KB Home capitalizes on townhouse trend with Los Angeles Newfield development

Dive Brief:

Homebuilder KB Home is opening Newfield, a development comprising 96 three-story townhomes that will be sold as condominiums, in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County.
The project touts its proximity to employers including California State University, companies in Long Beach, as well as the Los Angeles International Airport, Tesla and SpaceX. It is also located near the Los Angeles Metro Rail Green and Silver public transit lines.
The townhomes will range from 1,784 to 1,914 square feet, and they will be Energy Star-rated. Prices start in the low-$500,000s.

Dive Insight:

KB Home, the nation’s sixth-largest homebuilder according to data from Builder magazine, is opening Newfield as builders around the country are looking at townhomes as a way to attract younger, first-time buyers to homeownership.

A February 2016 report from the National Association of Home Builders looking at Census Bureau starts and completions data found that townhouse starts were up 18% in 2015 from 2014, compared to all single-family-attached starts, which grew 5% during the same period. Although townhouse starts are down from the market’s peak in 2008, they are likely to remain popular going forward.

Additionally, younger buyers increasingly cite walkability as a desired feature of the communities in which they buy homes. A 2015 survey by the National Association of Realtors found that walkable communities were becoming more popular, with nearly half of respondents saying they’d take a smaller yard over a long driving commute, indicating that buyers may be more likely to settle in smaller homes closer to urban cores rather than a larger space in a suburb farther out.

However, not all mixed-use developments that aim to boost a city’s housing stock are viewed favorably. Los Angeles voters will see an initiative on their March 7 ballot that seeks to put a two-year ban on zoning modifications required by many large-scale projects, including a 14.5-acre high-density development currently on the boards for the city’s Arts District that features a 58-story high-rise with more than 1,700 for-sale and for-rent units.