Nashville Modern Prefab

A Few More Years...

2010-06-13T13:14:00.002-05:00

Now we know that it will be at least a few more years before we build anything on our lot. Work is taking us to Europe for an extended stay - two years minimum, probably closer to five depending on how it goes. With any luck the economy will be improved by the time we get back. But with the out of control spending by the current (and previous) regime I can only see things getting worse.

Pulling the Plug

2009-03-20T15:10:00.003-05:00

After a few more attempts to find a financially sound way to get our house built we have decided to put things on permanent hold.

The biggest issue all along has been the gap between the cost to build the home versus the appraised value. Even after several rounds of redesign to cut costs we could not get the design to be within $100k of the the appraised value. We had problems at both ends of the gap. The appraisals were lower than reasonable (in our opinion) because there were so few single-family home sales in the area so most of the comps were in much less desirable areas outside of Germantown. But we were also trying to build something that was at a higher quality standard than any of the infill construction even in Germantown. Even though we were not planning to resell the house any time soon, it still didn't make sense to us to buy something that was immediately valued at $130k less than our purchase price.

Of course it didn't help that the real estate market collapsed during all of this planning. At the same time that our appraisals going down we also had the banks requiring a much larger deposit in order to get financing, even when banks were willing to discuss financing new construction.

There were other problems along the way. One issue was that the pre-fab factory that was planning to build our modules closed up due to the crash of the home-building industry. We tried to get the Hive design constructed as a site-built home but we ran into a quagmire of problems with trying to sort out logistics once the home was no longer a turnkey product that we were purchasing from Hive.

Right now it appears that we are making the right decision at least from an economic standpoint. We are now renting a nearby loft that is larger than our planned home and much nicer but our rent is much lower than our mortgage would have been had we built the house. And just in the past month or two we have seen much bigger drops in the neighborhood real estate prices as more developers try to move unsold inventory and more flippers try to unload vacant homes.

We still own the land and it is not a real great time to sell real estate so we will hang onto it and see if market conditions change for the better. But I am not optimistic. The clowns in Washington are doing exactly the wrong things to actually improve the economy.

On Again?

2008-05-08T10:06:00.002-05:00

Looks like things are tentatively moving forward. A minor redesign, a few cost reductions, and a possibility of financing means that the stars may align for us soon. One good thing about trying to build during a bad real estate market is that everybody gets much more cooperative. We should know within a few weeks if it will work this time around.

Patience

2007-10-17T15:55:00.000-05:00

Time to sit and wait. Even with all of the construction activity and the apparently strong market for townhomes, lofts and flats there have been no recent home sales in the Germantown neighborhood. There are few houses on the market now that should sell for prices that would allow our appraiser to get the comparable sales that we need in order to get our house accurately appraised. Until that happens we will just keep the grass mowed and hope that the city does not place any more restrictions on what we can build on our lot.

Disconnect

2007-08-08T22:37:00.000-05:00

I thought it would just be a formality, but now the bank has appraised our planned house for much, much less than it will cost us to build it. The low appraisal was blamed on the lack of single family comps in the neighborhood. Most of the recent construction and sales have been condos and townhomes. Many of these townhomes have even been much more expensive than our planned home, but that does us no good for appraisal comps.
Now it is time to rethink the game plan. Do we shop around for a more willing lender with a more sympathetic appraisal (probably not too smart) or do we somehow find a way to cut our construction cost by over a third so that the budget will be within the current appraisal?
As much as I would like to forge ahead with the current plan we are getting a clear message from our bank that this house on that lot at that price is not a good investment.

Almost There

2007-07-19T20:36:00.001-05:00

We have been sorting out some details on the house before we actually sign the contract and start construction. It looks like we are getting to the end of this part of the process. All of the lighting and plumbing fixtures have been selected. Floors, cabinets and railings are finalized. Now we are just waiting for the bank to sign off on an appraisal so that they will give us the loan. The we will be in business.

One minor glitch with the windows. The house was originally designed for Pella Architect Series windows. We decided to save some money by switching to the ProLine series when they came out with a black framed version. Unfortunately we just found out that not all of the sizes that were originally specified are available in the ProLine series. A few adjustments are being made to the elevations. Hopefully it will be very minor.

Here is a cool video of another Hive Modular home being set. If all goes well we will be setting ours in just a couple of months.

Flooring Options

2007-06-12T23:44:00.001-05:00

We have the flooring choices narrowed down to 2 finalists: bamboo and ash. They both have their good points.

The bamboo is really tough and installs easily. The color is fairly uniform so it should look good with all of our modern stuff.

The ash should come in close to the same price but will make for a dustier install. Nice thing is that the floor will be smooth after the finishing without those little grooves that separate the prefinished boards on the bamboo. We can also stain it to get the color we want.

More Landscaping Ideas

2007-06-08T14:16:00.001-05:00

Another Rosenlof|Lucas design at a Hive house in Minneapolis. Our front yard is much smaller than this, but I really like how the landscape design works with the geometric style of the house.

