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Hernando builders' work on display

Last year was a very good year in the Hernando building community.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published March 4, 2006

Home builders in Hernando County are busy. That's not new. What is new, though, is the wider-than-ever range in types of homes and types of buyers.

The square footage, the variety of the amenities, the price tags from top to bottom - all of it is on display in the Hernando Builders Association's annual Parade of Homes. This year's parade, which starts this weekend and runs through March 19, features 45 model homes from 23 builders.

"You're going to have a tremendous variety of homes in a lot of prices and categories,'' said Mary Mazzuco, vice president of Royal Coachman Homes of Spring Hill and a co-chair of this year's parade.

Doug Adrian is the head of Spring Hill's Vision Development and Construction and vice president of the Hernando Builders Association and Mazzuco's co-chair. He says Hernando County has "something for everyone.''

"We have a lot of new builders and a lot of new things for people to see,'' said Bob Eaton, owner of Artistic Homes of Spring Hill, Hernando's largest independent builder.

"I believe these homes can go up against any homes in Florida,'' said Dudley Hampton, head of BJH Construction in Ridge Manor, treasurer of the builders association.

Last year was a very good year in the Hernando building community.

In spite of a fourth-quarter slowdown, which coincided, of course, with a general cooling off of the real estate market, the building department issued a record 4,185 permits for new homes.

The slightly saner pace of growth is allowing companies to catch up on some of their backlogged orders, according to local builders.

The less red-hot real estate market might contribute to a head count slightly lower than last year's heavy parade turnout, said Tim Stoops, the president of the builders association.

But the overall forecast for Hernando as a whole is still up, up, up: The population at the end of January was 158,605, according to estimates from the county's planning department - up from just more than 130,000 in 2000 - and is projected to be at least 176,000 by 2015.

Within that evolving reality, changes continue in the Hernando home-building community.

In general, local builders say, the homes in this year's parade are bigger and have more and fancier amenities: pools, granite counter tops, fancier cabinets, higher ceilings, open floor plans and big master bedrooms.

The prices of the homes on display range from $140,900 to $447,000, Mazzuco said. In 2005, single-family homes in Hernando sold for an average of $155,000, according to the county's property appraiser's office.

"They're built for the Florida lifestyle,'' Hampton said. "You want to step out on your lanai and have a barbecue. You want to be able to step out of your lanai and be on the golf course.''

Who's moving into these homes is also beginning to change a bit.

Retirees from the Northeast are still a staple, and builders and Realtors are starting to see the beginning of the bulge of the baby boomers, too, but people are also moving to Hernando now from more expensive, more congested parts of Florida, and that includes younger buyers, commuters coming up the Suncoast Parkway from Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties.

"We find more and more people are coming up from Tampa,'' said Bob Vause of Windjammer Homes of New Port Richey. "The biggest reason people are moving out is to get away from the city and the traffic and the taxes and the insurance costs.''

"We're getting a lot of younger families,'' said John Reventas of Ron King Construction of Brooksville.

Here's how Georgiann Lee of US Home's Tampa division put it: "A lot of people are moving up from further down.''

Who's actually building the homes is shifting as well.

The local stalwarts certainly haven't gone away - Artistic Homes, Palmwood Builders, Pastore Custom Builders, Royal Coachman - but more out-of-county builders and large national and regional builders have moved in. That list includes Levitt and Sons of Boca Raton, William Ryan Homes of Tampa, Windjammer in New Port Richey, Southern Image Homes of Tarpon Springs, and Ryland Homes, a Southern California builder with a big presence in the Tampa Bay area.

"The market is moving up there,'' said Alex Mourtakos, president of Southern Image and president of the Pasco Building Association.

Southern Image traditionally has built in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties. Mourtakos' company got into Hernando just late last year.

"It's a natural progression for us to be there,'' he said.

More evidence that the Hernando market is growing in size and prestige: Sterling Hill, the 1,250-home project in Spring Hill, is ranked third among the top 10 communities in the Tampa Bay area, based on starts in the fourth quarter of 2005. The builders active at Sterling Hill are national and regional names: Avatar, Inland, Windward, Grant, Lennar, William Ryan, US Home and M/I.

But maybe the biggest sign of what's on the Hernando horizon is Southern Hills Plantation. Jacksonville development company LandMar has 999 homes planned - plus an already-done, Pete Dye-designed golf course - set on the rolling hills south of Brooksville on U.S. 41. The homes range from the high $300,000s to more than $1-million, and builders include companies well-known in the Tampa Bay market that see Hernando as the next frontier: David Weekley Homes, Bayfair, Hyde Park Builders, Levitt and Sons, Vallery Custom Homes and Windjammer Homes.

"There's a wide variety of prices, amenities, sizes - a lot more than there was 10 years ago,'' Windjammer's Vause said of Hernando's 2006 Parade of Homes. "There's just a bigger demand for them.''

"The parade's a perfect opportunity for everybody to go out and look at everything that's available and going on in the building community,'' said Eaton of Artistic.

"It gives us a chance to show off our models,'' said Stoops, the president of the builders association, "and it allows people to go around and see what's out there.''

-- Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (352) 848-1434

[Last modified March 14, 2006, 15:18:44]