Nest — Winter 2022

home design real estate

WINTER 2022

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HomeShare Vermont’s matchmaking mission

Birdseye levels up with Woodstock’s Bank Barn

Huntington Homes’ movable building blocks

True confessions of a first-time home buyer

NEW THIS ISSUE

Last Quarter

Vermont housing news PAGE 6

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inter in Vermont is dark, but there are ways to let in the light. Birdseye architects did just that at WOODSTOCK’S BANK BARN, designing a glassencased first story for a home inspired by a traditional style of barn.

Take a tour of the stunning structure and find other unique approaches to housing in this issue. Two new TINY HOUSES IN BARRE are intended to transition people out of homelessness, and an upcoming design charette will help turn underused spaces into AFFORDABLE HOUSING SOLUTIONS. For more than 40 years, HOMESHARE VERMONT has been matching folks who need housing with those who want to share their home; we spoke to some pairs to hear how that works. If you’re looking to build, East Montpelier’s HUNTINGTON HOMES constructs modular houses that can be transported in movable sections. And if you’re planning to buy, writer Jordan Barry’s essay on SURVIVING THE REAL ESTATE SCENE offers some hope.

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HomeShare Vermont marks 40 years of pairing hosts with guests B Y S A LLY P O L L AK

Level Up ....................................12 Woodstock’s Bank Barn transforms agricultural architecture B Y A M Y L IL LY

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Mod Squad ...............................16 Huntington Homes builds modular houses in movable sections B Y A NNE WAL L AC E AL L E N

Buying Time ............................. 21 How I navigated the Vermont real estate market in 2021 B Y JO RD AN B AR RY

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21 ON THE COVER Bank Barn in Woodstock PHOTO COURTESY OF BIRDSEYE

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Vermont housing news

BY ANNE WALL ACE ALLEN

The Lift House in downtown Barre

BY THE NUMBERS

$168.8 million

The amount of state and federal money the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board has available for developers to use over the next two years to create and rehabilitate housing around the state.

231

The number of mobile home parks registered in Vermont in 2021. An important source of moderately priced housing in Vermont, mobile homes located in parks make up about 7 percent of the housing stock. In 2021, the median monthly lot rent for a mobile home was $360 — an increase of about $5 from 2020.

Almost 90 percent of mobile homes are owner-occupied.

$336,000

The median price a house in Vermont sold for in December 2021. That’s 9.4 percent higher than the year before, when the median price was $307,000.

$446,000

The median price a house in Chittenden County sold for in December 2021. That’s 8.8 percent higher than the year before, when the median price was $410,000.

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Big Problems, Tiny Solutions The city of Barre needed homes for people emerging from homelessness, and students in Norwich University’s Design + Build Collaborative needed a project. The result: a new, energy-efficient tiny home that provides independent living in downtown Granite City.

The Lift House is one of two tiny homes built by Norwich University students last year. Just 360 square feet each, the homes are designed to help people living with mental illness transition out of homelessness. The Lift House’s name nods to the concept of lifting people out of difficult situations.

Last month, the Vermont chapter of the American Institute of Architects bestowed one of its Honor Awards on the Norwich School of Architecture and on professors Tolya Stonorov and Danny Sagan for the Lift House. The judges noted that the two homes “promote both contemporary and authentic architectural values ... on a vacant lot once inhabited by blighted, deteriorating housing.”

To Stonorov, the projects were an extension of the values she brings to her own architectural practice and to her work at Norwich University.

“The school is passionate about helping create architecture for social justice,” she said. “That’s something that I think is the responsibility of a university: to help communities.”

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The homes were built on land donated by former Barre mayor Thom Lauzon. Downstreet Housing & Community Development, a nonprofit that provides affordable housing, home repair loans and other financial assistance in central Vermont, is using them to house clients who cannot be successful living in congregate housing, such as a shelter.

The residents are clients of Washington County Mental Health Services.

“They don’t need a 1,000-square-foot apartment,” Cara Hansen, Downstreet’s communications manager, said of the residents. “They just need a place to live, and they need privacy.”

The tiny homes offer plenty of room, Stonorov said: “There is a nice-sized kitchen and really decent-sized bathroom and bedroom and a good living space. If you go into the houses we have designed, they are pretty generous.”

The two homes are located next to another, larger home occupied by former clients of Washington County Mental Health Services who are available to serve as mentors to the people who live in the tiny homes, Hansen said.

She added, “It definitely fills a need that was not being met before.”

