Up on the rooftop: Urban and suburban infills with a view

If you’re shopping for a new-construction home in the city, you’ve probably stood on a lot of rooftop terraces lately. Several homebuilders are adding them to designs as a way to attract buyers interested in outdoor living without a lot of upkeep. “Buyers want private outdoor space, but many don’t want a large yard,” said Robin Miller, principal of Richmond-based Miller & Associates. “They like the privacy and security of a rooftop terrace, often with a view.” That’s not to say rooftop terraces are entirely new to the city. “We started building them 15 years ago,” said Miller, whose company has been active in the revitalization of the Manchester neighborhood in South Richmond. Even so, the number of new homes with rooftop terraces is climbing. Today, for example, Miller’s company adds them to all its new-construction projects, including its new-to-the-market Manchester Gardens development. (Prices for each of its two-unit duplexes start at $675,000.) And he’s not the only builder ramping up work on rooftop terraces. “Currently, I am working on 17 different projects in the city that are incorporating a rooftop terrace into the design,” said David Seibert, a real estate agent with Long & Foster who works with local builders. “In 2019, that number was zero.” One of Seibert’s builder partners, Richmond-based Center Creek Homes, currently has four infill homes under construction in the city’s East End, and all of them have rooftop terraces. “These are narrow-lot houses that are common in the city’s East End, and that footprint lends itself very well to rooftop terraces,” said Greg Shron, Center Creek’s chief operating officer and cofounder. “Conventional wisdom used to be that if you had a smaller property in the city, you had to sacrifice outdoor living space. But rooftop terraces give you a chance to move it to a different plane.” Seven of Center Creek’s 19 projects currently under construction have rooftop terraces, and the majority of them are in the East End. Just under half of the projects it plans to launch in the next 90 days will have them. Most of those homes will be in East End, as well. The rooftop terrace isn’t an exclusively urban trend, though. For instance, Richmond Hill Design + Build is building four homes – each listing for $1.3 million – with rooftop decks in Cashel Modern, an infill suburban community near the intersection of Patterson and Westview avenues in the city’s West End. “These houses each feature two rooftop terraces or elevated patios,” said Lloyd Poe, owner and founder of Richmond Hill. “A rooftop terrace is the new ‘wow’ factor in residential living.” Vanessa Poe, Lloyd’s daughter and the family firm’s vice president and lead architect, predicts the trend will move even deeper into the suburbs. “Some of the people who bought the first houses with rooftop terraces in the city are having kids and moving to the suburbs, and they want that feature in their new homes,” she said. There’s a catch, though. Rooftop terraces aren’t cheap to build, and they aren’t cheap to buy. In part, that’s because the engineering behind the design is complicated. “A good roof terrace is built for a party, so the structure itself needs to be significantly reinforced from a structural standpoint, and the materials required for the walkable roof surface are definitely not inexpensive,” Seibert said. Buyers should expect a rooftop terrace to add $10,000 to $20,000 to the price of a house, depending on its size and complexity, Lloyd Poe said. “It’s difficult to make the numbers work on entry-level homes because the buyer in that market segment is looking for core living space, and they’re very price-limited,” Shron said. “But the feature isn’t limited to luxury properties, by any stretch of the imagination.” Locally, rooftop terraces are more likely to show up on houses with price tags of $500,000 or higher. “This feature is still fairly new to the broader Richmond market, so figuring out how to price it and establish an understanding of how to appraise it are still works in progress,” Seibert said. “What I can say for sure is that buyers love them, and we are going to be seeing a lot more rooftop terraces in the years to come.”   Originally published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Doug Childers / Homes CorrespondentJul 1, 2023