Builders still betting on Stansbury Park

(Tooele Transcript Bulletin) While residential building has ground to a standstill in many parts of the state, Stansbury Park remains one of Utah’s hot spots for new home construction.

In fact, Stansbury was recently found to be the No. 4 market for new home sales in the greater Salt Lake City area by Metrostudy, a Texas-based housing market research firm. Between June 30, 2008, and June 30, 2009, 145 new homes sold in the community, according to Metrostudy.

Currently, five home builders are building in Stansbury: Ivory Homes, Richmond American Homes, Symphony Homes, Fieldstone Homes and Holmes Homes. Part of the reason they remain so bullish on the 40-year-old community is that they can sell larger homes at lower prices there than they can almost anywhere else within the same driving distance of downtown Salt Lake City.

“That No. 4 rating is not surprising,” said Nate Roundy, sales consultant for Ivory Homes’ Benson Mill project. “Stansbury is a beautiful location, prices are affordable, and the commute to Salt Lake is reasonable.”

Ivory, a Salt Lake City-based company and the state’s largest home builder, is marketing townhomes at Benson Mill starting at $140,000. The company has currently sold nearly half of 150 planned townhomes in the two years since breaking ground on the project, according to Roundy. At its nearby Estates at Benson Mill, a single-family home project, the company has sold 25 of 200 planned units at prices starting at $180,000.

Richmond American Homes, a home-building subsidiary of MDC Holdings of Denver, Colo., has three projects in various stages of development in Stansbury Park, according to Scott Longnecker, a sales associate with the company.

The Starside project, with single family homes starting at $210,00 range, is nearly sold out. After three years, there are only four out of 50 lots remaining.

The Richmond American Homes in Stansbury Place are also approaching sold out with 15 of 40 lots remaining. That project opened two and a half years ago with homes starting at $210,000, according to Longnecker.

The Picket Lane development for Richmond American Homes has been open since 2007 and has 25 lots left out of just over 60. A second phase, is set to begin construction and will add 50 additional lots with home prices starting at $178,000.

“Richmond American will be in Stansbury for a while,” Longnecker said. “Stansbury has been a very good market. Initially sales were driven primarily by people from the Salt Lake Valley that were looking for a good home for a good price and then commuting back to Salt Lake. But recently, with the businesses that have been locating in Tooele County, we have started to see people that are relocating to Tooele County for work.”

Fieldstone Homes, a home builder with projects in California, Utah, and Texas, is in the process of closing out its 50-lot project in Stansbury Place that opened two years ago. With 15 lots to go, the company is shifting its local focus to a new project, Copper Canyon, a 471-home master planned development in Tooele.

Holmes Homes is a family-owned company in its fifth generation with projects in Utah, Arizona, and Idaho. Holmes has 65 lots for sale in Stansbury Park at Stansbury Place, which are being sold by local real estate agents Nicole Cloward and Melissa Collings, both with Re/Max Platinum.

The Holmes Homes in Stansbury Place start at $189,000, according to Cloward.

“Stansbury is very popular,” Cloward said. “The short commute to Salt Lake, along with affordability, makes it very attractive.”

Symphony Homes at Shadybrook Lane in Stansbury Park, with units ranging from $300,000 to $400,000, is at the upper end of the price scale, but the homes have sold well in the year since the project opened, according to according to Margie Thomas, a sales consultant for Symphony Homes, a North Salt Lake-based homebuilding partnership that has been building and selling homes in the Utah market since 1988.

Out of the 35 lots in Phase I of Shadybrook Lane, 11 have sold with another four under consideration, according to Thomas.

Stansbury Park was founded in 1969 by developer Terracor as a planned community with a lake, golf course, swimming pool, clubhouse and greenbelts. Terracor initially contracted with Dixie Six builders, a major home builder in Utah at the time, to build the first homes. Terracor went bankrupt in 1982, however, and building languished until around 1992, when Watt Homes started building in the area, according to John Poulson, a long-time Stansbury Park resident.

Metrostudy rated South Jordan’s Daybreak development, a Kennecott Land project, as the No. 1 new-home project in the state with 363 closings. The Ranches in Eagle Mountain followed as No. 2 with 243 closings, while Foxboro in North Salt Lake was No. 3 with 241 closings.

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