Thinking About Landscaping

2007-06-08T12:02:00.000-05:00

While we are sorting out some details on the inside of the house I have been pondering landscaping options. We have lots of issues to address:
- Dealing with any runoff
- Creating some privacy screening ( not that we have anything against giant barking dogs)
- Making some shade to keep us from cooking on those hot summer afternooons
- Keeping away from those big powerlines out front

I really like this quasi-patio in the back yard of the Hive house in Minneapolis:

It Never Ends

2007-04-29T21:23:00.000-05:00

Just when I thought we were in the clear with all of the government approvals I find that the man is threatening to place a Historic Zoning Overlay on properties within Germantown. So much for property rights. There is a public meeting coming up where we can provide input. I wonder if they would be at all responsive to my input to get the hell out of my way.

Approved!!!

2007-04-04T22:42:00.000-05:00

I presented the latest house plans to the Design Review Board yesterday. I was a bit nervous about our chances of approval even though I have had many discussions offline with members of the board. Sitting in the room waiting my turn I got even more nervous. The first project that went before the board on Tuesday was basically told to start from scratch. The second guy was there for at least his 3rd attempt to get a duplex approved. Rejected again until they could get a better parking solution.
My turn came up and I had to explain my project. I stumbled through a quick overview, not sure which details were important to them. They asked a lot of questions and I answered a few of the. Luckily some of the people on the board were able to answer some of the questions for me just be looking at their copies of the plans. The only changes that they require to the design are on the windows for the North side of the house - a larger window in the front upstairs bedroom and one more small window near the base of the stairs. Could have been worse. They approved with conditions so we are ready to actually get started for real.

More Feedback

2007-03-01T22:42:00.001-06:00

We thought we were finished with the design but got some more comments back from the design review board. We will still need to make a few changes before we officially submit it to the board for approval.

Nashville is Getting Modern

2007-02-28T20:10:00.000-06:00

There was an interesting and well attended forum last night at the Nashville Civic Design Center. Four local architects spoke about their modern projects. It was quite interesting to see so much interest in modern architecture, especially the residential infill that was the focus of much of the evening's discussion.

Price Harrison spoke about several homes he designed including this one in Cherokee Park:

Larry Woodson discussed many different projects and very briefly mentioned one of my favorite homes in Nashville, his own Woodson-Gilchrist Home:

Even if our neighbors hate our house at least there will be some other people in Nashville that will appreciate what we are doing.

Final Design?

2007-02-26T22:52:00.000-06:00

We are just about ready to submit the design to the city for approval. Here is a video of the 3D rendering:

Hive Happennings

2007-02-08T20:48:00.000-06:00

The Hive guys have been busy lately with new houses and lots of good exposure. I spotted this segment on HGTV:

And they made their way onto video on the Taste TV website.

More Development in East Germantown

2007-02-05T08:54:00.000-06:00

We were not he only people to be buying property recently in East Germantown. Today's City Paper reports on a transaction that I heard about a few weeks ago.

Some developers bought the entire 5 acre block just 1 street over from where we are building our new home. Since this block borders the proposed Neuhoff development it means that nearly everything between us and the river is slated for redevelopment. It is getting exciting!

Hive Visits the Site

2007-02-02T16:36:00.000-06:00

We now officially own the land - weclosed on the purchase on Jan 31st. Woo hoo! Proud new owners of a grassy strip of land partially occupied by our neighbor's rottweilers.

On Thursday the fine folks from Hive made their way to Nashville to view the site, discuss the plans, and visit a local modular manufacturing facility. Marc Asmus and Bryan Meyer spent a few hours checking out the neighborhood. Although amazed at the amount of new development in Germantown, they are perplexed as to why the city is so unfriendly to modern allowing modern design in the area. They said out loud many of the things I have been wondering lately - like why is the Design Review board so concerned with our design when we are surrounded by industrial buildings, chain link fences, dilapidated old (but not historic) shacks, and barking rottweilers. Unreal.

The plans are getting dialed in. The master on main works out nicely since we now have a cool loft space upstairs to use as an office. Good news from the site visit is that the lot slodes sharply enough that we can add some more windows to the basement. With 8 feet clear in the basement that will make it some very usable space if we need to expand.

It sounds like the factory visit went well. Geometric Building Systems in Lewisburg is eager to start building some modern modular homes. We should have the flexibility to get everything built just as Hive designs it. GBS even has some local contractors that they work with so we are a bit less nervous about finding somebody to do the site work.

Shouldn't be too much longer now before we will be ready to submit to the Design Review Board. That should be fun.

Surveyed

2007-01-18T23:45:00.000-06:00

Minor updates.

Our property survey documents showed up the other day. Looks like the neighbor's fence encroaches on our property by a foot and a half. Time to meet the neighbors - and their 5 rottweilers!

The city also put in some fancy new brick sidewalks that we will get to tear up in order to put in the utilities. Yippee.

Working on the Design

2006-12-21T23:26:00.000-06:00

The folks at Hive are working on the design for the house now that we have given them some input and we have some sense of what to expect from the Design Review Board. I showed this design of another Hive home to a DRB member and got some feedback.

They are looking for a larger front porch, a sloped roof, and possibly different materials. Will be interesting to see what Hive gives us.