REAL(TOR) TALK

“It’s been nuts for two years;

it’s like a feeding frenzy.”

B E T S Y FR A NZ ONI of Franzoni Real Estate in Rutland With Vermont’s limited housing supply and surplus of buyers, Franzoni has helped her clients navigate prolonged bidding wars in the past few years.

One young couple that hired Franzoni put in six offers over the asking price for homes in the Rutland area. The seventh time, they were successful — in the sense that they ended up with a roof over their heads.

“It wasn’t really the kind of house they wanted, but they are fixing it up to meet their standards,” Franzoni said.

Renters are also struggling with the lack of inventory; Franzoni said she gets three or four calls a week from people asking whether she knows of anything available. And she’s spoken to a few who have turned down job offers in the area because they couldn’t find a place to live.

“It’s tough out there,” Franzoni said. “It’s a sad situation.”

MARK YOUR CALENDAR Vacant lots, abandoned buildings, empty office spaces — the Vermont chapter of the American Institute of Architects wants to help turn these and other underused places into affordable housing solutions.

In response to the state’s housing crisis, AIA Vermont recently formed an affordable housing committee. “One of the main questions we asked ourselves was, ‘What can architects do to help with this enormous issue?’” executive director Sara O Donnell said.

One answer: a design charette to help developers, groups and towns that have housing projects in mind and would like some pro bono design input.

The chapter is currently soliciting applications for just such an event. Select projects will be discussed during a participatory planning process at Vermont Technical College in Randolph on March 25.

While this event is free, O Donnell pointed out that an architect’s input generally won’t make a project more expensive.

“Often, when working with an architect, especially on bigger projects, it saves money in the long run by making the building run more efficiently and using space better,” she said.

AIA is accepting applications until January 24 at aiavt.org.

Anecdotal evidence suggests some pandemic-related population changes in Vermont — but there’s no decisive information yet about who has moved where, and for how long.

National moving company United Van Lines, which conducts an annual survey, has its own take on the matter: It reported that, based on van rentals, Vermont experienced the highest percentage of inbound migration in the country last year. The data revealed that 74 percent of the Vermont-related van rentals were for moves into the state.

As for the state with the most outbound moves: That would be New Jersey, where 71 percent of the van rentals were used for relocation to somewhere else.

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COURTESY OF KAREN PIKE

Jeri Messick and Dan Dougherty at Messick’s home in Milton last summer

Making Matches

HomeShare Vermont marks 40 years of pairing hosts with guests

BY SAL LY POLL AK • sally@sevendaysvt.com

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For Christmas dinner, Jeri Messick roasted a turkey, and Dan Dougherty made stuffing and cranberry sauce. The two exchanged holiday gifts: Messick gave Dougherty some clothes, and Dougherty bought Messick a new alarm clock.

The occasion last month represented something more than the usual holiday festivities for the pair. It marked a year since Dougherty moved into a spare room in Messick’s three-bedroom Milton home — an arrangement facilitated

by South Burlington-based nonprofit HomeShare Vermont.

HomeShare matches folks who need housing with those who have space in their homes and would like to share it.

The process of making a match, which is organized and guided by HomeShare, starts with a free application. It includes interviews with each person, a meeting between the two, and a 14-day trial period in which the guest moves into the prospective home. If each party

wants to proceed, as happens in roughly 90 percent of cases, then HomeShare negotiates a formal arrangement.

Those arrangements come in three basic types: a rental agreement, which is strictly financial; a hybrid plan that involves rent and service (typically six hours a week of household chores, shopping or yard work); and an option in which the guest provides assistance to the host, with the duties spelled out and no money exchanged.

Currently, HomeShare has about 55 matches in Vermont, most of them in Chittenden County, according to the nonprofit that serves seven counties.

“Every situation is different,” said Kirby Dunn, HomeShare’s executive

HOU SIN G “It’s just wonderful,” Messick said. director. “It’s really up to what two “I’m not as lonely as I was. I have compeople are willing to do and what panionship, and I’m helping somebody they’re looking for.” else out.”

A successful match is built on Dougherty, 61, is a widower who common interests, similar expectations couldn’t afford his Essex apartment on a and compatible lifestyles, Dunn said. In single income after his wife died in the addition, it requires a certain degree of summer of 2019. That fall, he answered flexibility. a Craigslist ad posted by a middle-aged “You have to be able to go with the flow a little,” she said. “It’s hard to invite Burlington man who needed a caretaker.

