Burdick Homes Now Building in Cibolo Canyons!

Cibolo Canyons, home to JW Marriott golf resort, tees off new housing .

By: Tricia Lynn Silva
Reporter/Project Coordinator- San Antonio Business Journal

 

Cibolo Canyons, since debuting in 2006, has become home to more than 700 San Antonio residents.

But in late 2008, the project, like many developments here, began to lose steam as the nation’s housing-market meltdown began to hit home.

Cibolo Canyons is anchored by the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa — which features two PGA-sanctioned Tournament Players Club golf courses and 1,000 rooms. Since it opened in 2010, the venue has become a hot spot for tourists, conventions and special events — all of which have meant more exposure for Cibolo Canyons.

Now, a well-known local homebuilder is making a multimillion-dollar play to breathe new residential life into the high-end housing communities surrounding JW Marriott.

Burdick Custom Homes plans to purchase a total of 20 single-family lots in Palacios — one of several neighborhoods nestled within Cibolo Canyons on the city’s far North Side.

Burdick is one of several builders buying lots and building homes in Palacios. Art Burdick, president and founder of the Burdick Custom Homes, calculates his investment alone will total more than $20 million.

That investment by Burdick, and other builders, is expected to have a ripple effect in Cibolo Canyons, especially as the community’s developer, Austin-based Forestar Group Inc., works to infuse some new energy into the next phases of this master-planned community.

Forestar is making its move to target buyers who want not just a house, but a lifestyle, according to John Pierret, executive vice president of real estate acquisitions for Forestar.

What Burdick brings to the table is a name with a lot of experience in some of San Antonio’s most affluent communities and a product that is attractive to today’s buyers, says Susan Wright, community liaison for Cibolo Canyons.

“(Burdick) is a great marketer,” she adds. “He brings a name that will help drive traffic.”

Sand trap

At build-out, Cibolo Canyons will boast a total of 1,600 single-family homes — a mix of upscale production homes and high-end custom homes located in several smaller, gated, neighborhoods. In addition, Forestar plans to develop apartments and condominiums in the area over the next five to seven years.

Palacios is one of the newest neighborhoods, but it is not brand new. In 2008, it was the site of the Greater San Antonio Builders Association’s Parade of Homes.

“Our timing couldn’t have been worse,” Pierret recalls.

It wasn’t long after that Parade that the Great Recession took hold — an economic collapse that relegated many would-be homebuyers to the sidelines.

Some of those on the sidelines were hampered by stricter lending requirements put in place in the wake of the subprime lending crisis that crippled the nation’s housing market. Cibolo Canyons, however, is targeted at what Pierret calls the “discretionary buyer.”

Unfortunately, even those buyers were taking stock of the dour economy post-2008 and opting to put major investments, like buying a new home, on hold. And the homes going up in Palacios during that period were priced from $1 million and up, which represented a hefty investment for even the well-heeled discretionary buyer.

But over the past year, the local housing market has started to rev back up, though caution still guides its course. Enter Burdick, with a plan for targeting a sweet spot in today’s market — families wanting to move up from their current homes.

Burdick’s houses in Palacios will range in size from about 3,000 to 5,000 square feet and will be priced in the $700,000s and up — a notch below the $1 million-plus properties that were being built in the area in 2008.

“We are going to provide that option for the move-up homebuyer,” Burdick says.

On the green

If that $700,000 price range still seems extravagant to some for a city like San Antonio, recent statistics from the San Antonio Board of Realtors paint a different picture.

A total of 606 homes in the price range of $500,000 and up were sold in the greater San Antonio area between January and November of 2012 — up from 556 sales over the same 11 months the prior year, SABOR reports.

Meanwhile, the far North submarket — which includes Cibolo Canyons — continues to rank as one of the most active areas. Between Jan. 1 through Nov. 30, 2012, there were 1,997 home sales in this submarket — up from 1,645 for the same 11-month period in 2011, SABOR reports.

And it is a market that Burdick knows well. The homes he plans to build in Palacios will be similar to those Burdick has built in another high-end San Antonio-area neighborhood — The Dominion.

All of Burdick’s homes will be built in partnership with Steve Frank under the moniker Burdick & Frank Ltd.

To date, Burdick & Frank has one model and one spec home under construction in Palacios.

The homes will be built in time for the 2013 Parade of Homes, which will run from May 18-27 at Palacios.

But this time around, Pierret, Wright and others expect the outcome post-Parade to be much better.

Tricia Lynn Silva covers real estate, retail, construction, and law firms; she also plans and edits some special reports.