Building in Brunswick: Former Fixer-Uppers go from the Ground up
By Greta Walker
My husband was asked in early 2006 to transfer to his company’s Wilmington location. At the time, I was working in Whiteville, and we were living in the small town of Tabor City, where we both grew up, about an 80-minute drive from Wilmington.
We had purchased a "fixer upper" house in Tabor City in 1995. Built in the early 1940s, it was cozy, comfortable and quirky; a small house in a great neighborhood. We completely gutted the kitchen, bathroom and den as well as rewiring, re-plumbing and converting a porch into a larger utility room. We did the majority of the work ourselves with a lot of help from my father, an experienced remodeler.
Since we had remodeled one home already, my husband had only two requirements for a house: no fixer-uppers and low maintenance. We began looking into the Brunswick County real estate market in the spring of 2006. Our plan at that time was to buy an existing home. Prices were high, and inventory was scarce. Twice, a listing we were interested in became unavailable in three days or less. We weren’t in a hurry to make a decision so we kept looking.
We really liked what we saw in our price range at Waterford of the Carolinas. After looking there we began to seriously consider building instead of buying. Waterford became the standard to which we compared everything else and we nearly decided to build there. Then, late one spring afternoon we saw a sign for Jefferson Landing, a new development in the pre-sales phase. We decided to drop by their sales office located in the developer’s prior project, Westport, south of Leland.
We felt pretty confident that we had a handle on the local real estate market. When we turned into Westport and saw the beautifully lighted brick homes and manicured streetscapes, we were sure we were wasting our time; these beautiful homes simply HAD to be out of our price range. We drove around and were very impressed with what we saw. Unfortunately, we arrived after the sales office had closed.
Two weekends later, my husband and I met with his boss to discuss our upcoming move. His boss is very knowledgeable about business, including real estate, so we asked him for some suggestions. He recommended that we check out, "a new development in Brunswick County. I can’t remember the name, but there’s a bronze sea captain statue at the entrance." We told him we had been by there, but the homes looked out of our price range. He smiled and suggested that we stop by again. I’m sure glad he did!
At Westport, Kim Fanelli showed us model homes that would also be built in Jefferson Landing, the first neighborhood in a new planned development called Brunswick Forest. She described the development’s overall plan with its mix of retail, neighborhoods and nature. Brunswick Forest included amenities that we hadn’t seen elsewhere, such as a River Club and Gardening Center. Other amenities included a Wellness Center, parks, nature trails and a golf course. We were really excited about the concept and very impressed with the quality of construction exhibited by the builders at Westport. Most importantly, the homes were within our price range. Because this was the first neighborhood of the development, home prices were comparable to what we had been considering.
We continued looking, but both of us kept turning the discussion back to Jefferson Landing. We returned to Westport two weeks later, put down an earnest deposit and made an appointment to choose a lot.
We walked through several models as well as many homes under construction at Westport and finally settled on a house plan. We chose our lot from the developer’s map, and in early summer 2006 we visited the lot to confirm our choice. At that time the road into Jefferson Landing was very rough dirt and we needed a four-wheel-drive just to get out to the lot, which hadn’t been cleared. Shawn Horton took us out for the visit and explained along the way where various features would be located. Since the area was still mostly forest, it took quite a bit of imagination to "see" how things would eventually look.
One of the disadvantages of purchasing in a pre-sale development is the inherent delay. The lots are sold well before construction can begin. The earliest our builder, Premier Homes of Wilmington, Inc., could start on our home was in February 2007. We signed a lease for an apartment about two miles from Jefferson Landing in June 2006, knowing that it would be at least a year before our house would be ready.
At first we were disappointed that we wouldn’t be in our new home earlier, but as we thought about it, we realized that there were advantages to being later rather than sooner. We had extra time to think about changes to our house, such as adding a brick courtyard and changing the configuration of the kitchen cabinets.
The most exciting part for me was choosing the brick, flooring, cabinets, etc. We had plenty of time to think about these choices, so my very patient husband and I spent many Saturdays sitting in Premier’s "selections room" mulling the available options over a cup of Port City Java. We discovered that one of Premier’s employees, Ann Bigg, was building across the street from us. She and her boys are great neighbors.
Construction began right on time in February 2007. Living less than two miles from our lot allowed us to keep close tabs on progress. Premier corrected most issues without our bringing it to their attention. As we had anticipated, there were several minor delays, so the house wasn’t completed until late August. We were past ready to get out of our apartment! We finally moved into our new home during the week of Labor Day. Our punch list consisted of only a few minor cosmetic issues.
Living here these past several months has been wonderful. Brunswick Forest will be full of beautiful walking trails and bridges, and we’ve enjoyed many miles on the ones that have already been completed. We are looking forward to the completion of the Wellness Center in the spring. I’m eager for the Gardening Center to be completed, and we just learned that a new movie theater is being built here as well. We’re very happy in the North Brunswick area and excited to be a part of this lovely community.
Opinions in the magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent management views.