PARK PLACE For sale: Delaware County home now housing owners’ prized Porsches
parked where lounge chairs might ordinarily sit.
“I thought, ‘Jeez, what a great way to enjoy my hobby and collection,’ ” said Craver, owner of the custom home-building company Paul L. Craver Housewright.
“Instead of having them in some barn 10 miles away or some garage that’s cold in the winter and hot in the summer, I thought, ‘I’ll just put them in the house with me.’ ”
As the year comes to a close, I've added some last-minute items to my 2018 housing wish list.
In no particular order, here's what I'd like to see in the new year:
■ Affordable housing: The revival of the housing market has been a boom to owners and to the economy overall. But it has come at a price for those on the lower rung of the ladder who find it increasingly difficult to afford shelter.
While affordable housing builders scramble, they cannot begin to keep up with demand. Agencies such as Homes on the Hill, Homeport, Habitat for Humanity and Healthy Homes also do yeoman's work trying to help lowincome residents afford a place to stay.
The city has also stepped in, most recently by capping the rent of 20 percent of housing in the planned development next to COSI in Franklinton.
Despite such efforts, the affordable housing battle is being lost.
■ Caution: Home prices and sales show few signs of calming, as buyers compete for every nice listing under $400,000. But a faint whiff of the housing crash hovers in the air. Booming prices, multiple offers, sight-unseen bids and increasingly lower underwriting standards by federal agencies all sound eerily familiar.
The forces underlying housing — job and income growth, household formation and interest rates — remain sound, but a little perspective may in order.
■ The $250,000 new home: This may be the holy grail of central Ohio housing. Demand for housing in central Ohio may be unprecedented, but builders haven't fully capitalized on it yet. Every builder knows
what the market wants: new, well-designed homes in a good school districts close to the city for under $250,000.
But hitting that price is too often a deal breaker. Instead of $250,000, new central Ohio homes cost more than $350,000 (in Delaware County, they top $400,000 on average).
If builders can crack that nut, central Ohio housing would hum along far more smoothly.
■ The bigger picture: Realestate agents and their political mouthpieces have screamed for months that the housing sky would fall if Congress tweaked the mortgageinterest deduction.
On my 2018 wish: that they also acknowledge the moral and fiscal implications of a policy of underwriting half- million- dollar home purchases while millions of Americans can't afford housing.
■ Innovative design: Central Ohio has a great legacy of cutting- edge residential design, from Rush Creek Village in Worthington to Sessions Village in Bexley to the Miranova condominium building Downtown. But too many new multifamily buildings fail to rise above pleasantly inoffensive.
Happily, there are exceptions, such as: Jeff Edwards' Neighborhood Launch development; Kaufman Development's projects, including the intriguing Gravity building rising on West Broad Street; Hubbard Park Place in the Short North, built by the Wood Companies and Schiff Capital Group; and Casto's renovation of the Barrett Middle School.
Here's hoping 2018 brings more.