Dougherty took the position and moved somebody into your home.”

While each HomeShare arrangement into the man’s home for about a year.

But by October 2020, Dougherty is customized by the people who form said, “I was no longer needed, and I it, the individual matches are bound by became homeless.” the organization’s overHis church in arching goal: generating Colchester paid for affordable housing for Dougherty to stay in a Vermonters at a time motel for two weeks and of critical need, while then offered him the offering companionship church’s Sunday school and assistance to aging room — not in use during (and other) populations. the pandemic — as a The most recent data living space. He had a put Vermont’s rental vaDAN DOU GHERTY bathroom with a shower cancy rate at 3.4 percent and use of the kitchen. and Chittenden County’s Dougherty lived in the church for about at about 2 percent, according to the two months, during which time he tried Vermont Housing Finance Agency. to find housing through various social service agencies. But his hourly wage of Sharing the Burden $21 priced him out.

Messick, 71, the Milton homeowner, “I made too much money for said she needed financial assistance to assistance,” Dougherty said, “but not stay in her home after the June 2019 enough to rent an apartment.” death of her husband. She learned about One day at the church, he saw a HomeShare from a brochure at her flyer about HomeShare. It was early doctor’s office.

December 2020, a stage of the pandemic She and Dougherty were matched in when it was tricky to meet new people December 2020. He pays rent and shovand consider shared living. els the driveway, takes out the trash, “We took our precautions and met works in the garden, and pitches in with just before Christmas,” Dougherty other chores. Messick, a retired school recalled of his meeting with Messick. bus driver, cooks supper for the two “And we seemed to click right off the of them during the week; Dougherty, bat.” a courthouse security guard, prepares MAKING MATCHES » P.10 meals on weekends.

WE FELT RIGHT AT HOME WITH EACH OTHER.

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HO US I NG

Making Matches « P.9 The two were up front with each other about what they wanted in a housemate, an openness that they said was key to making the arrangement work.

“We felt right at home with each other,” Dougherty said.

A History of Housing

Meaningful Connections

In Burlington’s New North End, two women who maintain independent lives found a connection through HomeShare about two years ago, when Theresa Mazza welcomed a fellow educator, Amy Ross, into her home.

Mazza, a Spanish teacher at South Burlington High School, said she needed rental income to keep her home after a divorce. A colleague told her about HomeShare, and Mazza made a successful match with the second person to whom she was referred.

Mazza’s bedroom and bathroom are on the first 10

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COURTESY OF KAREN PIKE

HomeShare was founded 40 years ago by a group of seniors as a grassroots initiative with the intention of helping aging citizens stay in their homes by matching them with other seniors in shared living situations, Dunn said. But HomeShare developed into an intergenerational program for the very reason it was conceived: Seniors wanted to stay put in their own homes.

Last year, people who shared their home through the program ranged in age from 27 to 98, according to Dunn; the average age was 72. Those who rented or provided assistance in another’s home ranged in age from 21 to 79, with an average age of 51.

“We’ve tried to encourage young people to consider sharing their homes,” Dunn said. “They might not need [household] assistance, but they could use financial assistance. We see this as part of the affordable housing solution in the area.”

HomeShare’s guidelines dictate that rent cannot exceed $650 a month in Chittenden County or $550 in other counties. The average HomeShare rent last year was $323 per month, according to Dunn.

These rates are substantially lower than the median rent in Chittenden County: $1,252 a month between 2015 and 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The website rentdata.org reports that the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Burlington area is $1,500; the state average is $1,077.

The pandemic has complicated HomeShare’s matchmaking process. There’s pent-up demand because people are more hesitant to open their homes to others, and it’s difficult for potential matches to become adequately acquainted through a Zoom meeting, Dunn said.

Over the decades, the program has observed three to four times more people looking for a place to live than available homes. The pandemic has pushed that number to 10 times more potential guests than available hosts, according to Dunn.

Yet the number of people living alone in this country is growing, according to the Census Bureau. In 2020, 28 percent of households in the U.S. were occupied by one person. In 1960, that number was 13 percent.

“Living alone — we think it’s a sign of independence,” Dunn said. “But human beings are social animals. The connection that comes by having someone else around is so life-altering.”

Theresa Mazza with her dog George and Amy Ross at home in Burlington over the summer

floor; Ross, also a teacher in South Burlington, has two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. One of those bedrooms is for Ross’ teenage daughter, who lives at Mazza’s house part time.

