Tag: real estate

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News

The student housing scramble: Two roommates find a good fit off-Grounds

Third-years David Gent and Drew Dudzig like being off-Grounds, where they have their own bedrooms and pay less than what they paid to share a room at UVA’s Lambeth Field Apartments last year. Photo: Eze Amos

By Shrey Dua

In Charlottesville, one of the largest populations of apartment dwellers can be found in the roughly mile-wide radius immediately surrounding the University of Virginia: students.

Every year, waves of UVA students abandon Grounds in favor of their own apartments, a process that quickly spirals into a mad dash to find the best, most-affordable living space as close to Grounds as possible. That means the search for housing often starts as early as September.

Third-year students David Gent and Drew Dudzig, who met in high school and became roommates in their second year at UVA, enjoyed some of the benefits of on-Grounds housing their first and second years, but decided to move off-Grounds for their third year. 

“We weren’t trying to live on-Grounds another year, just given what you get for how much you pay,” says Gent.

The two found a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment at College Court, a small, ’70s-era complex on 13th Street, after a nerve-racking house-hunting process. “It was actually incredibly stressful,” says Gent. “I went to Australia for a summer internship, and during that time the plans we had made fell through, so Drew and I were basically homeless around mid-June.”

Gent found an apartment while he was in Australia and had his mom contact the owner to work out the details. “It was a pretty crazy situation, but everything worked out in the end,” he says.

Dudzig and Gent’s story is fairly common among university students. The race to find housing often leaves many in a last-second panic just to find a place to live in Charlottesville, let alone one with the amenities students look for in an apartment, especially a room of one’s own.

“Honestly, I was so used to sharing a room at Lambeth last year, and the dorms my first year, as well as with my brother when I was younger, the fact that I got my own room this year alone made it pretty great,” says Gent.

“The apartment has its fair share of drawbacks, things like being in the basement, the occasional bug, keeping the small bathroom and kitchen clean, making sure the drain isn’t clogged, normal stuff like that we have to worry about,” Gent says. “But we’re both fairly clean so it’s really not much of a problem.”

Gent and Dudzig both think their apartment is a much better situation than living at Lambeth, where they were last year. Lambeth Field Apartments and GrandMarc on the Corner are both popular destinations for many second-year students, with fully furnished units and utilities included. But the downsides are pricey rents and often having to share a room. Gent and Dudzig paid around $800 a month each for a shared two-person bedroom. Now, “we each have our own room, and we’re paying less, around $750-775 a month, per person.” says Dudzig. “I also really like the location. Some people think walking to Grounds from the Corner can be a pain, but honestly it’s not very far at all from most of my classes. I probably even prefer the location to first-year old dorms.”

The two plan on living together next year, but this time they’re ahead of the game. They found an apartment months ago.

Categories
Living News

An abhorrent infestation, thousands of bullets, and a goat sacrifice

Art by Jason Crosby

While renters have it tough, managing an apartment isn’t a walk in the park either, and one local manager has truly seen it all. On the condition of anonymity, the industry professional of nearly two decades agreed to dish the details.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I could likely fill a large novel with good material on this topic.”

His “go-to” story starts about 10 years ago at an undisclosed three-story apartment in Charlottesville’s urban ring. A maintenance worker was befuddled when he opened the door to a ground-level bathroom and discovered a caved-in ceiling and “three inches of some type of mysterious fatty substance across the entire floor.”

He then tried the unit above it, where he found the same thing. Upon entering the third and final floor, “It looked like a scene out of a movie,” the apartment manager says. Streamers hung from the ceiling from a party the night before, but “it wasn’t a raging kegger, it was their child’s first birthday party—and they butchered a goat in the bathroom.”

That’s also where they cooked the four-legged mammal and poured its fat down the drain. (Much to their dismay, the pipes burst.) A neighbor recalled seeing someone enter the apartment with a live goat across his shoulders, and the animal’s carcass would later be found in a nearby dumpster.

The apartment manager says he also learned real quick that the best way to enter a home is to swing the door open and pause before proceeding through it. Why? Because if the place is particularly unkempt, cockroaches could rain down from the doorway.

In one instance, he recalls the shower of insects lasted for at least 10 seconds.

“There were so many roaches that the carpet was flowing like water.”

And last but not least, he remembers two young roommates, likely renting an apartment for the first time. They caused quite a scene on their move-out day, when inspectors found tens of thousands of BBs lodged into the drywall.

“Every piece had to be ripped out and replaced,” which came with a price tag just south of $10,000, he says. Pay up.

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News

No room to grow: In a tight real estate market, a family of seven makes do with 860 square feet

Sheria and Sylvan Kassondwa in the living room of their Fifeville home, with (from left) Syvlie, 12; Cherubine, 9; Cecile, 7; Charline, 3; and Seloe, 1. Photo: Eze Amos

Sylvan and Sheria Kassondwa’s 860-square foot, three-bedroom apartment would be fine, they say, if they had one or two kids.

As it happens, they have five.

“In my country, time is not money like here, you can spend more time with your family,” says Sylvan, who is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “And then here you find that you spend more time with work. So when you have more kids, you find that you have a big problem here.”

He laughs—what can one do? On a rainy afternoon in early March, his children, ranging in age from 1 to 12, pop in and out of the tiny living room to greet their guest, then disappear upstairs. They are charming and well-behaved, but their parents lament how cramped they are at home.

“The kids, they don’t have space,” Sheria says. “They have nowhere to keep their shoes, it’s a mess.” She indicates an overflowing shoe rack on the stair landing and waves her hands dismissively. “This does not really look like a place where you can breathe, feel fresh air.”

When the Kassondwas moved to this apartment in Fifeville, in November of 2017, they’d hoped it would be a step up.

