Housing market in Rome is enjoying a mini-boom
Compared to last year, 69 percent more single-family permits have been issued.
Homebuilders in Rome are enjoying a mini-construction boom. “I think it’s just the supply is low and the demand is high,” said Dan Childs, owner of K.C. Homes of Rome. Phillip Burkhalter, owner of Burkhalter Builders, anticipates starting two homes in his Kingswood Estates subdivision off Burnett Ferry Road soon, the first new construction in the subdivision since 2010.
Childs said he’s got a lot of customers who have come to him in recent months who have indicated they really wanted to buy an existing home but couldn’t find anything on the market in Rome that met their wants or needs. “As a result, a lot of people are just having new homes built for them,” Childs said.
Melody Harrison, a Keller Williams real estate agent and president of the Greater Rome Board of Realtors, said as of July 19, there were 367 single-family detached homes available on the Floyd County market. “Anything under $200,000 is pretty much snapped up in no time.” She said the first-time homebuyer market is very slow right now. “If anybody has anything they can sell for under $200,000, they need to put it on the market right now,” Harrison said.
Larry Maxey, president of Lakes Construction Co. said he’s got five new homes presold on Savannah Place, parallel to Garden Lakes Parkway in West Rome. “I think the economy is getting better,” Maxey said. “I guess we’re almost at full employment. Everybody that wants a job has one right now.”
The term “pre-sold” that Maxey used is a key part of the equation. Contractors are not building speculative homes like they did in the ’90s and first decade of the new century.
Burkhalter also believes that consumer confidence in the state of the economy has a lot to do with the increased interest he’s seeing from people interested in building a new home. “I’ve had a few inquiries along the way (over the last couple of years) but none of them serious enough,” Burkhalter said. “I think people this year have a more positive attitude about the economy being safer.”
Last week alone, the Rome-Floyd Building Inspection office issued seven permits for new single-family housing starts. The prices for those homes range from a low of $14,000 to a high of $420,000 and average $282,142. The squarefootage of the new homes varies from 1,650 to 3,560 square feet and averages 2,490 square feet. On average that’s a little more than $113 per square foot.
Rome-Floyd County Building Inspection office Director Howard Gibson said through the first half of the year, the number of permits his office has issued for singlefamily homes has gone up 69 percent over the same period of time a year ago.
Twenty-one permits have been issued inside the city limits through the end of June compared to 13 last year. Seventy-two permits have been approved for unincorporated Floyd County, up from 42 through the first six months of 2016.
Childs said most of the homes he builds are in the 2,800-square-foot range and take five to six months to build. “A lot of times, when I first start talking to somebody they’re looking at options and I’m getting them a price, and that usually takes a couple of months before we actually get started to build,” Childs said.
Childs said people looking to build in Rome like the open-concept home. “Most of my Rome customers at least, they want a master bedroom down, they love being able to live on one level,” Childs said. “We have a few that prefer all the bedrooms up but that’s becoming rare.”
Lately, Childs said he’s typically got anywhere from eight to 10 homes underway at any given time. He’s keeping a lot of sub-contractors busy at sites from North Quarters off Kingston Highway to the Battle Farm subdivision off of Old Summerville Road in the Armuchee area.
Billy Roberson, a painting contractor, isn’t exactly sure who to credit for the increase in new home construction. What he is sure of is business has picked up significantly. “I had three painters this time last year, now I have nine and we’re working several jobs right now,” Roberson said.
Maxey said new construction in Rome has picked up to the point where sub-contractors are becoming hard to find when you need them. He said a lot of the subs went out of business during the housing slump almost a decade ago. “A lot of them had to get a job with insurance and a lot of people who were getting on up there when the slump hit have retired,” Maxey said.
He said the Rome Homebuilders Association is offering four scholarships a year to prospective students who want to learn trades related to the homebuilding field. “We realize there is a shortage and we’re doing what we can,” Maxey said.