The two teachers give each other privacy but share meals on occasion, Mazza said. When she goes away, Ross takes care of her dog. Mazza, who has two grown children, enjoys hearing the banter of a mother and daughter in her home.

“I think about how quiet my house would be otherwise,” Mazza said. “I do like private time, but I think I have just enough. It works really well.”

HomeShare is most successful when a bond — a friendship — develops between host and guest, Dunn said. This is more likely to occur if the arrangement is not solely financial, she added.

“These matches are like little miracles in people’s lives if you find the right person,” Dunn said.

In Milton, Messick and Dougherty enjoy playing cards and going to flea markets and yard sales together.

Dougherty’s domestic assistance is wide-ranging. For the Christmas meal, he pulled the innards from the cavity of the turkey, relieving Messick of a duty she finds unpleasant, he said.

Finding a home in Milton when he was temporarily staying in a church “was like the world was lifted off my shoulders,” Dougherty said. “I’m beyond grateful. I don’t know where I’d be now if I didn’t get to HomeShare.” m

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AMY LILLY

Lana Reuss in the office area

AMY LILLY

Lana and Marc Reuss, with a Lego model Marc made of the house during the design phase with Birdseye

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HO ME T O UR

Level Up Woodstock’s Bank Barn transforms agricultural architecture

BY AM Y L I L LY • lilly@sevendaysvt.com

To reach Bank Barn, a house built just outside of Woodstock in 2019, you ascend a steep road leading to a long dirt driveway that curves up through a field. The Green Mountains soon appear off to the right, while above, on the left, the house comes into sight. Its long, boxy, gabled form looks not quite of this world, floating as it does on a first story that is end-to-end glass.

COURTESY OF BIRDSEYE

Bank Barn in Woodstock was built into a bank to provide ground-level access to two different stories.

It’s no wonder architect Brian Mac and his team at Richmond-based Birdseye felt compelled to give their creation a name. The traditional structure, a staple of Vermont barn types, is built into a bank to provide ground-level access to two different stories.

In Birdseye’s design, access to the basement level is through a carport whose exposed concrete walls cut into the bank on the narrow, gabled end of the house.

Pedestrian entry to the house is at the main floor on the uphill side, which orients those entering toward the south-facing glass curtain wall.

Owners Marc and Lana Reuss, along with their 6-month-old Rhodesian ridgeback named Red, warmly welcomed Nest into this haven of sunlight.

The couple are solicitous and unfussy, and their house reflects that vibe. The entire main floor is one sweeping room, punctuated by a massive yet airy four-sided freestanding staircase that brings daylight down to the basement level. Not only is the south side of the house glass, capturing the mountains in one long vista, the east and west sides are, too.

From the kitchen, the view out the west curtain wall is both intimate and grand. The interior concrete floor extends seamlessly outside to an ipe wood deck with a built-in hot tub and, a few shallow steps LEVEL UP

» P.14

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Level Up « P.13

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S INFLUENCE IS CLEAR IN BANK BARN’S SENSITIVITY TO NATURE AND THE BLURRING OF OUTSIDE AND IN.

down, a concrete deck with a fire pit and chairs.

No railings obscure the views of fields, woods and mountains.

The Reusses are unusual among owners of Birdseye houses. Mac and his team design such distinctive, luxe abodes — including the Mural House in Burlington, which won an award from the Vermont chapter of the American Institute of Architects last year — that their owners usually prefer to stay out of the spotlight. But the Reusses are devoted fans of the architect and his firm, and they enthusiastically agreed to a tour.

“They have an amazing amount of integrity that carries through to every employee,” Marc declared of Birdseye. “Getting to know those guys, both personally and professionally, they’re just super decent people.”

Lana qualified that, adding, “You’ll pay a lot more than you intended to. Within a month, we were 40 percent over budget. But you’ll never question their integrity.”

Marc, a retired human resources executive for pharmaceutical giant Novartis, and Lana, a former teacher, were at the end of a long stay in Europe — five years in Munich, three in London — when they decided to repatriate for Marc’s retirement. One of their twin daughters had attended Middlebury College; during visits, the couple had fallen in love with Vermont, and Woodstock in particular. While a real estate agent scouted locales, landing them the 60-acre plot, they searched for Vermont architects online and found Birdseye.

Back in the United States, the

couple first met with Mac over beers at Long Trail Brewing in Bridgewater Corners.

“They were beautiful people and just really fun and super interested in doing something unique,” Mac recalled of the meeting.

