LIFESTYLE VILLAS FACE GREEN SPACE
The first villas by Lifestyle Homes are designed to keep neighbours connected and cut costs on monthly energy bills.
The Parkhouses is a boutique 31-unit development for buyers who are 50 years and older. Prices start from the low $500,000s. These villas have a rear-attached garage and are arranged as a pocket neighbourhood within the Okotoks community of Drake Landing.
Pocket neighbourhoods refer to a small group of homes oriented around a common open space, which is intended to serve as an area to meet and bond with neighbours.
This format was a nice fit with the down-sizing segment of the market, says Michael Tandara, sales and marketing manger for Lifestyle Homes.
“It’s a lot quieter,” Tandara says. “Kids are no longer in the house and as they start to scale down, they start to seek that social interaction.”
For the aptly named Parkhouses, the pocket neighbourhood is done around a landscaped courtyard.
“Instead of the homes facing a street lined with driveways and garage doors, they actually all front on to this common green space park that are two little nodes inside the development,” says Tandara. This is the reverse of how some current villa development are laid out, he adds.
At the Parkhouses, maintenance is taken care of, making it easy for snowbirds to travel and not concern themselves with upkeep of their homes, he says.
“The common landscaping is taken care of through the association, the garbage removal, snow removal is taken care of through the association,” says Tandara. “So they can leave their place without worrying about those types of things. But because you get to know your neighbours as well, when you leave, you know someone is watching out for your place.”
These villas are offered in four options, including two that feature a loft. They range from 1,269 to 1,714 square feet and come in a one-bedroom layout with either one-and-a-half or two bathrooms. Developing the basement can tack on about 1,000 additional square feet.
“The homes are beautiful,” Tandara says.
“They are designed to look like large single-family homes rather than obvious duplexes.”
Lifestyle Homes has placed an importance on energy efficiency in many of its single-family homes and continues that work with its villas. The Parkhouses earned Built Green Canada’s platinum status, which is the highest ranking in the program. Built Green Canada is a third-party certification program that measures the level of energy efficiency in the methods and materials that go into building a new home.
“It’s a unique blend of something that is maintenance free from the standpoint where snow removal is being taken care of, but is also maintenance free from the perspective where if you use products that last an (exceptionally) long time, you don’t have to worry about the upkeep on them that same way,” says Tandara.