SOUTH JORDAN — Utah's largest homebuilder recently announced it would rally with Salt Lake Valley's largest land developer in a soft real estate market and build 500 more homes in a city already saturated with for-sale signs and bank foreclosures.
Homebuilder giant Ivory Homes is set to build the homes on Kennecott Land's vast master-planned community at Daybreak in South Jordan.
The homes will sit in a somewhat restricted village called Garden Park, where at least one resident of each home must be 55 years or older.
"No one wants to be categorized," said Myranda Baxter, 64, a sales associate for Daybreak. "We just call it 'the 55-plus community.' No one's (called) old or elderly here. They're just people who come and want a relaxed, maintenance-free place."
The community will feature variety of home styles, ranging from condominiums to luxury single-family houses, with townhomes and apartments in between.
According to Ty McCutcheon, vice president of Kennecott Land's community development, each home will be built with a not-so-young population in mind, with primarily main-floor living space to limit steps and stairs.
"They should save their steps for walking to the nearby train station, parks trails and a clubhouse," McCutcheon said. "It's all designed for that kind of ease and lifestyle."
Future buyers can leave their lawn mowers behind; yards will be fully maintained.
Ivory's timing to start throwing up 500 more homes, however, could be more favorable.
The communities surrounding neighborhoods are awash with for-sale flyers and signs, and hundreds of other homeowners have been forced to go one step further and throw in the proverbial towel as they've short sold and foreclosed on their slice of the American dream during the current economic meltdown.
At least 10 percent of Daybreak homes currently are for sale, and 50 of those have sat on the market long enough that desperate owners have had to short-sell or commence foreclosure, according to data from the Wasatch Front Regional Multiple Listing Service.
Sixty percent — 122 of 203 — of South Jordan's homes listed for sale are categorized as short sales, including many that are listed as foreclosures in that same category, according to the real estate listing Web site.
These grim numbers, however, never even jolted McCutcheon, who said he wasn't alarmed because his research reflects a growing population of baby boomers in the valley "who don't want to maintain a big house and a big yard," and in the next few years will be interested in exactly such a "well-thought out and well-planned neighborhood that thought of everything."
Nine other builders also selling homes in Daybreak, which currently is built to about 5 percent of its master plan of 20,000 homes.
Ivory will introduce the empty-nester village in April, with an expected grand opening in June, when interested people can visit a series of finished model homes. First buyers are expected to move in by year's end.
E-mail: jhancock@desnews.com