It started with a few infill projects in Portland’s close-in neighborhoods. Vic Remmers, Everett’s president, was working for Arbor Custom Homes – a company co-created by his father, Wally – when he began to notice a culture change in homebuyer preferences: They desired to live in walkable neighborhoods where grocery stores, restaurants and transit options were close.

“Those are the things we really try to hone in on,” Vic Remmers said. “It seems like that’s what’s really popular … That’s what makes Portland so cool is there are a lot of those neighborhoods available.”

Those first few homes sold quickly, and the father-and-son team hit the gas pedal. Last year, the company built 40 houses – a two-fold increase over 2012 – and this year it’s planning to build 80. Vic Remmers spends about two-thirds of his time driving Portland’s streets searching for opportunities.

Sometimes he finds it in an old, neglected home that he supplants with two new ones. Sometimes it’s preservation along with new construction, as was the case for the company’s Woodstock project.

There the company purchased an entire city block on Southeast 39th Avenue, preserved two century-old homes fronting Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, and split the remainder into five new single-family lots. Three homes have already sold; another is pending for $674,900.

Vic and Wally also are growing their multifamily division, via VWR Development. Last year, that company built a 30-unit apartment at Southeast 16th Avenue and Morrison Street. It’s nearly finished with a 46-unit apartment in the Sellwood neighborhood and a 50-unit one in the Beaumont-Wilshire neighborhood.

Navigating those waters has been tricky. The Beaumont-Wilshire project, for instance, has drawn significant opposition from neighbors dissatisfied with its size and design, but Vic Remmers said the project has taught him lessons about communication. In the Overlook neighborhood, he completely redesigned a 68-unit apartment development based on community input.

“Overlook is a great example where we went in with one idea and they didn’t care for it much,” he said. “They gave us some ideas, and it turned out a win-win for everybody. That’s kind of my goal for all the projects.”

Vic Remmers said he has several new apartment projects in the works for 2014.

The post 2014 Newsmakers: Vic and Wally Remmers appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Following a decision by the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, a drive by Beaumont-Wilshire residents to upend developer Wally Remmers‘ four-story apartment project has run out of road.

In a final opinion issued Dec. 4, LUBA remanded to the city of Portland its decision to issue Remmers (who is developing the project with his son Victor Remmers via Everett Custom Homes) a building permit for what the judicial board called “trivial” changes. The developer will need to revise certain design details – such as the location of a gas barbecue – before proceeding with construction, which is well under way.

In April, the Beaumont-Wilshire Neighbors for Responsible Growth began a costly process to appeal Remmers’ 50-unit Beaumont Village. Margaret Davis, a BWNRG member, said the decision was not what she had hoped for, but it isn’t a total loss.

“A remand is not an outright win, but it does feel like we’re going to get some things fixed with the building, and it’s also a chance for the city to just look at the project again,” she said. “So I have hope that we’ll turn out with something better. It’s not everything we wanted, but hey, we didn’t get an affirm, which would have been a loss.”

BWNRG members have adamantly opposed the project’s size and lack of parking, contending it neither followed code nor adhered to city criteria. The group sought to stymie construction by identifying in its appeal some of those perceived flaws, which ranged from sizable issues like a lack of parking to details like the amount of setback for dry wells.

LUBA found the project’s building permit to be complete before the city adopted its minimum parking requirements, and denied the argument that parking should be required. The board sustained the group’s argument about setbacks for dry wells, but with a major caveat.

“If we were not to remand this decision for other reasons based on our resolution of the fourth assignment of error, we would be hard-pressed to remand the decision based solely on such a minor error,” the board wrote in its opinion.

The fourth assignment of error had to do with minimum setbacks from adjacent residential properties, which in the case of a trellis and the location of a gas barbecue pit LUBA decided did not meet requirements. In the end, changes will likely be easy fixes for the developer.

“The changes that will be required on remand are trivial,” the board wrote. “In each case the needed changes are the kinds of minor changes that are routinely made via modifications of a submitted application or via conditions of approval. Reversal is not appropriate in these circumstances.”

A reversal decision would have completely nullified the city’s decision to issue a permit in the first place.

Legal counsel for Remmers declined to comment. Davis, meanwhile, said she is frustrated that her group needed to resort to such tactics just to be heard. BWNRG so far has raised $5,500 for its cause; Davis hopes the final tab won’t be much more than $10,000.

“Just to have the project be brought to code, it took all of that,” she said. “How did it turn out that we had this adversarial relationship with our own city? They have the rulebook sitting on every corner of their desks. It shouldn’t take us a year and a half worth of work to have (the project) be to code.”