Sylvan and Sheria had fled their home in the Congo more than a decade earlier, seeking refuge from the war and violence there. They landed in Uganda and applied for refugee status in the United States. It took 12 years.

“We were struggling to live,” says Sheria. “But we had this hope, that one day we would be fine.”

They were thrilled to finally get to the United States, and the family (by then, the Kassondwas had four kids) came to Charlottesville in September of 2016. The International Rescue Committee helped them settle into an apartment off Hydraulic Road, and paid their rent for the first three months while they found work.

“Then, thank God, we met International Neighbors,” says Sheria.

Founded by local educator Kari Miller, International Neighbors helps support refugee families once the IRC is no longer involved in their cases. The organization connects new arrivals to local “family friends” and helps them navigate the complexities of American life, from school forms to local events.

“She helped us a lot,” Sheria says, “but she can only do so much.” The two-bedroom apartment was a tight fit for their family of six, with another baby on the way. So the couple took it upon themselves to try to find a bigger place, searching apartment listings online.

With their limited budget (Sylvan was working as a tailor, while Sheria cleaned houses and took classes to improve her English), there were few affordable options.

Eventually, they found a three-bedroom for $830 a month, only $100 a month more than their two-bedroom, in a complex aimed at low-income renters called Greenstone on 5th.

“It’s cheap for the area, that’s why we are here,” Sylvan says. 

They applied online, but after moving in, they realized how small each of the rooms was (the bedrooms fit little more than a bed and a dresser, with only a foot or two of space in between), and that there was no washing machine in the apartment.

Doing laundry in the complex costs $3.75 per load, Sheria says, and, “I have this many kids. It’s going to be five loads.”

As the children get older, having only one bathroom for all seven of them is also a problem, but apartments with two bathrooms and washing machines cost $1,200 a month, Sylvan says—out of reach for now.

The apartment has a roach problem, and maintenance is slow to respond to calls, Sylvan adds. But his number-one concern is the neighbors. He says people are often hanging around the complex smoking marijuana.

“This day, it’s good,” Sylvan says with a smile, indicating the gloomy weather outside the window.

“Cause it’s cold outside, everybody’s doing it in the house,” his wife explains. In summer, they say, it’s terrible.

“It’s not a good environment for my kids,” Sheria says. “But we don’t have a choice for now.”

She’d prefer to rent a duplex, but she doesn’t think it’s possible. “In Charlottesville, it’s very expensive,” she says. “We’d never afford that.”

“Every family here is squeezed,” Sylvan adds.

After taking English classes, Sheria trained to become a certified nursing assistant, and now works full-time at UVA. Sylvan hopes that, before his children become teenagers, they’ll be able to afford another place.

“I’m trying to plan, but I don’t know if I can afford to move,” he says. “Maybe next year, or two years.” He’s thinking about getting a second job. “But also, when you have a second job, you have little time with your kids,” he notes.

Still, the couple does not want to complain too much—their home is an improvement over what they left behind in Africa, and Sylvan takes a philosophical view. “If you can’t afford the house that is fitting your family, you need to [be] content with the one you have,” he says.

His wife, who would also prefer a roomier kitchen, interjects: “But you are not happy about it.”

 

Categories
Living

Rejected but not dejected: Imperfect renters hold out hope for a place in town.

By Rusty Gates

While swilling chardonnay at a party recently, I fell into conversation with a droll gentleman who had lived in Charlottesville for many years. A friend of my sister, he knew that my girlfriend and I had moved to the area within the past two years.

“Where are you living?” he asked.

“In a little cottage on a beautiful, historic farm in Gordonsville,” I replied, perhaps a little too enthusiastically.

He stalled for a beat—comic timing—then said, “Oh, you’re country-curious.”

He smirked, and I chuckled, even though I felt daggers of desperation in my chest.

In Charlottesville, I learned, you either live out (in the boonies) or you live in (downtown or Belmont, for instance). Living in was starting to feel like joining an exclusive club. For months my partner and I had tried to find a place in town. We wanted to walk to City Market, see movies and live music on the Downtown Mall, and read heady books in fragrant coffee shops. We also wanted our trash and recycling picked up, and to do laundry at home.

We still want those things, plus a place with a second bedroom, or a third, for when my partner’s kids visit. But we’ll have to wait.

In the meantime, we spend weekends driving nine miles to the recycling center and dump, and six miles to the laundromat, which also happens to be a dump. We both work in town, and the daily 50-mile commute is wearing on us. It’s not all bad, of course. Deer scatter or stare curiously as we nose our car up the gravel drive and through the woods to reach our cottage. During the morning trip, the sun lights up the fields, where cattle and sheep graze. Mountains loom in the distance, so beautiful yet so far away—like Charlottesville. We read heady books in our bedroom, which is nestled in the trees and has a charming view of our busy birdfeeder. The woodpeckers! The cardinals! The damn squirrel who devours the sunflower seeds we buy at Tractor Supply!

Like the squirrel, we refuse to be denied. We are still looking for a place in town, trying to stay upbeat. It will happen. We’ll find a landlord who will ignore our mediocre credit scores and trust us to pay the rent on time, because we have full-time jobs and adequate income and impeccable personal references. When you live out, you find landlords like this, not to mention, cheaper rent. The honor system trumps FICO scores. And lessors understand that not everyone reaches their 50s with an unblemished financial history.

Of course, the story is different in town, where the apartment hunters are like schools of piranhas, gobbling up the available rentals. Some of these nasty little fish are students who have parents with money. And the landlords and property management companies cater to them. Oh, I could go on. And I will. Here are the lowlights of our apartment search.

• Great listing on Craigslist for a place in Belmont. Arrange viewing via anonymous email. Show up on time. Wait an hour. Realize the listing was a fake. Go to the nearest bar.