Marc, who has a deep interest in architecture and a detailed knowledge of European-designed décor, brought along a model of the house he had in mind, which he had constructed from white Legos. He took it out during Nest’s tour: The form is slightly more industrial than the house Mac created.

Birdseye consists of a 25-year-old architectural practice and a 40-year-old construction company specializing in detailed craftsmanship. Its approach honors Vermont’s design-build tradition. The architects do two to three projects a year, but not all are built by the construction arm; the Reusses chose Birdseye Construction from three bids.

Like Bank Barn, several of Mac’s other home designs echo the agricultural structures common in their rural settings. These include Woodshed in Pomfret, clad in repurposed wood from snow fences and horse corrals; and Lathhouse in the Hamptons, whose exterior imitates lath, the narrow bands of wood spaced slightly apart for ventilation in corn cribs and drying barns.

Bank Barn, honored by both the Vermont and the New England chapters of the American Institute of Architects, has an additional accolade: its own book. The 200-page monograph was recently published

by Oscar Riera Ojeda as part of its international Masterpiece Series — putting Birdseye in the company

The south side of Bank Barn

PHOTOS: TOM MCNEILL

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HO ME T O UR of California-based Faulkner Architects and Alberto Campo Baeza in Madrid, among a dozen select firms.

Bank Barn: Birdseye includes a foreword by Phish bass guitarist Mike Gordon (Mac designed Gordon’s Lake Champlain home, as well as longtime Phish manager John Paluska’s Burlington house); an intro

by Tim McKeough, a design writer for the New York Times; and an interview with Mac conducted by Vladimir Belogolovsky, a prolific design writer and architectural exhibition curator who trained as an architect. Oh, and gobs of gorgeous photos.

In the book interview and on the phone with Nest, Mac described his aesthetic as a desire to “edit out” as much as possible, leaving just the bare minimum forms of a building. Instead of gutters, the roof has an extended overhang and gravel-covered French drains beneath. Vents from the kitchen and dryer are custom-made and integrated into the exterior cedar siding. A hallway pocket door on the second floor is exactly the height of the nine-foot ceiling.

Mac, a Midwesterner who earned his architecture degree at the University of Detroit, said he was primarily influenced by his modernist professors and the “accessible” architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses.

“He was my go-to architect,” Mac said. The father of modernism’s influence is clear in Bank Barn’s sensitivity to nature and the blurring of outside and in by details such as the continuous kitchen floor and ipe deck separated only by glass, and the secondstory corner-wrapped windows. Both are features of Wright’s Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.

Marc’s own aesthetic seems well matched to the architect’s. He sourced all of the furniture, lighting and plumbing. The sleek, industrial kitchen, manufactured in Germany by Bulthaup, complements the Bulthaup solid-oak dining table, black hanging lamps

by Vipp and Eames lounge chairs. Upstairs, each sparely furnished bedroom has its own bath with equally sleek fixtures by Vipp.

The white walls have been left undecorated but for two large-format photographs — of New York City and Red’s great-uncle — and, on the basement level, a wall-hung wine rack and sparsely filled display shelf.

A Rais woodstove in the living area provides only a fraction of the heat for the 4,500-squarefoot home. Bank Barn has a geothermal system that powers the radiant floors on all three levels.

Meanwhile, a 15-kilowatt array of three groundmounted solar panels — Mac said he didn’t want to mar the roof ’s aesthetic — generate the house’s only source of energy: electricity.

Though carefully modeled for energy use by New York City environmental consultants Atelier Ten, the house isn’t as close to net-zero as intended. “We still use plenty of electricity in the winter,” said Lana.

Back on the main floor, Marc mentioned that the 16,000-pound steel staircase was dropped in by crane in late February, when the ground was frozen enough to support its weight. Its floating oak risers span banisters made of steel sheet or glass.

“Every angle on the stairs — you never get tired of it,” Marc said. That goes for the whole of Bank Barn, he added: “It’s a source of endless joy.” m

The view from the main floor

The kitchen

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Mod Squad Huntington Homes builds modular houses in movable sections

BY ANNE WAL L AC E A L L EN • anne@sevendaysvt.com

Jason Webster in the kitchen of an energy-efficient TruHome model at Huntington Homes

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The production floor at Huntington Homes

CO NS T R UCT I O N A duplex bound for Nantucket got its start last October as a stack of lumber at one end of a cavernous factory in Vermont.

Over the course of 12 days, carpenters, plumbers and finishers worked on the house in pieces as it traveled down the assembly line at Huntington Homes, a modular house-building company in East Montpelier.

