The School House

It has been a busy August here at The Home Zone Company, with one long road trip after another. I have been driving around the mid-south focusing on waterfront or golf community townhomes near school towns like Charlottesville, Knoxville, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Houston.

I have a new client category comprised of parents of boarding school or college bound kids. Not shocking at all to you perhaps; but when you factor in that this category of clients is my age cohort - -well let's just say I've reframed my thoughts about the necessity for botox and social security.

Upon my return home from searching for school houses, I was tickled to see Louise Tutelian's article in Thursday's New York Times about this new trend of parents who purchase secondary residential assets that are convenient to their kids in college.

This sector of the business is the result of a matrix of interests and conditions. Here are the 5 conditions that inevitably lead to someone hiring our company for research and "home-launch" of an Off to School house:

a. a college or boarding school bound child has an active sports or arts talent
b. in or near a scenic or exciting or cultural area
c. where there are limited comfortable rental or hospitality choices
d. but the parents do not wish to relinquish their mildly chaotic "friends and family" lifestyle with in-laws, special friends, nannies, grandparents, roommates and dogs (rarely cats)
e. and they and the extended family are their child's biggest fans.

What specifically they are looking in this residential asset falls into two categories, inside and outside.

Outside is the most client specific - -whether they are forest hikers, horse lovers, latte drinkers, golfers, boaters, medically dependent, culture vultures etc. --and drives the initial location scouting parameters. Once we have identified the ecosystem, the specific location choices are dependent on visual appeal of the approach and surrounding properties along with appropriate levels of quiet and privacy.

On the inside, this client group is attracted to small work area kitchens with walk in pantries that open onto dining areas that can easily accommodate furnishings for 12. The living area must have over-sized french door access to 10' or deeper porches and landscaped stone patios. Elevators for 2 are in place or must be installable with little disruption to the floor plan. The laundry is front loading and in two areas: one on the upper level nearest the bedrooms that the children and guests will be using and one near the lower level secondary entrance. Tubs are out -- over sized walk in steam showers with built in seating. two or more heads and secondary hand held sprayers are in.

The form that all these "insides" take that is most popular, surprisingly to me, is the high end townhouse or patio home, as long as it has some type of view. Supporting a gardening crew and property manager for a school house is a non starter. Although my clients insist these are limited term investments and they factor in cost recovery in five years, I have to wonder if these bijoux bohemihomes will become the primary residence as my forty and fifty-something clients start thinking about their right-sized 60s and 70s.

At any rate, this has been a fun new category. With the exception of speed traps on I-81 in Virginia, which is an entirely different story, Off to School lifestyle provisioning is like, so now!