• View apartment in building with about 100 units, about a mile from the mall. Roomy apartment, but the “gym” consists of an infomercial elliptical trainer and a weight bench and dumbbells from the Salvation Army store. Agent hands us a form and says to fill it out, send it in, and she’ll be in touch. The form says we’ll have to submit a significant amount of information—including copies of our divorce agreements. We decide against it. On principle.

• Schedule appointment to see warehouse-y apartment near Circa—our favorite antiques/secondhand store! The deposit is reasonable, the place just right. Take time off from work to meet the rental agent, show up on time. Check voicemail while sitting in parking lot. It’s the rental agent, who called to say the place was already rented.

• Turtle Creek apartment complex. A little further from downtown than we want, but as we see during the tour with the owners, they’ve done a great job renovating the condo. Speaking with the owners, we realize that we have a very good mutual friend! Kismet! We laugh and share stories about the mutual friend. They seem to want us as tenants. But when they ask about our credit scores, we tell them the truth. They wish us luck, show us the door, and fail to respond to repeated text messages. Two days later, we see the apartment relisted—with a minimum credit score of 700 as a requirement.

• We respond to an ad for a “lovingly renovated” three-bedroom on West Cherry. It’s about $200 above our limit, considering that those couple hundred bucks were listed in the fine print as monthly utility fees. Still, we view the apartment. It’s a one bedroom with two converted spaces—a walk-in closet and a small living room—the landlord calls bedrooms.

• Landlord says, “I can show the apartment between noon and 3pm, Monday to Thursday.” But we have jobs. Could we see the place after work one day? “Sorry, no.”

• Listed rent is $1,800. Whoa. But we’ll look, because we’re curious. One place, in Belmont, is fantastically restored by an architect. For the same price, a cramped house just off of Ridge Street has cat-pissed carpets, a broken washer/dryer unit, and a 15-year-old interior paint job. The former place we might consider getting second jobs to afford. The latter? What has the landlord been smoking?

• Landlord says, “We have a lot of interest in this unit.” It’s the right size and the right neighborhood. It’s available six months from now. “The only way you’ll get this place is if you make a deposit, sight-unseen.” Um, no?

And so the search continues. For now, we have the lovely drive, deer, birds, mountain views, grazing livestock, and one relentless squirrel. We’re starting to like the little guy. He perseveres.

* Rusty Gates is a fake name. The experience the writer describes here is real.

Categories
News

What’s in the works

Photo courtesy Six Hundred West Main

It can be a long road between submitting plans and breaking ground on a project in both the city and the county. Maybe your apartment complex will be sued by neighbors, as is the case for 1011 East Jefferson with its 126 apartments. Or maybe the project is so complex, like the redevelopment of Friendship Court, that it takes years to get the go ahead.

There are nearly 800 apartments currently under construction in the city and county. That sounds like a lot, but Planning Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg points out that population growth in our area far exceeds estimates, and the new units won’t fill the demand for housing. A variety of factors is limiting the area’s supply of apartments, from a lengthy and unpredictable approval process to zoning that favors single-family homes. The end result? Rising housing costs. 

Charlottesville

Cedars Court Apartments 1212 Cedars Court 19 units

1725 Jefferson Park Avenue 1725 Jefferson Park Ave. 19 units

600 West Main 510 W. Main St. Starr Hill 56 units

William Taylor Phase II 523-529 Ridge St. 27 units

Albemarle County

Brookdale Mountainwood Road 96 units*

The Lofts at Meadowcreek Pen Park Lane 65 units

Old Trail Crozet 183 units

Riverside Village Pantops 24 units

The Vue Jarmans Gap, Crozet 126 units

Categories
Arts Living

Of two minds: Housemates cohabitate and collaborate

For cellist and songwriter Wes Swing and visual artist Bolanle Adeboye, living in the same Woolen Mills house has resulted in plenty of creative collaboration. Photo: John Robinson

Sitting on a bench full of pillows at a large, round wooden table she made with her own hands, Bolanle Adeboye smears veggie cream cheese on both halves of a cinnamon raisin bagel. The visual artist is fighting a cold, and her housemate, cellist and songwriter Wes Swing, asks if she’d prefer a cup of coffee or a mug of tea to soothe her throat.

Coffee, Adeboye answers. Definitely coffee.

As Swing brews coffee, they try to figure out (upon this reporter’s prompting) when they met. Adeboye can’t quite remember when, but Swing’s pretty sure he knows. It was 2009, maybe 2010, and Swing was playing a show at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative. Swing noticed that Adeboye was drawing.

Adeboye told Swing that she liked drawing to music, and Swing asked to see what she’d made.  He was intrigued by her work, and they talked art for a while.

Holding a hot mug of coffee in both hands, Adeboye is touched by the fact that Swing remembers that interaction so clearly. “I do remember being blown away by your music the first time I heard it,” she tells Swing. “It was like magic.”

That drawing was perhaps their first collaboration, though an unofficial one. At the time, neither artist had any idea that they’d end up housemates, a living situation that has led to a fruitful creative partnership.

At that point, Adeboye was living in the downstairs apartment of a house in Woolen Mills, a space she’d shared since 2002 with a variety of roommates, all artists of some kind. Not long after making album art for Swing’s 2011 album Through A Fogged Glass, and an animated video for the song “Lullaby,” Adeboye was looking for a new roommate, and Swing, who was looking for a place to live, seemed cool enough to her.

After all, Adeboye says, laughing, she’d heard “Lullaby” a thousand times or more at that point, and she knew she could live with his music.

Adeboye has owned the Woolen Mills house since 2003, and has been slowly renovating it. In 2017, she moved up to the second floor and Swing, who’d briefly left to live in San Francisco, moved back in and took over the first floor apartment. Now the two hang out together, on both levels, often.