The duplex emerged in four sections from the other end of the factory, with its interiors completed and painted. There were cabinets in the kitchen and towel racks in the bathrooms.

The next step on the home’s path: a truck trip to New Bedford, where the shrink-wrapped pieces traveled by barge to the Massachusetts island off the coast of Cape Cod. There, a local crew began the work of connecting pipes, hooking up electricity and making other finishing touches that could only be done on-site.

When it was all done, a few months after delivery, the house would be indistinguishable from its stick-built neighbors.

Though there are several modular home dealers in Vermont, Huntington Homes is one of just two manufacturers; the other is Vermod, which builds affordable modular homes in Wilder.

Huntington’s factory crafts about 75 homes a year destined for Vermont and other locations within driving distance.

Modular buildings tend to cost less to construct than conventional ones, according to copresident and co-owner Jason Webster, whose father bought the company in 1993 after having managed the operation since its inception in 1978.

Because about 80 percent of the

construction happens in the controlled environment of a factory, modular and prefabricated homes come together faster than traditional buildings. The nation’s biggest modular companies, which build hotels and other large structures, often further reduce costs by locating their factories in rural areas with comparatively low labor and energy prices.

At Huntington, each home takes about 12 eight-hour shifts to build. The indoor environment is easier on the company’s 75 workers, Webster said.

“Nobody is racing around; nobody is hollering,” he said.

Customers can approach Huntington with their own home plans or choose from a menu of several dozen options illustrated by rotatable online pictures.

At 772 square feet, a cape called the Harrington is one of the smallest; the Westminster II, at 2,852 square feet, is one of the largest, with four bathrooms and four bedrooms.

A big Huntington house with simple, inexpensive finishes might cost as little as $170 per square foot. A smaller one

Marlene and Joe Wurtzbacher at their Huntington home in Waterbury Center

with high-end finishes, such as hardwood floors, wood siding and a standing seam roof, is priced at about $250 per square foot, a sum that’s in keeping with most single-family home construction in Vermont at the moment. The owner’s outlay on land, a driveway, septic, electric and permitting adds greatly to the final cost.

“In central Vermont, where you’re paying $120,000 or $140,000 for the piece of land — which then needs $80,000 for driveway, septic, power, excavation — you’ve spent $200,000 before you’ve started building anything,” Webster said.

Just a few years ago, the average

Huntington home cost about $350,000.

But nowadays, with land and material prices soaring, Huntington’s typical Vermont home appraises for $600,000 to $900,000, including the land, Webster said.

Huntington Homes started out in 1978 with affordable one-story ranches, then gradually improved its materials, amenities and floor plans. In that time, modular home construction has become more sophisticated everywhere. About half of the homes Huntington is building this year are all-electric, with no MOD SQUAD

» P.18

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CO NS T R UCT I O N JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

Mike Keough (left) and John Smith assembling and painting windows at Huntington Homes

Mod Squad « P.17 equipment fired by fossil fuels. They are heated and cooled by heat pumps.

“Vermont clients tend to choose all-electric,” Webster said.

In its year-old TruHome line, the company focuses on energy efficiency, recycled materials and other sustainable choices, while standardizing its designs to make the homes more affordable. In any construction project, when clients make changes, the price goes up.

That’s one reason Miya Teraki and Nate Howells chose a modular home last year when they wanted to build a threebedroom house in Duxbury. They hoped to avoid surprises, Teraki said.

“My husband and I have a pretty project-based mindset,” she said.

“Understanding what we were building, with all of the details, and not having to make a lot of rushed decisions during the construction appealed to us.”

Joe and Marlene Wurtzbacher started with their own home plan and had Huntington turn it into a modular home 18

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NOT HAVING TO MAKE A LOT OF RUSHED DECISIONS DURING THE CONSTRUCTION APPEALED TO US. MIYA TERAK I

that they placed on land in Waterbury Center. Still, a modular home turned out to be less expensive, faster to build and more energy efficient than a traditional home would have been, Joe Wurtzbacher said. And it meant less decision making throughout the process.

“A lot of the questions are already answered,” said Wurtzbacher, a retired firefighter who moved to Vermont from Summit, N.J., a decade ago. He liked not having to make choices about concrete, framing and other materials, as he had when his previous homes were being

built. “The things we were sweating over were things like flooring choices, cabinets, the roofing color,” he said.

