"There’s a surprise every time you turn a corner.”
That’s how Heath Clark, owner of Bill Clark Homes and Legacy Homes by Bill Clark, recently summarized adapting to COVID-19 as a homebuilder.
The first facet Clark mentioned as he spoke this month at a Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association event: personnel.
“Now something happens, two weeks are gone,” Clark said, referring to a coronavirus quarantine period.
How key a person is to the job, such as those working in skilled trades, makes a big difference, he said.
“When that person leaves, then who fills in? There is no one because I have people who have been here a long time, and there is no replacement,” Clark said.
He also mentioned having to wait longer on materials for new houses, including 11 to 14 weeks for windows and 12 weeks for cabinets.
“I’ve got 50 or 60 houses out there with no windows that are built, waiting. That is big. I mean that’s big,” Clark said. “And it hurts.”
While some of the changes that have happened during the pandemic, including a massive increase in lumber prices, are making the job harder and more expensive for builders of all kinds, some are changing how houses and commercial space are built.
For example, remote working is expected to be part of the home plans at East & Mason, a master planned community coming to 7500 and 7420 Masonboro Sound Road in Wilmington.
The East & Mason community, under development by Robuck Homes, is expected to contain 170 homes, including single-family, traditional neighborhood design and active-adult homes, according to a news release. A community clubhouse with a pool, multiple open spaces and pocket parks are also planned.
“Our vision is to create a place where families and active adults can live, work and play with great access to all that Wilmington has to offer. East & Mason will have distinctive architecture and diverse streetscapes that will provide a modern lifestyle atmosphere that brings people together,” said Chip Bishop, general manager of Robuck Homes.
He said the homebuilder is “really trying to focus on the remote-working experience because even before COVID, Wilmington had a large contingent of work-from-home employment. And so our home plans are designed around that. It seems like there’s a lot of people who live in Wilmington and work all over the country … Even with our amenity, we’re going to have space built into the amenity for those who work from home but every once in a while need a conference area to have some sort of collaboration.”
In the custom home market, swimming pools have made a comeback in a big way.
“We went from building 20% to 30% of our clients with pools; that number has doubled. … More than two thirds of our clients are building swimming pools,” said Dave Spetrino, founder and president of PBC Design + Build. “And a lot of that is because they’re there [at home]. They’re not out or they’re not socializing; they’re not vacationing, and that pool, coupled with a low interest rate, is basically an appendage to the house and has become the norm.”
John Lennon, director of operations for River Bluffs Development Corp., said the homebuilding industry adapted quickly to COVID in the beginning, tweaking “everything from internal staffing to the way builders manage their trades on the job sites. I think everybody got pretty smart in being COVID-aware early on,” Lennon said during the WCFHBA panel discussion. “And then we saw the first wave of people calling from out-of-market saying, ‘What do you have available?’ [The reply:] We have beautiful home sites. ‘No, what do you have available right now?’ And so it was a challenge because with spec houses, there’s not a lot of them.”
He also said, “The other thing that was really strange locally was that we saw a huge increase in downsizing. For whatever reason, this pandemic has motivated people to go ahead and make that move, where they’re moving out of a larger home into 1,700-1,800 square feet.”
Spetrino has seen a similar trend.
“Our clients aren’t necessarily as focused on such a large home, but they do want a better home. So what they’re not saying is ‘more and more and more’; What they’re saying is, ‘Give me spaces I’m going to use, but I want those spaces to be really well done,’” Spetrino said. “And so they’re not necessarily spending less than they were before, but they’re building less, and then they’re spending those same dollars on finishes, details and creature comforts, things that they can actually see where their money is because they are recognizing that they’re spending more time at home.”
Changes because of the coronavirus pandemic are also evident in commercial building, either through retrofitting existing spaces or in new structures. The renovation of the historical building at 226 N. Front St. in downtown Wilmington by East West Partners, in partnership with coworking firm Common Desk, is an example.
“In the COVID era, there’s a lot of no-touch protocols and systems,” said Margee Herring, public relations consultant for East West Partners. “HVAC has been calibrated to recognize how to better clean the air … It’s been very nice for East West Partners because they’ve had [Texas- based] Common Desk learning on the site with their other locations the protocols and processes and systems that will accommodate this new era in which we live.”