On this particular morning, late winter sun shines through the first floor windows, soaking the entire place in beams of light; it’s a veritable showroom for Adeboye’s craftsmanship and vision. She designed the open but cozy floor plan, made much of the furniture and accent pieces (including light fixtures), and covered the walls with her paintings and mixed-media pieces. It’s all “driven by available repurposed and salvaged building materials, determined by ever-shifting function,” says Adeboye of the abode.

“It’s like waking up in an art gallery,” says Swing, who feels constantly comforted and inspired by the house…so much so, that he likes to stay home, and as a result, he makes a lot of music. “It’s the perfect space for making stuff,” he adds.

What’s more, says Adeboye, the home and its décor constantly evolves, so “you have to be comfortable with chaos and uncertainty and change.”

“’Live with it.’ That’s the motto here,” says Swing.

And they do. The sonorous sound of Swing’s cello drifts upstairs to Adeboye’s ears, where she’s usually working on her own apartment (it’s still a work-in-progress), or on one of her fine-art pieces. Adeboye has put a lot of time and thought into creating her living environment, making real her longtime vision for how her life would look, feel, and sound. Strangely enough, she says, when she thought of the sound aspect, she imagined cello. Adeboye didn’t grow up playing an instrument, but she always loved music, and cello in particular.

Adeboye puts down her bagel and puts her hand over her heart. “This is just making me so grateful for my life,” she says to Swing. “I thought I was going to marry a cellist, but instead I just live with one. I don’t actually have to marry one, which is awesome,” she says, laughing.

Swing knows Adeboye’s home when he hears her walking around upstairs or playing electric guitar; Adeboye knows Swing’s home when she hears him playing cello or singing. There’s no setting a time to meet and discuss ideas. All it takes is walking up or down the stairs when inspiration (which can be a vulnerable state of being) strikes. Living in close proximity has cultivated trust in many forms.

They often tackle maintenance projects together (most recently a broken dryer), and there’s no hassle over collecting the rent.

Over time, the nature of their collaboration has evolved from Adeboye creating visuals to and for Swing’s recorded music and live performances into something more intertwined.

Their most recent collaboration, “Now/Now,” is an interactive project in which Adeboye and Swing, along with their audience, produce real-time musical and visual representations of the audience’s reported emotional states. So far, they’ve brought iterations of it into local schools and jails, to various community art performances, and to a school for the deaf and blind in Florida. Each time, it’s a little different, depending on the participants, but the core—the idea of being and creating in the moment, with the people around you—remains the same.

“It took a lot for me to be willing to go there,” says Swing about the intensely collaborative nature of “Now/Now.” He says that before working with Adeboye—who brings chalkboards and sticks of chalk to her visual art shows so that people can react creatively to what she’s doing—he hesitated to work with other artists of any kind, lest they misunderstand or misinterpret his vision. Swing now sees that relinquishing some of that control can yield some pretty spectacular results.

Adeboye says that Swing’s transformed her work, too—she consciously incorporates more interactivity, she’s branching out into other media (such as light boxes), and she’s taught herself to play electric guitar.

Collaboration is such a natural thing for them that they begin a new one as they polish off their breakfast. Swing tells Adeboye that while lying in bed the previous night, he imagined the inside of the Woolen Mills Chapel filled floor to ceiling with her projections.

Adeboye chews her last bite of bagel, thinks it over. “Alright, we’ll talk,” she says, giggling as she realizes: They already are.

Categories
News

Elevated space: Inside Oliver’s Treehouse

Ceilings soar and light floods in Ten Flavors’ new digs in the Treehouse, a space designed for designers. STEPHEN BARLING

Oliver Kuttner doesn’t do bland. And he doesn’t like building the same thing over and over. His  latest project, the Treehouse on the corner of Garrett and Second SE streets, is testament to that.

“I wanted to do a small building,” he says. “I wanted to make that corner interesting.”

The result, beside his Glass Building, is a 17,000-square-foot, three-story, light-filled structure that soars into the trees.

“I like playing with elevation,” says Kuttner. “You get more for less.” That was a lesson he learned with the Terraces on the Downtown Mall, which has four stories—and nine levels. The Treehouse is a three-story building with a mezzanine and basement, but inside, with its tall ceilings, it feels larger.

Ten Flavors’ Jim Gibson is a longtime tenant of Kuttner’s, who sold the building the design co-op had occupied for 30 years in 2013. But the designers had gotten used to tall ceilings and being on the mall. “We looked within a one-mile radius and couldn’t find anything,” says Gibson. “Finding open space is hard. Finding open space with tall ceilings is really hard. We were used to soaring ceilings.”

When Kuttner said he was going to build what would become the Treehouse, says Gibson, “We had no idea what this building would look like. It was a leap of faith.”

Keeping the faith paid off with a location two blocks from the mall, 16′ to 18′ ceilings and walls of windows with natural light flooding into a building that is quite unlike anything else in town. “It’s a funny, polarizing design,” says Gibson, and the reaction to it has been mixed.

“Some say it’s the coolest thing in Charlottesville,” he says. “Others said, ‘Who designed that?’” For the designers at Ten Flavors, says Gibson, “We’re all familiar with the shock of the new.”

Gibson describes the “wildly creative way” Kuttner went about building, redoing something if it didn’t work out. Ten Flavors occupies the second floor, and he says the space on the third floor that will hold WillowTree’s 150 or so employees is “even more quixotic.”

Kuttner wanted to prove that there could be height without an intimidating mass at the sidewalk, and he says there was some experimentation, with architect Gate Pratt helping in the early stages.

Initially Kuttner wanted the exterior to be a living surface of plants, but he backed off that idea. “I was opening myself up to a lot of maintenance problems,” he concedes. And with his goal to spend half his time in Europe, says Kuttner, “I need to get away from maintenance.”

