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THEY MAY NOT BE RICH AND FAMOUS,
but they’ve carved out their own unique lifestyles centered around custom
built dream homes.
From Windsor to Wheatley, standing out among
the rows of traditional bungalows are monuments to individuals’ desires to
leave their personal stamps on the landscape.
When, for example, was the last time anyone
wanted to hold a wedding reception in your backyard?
Well, its happened to Bill Losoncki, former owner of the Hilltop
Restaurant near Leamington. Losoncki can look out from his Spanish-style house
on a street off Leamington’s Seacliff Drive and view a terrace and ravine
turned into a floral garden. The
secluded home, which he would sell for $425,000, has a fountain in the front
entrance courtyard. Losoncki said
people have asked him to allow their wedding receptions and photo sessions
around the terrace and pool area.
County building inspectors and
REALTORS®
say they now are seeing more unique and bigger homes being built and sold than
at any time in the past.
Fuelled
by an economic recovery,
Essex County can expect a record 1,000 housing starts this year, said county
planner Ed Cornies.
Sales of new and old homes have also
been keeping
REALTORS® busy doing deals for more than 4,200 single residential
properties as of October. The homes
sold are worth more than $270 million, including three homes with a combined
value of nearly $900,000.
REALTORS®
say that many of those buying a
$250,000-plus home are into their third or fourth purchase. The buyers are usually professionals, self-employed or from two-income
families. They know what they want
and now have the money to get it, say realtors and contractors. Many of today’s dream homes are being
built in individual styles that set them apart from the formula home. Off Highway 18 north of Amherstburg into Pointe West, a collection of
estate homes is carved into what was farmland bush. Every house is unique, brick or frame; all are custom-made. Look
off tree-lined Seacliff Drive in
Leamington or down lonesome County Road 50 west of Kingsville. Long, ranch, colonial-style brick homes with fancy roof lines are being
built between older waterfront estates.
People have different dreams about their
escape home. Maybe it resembles one
in Kingsville, on a secluded estate sheltered by pines and surrounded by a
wrought-iron fence. It’s tucked
away at the end of a winding road on the lakefront in a remote corner of town. The house, with white concrete walls, is topped with a weathered red-tile
roof. It comes with the history of
a railway tycoon who built it, and an interior befitting the elegant grandeur of
the architecture of the 1930's, with aged, inlaid marble tile floors throughout. Though not for sale, the two-hectare (five acre) estate in Kingsville
could be yours for $4 million.
Many of these homes are the stuff of local
lore. The “Holiday Inn” is the
nametag on a famed estate on the west of Leamington that has its own indoor
swimming pool under a skylight dome.
And there are houses that become known for
their own features:
A home on Highway 3 near Leamington is built
into the bank of a ridge overlooking farmland. Mersea Township building inspector Bud Chambers estimated it must have
$40,000 in concrete work alone for the 12-metre (40 foot) long support wall
built into the bank.
Past
Leamington, Marg Willan talks
with similar pride about the home she and her husband Ralph built. The complex roof line allows a different view from each window. There is an oak-paneled library off the family room with a sloped oak
ceiling reaching to the top of the second floor. The reclaimed brick exterior came from the part of the Windsor Board of
Education administration building that was torn down.
A long counter island sets off the kitchen with a glass-enclosed alcove
room off to the side.
Matteo
Cristafaro, one of several master
builders of custom-made homes, said constructing such homes can take six months
or more. "Designs are unique, construction standards are high and
everything is just more complicated", the Amherstburg contractor said,
"Foundations are heavier and floor joints oversized, I always like to build something and look back at it and see what
I’ve done”. It is, he said, a
24 hour job. “It’s interesting,
because not one house is the same. We do different designs and put in a lot of hours. You deal with engineers, school teachers, lots of school
teachers...people who know what they want.”
Cornies, county planner, said many homes are
being built along the water despite record-high levels of the Great Lakes.
Such development built to conform to waterfront standards has not been
much of an issue by regulating authorities including the Essex Region
Conservation Authority. Cornies
said,
REALTORS® say lake levels haven’t slowed sales of such properties. “We haven’t had any trouble at all,” said Stan Dunn,
manager of Buckingham Realty’s main office in Windsor.
REALTOR®
Ron Renaud said
Amherstburg is just beginning to realize what a prize it has in its Detroit
River shoreline. “Until the last
few years, no one had really taken advantage of waterfront in the Amherstburg
area and really marketed it.”
For
REALTORS®, selling such estate
homes isn’t much different from any other deal.
But it can take more time because of the exclusive nature of the
clientele and the limited market.
Renaud, like
Robert Tatomir, Broker of Record, in Leamington, handles exclusive real estate. Both say a customer who buys expensive homes is really no different from
someone with a smaller budget. Each
have sold homes some of the most expensive and least expensive homes in the
area. They both realize that the $60,000 buyer will move up to a
$90,000 house and then move up again.
Tatomir
said that many of today’s custom-home owners have built a successful business
or practice and now want to enjoy their rewards by building something for themselves. “They
now want to build a personal landmark so to say.
They feel an inner feeling that, it might be their turn now! |
