Wall Street Journal - The New Home Company

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Grass menagerie:
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M9
HOMES
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MARKETS
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PEOPLE
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MANSION
UPKEEP
VALUES
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NEIGHBORHOODS
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—Phyllis Diller
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FIXTURES
Master Pool
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BROKERS
Friday, May 8, 2015 | M1
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
© 2015 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved.
Master Closet
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‘Never go to bed mad.
Stay up and fight.’
Master Kitchenette
Master Gym
Master Office
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE
FROM TOP: ARX SOLUTIONS (5 RENDERINGS); ARTEFACTO USA (REGALIA)
With square footage that rivals the average American home, luxury master suites now include private
pools, kitchenettes, gyms and salons; some bedrooms designed for small-scale entertaining.
GOING BIG In the penthouse of the Regalia tower in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., the master bedroom takes up 50% of the 5,700-square-foot floor plan. Finish My Condo, a Miami-based contractor built amenities that include an entertainment area with a large projection-screen TV hidden in the ceiling. Renderings at top show elements in a master suite of a planned penthouse unit in Echo Brickell, another Miami-area development.
BY CANDACE JACKSON
THE LATEST HIGH-END HOMES come with master
suites that are so vast and lavishly appointed, you
never have to leave the bedroom.
With boutique-style closets, media rooms, offices,
gyms and even kitchenettes and laundry rooms,
many masters are larger than average-size houses.
The penthouse master suite of the new L’Atelier
Residences in Miami Beach, Fla., is more than 3,000
square feet, with an additional 1,000 square feet
outside on two terraces—including one with a hot
tub overlooking downtown Miami.
“It’s like a separate apartment,” says Meir Sre-
bernik of SMG Management, the co-developer of
L’Atelier. The penthouse, priced at $33 million, totals
8,000 square feet of indoor living space, 37.5% of
which is in the master. Echo Brickell, another Miamiarea development, will have a 10,000 square foot
penthouse with a master suite that has a “midnight
bar,” gym and an infinity-edge pool.
At Turnberry Ocean Club in Sunny Isles Beach,
Fla., the 11,000-square-foot, three-level penthouses
will have master suites that take up almost an entire floor and feature a large balcony overlooking
the ocean. The space includes his-and-hers offices, a
gym, a massage suite, a sitting room and a separate
living room with a “midnight bar” that has a sink
and microwave. The units haven’t yet hit the mar-
ket, but the developer says the asking price will be
around $35 million when they do, later this year.
At Barn & Vine, a development of 37 homes in
Bridgehampton, N.Y., homes include large primary
master suites with custom closets, fireplaces and
free-standing soaking tubs, as well as secondary
master suites on the ground floor. Homes under
construction there will range from $2.695 million to
$3.995 million when completed.
Carina Radonich, the co-owner of Finish My
Condo, a Miami-based general-contracting company,
says she recently completed a penthouse at the Regalia tower in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., where the
master takes up 50% of the home’s total 5,700Please turn to page M6
CARLOS ZAMORA
INSIDE
LOW-KEY LUXURY WITH A RICH HISTORY
HISTORIAN’S TALE
David McCullough on a
Pittsburgh childhood M14
From a townhouse on a gracious canal to a villa on a leafy street, Amsterdam has the charm of other global capitals
without the hefty price tag. Prices are creeping up, however, with some areas back to prerecession levels.
EASY COMMUTE This relatively modern building in Amsterdam’s city center has a stylish loft apartment
with two bedrooms and one bathroom and is listed for about $937,400.
ative to what banks are paying
on deposits, says Kees Kemp, a
partner at Broersma estate
agents. “People are not getting
any interest from the banks,
and the trust in banks is less,
so they have decided to invest
in real estate,” he said, referring to the billions of euro the
Netherlands has had to spend
on bank bailouts during the recession.