As for cost, he says, “I have no idea. It depends on how much you value your time.” One area in which he invested heavily was thermal mass. “I spent a huge amount on insulation,” he says.

The Treehouse and an apartment building—the micro apartments to which the city gave a cold shoulder—will be some of his last projects here, says Kuttner. He’ll do the apartments by right with 80 units. “It’ll be extremely popular,” he predicts. And he’s selling land behind the Treehouse, which will become a nine-story office building.

Speaking of mass, that project, with four floors of parking and five of offices on top of 200 parking spaces, is squeezed in behind the Treehouse and Glass Building, and shaves off the back section of the latter, according to plans from Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer. It also turns the parking spaces in front of The Bluegrass Grill & Bakery and The Bebedero into a plaza for seating.

While the parking/office nine-story combo inevitably will change some of the views from the Treehouse, for those inhabiting what Gibson calls Kuttner’s “strange but beautiful” building, there’s a certain joy in coming to work in something that’s not a low-ceiling cubicle. “The thing I’m most grateful for,” says Gibson, “is the opportunity to get a space this out-of-the-ordinary.”

DCIM100MEDIADJI_0222.JPG
View from above. Matteus Frankovich/SkycladAP

Categories
Magazines Real Estate

Virginia wine time

Not so long ago, the best wine was European, and good American wine was Californian. Period. Virginia oenophiles knew that Thomas Jefferson had tried and failed to make a drinkable beverage from Old World vines on Virginia soil, and if the Renaissance man of Monticello couldn’t do it, it obviously couldn’t be done. End of story.

Or maybe not. At Monticello, as a matter of fact, grounds and gardens director Gabriel Rausse is now making wine from the same grape varietals Jefferson tried back in 1807. Today there are a whopping 255 wineries in the commonwealth – more than double the number from just eight years ago. Virginia wine has been served at the White House, and is on the menu for an upcoming dinner at the U.S. embassy in London. If only TJ’s vintner, Phillip Mazzei, could see us now, when wine lovers are actually moving here to be part of the scene.

“We came here on vacation two summers in a row – 2004-2005,” says Joyce Watson, owner of Wine Made Simple in Charlottesville. “We had heard about Virginia becoming an up-and-coming wine region. I suppose wine has been a hobby all of my life, and so most vacations revolved around wine and visiting different parts of the country.”

Although she enjoyed a successful career in the corporate world, Watson says, “I had always had that little dream in my heart that I wanted to be in the wine business and have my own shop.” In 2011, she made that dream come true, opening Wine Made Simple and becoming a part of an industry she believes is “such an important part of who we are as a culture here in Virginia. It’s part of what I love about the state so much,” she says, “what really drew me here. I think a lot of people find it very exciting.”

Those people include tourists drawn by Virginia’s beauty and history who discover its burgeoning wine scene. “It’s amazing to see what’s happened in a decade,” Watson says. “All the talent and the expertise that we have here has really contributed to Virginia wine being recognized as an area where quality wine is being made nationally and internationally. The fact that it’s become a wedding destination has brought more awareness to the wine industry here too. I think the thing that people really enjoy is just the whole experience of going out to the Virginia wineries. It’s such a relaxing experience. They are very pleased with the wines and the variety.”

The Vigonier grape is very well-loved here,” Watson adds. “People really have come to know it because of how well it grows here, and it’s featured on most wineries’ tasting lists.” In her own store, Watson finds that Virginia wine sales peak in December, as wine lovers in the know buy gift bottles to show off the home state product. She keeps roughly 50 different labels in stock.

“We are coming off of five or six years of dramatic growth in term of sales and in the number of wineries that are producing wine,” says Annette Ringwood Boyd, Director of the Virginia Wine Board Marketing Office. “Virginia is getting critical acclaim for our Cabernet Franc, our Petit Verdot and our Vigonier.”

While Virginia winemakers produce plenty of well known wines like Merlot, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, they also bottle blends with intriguing names like Othello and Scintilla (Veritas Vineyards), Festa di Bacco and Albarino (Afton Mountain Vineyards). The industry here is all the more exciting for its youth, and its youthful spirit of innovation. “You see a lot of experimentation,” Boyd notes. “Virginia can be hot and humid in the summer. So we’re looking to wine regions in the Mediterranean; we’re seeing experimentation with grapes from those areas. Italian Vermentino, French Petit Manseng, and Spanish and French Tannat are having a lot of initial success here.”

That success is coming at a particularly fortuitous time, when the “farm to table” locavore movement has sparked an interest in where food is grown, and that interest in turn, as Boyd points out, has sparked an interest in local wine. Not only is “Virginia is really coming along with the caliber of our wines,” she says, but “the two movements are happening at the same time.” Spring is the time to enjoy both together, as the festival and special events season gets underway. To paraphrase one local vintner, Virginia wineries are easy to find and hard to leave. Here is a sampling, “nose” and “finish” not included, of what’s happening soon.

Cardinal Point Winery

Rockfish Gap, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Skyline Drive, are all clearly visible from Cardinal Point Winery in Nelson County, where winemaker Tim Gorman began tending the vineyard’s fifteen acres in 1986. Right now, Cardinal Point’s red wines include a 2012 Clay Hill Cabernet Franc and a 2012 Union with 72 percent Petit Verdot, 17 percent Cabernet Franc, 11 percent Tannat. White wines include a 2013 Green inspired by the Vinho Verdes of Portugal (made by co-fermenting Chardonnay and Petit Manseng), a 2013 IPC Hopped Chardonnay, a 2012 A6 (a blend of Viognier and Chardonnay), a 2013 Quattro (a blend of Riesling, Gewurtztraminer, Viognier, and Traminette), and a 2013 Chardonnay.

