COURTYARDS AND CARRIAGE HOUSES
Innovative design features optional extra suite, rear-attached garage and side-yard deck
While a big backyard can be a coveted feature for some house hunters, its requisite upkeep isn’t a fit for everyone.
A single-family home with an attached garage but without the maintenance needed for a personal green space is a balance Daytona Homes strikes in Livingston.
Daytona Homes — currently operating in the greater Edmonton area, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Regina, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg — debuted in the Calgary market earlier this year, joining the north side community of Livingston, and Walden on the southeast end.
One of the two single-family styles it offers in Livingston is a home with a rear-attached double car garage and driveway, starting from $415,000, including GST. This format shifts the conventional orientation from a backyard, to a side yard, sometimes called a courtyard.
For this space, the buyer has the option of having grass laid down, or the ability to give the lawn mower a rest, with a deck built, or stamped concrete done.
Vivi Liang and her husband, Ken Qi, were attracted to this design. Both working, and with three children, one aged four, and the others 21-month-old twins, things get busy.
“( We) don’t have that much time to take care of a backyard, (mow) the grass, and (plant a garden),” she says, adding the deck in their side yard will be well-used and doesn’t require the upkeep a large lawn can.
“They’re very unique,” says Sandy Tang, area sales manager for Daytona Homes, of the rearattached models, adding that these homes link to their garages through a sizable mud room, featuring many windows. These windows, along with windows from the kitchen, look out at the courtyard.
This garage also introduces an uncommon opportunity for homebuyers — additional livable space.
“With these models, you have the option of adding a carriage house,” says Tang. “You can use it as a mother in-law suite, nanny suite, an investment property. A lot of people have pointed out that they’d want to use it for Airbnb. It’s 605 square feet, like a onebedroom condo that sits directly above the garage.”
This space has a bedroom, bathroom, laundry area, great room and kitchen.
Qi and Liang bought Daytona’s Niro model, which measures 1,616 square feet.
The move was motivated by the need for more space, bringing them from a smaller townhome with a single-car garage in the established Country Hills neighbourhood.
“This space is perfect for us,” says Liang, singling out its openconcept central kitchen, with a large island and generous counter space, as a highlight.
“It’s a really good, open kitchen, and there’s a lot of space for cooking,” she adds.
Daytona’s single-family options also include three-storey models with a double-attached tandem format garage from $485,000, including GST. This will fit the needs of someone looking for bigger floor plans, says Tang of the lineup that ranges from 1,915 to 2,105 square feet.
Garages in this segment, which reach 43 feet long, also have the potential to be something beyond a storage space for vehicles, says Tang. “They have room to put a tool area in the front, or to turn it into a fitness area, whatever they want to, and fit two vehicles in the garage, as well,” she says.
The three-storey homes are a drive-under configuration, meaning the garage sits beneath the main level, comprised of spaces such as the kitchen, great room, dining area and a den.
In most cases, the garage in move-up single-family homes is shared with its main floor.
As a result, these homes boast the uncommon combination of both a front-drive garage, and windows in the front-facing great room.
In Livingston, Daytona also has two-storey townhomes from the $350,000s, and three-storey townhomes with a third-floor patio from $368,000. In both cases, the price does not include the tax.
Daytona currently has two show homes open in Livingston and expects to have a total of five open by the end of this year.
Livingston, which straddles Centre Street, west of Deerfoot Trail, is master-planned by Brookfield Residential. It was crowned New Community of the Year at the recent BILD (Building Industry
and Land Development) Calgary region Awards.
The builder group, along with Daytona, is composed of Morrison Homes, Jayman Built, Homes by Avi, Cedarglen Homes, Brookfield Residential and Avi Urban. Livingston is one of the first communities in Calgary approved under the current municipal development plan.
This helped make it possible for a major activity centre and urban corridor along Centre Street to be included in the community plan.
“There are a lot of amenities coming into Livingston that are exciting people,” says Tang.
“We’ve noticed that we get a lot of people from Panorama Hills and Coventry Hills, people who live in the area, but want to come into a brand-new community.”