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Homes, cookies and a lot of dough

Upscale Southern Hills hopes to heat up sales by giving prospective buyers a taste of luxury.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published February 18, 2007

BROOKSVILLE - Sales consultant Mike Morrell of David Weekley Homes was baking sugar cookies Feb. 10 in the kitchen of a three-bedroom, 3,200-square-foot, $410,000 model home that was on display at the new Southern Hills Plantation, south of downtown on U.S. 41. The cookie count in the early afternoon was up to eight dozen Otis Spunkmeyers.

"If you feed them," Morrell said, "they will come."

Whatever works.

The tour of homes at gated, tony Southern Hills started last weekend and continued Saturday. Today is the last day of the showcase of the finished inventory of 23 model homes here and also at the adjacent active-adult Cascades community. Jacksonville's LandMar Group, which owns and runs the upscale development with Old Florida features and New Florida prices, is hoping this event spurs sales in this slowed-down housing market.

An estimated 1,500 people came last weekend to look, but sales have been sluggish - especially compared with the furious pace of lot sales here a couple of years back.

"We're not as far along as we would've liked to be on home sales," LandMar regional manager Jim Harvey said this week.

"People are much more cautious and taking their time now," he said. "They really want to see what they're buying."

Southern Hills is something new for Hernando County. Most of the local housing stock is much more modest and modestly priced. But Southern Hills promotional materials tout "single-family estates" and "luxury mansion homes" and talk about "architectural designs featuring elements of historic Brooksville homes such as porches, dormers, classic bungalow designs with tapered columns and raised foundations."

The development, which ultimately could have as many as 999 homes, sits on hilly terrain that's unusual for mostly flat Florida. It has a spa and a fitness center with private steam and massage rooms, an on-site hair salon and a Pete Dye-designed golf course with a Grand Clubhouse that overlooks the 18th hole.

Initial marketing materials from LandMar called Brooksville "an area whose time has come."

And in June 2004, on one Saturday, the company sold 302 lots for more than $38-million.

A year later, again on a single Saturday, the site sales were similarly stunning: 236 lots for $40-million.

The buyers were empty nesters and people from Tampa or states up north looking for second homes.

Nick Nikkinen from Hernando's Property Appraiser's Office called it a real estate phenomenon.

Those years, of course, were wild and flush in the real estate game - '04, '05, even early '06 - but it's not like that anymore here in early '07.

In late '05, when the Southern Hills sales center opened, the least expensive homes had a bare-bones tag of about $325,000, and that didn't include the lots, which started at about $80,000. Now some of the smaller "cottage" homes can be had for as low as $248,900, with the lots priced at $66,900.

One home built by Windjammer, with four bedrooms, a three-car garage, 4,032 square feet and a two-story pool cage the size of a small concert hall, was priced at $1.3-million but is on special right now for $990,000.

"If you've got a spare million bucks," Southern Hills sales manager Steve Erick said last Saturday, "we'll even give you change."

Only 12 homes have people living in them. Erick is in one of them. He said all of the people who live in Southern Hills got together for a party for Christmas and fit into one family room.

"But next year," he said, "we're going to have to rent the clubhouse to get all the residents to fit in one room."

At least that's the plan. The hope.

"Now that the models are finally in place, I think it's going to be good," Windjammer sales executive Mark Tesch said. "I've had a number of people who are interested now. I think we're starting to creep into the up again."

"We think it's an area that's going to continue to grow and continue to be discovered," LandMar's Harvey said, "and we expect to be a part of that growth process for years to come."

The home tour last Saturday brought out the Acuras, the Audis and the Mercedeses to a community with just-planted sod, just-finished models and a few not-quite-finished sidewalks.

In Bayfair's Ashland Manor model, company sales manager Susan Deering showed off its open, high-ceilinged look, with an outdoor kitchen and fireplace on the back patio by the pool. Residents practically could live outside for nine or 10 months of the year. The home has a base price of $383,900.

"To me," Deering said, "it has kind of a Tommy Bahama, Key West feel."

The Molly model from Vallery Custom Homes, available, total package, for just less than $1.3-million, has a built-in doghouse in the wing with the washer and dryer - and also a dog shower.

"Is that deluxe or what?" Vallery custom home consultant Steve Theall said.

"People who are spending $800,000, $1-million," he said, "they want to see something like this."

Across the street, at Bayfair's $799,000 Madison Bungalow, sales executive Linda Kaspari showed off the 42-inch maple cabinets, the 5-inch baseboards and the polished, oil-painted trim.

"Place looks great," Erick told her. "Sell a million of them."

"We're trying," Kaspari said.

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

[Last modified February 17, 2007, 18:24:27]