On Friday, May 8, runners will enjoy the Rockfish Red 4 Miler, a Friday night “group run” winding through scenic back roads, beginning and ending at the vineyard. The race will begin at 6:00 p.m., and will be followed by live music on the veranda, and wine samplings in commemorative wine glasses. Food will be available for purchase.

Afton Mountain Vineyards

Elizabeth and Tony Smith grew up in Albemarle County, went to Albemarle High School, and were married at the University of Virginia Chapel. In 2009, after twenty years in Virginia’s Tidewater region, the Smiths headed inland and acquired a vineyard on the sunrise side of Afton Mountain, where the vines are protected from frost, shielded from excessive rain, and dried by breezes flowing through the Rockfish and Humpback gaps. Today the Smiths grow fifteen grape varieties on twenty-four acres.

On Sunday, May 10 Afton Mountain Vineyards will offer serve Mother’s Day mimosas prepared with their dry sparkling Bollicine. Nadjeeb with Flora Artisanal Cheese will host a pop-up cheese shop from noon to 4:00 p.m.    

Democracy Vineyards

Established in April in 2009 on land that formerly held apple orchards, Democracy Vineyards in Nelson County still devotes fifteen of its forty-five acres to apples. Six of Democracy’s acres are currently “under vine,” with an acre each devoted to grapes for Chambourcin, Petit Verdot, Merlot, Pinotage, Viognier and Petit Manseng.

“Making wine in Virginia, there is always the need to improvise from year to year, but that’s also a chance for some tinkering and creativity,” says vintner Ben Margulie. “The wines benefit from modern vineyard and winemaking techniques as well as the close attention they can get at smaller production levels. My ultimate goal in the winery is to use the diversity of flavors that our vineyard site gives us to make a variety of wines for our customers’ palates.”

Local musicians play Democracy’s tasting room each Sunday from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. The May schedule runs as follows: Sunday, May 10 – Sue Harlow; May 17 – The Free Radicals; May 23 – John Tracy; May 24 – Ragtop; May 25 – Marie Anderson.

Veritas Vineyard and Winery

Andrew and Patricia Hodson took the name of their winery, opened in Afton in 2002, from the Roman historian Pliny the Elder’s famous observation that “In Vino Veritas” – “In Wine There Is Truth.” Veritas is a full family affair, operated with the help of the Hodson’s children Emily, George and Chloe. Patricia cultivates the vines. Andrew and Emily, who earned a Masters in Enology at Virginia Tech, make the wine.

Veritas will offer a four-course, wine-paired, Mother’s Day Winemaker’s Brunch on Sunday, May 10, beginning with a glass of bubbly at 12:30. The meal will be served at 1:00 p.m. Tickets are $75 per person, and a vegetarian option is available for the same price. Non-alcoholic meals are $30 for children 10 and over, and $10 for children under 10. Reservations are required.

DuCard Vineyards

Nestled at the eastern edge of the Shenandoah National Park, in the shadow of Old Rag Mountain and White Oak Canyon in Madison County, DuCard Vineyards is a “hobby gone wild” for husband and wife owners, Scott and Karen Elliff. The Elliffs began by selling grapes to a nearby winery, but when those wines started winning awards, they started making their own, at first for friends and neighbors, then for the friends and neighbors of their friends and neighbors. And so on.

They’ve gone public now, and their annual Wineappalooza!, Saturday, May 16 from noon to 7:00 p.m., will feature wine tastings, music by Scuffletown and The Local Vocals, food from the Pig & Steak Restaurant, and crafts for show and sale by numerous vendors. Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door, and come with a DuCard logo wine glass. Pets and families will be welcome.

King Family Vineyards

When David and Ellen King moved to Virginia from Houston, Texas in 1995, a vineyard and a winery weren’t even on their minds. David King had been playing polo since 1980, and what the family was looking for was a farm with twelve acres of relatively flat ground for a polo field where he could continue. Today their property in Crozet contains both Roseland Polo field and King Family Vineyards, where sixteen red, white and sparkling wines are currently available.

On Sunday, May 17, The Barbeque Exchange will serve barbeque at the vineyards from noon to 5:00 p.m. The last tasting will begin at 5:00 p.m. Glass and bottle sales will be available until 6:30 p.m., and the Tasting Room and patios will be open until 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $16 per person and available online.

On Sundays from Memorial Day weekend through mid-October, weather and field conditions permitting, the King family invites Tasting Room guests to join them fieldside to watch polo. Matches are free and begin at 1:00 pm. Visit their website or Facebook Page on Sunday mornings after 9:00 a.m., or call 434-823-7800, to confirm that they will be playing.

Monticello

Thomas Jefferson maintained that “in nothing have the habits of the palate more decisive influence than in our relish of wines,” and The Wine Festival at Monticello, Saturday, June 20 from 6:00 to 9: 00 p.m., offers a chance to taste what Jefferson could only dream of. Besides sampling Virginia wines, festivalgoers can view Monticello’s restored vineyards and wine cellar, meet wine-maker Gabriele Rausse, tour the house, and hear live music on the West Lawn.

Gourmet picnic boxes for two, available by pre-order only for $30, will include fresh fruit, local artisanal cheeses, bread and dessert. The Wine Festival at Monticello is an adult only event, limited to ages 21 and over.

By Ken Wilson

Categories
Magazines Real Estate

Simple schemes to trim expenses

If you regularly run out of money before the month is over, it’s time to consider some economies. Here are concrete ideas to help stretch your money farther.

First, build an emergency fund—enough to cover three months expenses to start and building to six months. Then if an emergency strikes, you’ll have funds to cover it rather than withdrawing from a retirement account with the resultant penalty or having to use a credit card with a high interest. (As one wise man said, “Interest is something you earn, not something you pay.”)