The city’s most aspirational
area for singles and couples is
the canal belt, specifically
alongside the three widest and
most gracious canals of the
Dutch Golden Age: the Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht.
Each curved waterway is
lined with beautiful 17th-century
townhouses built for wealthy
Please turn to page M3
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LIKE THE TULIPS in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, the city’s
luxury real-estate market is
blooming.
After a tough, six-year
slump—property values fell by
as much as 20% between 2008
and 2013—prices in Amsterdam’s most affluent areas are finally on an upward trajectory
and have risen 10% in some areas over the past year, according to Statistics Netherlands,
which monitors house prices.
The average property price in
the city is €272,438, or about
$300,000, and some areas are
back to peak prerecession levels.
Partly driving the rebound
is the potential return investors can get on real estate rel-
BROERSMA
BY RUTH BLOOMFIELD
KINGPIN’S LAIR
The ‘Scarface’ mansion
gets a price cut M2
A NEW FLAME
Ventless fireplaces are
heating up M5
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
M6 | Friday, May 8, 2015
MANSION
BRIDGEHAMPTON, N.Y. At Barn & Vine, a 37-home development in the Hamptons, homes include both primary and secondary master suites. Top, a bedroom with deck
and fireplace. Above, large soaking tubs in two of the master bathrooms. Homes under construction there will range from $2.695 million to $3.995 million when completed.
ARX SOLUTIONS
Continued from page M1
square-foot floor plan. Built as a vacation home for a client, the condo’s
master includes a sitting area, an office, his-and-hers closets, his-andhers bathrooms and, of course, a
bedroom. A large projection-screen
TV is hidden in the ceiling in an entertainment area.
Today, the median newly built
American home measures about
2,300 square feet, with a typical
master bedroom taking up 12% of
the overall square footage, according to the National Association of
Home Builders. It wasn’t always
this way. Before the 18th century, a
home’s sleeping quarters tended to
be communal spaces in multipurpose rooms like great halls, according to “Sleeping Around: A History
of American Beds and Bedrooms,”
by Elizabeth Collins Cromley. Late
19th- and early 20th-century homes
had bedrooms with far more privacy, though they were typically
small, often to conserve heat. For
the wealthy, a master bedroom
could include a series of sitting or
dressing rooms, a precursor of the
multi-room suites gaining popularity today.
By the mid-20th century, larger
suburban-style homes gave rise to
master bedrooms with private bathrooms and larger closets. Architects
say the space started to become
more luxurious in high-end homes in
the 1980s and ’90s, with grander
closet spaces and spa-like bathrooms.
In recent years, homeowners and
developers say elaborate master
suites have become more apartmentlike in the midst of another trend:
multigenerational housing. Many
homes now include living spaces designed to house aging parents as
well as adult children who may be
moving back home. The sweeping
suites provide a getaway for the
homeowners. Joan Marcus-Colvin,
senior vice president of sales, marketing and design for the New Home
Co., a master-planned community
developer and home builder, says
the company has recently started offering more floor plans that make
the master suite feel more like a private retreat, partly as a response to
the multigenerational shift.
Newer floor plans offer options
like laundry rooms, small gyms or Pilates areas and “super closets” within
the master. The company’s newest
community, in Newport Coast, Calif.,
will have homes with very large private decks off the master bedroom.
When the homes are finished, prices
will start in the mid-$3 million range.
In Park City, Utah, orthopedic surgeon Dennis Phelps hired architect
Lori Schneider, of Boulder, Colo.based Studio Blue Design, to create a
6,000-square-foot spec home with a
1,200-square-foot master. Because
the home would most likely be a second residence for the potential buyer,
and frequently draw relatives and
friends as houseguests, Dr. Phelps
and Ms. Schneider discussed making
it a private suite that could be somewhat self-contained from the rest of
the home. The entire space can be
heated and cooled separately. A flexible room within the suite can be outfitted as an office, gym or TV room.
