have had (I personally don't think they ever had any).
The other sections of Amberly sold out with great speed because there was a strong perceived VALUE in those sections-the KB buyer is a price driven square footage buyer who is ok buying a beige box if the price is right and the Pulte buyer (Blackstone) is also looking for value. KB and Pulte were positioned to receive renters from Morrisville and middle income transplants-Village Square was priced for relocating executives with $100K plus annual incomes and the great majority of them wanted more property. When the market was rolling along people were willing to borrow another $50-$100K to step up into Cameron Pond, Weycroft, and Horton's Creek and get a lot with some semblance of privacy as opposed to an alley backyard lot in Village Square. I was living in Cary Park at the time, and I chose to move to the other side of Cary where the same money bought me a .33 acre lot that backs up to woods and a Custom Home with a walkout basement for what I would have spent on a home in Village Square that was barely far enough apart from the adjacent home to walk in between the two houses. I might as well have bought a townhouse in Village Square-in fact that's what people did. The beautiful townhomes on the North side of McCrimmon Parkway were priced like the single family homes in Village Square, and those sold thru very quickly and remain in demand as resales because they make sense at the price point.
The same concept that failed in Village Square is also failing in Renaissance Park in Raleigh-people will not spend upwards of $400K for a 3000 SF single family home with no property and no privacy. The weakest sections of most Master-Planned communities across the Triangle are the ones that are most like VIllage Square.
The village square concept definitely appeals to a much narrower range of buyer, that's for sure. The best way to to it would be like Carpenter Village with the retail nearby. Of course they found that most retail and food want to be more centrally located and they only got two or three buildings done. Now they are going to do residential there.
Guys, no ill intentions here by the post. I found this comment above to be interesting. Have to admit, I am not blind, but some of you might miss the areas around these streets in Amberly, and this is the reason for my post:
Mountain Maple
Chalk Maple
Overcup Oak
Sand Pine
Bluff Oak
etc.. etc.
There must be at least 100 open lots (probably more, based on the size of the lots).
Thanks for all your inputs. I hadnt heard about some of the other comments provided.
So what exactly are you asking? Or are you simply making an observation?
The village square concept definitely appeals to a much narrower range of buyer, that's for sure. The best way to to it would be like Carpenter Village with the retail nearby. Of course they found that most retail and food want to be more centrally located and they only got two or three buildings done. Now they are going to do residential there.
Carpenter Village worked because it was a pretty unique concept when they broke ground-there was virtually no activity West of 55 at that time. It was also realistically priced-I looked at homes in CV in late 2002 before buying in Cary Park and while I decided that the concept wasn't for me at that time I didn't think for a minute that the homes were overpriced.
What should have happened in Village Square was to give the single family section to a builder like McNeill Burbank who could have put up decently detailed and built homes that felt different than Amberly's other single family offerings at a fair price point and kept Village Square's single family entry point below $300K and the typical transaction price in the mid $300s-I think it could be sold out today if that had happened.
That couldn't have worked, though-the lots were too costly. McNeill Burbank was paying around $45K for similar sized lots in Cary Park just a few years earlier and burned thru 110 lots-the Village Square builders paid upwards of $80K for lots in the first phase. While the location is very different, McNeill Burbank built and sold hundreds of the types of homes that should have been in Village Square down in Sunset Oaks on lots of around .16 acres that they were paying $50K or less for and Dennis Fitzgerald did his very successful run of Cottages in Sunset Oaks on small lots. People will buy small lot homes and pay decent $/SF for them but when you get to 28-2900 SF you are talking about a family home and families want a backyard at $400K and up.
The developer was greedy and working right up against the maximum densities allowed (and encouraged) by the Town of Cary. TOC was looking for maximum tax revenue-10 lots per acre at an assessed value of $80K for the lot and $400K for the house sitting on it sounds pretty good to bean counters. The builders were short-sighted and so used to operating in a lottery situation to get their lots that they didn't step back and say "who is going to want this product?" In the end, the buyers weren't there.
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