Next, if you can’t afford to pay cash—or pay off your credit card each month—don’t buy it. If you have credit card debt, pay it off ASAP. At the very least find a credit card with a lower interest rate and transfer the balance. Call customer service and talk to a person. You can sometimes negotiate a better rate than is shown on websites. Investigate no-fee cards which offer cash-back rewards. Some offer gift cards worth more than the cash return you are due.   

Stay healthy.  Exercise, eat wisely and take care of yourself.  Washing your hands can actually be a money saver if it keeps you from catching something that causes you to miss work, cough up a co-pay to visit your healthcare provider, or fork over for medications. You’ll even save money on tissues and throat lozenges!

Do it yourself. Cook more meals at home. Go vegetarian at least one night a week. Check YouTube for videos of home repairs from replacing a car’s headlight to fixing the washing machine. Paint your own bathroom. Choose clothes that don’t need dry cleaning. Mow your own lawn. Color your hair yourself. Use plastic bags and aluminum foil at least twice and you can buy them half as often.

Never buy retail. Watch for sales. Peruse eBay. Use on-line price comparison sites and check product reviews. Load apps on your smart phone to compare prices, download coupons, manage reward cards, and check out product reviews. Patronize thrift stores to find bargains, one-of-a-kind items, and help worthy organizations at the same time. Pre-select a major purchase like a lawnmower or fridge (after consulting Consumer Reports or other ratings), and then wait for a sale.

Always ask for a discount if you are a student, a senior, a teacher, or belong to another special group. Home Depot and Lowe’s, for example, offer 10 percent discounts to persons with a military ID card. Staples has a special program for teachers. Some businesses, especially restaurants and grocery stores, offer discounts on a certain day of the week. Visit GiftCardGranny.com to find the best prices for selling unwanted gift cards and for buying gift cards at attractive discounts.

Save electricity. The Good Housekeeping Institute estimates the annual cost for a single lightbulb (on for three hours a day and amortizing the bulb over its lifetime) at $8.21 for an incandescent, $2.05 for a compact fluorescent, but only $1.64 for an LED. Using a clothesline or drying rack is kinder to your clothes than a dryer and saves power at the same time. If you heat the oven for a pizza, bake some cookies with that same electricity.

“Vampire power is huge these days,” observes Charlottesville’s Better World Betty. That’s the wasted electricity used by “standby” items such as televisions and computers that draw current even when “off.” Other offenders are chargers for power tools or cell phones that suck energy even when they aren’t charging. The Department of Energy estimates that this vampire usage costs $100 or more each year in the average American household.

Forgo the fancy coffee for a cup of regular brew a couple times a week and only buy bottled water when the tap water is unsafe. Fill a reusable water bottle at home and take with you on outings. To see what a difference this can make, put the greenback you didn’t use to buy bottled water and the difference between the latte and regular coffee in an envelope in your pocket or purse. At the end of the week, put it in a big jar. At the end of the year you could easily have $500!

By Marilyn Pribus

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In the past few months, Marilyn Pribus and her husband learned from on-line videos how to fix the failed you-left-the-headlight-on buzzer on her Honda by swapping the passenger and driver door plungers. They also saw how to repair a microwave that didn’t work because the door didn’t close tightly—with just a screwdriver and a paper clip. They figure they saved well over $100 with those two tasks.

Categories
Magazines Real Estate

Can a rental unit add value to your property?

When Norma Rafferty’s father passed away, it made sense for her and her husband, Bob, to have a modest apartment addition for her mother built onto their home. A few calls showed neighborhood zoning and homeowner regulations allowed it if various permits were granted. They hired an architect to design an addition to fit well with the existing house.

Then they got bids from three contractors (after checking with the Better Business Bureau) and hired a firm recommended by friends at their church. The addition blended seamlessly with their house using the same style windows, siding, paint, and roofing.

Mom’s space was legally an “accessory apartment,” because although it connected to the house through the living room, she also had a separate outdoor entrance, a bathroom, and a modest kitchen with a cooktop, microwave, small fridge, and an oven large enough to bake her famous chocolate chip cookies. The floor plan also included a separate bedroom with a good-sized closet and a living area with enough room to entertain friends.

The long-range plan was that once Mom no longer needed the apartment, Norma and Bob would use it as a rental it to augment their retirement income. In the end, however, they opted to convert the space to a luxurious master bedroom suite for themselves complete with a sauna and a large hot tub.

Does an extra unit increase value?

Options for adding rental spaces vary from creating a full apartment to converting a walk-out basement or space over a garage into a modest studio with a separate entrance, a bathroom with a small shower, and a kitchen sink with a microwave and mini-fridge.

“When people are considering whether to add a unit, either for a relative or as long-term rental income, they ask me if it would add value to their property,” says REALTOR® Sara Greenfield, Principal Broker for Charlottesville Fine Homes and Properties. “I have seen homes transformed and the owners get to use rental income to offset the expense of upgrading and adding to the property.

“When you add a full bath and complete kitchen it definitely adds value to a home,” Greenfield continues, “but it’s not inexpensive. It generally entails finishing or adding space which often requires additional heating and air-conditioning. Plumbing and electrical work are another expense when creating a kitchen, a bathroom, and perhaps space for a washer and dryer.”

Does a rental unit help or hinder the sale of a property?

“I believe a separate living area helps sell a property,” says Jay Kalagher, a REALTOR® with Long & Foster in Charlottesville. “I find people who are house shopping don’t generally ask for properties with a rental, but when they see one with an extra property—whether new or a resale—they think it’s a good idea. They find uses for it and see a benefit to it because a rental unit can make great financial sense,”

Kalagher points out that this concept was very much a part of the planning for the new Belvedere subdivision in Albemarle County near Charlottesville. “Many of the Belvedere homes,” he explains, “are built with a garage. A ‘carriage house’ can be created above the garage which can be used as extra living space for the family or as a rental property.”