The home sold in March for $3.3 mil-
FROM TOP: BRIAN BAILEY; PHILL LEHANS (2)
MASTER (SUITES) OF THE UNIVERSE
MIAMI BEACH, FLA. A rendering of the penthouse master suite at the new L’Atelier Residences. When the luxury-condo building is completed, the penthouse master suite
will measure over 3,000 square feet, with another 1,000 square feet outside on two terraces. The penthouse is priced at $33 million.
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Friday, May 8, 2015 | M7
ARTEFACTO USA
MANSION
ERHARD PFEIFFER (3)
SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FLA. The master bathroom in the penthouse unit of the Regalia tower. The 5,700-square-foot unit, built by Finish My Condo in Miami, is a vacation
home for the client. Among the amenities are his-and-hers bathrooms; one is shown above.
WINNETKA, ILL. The bedroom, sitting area and foyer of the master suite inside a home designed by architect Richard Landry. The property, called Le Grand Rêve, is located
just outside of Chicago. The 27,000-square-foot main home has six bedrooms. It is currently on the market for $13.9 million.
#,
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! *$ !"+ ) %" ' lion to a couple from California.
Jeff Franklin, best known as the
creator of the TV show “Full
House,” recently put his 8,000square-foot Los Angeles home on
the market for $38 million. The
home, perched above the Sunset
Strip, was built speculatively to sell
and completed earlier this year.
(Mr. Franklin lived on the lot for
more than 20 years before tearing
down the original house.) Mr.
Franklin decided to dedicate the
third story to a roughly 2,500square-foot master. “It has the best
views in the home,” says Mr. Franklin, who lives in a different home he
built nearby and is working on a reboot of “Full House.” The glasswalled space has two fireplaces, an
espresso bar and a private terrace
with a fire pit. An indoor/outdoor
shower overlooks downtown L.A.
His listing agent, Brendan Fitzpatrick of the Agency, says master
bedrooms often rank in the top two
or three things buyers consider
when purchasing a home, after the
kitchen. “It’s the first place you end
up in your home in the morning and
the last place you end up in the
evening,” he says.
Richard Landry, a Los Angelesbased architect who has designed
luxury custom homes for celebrity
clients like Tom Brady and Gisele
Bündchen, as well as Mr. Franklin’s
spec home, says he has designed
master suites as large as 5,000
square feet. Amenities have included
everything from small kitchens to
beauty salons and pedicure stations.
Some clients have requested private
pools just off the master, separate
from the home’s main pool.
Though it’s still considered the
most private area of a home, some
homeowners have started to think of
the master as a space that could also
work for small-scale entertaining,
particularly as closets have evolved
from utilitarian storage spaces to
showpieces modeled after designer
stores, with fireplaces, seating areas
and separate dressing rooms. “It’s a
place to enjoy looking at the things
you have,” he says.
In Miami Beach, Friedrich
Koesters, a corporate lawyer, and Michael Jarboe, a former model, say
that since they spend most of their
time in the kitchen and in the bedroom, it made sense to invest most
heavily in those areas. “Everybody
spends a lot of time in the bedroom,
even apart from sleeping,” says Mr.
Koesters. A 930-square-foot mastersuite addition to their 1937 Art Decostyle home cost roughly $500,000.
The design started with a freestanding tile and porcelain shower
structure that takes center stage in
the open-plan bathroom. “We wanted
to showcase everything almost like a
piece of art.” They recently put the
3,900-square-foot home on the market for $4.35 million because they’ve
decided to relocate to Europe.
Claudia Barnett, a real-estate
agent Premier Sotheby’s International Realty in Sarasota, Fla., recently remodeled a circa-1926 historic home, spending an estimated
$80,000 on the master renovation.
The space now has a large his-andhers bathrooms, mirrored closets and
a bedroom. Ms. Barnett says friends
and relatives visit frequently. “We
run our house like a B & B and have
guests upstairs and our own space
downstairs,” she says.
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