This multi-million dollar home in Spring Hill in Mobile is one of a handful of upscale homes under construction. The 3-story home with 5 bedrooms, 5 full baths and 2 half baths, features 3 kitchens and a theater room. From left are builder Geoff Cochran, architect Craig Roberts, and builder Jared Cochran. (Press-Register/Bill Starling)
MOBILE, Alabama ? ?Everybody wanted to build this house,? said architect Craig Roberts of Mobile as he stood in front of the 3-story mansion on a lush lot on the Country Club of Mobile golf course.
Five contractors met with the homeowners in hopes of building the multimillion-dollar house that Roberts designed. Builders Geoff and Jared Cochran of Cochran Investments in Spanish Fort were selected to construct the 10,500-square-foot house, which is almost finished.
News that Roberts had landed another high-end house project quickly hit the builder grapevine. ?We?re excited,? Geoff Cochran said. ?That?s a potential job for us.?
In tough economic times, even the wealthy cut back on spending, builders said. The major slowdown in the luxury home market in the last several years has caused a big-time slump in business for architects and contractors. And when those industries are hit, so are the support businesses including landscape architects, home plan designers, decorators and suppliers.
To stay afloat, many of these professionals are taking on remodeling projects, commercial work if they can get it, and finding a niche in smaller home construction. Some veteran building firms and suppliers have laid off workers and temporarily closed their doors until the economy improves.
To survive in the market you have to cut expenses and diversify, according to Mac Walcott of Walcott Adams Verneuille Architects in Fairhope. The firm is busier than last year, and they are starting new projects, but consumers are still uncertain about the future, he said.
?When the downturn started we figured that most people?s wealth was tied up in their business, investments or real estate,? Walcott said. ?When investments and real estate are soft, it?s a double whammy.?
Landscape architect Paul Fontenot of Garden Design Solutions in Fairhope has stayed busy by expanding his work territory into Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss., Pensacola, Fla., and Jackson, Ala.
?The architects that do the fine custom homes in town used to refer me 10 major residential projects a year,? he said. ?We?d do the new construction from the ground up. Now I may do one or two new homes a year.?
Fontenot says this year will be significantly better, as he?s fielding calls from clients who had put off improvements. ?But it hasn?t been clients saying they want to build the million-dollar house that their architect designed.?
This year has been busier than last year ? which may have been the worst ever, said Lucy Barr, a residential designer in Mobile. She did more remodeling work and found a new niche in construction consulting. ?I became a go-between for the contractor and the homeowner,? she said.
And those were for homes that she had not designed. ?It was a problem-solving type of thing,? she said.
?The heart-breaking thing is I did three really nice sets of house plans that never went to construction,? Barr said. ?The owners realized the value of the homes they were in had dropped so much, they weren?t going to take a loss to get into a new house.?
When times were good, architect Pete J. Vallas of Mobile was so busy that he had a nice backlog of work in the pipeline. ?The sad thing now is there?s no backlog,? he said. ?And I hear that from all the architects.?
He has several projects under way, he also has time to do smaller projects, and will soon tackle a commercial project. ?I?m working twice as hard to keep my income up,? Vallas said.
Roberts has been through slow economic times, but nothing lasted this long.
?I?ve never seen anything like it in my 35 years. You know it?s a sign that things aren?t real good when I get big contractors calling me looking for work.?
The Cochran brothers turned to high-end new home construction and remodeling, when their niche of building homes in the $400s to $700s all but dried up a few years ago. Their work on the Spring Hill estate designed by Roberts will end in six to eight months, and like their colleagues, they hope more jobs are on the horizon.
?We wanted this job really bad,? Geoff Cochran said.
Article source: http://blog.al.com/press-register-business/2011/09/high-end_home_market_slow_in_m.html
Source: http://bamabusinessnews.com/high-end-home-market-slow-in-mobile-baldwin-counties/
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