He says in Belvedere’s first phase of 116 dwellings about 90 have this carriage house capability. “About 60 or 70 of them were completed specifically as rentals,” he says.

Some things to consider

Before adding a rental unit, there are things to consider carefully. Will there be a loss of privacy or unwelcome noise from people living so close? Do you have adequate parking space? Can you handle the responsibility when the unit’s toilet backs up at midnight, or the fridge fails the day before Thanksgiving? Will it be difficult to find tenants?  Will your neighbors object?

And most important, what are local regulations, restrictions, and requirements?

What are the legalities for a separate unit?

If you are persuaded you want to do this, the next step is to check with your local zoning board, your neighborhood homeowner association and, for good will, your immediate neighbors. Whether it’s new construction or a conversion, you’ll need an architect or contractor who is qualified to draw up and submit plans to your local planning department to obtain a building permit and inspection schedule.

Craig Fabio, assistant zoning administrator for the City of Charlottesville, notes that these units are termed “accessory apartments,” whether interior as part of the existing dwelling or exterior in a separate building. “Especially since 2009,” he says, “we’ve seen people go that road to maintain their homes which may have lost value. They may have also lost jobs and this extra income can make a lot of difference in being able to keep their home.”

Charlottesville itself has a number of zoning districts. Fabio says the majority of the districts permit accessory apartments, although they may have differing restrictions on factors such as how many unrelated persons may share the space. “It’s a by-right use,” he says, “but you have to go through permitting, have a separate entrance, and meet building codes for exits and habitable space.”

He also points out that because different jurisdictions can have very different zoning and regulations in place, it’s essential to check the permitting requirements and process before beginning any construction or remodeling.

He says the city doesn’t really know how many accessory units there may be. “That’s just talking about the legal ones,” he says.  “We’re under the impression there are more that don’t have required permits,” he says. “They may have been around for forty years. When we find them, we review them to be sure they are a safe place for people to live.”

What might be the tax implications?

Keep impeccable financial records. If a family member will be using the space, you can still add the building expenses to your home’s basis. Check with your tax advisor in case the person could be claimed as a dependent.

If you will be renting out the space, it’s doubly important to keep an accurate record of your expenses which will often substantially offset the rental income on your tax return. Check IRS publication 527. You may be surprised at what you can claim. Construction and maintenance costs, and repairs to the rental premises are all expenses that can be deducted on Schedule E of your tax return.

Other expenses must be divided between the rental part and the part you use—rather as if they were two separate properties. You can deduct part of certain expenses on a percentage basis including a portion of expenses such as utilities, home mortgage interest, insurance premiums, and real estate property taxes on Schedule E.

Although setting up the bookkeeping can be complicated at first, after the first year it will be easier and offset by that steady rental income or the peace of mind knowing a family member is cared for close at hand,

Creating the second unit

Remember, things usually cost more than expected, so draw up a basic budget of how much you can realistically afford. Calculate expenses such as architectural plans, plumbing, electrical work, a heat pump or other way to heat and cool, fixtures, cabinetry, appliances, carpeting, painting, even paving. A small laundry area with washer and dryer is a definite plus when seeking good renters.

Obtain bids from several contractors and check their references carefully. Talk with persons who have used them about the quality of the work, the accuracy of the estimate and bid, how disruptive were the workers on the job, and whether they finished on time.

If you are at all handy, you can probably do much of the finishing work yourself. You may not be able to install a toilet or wire the ceiling for lights, but perhaps you can install kitchen and bathroom cabinets and flooring. It’s likely you can do the interior painting, install privacy blinds, and hook up appliances. Consider neutral colors in paint, tile, carpets, and floors.

Can you have a separate electrical meter installed? If not, you’ll need to calculate the portion of your electric bill used by your tenants. In any event, you’ll want to install the most energy-efficient appliances and lighting you can find.

Finding tenants

REALTOR® Kalagher says there is a clearly established rental market in this area. “People post properties on Craig’s List and they are rented pretty quickly,” he says. “In fact, some Charlottesville lenders will factor in an anticipated rent from an established accessory unit when evaluating potential mortgages.”

Prospective tenants include UVa students and visiting faculty, young people, older persons who are downsizing, and others. Some property owners prefer to engage a rental management company to handle the legalities and midnight emergencies. Many local real estate firms have rental management departments. Fees can vary.

Becoming a landlord brings a new set of challenges starting with arriving at an appropriate monthly rent that attracts tenants without leaving money on the table. This will depend on whether your offering is furnished, prices in your neighborhood, and your costs like taxes, insurance, utilities, mortgage payments, plus potential maintenance and repair.

Check out tenant candidates very carefully. Check their employment and credit reports, have a responsible co-signer for students, and contact former landlords. Your rental agreement should include your duties as a landlord, and the tenants’ responsibilities. Include terms about security deposit, late fees, and especially terms by which the lease may be broken by either party. If unrelated parties are renting, have each individual sign the lease.

It’s important to plan carefully before creating a rental property, but the financial rewards can be substantial.

NOTE: The Virginia Short Term Lodging Association (VSTLA) represents individuals in our region who offer short-term rentals of completely furnished rooms, guest houses, or entire homes. For example, the website Airbnb which brokers properties between homeowner and renter, recently showed 384 listings for Charlottesville, 124 in Lovingston, and hundreds more in other nearby zip codes. StayCharlottesville.com is another service offering a variety of short-term accommodations from apartments to cottages to estates in the region. This article, however, is addressing properties with separate units for family members or for long-term rental, rather than short term accommodations.

By Marilyn Pribus

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Marilyn Pribus and her husband live in Albemarle County near Charlottesville.