5 Reasons to Consider a Villa or Carefree Home

Homebuyers often forget a superb option when looking for St. Louis or St. Charles County real estate – villas (sometimes referred to as carefree homes or low maintenance living). Villas are sometimes attached homes, but could also be freestanding homes, situated within a villa community. While some might think that villas are just for retirees, many of today’s villas are created for everyone. Here are five reasons to consider a villa for your next home purchase.

1. Low Maintenance

Villa communities are created with low-maintenance living in mind. Like many single-family home communities, villa communities have a homeowners association or HOA that oversees daily community operations. However villa community HOA’s usually offer a lot more with regards to maintaining your property including the exterior maintenance, lawn care, landscaping maintenance, and snow removal.  Some association fees even cover structural home insurance.

2. Amenities

Many of the amenities you get in a single-family home and community are offered at villa home communities. Villa homes are usually created to offer privacy by providing buffer zones between entrances to homes, have private decks and/or secluded patio areas. Shared walls are built with sound and fire proofing materials for additional privacy and security. Also, planned villa communities sometimes include community green spaces, a clubhouse, a pool and tennis courts. 

A lovely deck in Lake St. Louis at a villa community built by Bridgewater Communities.

3. Affordability

Villa owners often see money savings when comparing villa community HOA fees and what they include to the cost of hiring individual services for exterior maintenance, lawn care, landscaping and snow removal. Also, villas have proven to hold their value at resale as more and more homebuyers discover the advantages that a villa home provides. In fact, increased interest in villa homes has lead to the creation of many luxury villa communities for the villa buyer who craves more space and designer details. 

Spacious and open villa home kitchen in St. Peters.

4. Security

If you travel frequently or only occasionally but for an extended period of time, a villa home is an excellent option. With exterior maintenance done for you, the exterior of your villa home will be kept in tip-top shape while you are gone. This thwarts potential thieves looking to break into homes that appear unoccupied. A leaky roof or gas leak is less likely to go unnoticed in an attached villa home where neighbors share a wall or roof. 

An open floor plan at a villa/carefree home built by Bridgewater Communities.

5. Location

While single-family homes may be built in a secluded neighborhood removed from town, villas are often in areas near shopping, banks, hospitals, vibrant entertainment and dining options. You may find a perfect villa that is closer to your office, shortening your daily commute or making your commute doable by bike or by walking. The right villa could even negate the need to own a car. 

A beautiful villa/carefree home in St. Charles, MO, built by Fischer & Frichtel.

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The Boehmer Team helps homebuyers buy or build the perfect villa/carefree home and helps home sellers list and sell their villa when they are ready to move on. We are villa experts that are well versed in all types of homeowner association agreements and can assist in making sure you understand everything that is included with a particular villa community. If you are considering buying or selling a villa/carefree home in the St. Louis or St. Charles County are of Missouri, contact The Boehmer Team. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have about villas and would love the opportunity to serve you.

Home Renovations That Pay Back

Whether you’re putting your home up for sale or planning to live in it for the foreseeable future, you may be considering home renovations. When the time comes to sell, it will be valuable to know the home renovations that pay off and those that don’t.  Also, knowing which home renovations pay back may help you make better decisions on which renovations you choose to make now.

Earlier this year Remodeling Magazine came out with their 2015 COST VS VALUE REPORT. This annual report is highly regarded and referred to throughout the remodeling industry. They’ve put this information online in a format that can be sorted so that you can make best use of the information.

The Cost Vs Value Report compares average cost for 36 popular remodeling projects with the value those projects retain at resale in 102 U.S. markets.

Snapshot of the 2015 Cost Vs Value Report

As the 2015 Remodeling Cost vs. Value Report makes clear, large-scale jobs aren’t likely to return sellers their full cost. But there are improvements worth doing in anticipation of an upcoming sale.

In the article 2015 Remodeling Cost vs. Value: Less Is More, Stacey Moncrief of Realtor.org writes, “Simpler, lower-cost projects tend to return greater value.”  

For example, steel door replacement is the least expensive item on remodeling cost vs. value list yet offers the most payback. Other projects expected to top near 100 percent payback include: the midrange garage door replacement, the upscale garage door replacement, the midrange wood window replacement, and the minor kitchen remodel.  

The headline of an article written by Jim Gallagher at StLToday.com sums it up, Remodeling: The payback is in happiness, not home value.

He writes, “In a new study of 36 types of home improvements, only two raised the value of a St. Louis home by as much as the job cost. A mid-range kitchen remodel would just barely pay for itself. So will replacing windows with mid-priced wooden ones. Every other job was a money loser.”

While you need to resist the urge to over-renovate, if you do, you should prepare yourself to not take it personally when you don’t get out of a project what you put into it. Although you put your heart and soul into designing it, your dream master suite addition may fail to add a big boost to your home’s appeal. Ultimately, you should be happy in your home. If you make a major renovation that is highly customized to you, enjoy it. It might just take a little longer to find the perfect buyer who will love those same customizations. 

Want to purchase a home that doesn’t need any renovations? Or do you need help selling a home that could use renovations? Contact The Boehmer Team. Our real estate expertise and resources for contractors and handymen will help.  

Update: The day this blog was published the National Association of Realtors released their own 2015 Remodeling Impact Report. You can click the link to the 49 page report. We found that the data is similar to the Cost Vs. Value Report referred to above but thought we should share this newly available information.