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When Carole Lower bought her home at 3535 N.E. 45th Ave. in 1964, she never thought to ask about the zoning for either her property or the surrounding block. It was a residential neighborhood, and it was hard to imagine it could ever be anything else.

Lower, 75, has seen her fair share of changes in the past half century, but nothing like the four-story wall that construction crews soon will begin building a stone’s throw from her backyard, at 4425 N.E. Fremont St. She is one of many area residents who are struggling to come to grips with the 50-unit multifamily project.

“I’ve lived in this neighborhood since I was four years old,” Lower said. “Change is difficult for older people to accept, but I think I could accept the change if it was not for (the developer’s) basic attitude of, ‘Well folks, get over it. This is the future; you just have to deal with it.’ ”

Less than two months after a neighborhood petition to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals brought construction of a multifamily project on Southeast Division Street to a halt, Beaumont-Wilshire Neighbors for Responsible Growth is planning to appeal this one on Northeast Fremont Street. And while neighbors attest that their voices are being ignored, others contend that such grassroots campaigns are setting a damaging precedent.

Demolition has begun on the site; its permit is “under inspection,” according to the Bureau of Development Services website. Neighbors have voiced their opposition to the project’s lack of both parking and retail on the ground floor. On April 17, BWNRG filed with LUBA notice of its intent to appeal the project’s permit, but hasn’t offered details on why specifically.

Wally Remmers of Everett Custom Homes and his son Victor are developing the 50-unit project, which is called Beaumont Village.

Lower said Remmers has not been receptive to residents’ concerns, but she acknowledged that he reduced the number of units from 65 units. The developer has since added a commercial element but has resisted parking, according to the neighborhood website.

That’s because it’s not financially feasible, Remmers said. As a mid-block site, the development would be best served by underground parking, which is cost-prohibitive. But even if he were to provide at-grade parking, it would eliminate the retail space neighbors sought originally. He thinks that will be an unintended consequence of the new minimum parking requirements that city commissioners adopted earlier this month.

“With the new code, I think you’ll see people going back to not doing retail and doing parking garages,” Remmers said.

In February, LUBA revoked a building permit for an 81-unit apartment project on Southeast Division Street, because of an appeal made by Richmond Neighbors for Responsible Growth. The project’s developer was Dennis Sackhoff, who is Wally Remmers’ business partner at Beaverton-based Arbor Custom Homes. Sackhoff’s project sat idle for more than a month before he could reapply for a new permit.

Margaret Davis, another neighborhood representative, said she is concerned about not only parking, but also pedestrian safety and traffic congestion. Davis believes that part of the problem stems from old zoning codes that allow for new, high-density apartments that don’t mesh with infrastructure systems built long ago – such as narrow, two-lane streets that are becoming major thoroughfares, but aren’t wide enough to allow for, say, a bus and a fire truck.

“It just seems like there is no transition between this ultra urban thing and infrastructure that doesn’t support it,” Davis said. “We have had some assurances from the city that, ‘Yes, we see the problems,’ (and) ‘Yes, they’re being fixed with the comp plan.’ But there was a feeling that we had to do something more immediately. What’s in place is kind of a joke.”

To try and massage the urban barrier between Beaumont Village and the rest of the neighborhood, residents asked Remmers to reduce the building’s height to three stories. But that’s also not feasible, Remmers said, because the price he paid for the property was based on its zoning and development potential (four stories of multifamily).

Remmers said he’s willing to work with neighbors, and has placed a call to their attorney, Ty Wyman of Dunn Carney Allen Higgins & Tongue LLP, to set up a meeting to discuss the issues. Remmers finds the situation frustrating – his team worked for more than six months and spent more than $600,000 preparing the building permit application.

“We went through the process of everything being checked, and rechecked, and rechecked again to make sure everything complied with zoning,” he said. “There were no discretionary decisions whatsoever.”

Brian Owendoff, a senior vice president at Capacity Commercial, also voiced concern. He’s been involved in Portland apartment construction totaling more than $100 million, and thinks the practice of revoking a building permit after issuance by the city will make lenders hesitant to issue construction loans because of heightened entitlement risks.

He said that while many projects benefit from neighborhood input, the developer is the only stakeholder with multimillion-dollar risk on the line (in Remmers’ case, it’s approximately $5 million). Owendoff said that neighbors need to realize that not every recommendation makes sense, or is financially feasible. Changing the rules mid-construction is kind of like “Lucy pulling away the football just as Charlie Brown goes to kick a field goal,” he said.

For Beaumont Village, the city must file the building permit with LUBA by May 1. The petitioners then will have 21 days to file their brief. Davis declined to share the details of the petition until it had been filed with LUBA. Construction may continue during the duration of LUBA’s proceeding.