About half of Huntington’s homes land on sites in Vermont — especially in Stowe and the Mad River Valley, where there has been a lot of construction in the last few years — or just over the border in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Trucking the pieces farther would negate the price advantage of building the components in a factory, Webster said.

Yet on a typical day, when Huntington has four or five buildings moving through its factory in various stages of completion, many are bound for Nantucket, where the company started building homes in 1985.

Huntington has sent an estimated 600 buildings to the island in the last 36 years, Webster said. Despite the complicated logistics of getting the modules there, Nantucket’s stratospheric housing prices make it cost-effective.

“It just makes a heck of a lot of sense to use Vermont labor costs and ship value-added product to the island,

instead of ordering pieces to the site on Nantucket and then paying Nantucket labor costs,” Webster said. “On Nantucket, most of what we send is what would be considered their affordable housing.”

The median home price there is typically around $2 million, according to Anne Kuszpa, executive director of the nonprofit Housing Nantucket.

Huntington isn’t the only modular home company supplying the island.

Along with homes, Huntington has built worker housing on Nantucket. The company recently created a 20-room dormitory for the yacht club in the core historic district, where it had to follow an array of strict codes. The town required that its materials include period details such as genuine single-pane windows.

“I think 99 out of 100 people, when they get off the ferry and look at that building, they think it’s been here for 100 years,” Webster said. m

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R EA L ES TAT E

Buying Time

How I navigated the Vermont real estate market in 2021

BY J O R D A N B A R RY • jbarry@sevendaysvt.com

When my now-husband and I lived in New York City in our early twenties, we quickly discovered the best way to get a rental: Bring a check. At showings, we learned to ditch our timid Vermonter ways and elbow through all the other broke millennials to slam down a deposit. bathrooms; fireplace; big kitchen; ample parking; maybe a garage.

We were renting from Geri Reilly, owner of Geri Reilly Real Estate in South Burlington. At the beginning of 2021, we got an email from Mike Simoneau Jr., a Realtor at the agency: “Thinking of Homeownership This Year?!”

He told us that the market was hot but interest rates were super low; it was a great time to buy.

Last April, we put on our flame suits and jumped in.

In our first meeting, Mike told us he considers himself a “realist Realtor.” That was his way of gently explaining that our must-haves were a little lofty for our budget. We whittled it down to the essentials: three bedrooms, some sort of yard, commutable to Burlington.

We left the meeting knowing we’d need to be flexible. While we were contemplating spending what for us was an unprecedented amount of money, it wasn’t very much in the context of the current BUYING TIME

» P.22

MATT MIGNANELLI

A nearly windowless sixth-floor apartment on the unfortunately named Crooke Avenue? We decided to take it as soon as we stepped off the stinky elevator. It was the first and only apartment we saw.

We made on-the-spot offers for all but one of our Brooklyn apartments over the next six years.

Quick decisions were essential — and they weren’t permanent. It’s not like we were buying the place.

When we moved back to Vermont in 2019, we lucked into a cute rental house in Burlington’s South End. We dabbled in DIY and, early in the pandemic, planted an extensive garden. We started talking about buying, scheming up our dream home between episodes of “The Sopranos.”

The initial wish list looked a lot like the little house we were renting: Burlington, preferably South End; big yard; separate offices; two

NEST WINTER 2022

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R EA L ES TAT E

Buying Time « P.21 housing market — an intimidating mix of limited supply, huge competition, cash offers and waived contingencies.

But, for once, we weren’t in a rush.

Our lease went through the end of the year, and if we bought a place through Geri Reilly Real Estate, we could break it whenever we closed.

A few days later, we were prequalified with a lender, and our “collaboration center” — the personalized version of Zillow, aggregating all the listings that might pique our interest — was buzzing.

We sorted through about 25, clicking thumbs-up or thumbs-down. The third button was a heart: the real estate version of Tinder’s Super Like.

The first house we hearted checked most of our dream-house boxes: a cute ranch right behind Zero Gravity Craft Brewery, three bedrooms, nice kitchen, parking. It even had solar panels and a pool. It was toward the top of our budget, but the solar would mean a low electric bill.

We met Mike in front of the house and signed the COVID Questionnaire — certifying that we hadn’t left the state, back when that still wasn’t allowed, and that we had no symptoms or close contacts with COVID-19. Once inside, the house was everything I’d hoped for.

