Hot for Haute Rows

$1 Million-Plus Townhouses Cater To New Wealth

Townhouses on Evans Farm Drive, in a Craftmark Homes community in McLean where 64 units have sold for $1 million to $2.3 million. (Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

Not that long ago, "townhouse" was a downscale word. In some circles, its very presence seemed to threaten property values, and status-conscious suburbanites implored officials to bar such attached living, or at least limit its spread.

Some developers along the way undoubtedly saw the word as a classier alternative to the old-fashioned rowhouse, which had sufficed for generations of middle-class Washingtonians. Perhaps they wanted to evoke an earlier, gracious time, when the family of the country squire occasionally repaired to its house in town. Still, "townhouse" took on a negative connotation; "tacky" was the adjective that frequently preceded it. The big, detached, single-family house was the embodiment of suburban prosperity.

But that was so, well, last century.

Enter the brave new world of the million-dollar-and-up townhouse, the newest level of luxury to which many of those with means may now aspire. Or, as some builders and owners prefer to call their newly constructed high-end dwellings, "attached homes." Whatever they're called, the sales prices of some of these elegant new units have reached or even exceeded $2 million.

"This is not your ordinary town-home community," said Alexa Gelmi, who staffs the sales trailer at Craftmark Homes' Bethesda Crest, a new community of 24 townhouses off Rockville Pike. Prices range from $1.5 million to $2 million.

From McLean to Bethesda, from Alexandria to Potomac, this housing style is attracting the wealthiest of the wealthy, the soon-to-be or already empty nesters, the older couples "downsizing" from, say, 9,000 to 6,000 square feet, the occasional young family with more money than time to maintain a mansion.

How great is the demand for $1 million townhouses? Consider:

• One hundred and five would-be buyers in January each plopped down a $60,000 deposit, merely to enter a lottery for the first 15 "brownstones," 12 of them priced from $1.1 million to $1.4 million, at Park Potomac, a project that Eakin/Youngentob Associates plans off I-270 and Montrose Road in Montgomery County. EYA was among the pioneers of the million-dollar market locally a few years ago, with some townhouses at its Ford's Landing development in Old Town Alexandria and at Monument Place, near the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington.

• In the first month of sales at Bethesda Crest, from mid-December to mid-January, seven of the 24 planned $1 million-plus townhouses were snatched up. At another Craftmark Homes community, Evans Farm in McLean, all 64 townhouses have been sold at prices ranging from $1 million to $2.3 million.

• At Potomac Greens, a community just getting underway in Alexandria, EYA and Craftmark are both building $1 million townhouses, though some are priced lower. EYA's other new Alexandria development project, Chatham Square, includes 100 three-bedroom townhouses, with 16 units unsold as of last month, at prices from $896,000 to $1.8 million. In addition, there are 52 EYA-built units of low-rise public housing, which "definitely in the end didn't result in the discounting of any of the market-rate houses' units," said Bob Youngentob, EYA president.

• In Maryland, Rosemark, a company owned by local developer Michael T. Rose, is poised to build a similar high-priced product on the site of an old quarry with a Potomac postal address, just beyond the Beltway at River and Seven Locks Roads.

"The reason units are up north of $1 million is a result of location and square footage," EYA's Youngentob said. For example, his company's Park Potomac townhouses sell for $350 per square foot, "a substantial discount" compared with $500 per square foot for smaller condos being built by another company right next door.

"I think the distinction you need to make is we're not just talking about suburban town homes; they're really city homes," he said. "Will we find other locations that will require $1 million-plus town homes? Yes, we probably will. Knowing if there's a limit is a function of knowing how much demand there is in this market for the long term."

Strictly speaking, of course, we're not talking about city living, but close-to-the-city living.