Mike Donahue, an Avalon-based home builder, pulls back the curtains of a beachfront house he built in Brigantine, revealing a spectacular, postcard-perfect view of the dune grass, sandy beach and rolling ocean that are all directly beyond the edge of the property.
“It’s all about this view,” Donahue said.
It’s no secret that New Jersey’s prime real estate is the buildable land next to rolling dunes, soft white sand and the deep blue sea. But oceanfront development and sales haven’t been immune to the recession.
Avalon Realty, a real estate agency that sells homes in Avalon and Stone Harbor, sold 32 homes priced at $2 million or more in 2009, and 13 so far in 2010, according to data provided by the agency. The 2009 rate is about half the homes sold in 2006 and 2007, when the agency sold 67 and 64 homes, respectively, in that price range.
Donahue and Mark Asher, 52, whose architecture firm, Asher Associates, is based in Stone Harbor, have built several hundred homes along New Jersey’s coastline.
They have seen a drop in business in many island towns, but they say there is still good work in building homes by the sea.
The recent drop in the real estate market has not discouraged homeowners from spending big to build homes on shore lots, Asher said.
“You don’t build a $100,000 house on a $1 million property,” Asher said.
Architects usually get a 6 percent fixed rate on the cost of building the homes they design, said Jay Madden, who runs his own architectural firm, Jay Madden Architect, in Harvey Cedars.
For new homes, Madden said, the homeowner pays about $300 per square foot for the new property, with that cost funding the building and construction of the new home.
The lure of summer
Donahue, Asher and Madden found a lot of the inspiration for the current direction of their careers from spending their summers as children at the shore.
For example, Donahue, now 37, started working on commercial projects but always felt a connection to the way summer homes at the shore looked, and when the opportunity to build custom homes for clients emerged, Donahue turned it into a business.
Their customers can be inspired by summers at the shore as well.
When Michael Arizin, owner of the home Donahue was showing off, spent his summers in Avalon as a child, he acquired a taste of a small town at the shore and made friendships that have lasted to this day.
For all those summers spent at the shore, however, Arizin, now 57, had never set foot in Brigantine until one of his childhood friends invited him and his family to check it out.
Walking around the city, they accidentally made their way down an appealing side street, and by the time they made it to the beach, the idea of a shore home was firmly implanted in his family’s mind.
“Once you get that taste of getting on the beach, you can’t get rid of it,” Arizin said. “I tell people, ‘It’s great from the outside, it’s better from the inside, and it’s even better when you’re inside looking outside.’”
Multigenerational bayfront
Even though many of the homes at the shore are for people who only spend a few months of the year here, some homes are starting to be designed with the future in mind. The trend is toward family homes rather than moneymakers.
Construction was just completed on a bayfront property on Fourth Avenue in Avalon. The exterior fits in nicely with similar homes next door, but the inside tells the story of a family who wants to one day make it a more permanent residence. It includes a room for children, a nearby room for the parents and a room for grandparents.
“The house has become this sort of gathering place for the extended family,” Asher said. It’s designed for one family, not for multiple ones. The people who own it don’t intend to rent it to others.
“It’s not all about, ‘Hey, look at me,’” Asher said. “We want it to be a little more mild-mannered. It’s important for the client to like the home. But it’s great to hear that the neighbors like it, too.”
That’s not to say people have stopped building lavish homes.
A week after work was completed on a Madden-designed 4,600-square-foot property in Loveladies, Long Beach Township, the large shore home was used to host the owner’s son’s wedding, acting as the spot for both the service and the reception.
Madden said the owner sold his business to buy the home as a retirement property and something that the extended family could use.
Big homes at the shore are still appealing to a lot of people, he said, and many are building them now because the process can move a lot faster.
“A couple of years ago, people might have called, and I might have had 20 drawings I had to do before I could get to them,” Madden said. “Now, they can call up, and I can have their drawings by next week.”
Contact Ben Leach:
609-463-6712