Somewhat naïvely, I’d expected the home-buying process to be like an episode of “House Hunters.” We’d get to look at a few properties and spend time considering which would be the best fit. But a hot market waits for no buyer. There was a Realtor with a laptop coming in right after us to give a virtual showing. If we were interested, we needed to make an offer. That day.

We snuck away from a dinner party that night, putting together our first offer from our friends’ guest room.

I’d drafted a letter to the sellers

detailing how my husband and I first met across the street at Lake Champlain Chocolates — I worked there, and he would come in for milkshakes. Mike quashed that plan, explaining that such “love letters” are a violation of fair housing laws and that the National Association of Realtors now advised against them.

Instead of standing out with our love story, we’d have to be competitive by offering more than the asking price and

THERE WAS A REALTOR WITH A LAPTOP COMING IN RIGHT AFTER US TO GIVE A VIRTUAL SHOWING.

IF WE WERE INTERESTED, WE NEEDED TO MAKE AN OFFER. THAT DAY. waiving contingencies. We weighed the potential disaster scenarios that might come about from skipping a radon test or a furnace inspection, ultimately making an offer that waived everything except the general home inspection — even the appraisal.

The next morning, Mike called. He said, “Hey, Jordan” in an Eeyore-like voice that could only mean bad news.

There were 13 other offers, and the sellers went with one that was all cash, inspection waived. He was reassuring: “We’ll find the right place.”

We turned our rejection into Super Like fuel, handing out hearts willynilly as listings popped up, filling our weekends with showings at capes in the New North End; a house in the Old

North End where the upstairs ceilings looked suspiciously low; a fixer-upper near the airport with room for a pool, if we wanted to add one; a variety of houses in Essex and Winooski; and an 1800s farmhouse in Bristol.

After our first failed offer, we’d started to think about buying a “for-now home,” rather than a “forever home.”

Putting a five-year timeline on a starter place with only one bathroom or in a less-than-ideal location helped us imagine ourselves living there. It was the Brooklyn rental mindset, shifted slightly from “It’s not like we’re buying the place” to “It’s not like we have to live here for the rest of our lives.”

The old farmhouse would be a longterm move, though — I kept calling it a “house-house.” It had two garages, three bathrooms and extensive gardens. I was smitten. Sure, Bristol’s a bit of a haul to Burlington. But we were both working remotely, and we have good friends in the village. We made our second offer, boldly waiving contingencies on a 200-year-old house.

We lost that house to a cash offer, too: The sellers got $76,000 over the asking price, without an inspection.

That one hurt, but it also led us to our future home. Expanding our list of potential “commutable” towns helped us reconsider how often we need to go to Burlington. Were we missing other househouses outside of Chittenden County?

We asked Mike to expand our geographic range. Later that week, a listing popped up in Vergennes.

The outdoor space caught my eye: almost an acre, with apple trees, raised beds and a chicken coop. It also had strange patches of meadow-height grass scattered throughout the fenced-in yard, but I assumed the owners just didn’t mow there.

Inside, there were exposed beams

MAKE YOUR HOUSE FEEL LIKE A HOME

and sky-high ceilings, the listing photos showed. The kitchen was huge, with an island work space and a walk-in pantry.

The place had three bathrooms.

We got to Vergennes early on the morning of the showing — a quick 35minute drive — and stopped at Vergennes Laundry for scones and coffee. We sat at one of the orange tables out front, and I wondered why the city hadn’t been on our original list.

The house was perfect. Sure, the grass patches were kind of weird, the vinyl siding was pee-yellow, the office had an overwhelming red-and-brown paint job, the built-in microwave was missing a handle, and there was teenage graffiti all over the basement. But those things were fixable, and the graffiti — Sharpie doodles and spray paint about crushes, sports teams and “COVID SUX” — told the story of the house’s first family, who built it in 2002.

We employed our now-familiar strategy: offering slightly over the asking price, waiving all contingencies except the home inspection. When everything was signed and the offer was submitted, Mike let us know we were the first ones in. He called the next day: Our offer was accepted.

We closed in late July, landing at $7,000 over the asking price after some post-inspection negotiation. There have been a few surprises — like needing to cut part of the butcher block countertop to fit in a new stove, and having a slight leak in the roof — but no regrets, especially once we’d borrowed a brush hog from the neighbor to mow down the grass patches.

We drive to Burlington roughly once a week, soaking up the lake views along the way. We painted the office over the holidays, using three coats of primer. The microwave still doesn’t have a handle, but we don’t really use it, anyway. And I’ve successfully lobbied to keep the graffiti in the basement. m

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