Susann Haskins sees it nearly every day. The Montgomery County real estate agent takes a client into a three-story townhouse with eight-foot ceilings. The client abruptly walks out.
Then Haskins, president of the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors, shows a newer townhouse with nine-foot ceilings and a fourth-story loft. Within minutes, the client is ready to make an offer.
"This is driving the market today," Haskins said. "Consumers want higher ceilings on both levels, and by higher ceilings we are talking no less than nine feet. . . . It clearly has value to the consumer, so clearly it has value to the builder."
To get those ceilings, builders and developers are pushing the limits when it comes to the height of new homes.
That is one of the issues at the heart of the dispute over the new Clarksburg Town Center, the subject of a Montgomery County Planning Board hearing today. Officials say the project's developer, Newland Communities, agreed to build hundreds of townhouses no higher than 35 feet. Instead, officials say, 433 of those units could top 50 feet.
Newland, a San Diego company, says county officials knew all along how tall townhouses would be in the northern Montgomery residential development.
"We carefully followed the guidance and direction that was provided to us," said Charles Maier, a Newland spokesman.
Furthermore, Maier said, Newland's final product satisfied a consumer appetite for higher ceilings, a more open floor plan and other features that are possible only in four-story townhouses.
"Four stories allows the builder to build to the market," Maier said. "That is what the market demands, and that is what the builders are providing. . . . If the government prescribes a specific numerical height, you are going to have an absolute sea of sameness in every new community."
Four stories also mean more profit. Exactly how much is difficult to answer.
In Clarksburg, many newly built homes sell for $250 to $300 a square foot, said Lenn Harvey, a Bethesda broker. David DeSantis, sales manager at PN Hoffman Construction and Development of the District, said a larger townhouse with higher ceilings may yield as much as $100 a square foot more.
Sal Alfano, editorial director of Remodeling magazine, said he suspects that a lot of that extra money goes directly into the pockets of the builder and developer.