Beaumont Village will be market rate, but the units will be smaller to make them more affordable. Remmers believes his project is getting a lot of flak simply because it’s the first sizable apartment complex to join the neighborhood. More are expected.

“Development has impact,” Remmers said. “Nobody ever wants it in their backyard. The comments we get are: ‘We want affordable housing, but this isn’t the place to do it.’ … “There is need for that, and this is an expensive neighborhood … There are a lot of people that want to live there that can’t afford to live there right now.”

 (Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect a correction in the spelling of Carole Lower’s name and to include comments by Wally Remmers, one of the developers of the project.)

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As a father of a two-year-old son and with a daughter on the way, developer Mark Desbrow can see how his life has changed.

“I’ve noticed that since I’ve had kids, my universe has kind of shrunk a little bit,” he said. “I end up hanging out mostly with people close by. As a parent, you end up socializing out of convenience; it’s just kind of how it works.”

Desbrow – a former commercial developer for Opus Northwest – is partnering with Russell and Doug Campbell of Campbell Real Estate Group and Eric Jacobson of Jacobson Real Estate Group to build upon that universe by constructing a community-oriented housing development.

will sit on two acres in the Richmond neighborhood of Southeast Portland, at Brooklyn Street and 36th Avenue. The subdivision will feature 18 custom-designed homes on 5,000-square-foot lots that wrap around 10,000 square feet of shared green space. Residents will be able to choose the level of privacy they want where their backyards connect to the inner courtyard. The homes will be priced between $500,000 and $600,000.

Basically, it’s a centrally located, intimate subdivision designed to foster neighborliness. And the idea is resonating with parents, young or old.

“This is a market where buyers are kind of king, and they’ve got a lot of choices; but there’s not a lot of choices if you want to live in a really nice community,” said Eli Spevak, a father and the owner of cohousing development company .

Spevak has developed numerous community-minded projects throughout Portland, including in the Piedmont neighborhood, where he and his family formerly lived. He said his family outgrew that space and so now he is developing – along with business partner Zach Parrish – a new family home as part of a 16-lot, community-oriented subdivision called in Northeast Portland.

It’s been called the little farm within the city and, similar to Waverly Commons, it will feature a communal green space complete with gardens, chickens and beehives. Homes will be priced between $299,000 and $370,000. Spevak said the project is being designed to create a culture where neighbors feel comfortable lending things like a lawnmower, a canoe, a pizza stone or a newspaper.

The benefits to that kind of living are numerous, he said.

“At the Peninsula Park Commons, if we put our daughter to bed and we wanted to go see a movie, we would just hand the monitor to a neighbor and off we went,” Spevak said.

Desbrow and Spevak said their projects are appealing to two main groups: young families looking for a safe environment to raise their kids in the city and empty nesters seeking smaller, more manageable homes close to society, goods and services.

Waverly Commons is in line to be reviewed by the city’s hearings officer, and Desbrow said he hopes to start construction in May. That will require demolition of an existing children’s home, which has generated controversy from some residents.

Spevak said reservations are set for seven of the Cully Grove lots and an agreement is being finalized for an eighth. He said the team could start construction as soon as two months after it secures 10 reservations.

Both Waverly Commons and Cully Grove are incorporating green designs.

“The fact that we’re … close to our magic number in a market where buyers get to turn around and buy a house almost anywhere today, indicates to me there is a lot of demand for this,” Spevak said.

According to the Regional Multiple Listing Service, buyers want to be closer to the city. With an average total market time of approximately 145 days for homes sold in the 15 areas that compose the Portland metropolitan area, homes in North Portland, Northeast Portland and Southeast Portland sold in 90 days, 139 days and 112 days respectively.

Properties in Northwest Washington County and Beaverton were also selling quickly, at 115 and 116 days respectively. Desbrow and his partners tracked home sales in the Richmond neighborhood.

“They move even in the recession,” Desbrow said. “Eyeing that trend, we felt the market could support 18 homes in that location.”

Carrie Richardson, a principal broker at Realty Trust Group Inc. in Portland, is purchasing one of the Waverly Commons homes. She said the first thing about the project that appealed to her was the ability to design and build her own home so close to the city. But there was also a nostalgic aspect – she grew up in a similar subdivision in Chicago in the 1970s.

“It was just like having a built-in set of relatives or friends to always play with,” she said. “We ran in and out of each other’s homes just like they were our own, and there always seemed to be someone on hand to take care of the kids if one of the parents needed to run to the store.”

Wally Remmers, vice president of , said his company is planning to break ground on four subdivisions in Washington County this summer. He said Arbor is considering incorporating some of the design aspects, like communal green space, found in developments like Waverly Commons and Cully Grove.

