NAPLES, Fla. – Feb. 17, 2014 – The big rip-out is back. After years of marshaling their money and putting off all but the most essential repairs, Southwest Florida homeowners are opening their wallets to improve their homes.
But now they’re doing it for a different reason: for the fun of it.
“People are fixing homes up for style and aesthetics,” said Stephen Jaron, president of Renovate and Restore in Naples. “They want to make their homes more personal.”
Many are eschewing safe, traditional upgrades that won’t offend some future buyer in favor of wildly quirky re-dos that incorporate everything from built-in dog beds to turquoise cabinets and alligator-head towel racks.
“With the housing market so lucrative, people aren’t afraid they’ll lose money anymore,” said Parker Borelli, owner of Borelli Construction in Naples.
In his own practice, Borelli has seen budgets for a typical redo of a two-bedroom condo rise to around $110,000, almost double what owners were likely to spend two years ago.
And in the upper end, the sky’s the limit: One Grey Oaks owner recently asked him to put a marble driveway, fire pit and reflecting pool in his 2,500-square-foot guest house, to match similar amenities in the main house.
Rising home equity, improving consumer confidence and historically low interest rates – along with pent-up demand – are behind the trend, said David Crowe, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders.
The trade association’s Remodeling Market Index, activity as reported quarterly by remodelers, was at 57 in the fourth quarter of 2013 – its highest level since the first quarter of 2004.
The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University predicts remodeling will remain strong throughout 2014. The Joint Center’s leading indicator of remodeling activity shows spending for improvements at $144.7 billion in the first quarter, a 14 percent rise over the same period a year earlier. By the fourth quarter, the Joint Center expects it will reach $153.8 billion, a 9.9 percent annual rise.
Many are investing sizable sums to get what they want.
Take Denise and Tim Rose, both 57, who are on the second remodel of the $1.4 million home on Marco Island they bought seven years ago.
Although they originally intended to spruce up just a few rooms, they wound up redoing nearly all of it, at a cost of about $500,000.
Many of their upgrades, like 16-foot ceilings and glass doors, were done to maximize their expansive waterfront views.
But others, like a radius wall embedded with blown glass; an abstract painting that drops down to cover the television when it’s not in use, and a couch-high window-seat for their Maltese terrier, are individualistic touches inspired by the casinos and hotels Tim Rose develops.
“We want what we want,” Denise Rose said.
Bonita Springs remodeler Olaf Kuemmel, owner of SWF Construction, said one Canadian client recently bought an $800,000 home in Bonita Bay and spent about $300,000 with him to remodel it.
The owner asked Kuemmel to rip out the nearly new kitchen cabinets because he didn’t like the natural maple color and to replace them with brown-toned cherry cabinets. The appliances and countertops got the heave-ho, too.
Then he asked Kuemmel to replace 3,800 square feet of tile floors with hand-scraped hickory, and to redo the master bath in an ultra-contemporary style that included numerous body-spray heads.
When it was done, “it looked like a car wash,” Kuemmel said.
In some cases, homeowners are backing into a big redo of their homes after having to do some essential repairs.
Melanie Cusano said her family-run business, Bruno General Contractor, moved into fire-, mold- and water-related restoration from general remodeling during the recession. But now customers who have received insurance checks are starting to kick in their own money to go way beyond just fixing the damage.
“They tell us ‘since you’re in there anyway, let’s do some more,” she said.
In one recent case in North Naples, a customer got a check for about $30,000 when his water heater exploded.
But he decided to spend more than $70,000 more out of his own pocket to upgrade the cabinets and flooring – and take out a little-used loft to create trendy vaulted ceilings.
Another Bruno customer, Dwaine and Cathy Peetz of Omaha, spent more than $300,000 to renovate the three-bedroom Naples waterfront condo they purchased for a little more than $1 million in 2011.
They had the place gutted and replaced everything from the windows to the floors. Instead of safe neutrals, they chose a palette of bright Caribbean colors. The centerpiece of the remodel was their new kitchen with turquoise-colored accent cabinets and aqua tile backsplash to match the vein of turquoise running through their new granite countertops.
We put in what my wife wanted to match her artistic taste. We’re not concerned about resale.”
The latest statistics from research firm CoreLogic support this relaxed attitude about resale: excluding distressed sales, home values in the Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island area rose 10.1 percent in December 2013 from a year earlier. In Cape Coral-Fort Myers, they were up 8.1 percent for the same period.
And so homeowners are feeling freer to put in funky details that they’d never consider if they were trying to appeal to the masses, said Michael Park, owner of Dreamworks Kitchen and Bath in Naples.
Some clients are expressing themselves with expensive kitchen knobs to top off their remodeling projects, he said. One chose a different style of lizard for each of her cabinets, at a cost of $15 a knob. Another spent $50 a knob for two 4-inch tall ceramic fish. “When the doors are closed, the fish go kissy-kissy,” he said.
But the strangest request he’s had lately was from a woman who asked him to bolt a full-sized bronze alligator head she’d picked up into the wall above her new tub.
“She wanted to hang her towels and swimsuit from the teeth,” he said.
© 2014 the Naples Daily News (Naples, Fla.), June Fletcher. Distributed by MCT Information Services
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