Allan Appel Photo
Roberta Hoskie pitched luxury living — at a new home built on what used to be known as the Brookside projects.
Hoskie (pictured) summoned visions of a homeowner relaxing in a high-ceilinged living room with a cool ginger beer with lemon. Or perhaps a cocktail prepared in a kitchen with granite counter tops and shining stainless steel appliances.
“What we’re battling is the old feeling for Brookside. I’m trying to get across the concept of affordable luxury,” Hoskie said as she led a tour of 11 Jennings Way.
The homes are selling for about $144,000, which is 80 percent of market value, she said. “So you are buying equity.”
Her pitch involved more than selling a new house. It involved selling a concept for how a troubled housing project can be replaced by an attractive neighborhood with a mix of renters and homeowners of different means enjoying spiffy modern conveniences, finishes, and features.
The Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) hired Hoskie, a fast-rising local realtor, to make that pitch, and help make “Belden Estates” a success story for a new era of public housing.
Belden’s contract is to sell home ownership units for families to buy, not rent.
She has started pitching both six “Phase II” houses, on which construction is now beginning; as well the remaining unsold two of the first six houses from the first phase.
HANH tore down the old Brookside and Rockview projects in the shadow of West Rock by the Hamden border. It is spending $200 million to put up 400 home-style rentals reminiscent of the successful Monterey Place and Q‑Terrace communities.
The next six houses will be built next to this occupied home, where an Xmas angel recently landed.
A key component in the new concept is mixing the renters, who are starting to move back in, with families who will buy and own an eventual 18 homes in the development.
HANH hopes that will help create a safe community that will eventually convince Hamden to take down a notorious fence keeping West Rockers out of their town. Click here for a story on that de-fencing, which has been put on hold following a contentious public meeting this summer.
HANH has dubbed the charming and bucolic collection of homes at the corner of the area’s new streets, Jennings Way and Solomon Crossing, Belden Brook Homes, after the brook that runs nearby.
Click here for a story on the features of the first six homes that are already built and awaiting occupants.
Those six 1,400-square foot, two and three bedroom, one-and-half bath homes were completed in the first phase about a year ago.
Four are under contract. In a tough economy it has proved difficult to get people who qualify income-wise who also have good credit.
This month shovels are going into the ground soon for the second phase, six more homes.
That’s where Roberta Hoskie comes in. In 2004 Hoskie founded, along with her sister, Outreach Realty Services Her business, above the Wells Fargo bank branch at Whalley and Norton, is a rental, brokerage, property management, and even real estate training school, with five staff employees and 20 contract employees. A graduate of Helene Grant, Troup, Co-Op High, Gateway, and Quinnipiac University, Hoskie has also been named Connecticut Business News’s outstanding minority business woman of the year.
A door direct from master bedroom to the upstairs bath will be one of the new luxury features of the next six homes at Brookside.
The house at 11 Jennings Way is one of the first six built for the project. Hoskie has turned it into a cozy and comfortable home, furnished down to the towels and the fruit in the bowl, to help potential buyers imagine life in the Belden Brook homes.
Whereas the first four contracts to purchase came from tours of finished but empty houses, Hoskie brought in a designer to fit out 11 Jennings as an attractive model home.
Under her guidance the kitchen counte rtops of the new homes will now be granite. The formerly white appliances have been switched out for very modern-looking stainless steel stove, refrigerator, and dishwasher.
Having the visual image of living in a home, rather than empty rooms, has helped.
Hoskie said between 50 and 60 prospective buyers have come by.
The full bath upstairs.
She said the overall reaction has been positive. Some prospective buyers have wished the house had a basement. (There’s a storage shed in back and the HVAC is in a utility closet on the first floor.) Others expressed concern that there are two units per building.
“We’re not used to row houses in New Haven. When people think homeownership, they think detached,” she said. “But there’s only one wall” separating one unit from the next, that is, with no one living above or on any other side.
The other question prospective buyers ask is, of course, who the renting neighbors will be. She reassures them that careful background checks, both financial and criminal, are part of the process that is bringing new renters in to the new development. “This is not the old Brookside,” Hoskie repeated.
To qualify to buy one of the homes you need to be at 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), or $44,000 for one person or $64,000 for a family of four. You also need good credit. .
In some cases HUD or HANH can also supply a subsidy on a case by case basis for a family who falls short of the AMI. Those subsidies are based on income and background and go on for 15 years; after that you pick up the whole mortgage.
The taxes on each unit are estimated to be $5,500 a year. But a new owner pays only 10 percent for the first five years, 25 percent of the real estate tax in years five to ten, with increases gradually in five-year increments.
All this adds up an estimated average monthly payment of $800 or $900 a year, Hoskie estimated. “My company does a lots of rentals [in New Haven]; $900 is a two-bedroom in a three-family house with no bells and whistles.”
And not likely new granite counter tops.
“Compare it to this. This makes luxury ownership possible. In many cases you can own this property for less than you pay for rent.”
Hoskie is holding an open house Sunday between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
The new homes are nice.
But how are they "affordable" if a family needs to own & operate 2 cars in order to live there?
There's no way that a family of 4 making $60,000 per year can afford that. Policymakers need to realize that housing affordability is not the same thing as affordability.
Transportation costs have risen by 50% in the past few years. Sadly, bus service continues to be degraded, to the point of uselessness. And yet the Board of Aldermen under the CCNE/Jorge Perez leadership recently voted to NOT accept millions of free dollars from Barack Obama, and the State government, to rebuild the local bus and transit system -- funds that every other city in the country have accepted. Their only economic development vision, apparently, is using a "pipeline" to subsidize their own organization and provide a few more union jobs for well-connected friends in the suburbs.