COVID-19 has changed how some families live. New Lakewood Ranch homes may be for them
Builders have not only been selling a ton of homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have been adjusting to trends in the marketplace.
Among those trends: a demand for more gourmet kitchens, the addition of home offices, and the reality of more generations of one family living under a single roof, said John Mast, chief executive officer of the Manatee-Sarasota Building Industry Association.
The pandemic has forced more Americans to stay and work or study from home because home just might be safer than a college dorm, an assisted living facility or a company office.
Among those picking up on those trends is M/I Homes, which has begun pushing dirt for Lakewood Ranch’s newest village, Sweetwater, to be built on 223 acres on the southeast corner of 44th Avenue East and Uihlein Drive.
The 512 homes planned for Sweetwater will include two neighborhoods, one with detached single-family homes and the other with maintenance-free villas. The two neighborhoods will have their own separate gated entries and will be connected by a private roadway across centrally located ponds.
M/I has created a floor plan that features a multi-room space on the main floor of the home to accommodate major lifestyle shifts due to the pandemic, including homeschooling, home offices or housing for aging parents.
“We saw firsthand the high demand for homes in this area with the opening of Woodleaf Hammock last year,” Tony Crimi, vice president of sales and marketing, M/I Homes Sarasota, said in a press release.
The goal in planning Sweetwater was to provide two distinct neighborhoods for traditional and multi-generational home buyers as well as empty nesters, Michael Stephens, vice president of Land, M/I Homes Sarasota, said.
“We wanted to create a community where three generations could live within a five-minute walk or golf cart ride from one another, with each group having their own space, privacy and amenities,” Stephens said.
Ed Suchora, area president for M/I Homes, said the pandemic was a wake-up call for Americans who suddenly found them spending much of their lives at home, unable to travel and with their access to restaurants and other activities diminished.
Along with that came the realization that for many jobs, they could work wherever they wanted.
“We had a lot of folks working from home who thought that working at the kitchen table was no so great,” Suchora said.
“You are sitting in quarantine in Ohio, your home is too small, and it is not as nice as you would like it,” Suchora said of the drive for improved housing.
“We have had a whole influx of customers from out west, from California and even Hawaii. They can get the same lifestyle here for less cost,” Suchora said.
They have had the time to look around for something better, and can tour homes virtually with new technology, he said.
One of the floor plans going into Sweetwater will be the “Columbia” model, which has mullti-generational features such as a separate living area, separate garage and expanded space in the common living and kitchen area.
M/I plans to start building models this summer and to open the models in the fall, Suchora said.
In the interim, M/I Homes will be pre-selling Sweetwater at its Woodleaf Hammock neighborhood, also at Lakewood Ranch.
Prices are expected to start in the high $200,000s.
For more information about Sweetwater, visit M/I Homes website or call 941-225-2111.
This story was originally published February 19, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