Layers of Bureaucracy

2006-12-04T22:03:00.000-06:00

We were thinking that by moving from Atlanta to Nashville that we would be getting a little bit more of that small-town kinda vibe happening around us. It seems like the Nashville city government leans more towards Moscow (Soviet-era) than Mayberry. I could never have imagined that there could possibly be this much red tape, meetings, committees and approvals standing between us and a house. And much to my surprise, very little of the heat is because of the pre-fab nature of the home.

These are the different city departments that we will need to approve our project:

Metro Development and Housing Agency - This group is responsible for welfare housing and approves all new construction that takes place in "Redevelopment Districts". We are in the Phillips-Jackson Redevelopment District.

Metro Planning Commission is the bureaucracy that seems to be the ringleader for all of the other commissions, boards, and petty bureaucrats. I am not sure where they sit on the pecking order of governmental appointees. The Detailed Neighborhood Design Plan (DNDP) is administered by the MPC. I could have sworn that the East Germans proved once and for all that central planning does not work. We are subject to the plan for Sub-Area 8 which covers Germantown. It is interesting that the plan calls for much higher density development than the single-family home that we are planning - "3rd Avenue from Jefferson Street to Van Buren Street, as well as Jefferson Street between 3rd and 8th Avenues, should be developed with mixed-use mid-rise buildings of 4 to 6 stories."

The Metropolitan Historical Zoning Commission has a seat on the MDHA Design Review Board. Our property is not in a designated historic area and does not contain a historic building, but for some reason these guys will have a major amount of say over what our new home will look like. I just hope that they don't try to turn our house into some little DisneyWorldesque version of an old Germantown house.

And then there is the Nashville Civic Design Center which as far as I can tell does not wield any official power but they likely absorb a huge amount of tax dollars. This group has published the Plan of Nashville which includes a section that describes the long term plan (dream?) for Germantown and East Germantown.

The upshot of all this seems to be that even with a house that meets zonining (MUN - Multi-Use Neighborhood) and fits the Neighborhood Design Plan for our lot (Neighborhood Urban) we will still need to jump through many hoops to satisfy all of these people just for the sake of making these petty bureaucrats feel powerful.

Touring the Hive Model Home

2006-11-26T23:02:00.000-06:00

We flew to Minneapolis over Thanksgiving weekend so that we could walk through the Hive Modular B-Line model home that they built in Northeast Minneapolis. The home exceeded all expectations and let us better know what changes we would want to see when our home is built.

The model home was built for Hive architect Paul Stankey, but since he was out of town we were given a tour by Bryan Meyer. Pictures of the home are posted on Flickr.

Design by Committee

2006-11-22T10:52:00.000-06:00

The Approval Battle Begins

I began contacting the various city agencies that will need to approve our home design, and it looks like it will be an uphill battle at best. Initial unofficial feedback from members of the Historic Commission and the Design Review Board mentioned major concerns with:

1 - The lack of a front-facing entrance.
2 - The lack of a front porch.
3 - The materials in general and the metal siding in particular.
4 - The flat roof.

I spent an afternoon photographing other homes and buildings in the neighborhood to document the context. There are plenty of older homes in the neighborhood with no porches or only minimal stoops on the front. Pictures are on Flickr.

Since we already intend to modify the Hive design by adding a mudroom and changing the front door to face the street, we should be ok on issue #1. Now we need to find a front porch design that will not detract from the design of the house but will still fit in with the neighborhood. I am thinking of something like this example:

or:

Just imagine this configuration on the Hive with a small roof projecting out over the front door and a small stoop raised up a few steps from ground level.

Modern Modular in Nashville

2006-11-09T22:05:00.000-06:00

We are going to see what we can get away with by trying to put a modern prefab home in downtown Nashville. This will be our progress log.

Links:
Hive Modular
http://www.hivemodular.com/
http://www.fabprefab.com/

The Neighborhood:
Germantown
http://www.historicgermantown.org/site/
http://historicgermantown.blogspot.com/

Nashville design requirements:
The Municipal Code - building codes are section 16. Our lot is zoned MUN - multi-use neighborhood:
http://www.municode.com/resources/gateway.asp?pid=14214&sid=42

The planning handbook for the downtown district. Our lot is in the Phillips-Jackson redevelopment area (p22) which is governed by the MDHA Design Review Board (p54):
ftp://ftp.nashville.gov/web/mpc/counciil_handbooks/District19_handbook.pdf

More specific information on the Phillips-Jackson district:
ftp://ftp.nashville.gov/web/mdha/Historic%20Phillips-Jackson.pdf

Setback info - we should be able to go with the contextual setback which will let us place the home closer to the street instead of the 20ft required by zoning.
ftp://ftp.nashville.gov/web/mpc/UZOsetbacks.pdf

Neighborhood design plan for Germantown:

Google Map.

You can look up the plat info on this site.
http://www3.nashville.org/property/

Other Modern Stuff in Nashville
Nevada Heights
http://www.nashvillemodern.com/

And just for fun - some picture from our townhouse in Atlanta that we renovated a few years ago.
http://flickr.com/photos/tandemracer/sets/787686/