“We think there’s a real demand for that and a real need for it,” Remmers said. “People like to get to know their neighbors and they like to interact with people. And so it gives them an opportunity to do that and it gives them a nicer space they otherwise wouldn’t be able to have.”

Remmers said Arbor also would like to develop smaller subdivisions identical to Waverly Commons and Cully Grove if it could find land near the city.

Spevak said he sees a lot of potential for development of this sort in Portland.

“If you have a well-designed and beautiful little cluster of homes, people just gravitate to it,” he said. “I think there’s a good market for that.”

The post Portland developers focus on building for communities appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

As the person in charge of land acquisition and project planning for Oregon-grown home builder , Wally Remmers, the company’s co-founder and vice president, needs to keep a close eye on the residential real estate market.

Right now, his eye is on the North Bethany area.

“We’re really refocusing on concentrating our growth and our development into the Washington County areas now,” Remmers said. “The combination of great schools, good land holdings that we have and all the job growth that’s in Washington County, it’s just been a good situation for us and one of the reasons we’re focusing on it.”

To help narrow that focus, Arbor announced in December that it was selling much of its surplus properties – in areas like Wilsonville, West Linn, Sunnyside, Tigard and Tualatin – to two of its competitors, and .

Remmers said the company has 2,600 lots in Washington County: Construction is under way on a group of 500 lots, two groups will be released to the market early in 2012 and work is expected to start on four more groups next summer. Arbor also plans to build 193 luxury apartments in North Bethany next year.

The plan is aggressive, considering the general state of the industry.

Prices drop, sales increase

According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices – a leading measure of U.S. home prices – 19 of the 20 metropolitan cities covered saw home prices decrease from September to October 2011. In the Portland-metro area, values dropped 0.5 percent in October and were down 4.7 from a year ago.

Additionally, Portland State University’s Center for Real Estate third-quarter housing report found that the median sales price of homes in the Portland area had declined 6.1 percent from September 2010 to $222,500.

But while prices across the board are down, activity is up.

PSU’s quarterly report also found that the number of transactions in the Portland-metro area had increased 14.8 percent over the year, while the United States Department of Commerce reported that new residential sales across the nation were up 8.9 percent from October 2010. Commerce also reported that housing starts were up 24.3 percent from November 2010, and that the national market was sitting on a six-month supply of inventory.

For Remmers, that’s a clear signal that it’s time to get busy.

“The real significant thing in this market is that we’re sitting on a six-month supply of inventory and we’ve been there for some time,” he said. “That’s down significantly from what it was at one point in time.”

Remmers said a six-month housing supply represents a good market balance for buyers and sellers. Adding to that mix, he said, is the fact that the glut of foreclosed and distressed homes was also starting to thin out – foreclosure filings in Oregon decreased 36.6 percent from September 2010, according to PSU’s housing report.

The land crunch

Compounding all of that is a looming land shortage that Remmers believes will hit the Portland market late in 2012.

“It’s going to be an interesting time coming up here because when you say you want to do a subdivision, you don’t just walk out there and start pushing dirt around,” Remmers said of the lengthy application process that precludes any potential housing community. “It’s going to take a while to bring land to the market, even when people decide to do it, and there’s not a lot of movement, there’s not a lot of applications being submitted for new subdivisions, even yet.”

Remmers said the land shortage is because few developers were able to secure financing this year.

He said Arbor hasn’t had that problem, but it has felt the pinch.

When the recession hit, the company went from selling as many as 850 homes in 2005 to as few as 217 homes in 2010. The company responded by shrinking its operation, which allowed it to cut expenses and pay off debt.

Remmers said Arbor’s ability to stay nimble has given it an advantage over larger, slower-moving, publicly traded companies and has helped it maintain access to financing.

“I think that helped us a lot back in the boom years when things were really starting to expand and I think it’s helped us to shrink as well,” he said.

Another change the company has had to make is in the way it markets and sells its homes.

Whereas 80 percent of its business formerly came from plans and specs that people ordered after walking through model homes, 80 percent now comes from spec homes, in which the company makes the decisions about things like carpet color, countertop material and the type of window blinds. Remmers said he thinks that trend represents consumers’ general nervousness about the housing market.

“People want to see it, they want to buy it and they want to get a loan on it right now,” he said.

At least, that’s the company’s hope, and it’s gearing up for the crunch.

“There just isn’t going to be the supply out there where the buyers can shop and take their time and dicker,” he said. “They’re going to start seeing houses selling out from under them. They’re going to start seeing multiple offers coming in on houses. That’s going to change the dynamics of the business.”

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