Pricey housing pushes firm to design a few of its own

Melissa Wechsler and Chad Lorentz are associates at an architecture firm, so it's no surprise that one day at the office they were batting around creative ideas on how to make housing affordable in unaffordable Seattle -- for them, not just their clients.

With a little ingenuity, and some help from their boss, they put themselves in control of designing their future homes instead of letting the housing market control and limit their choices.

Wechsler, 31, had just moved back to Seattle from Miami with her husband, Jeremy, and the search for their first home was proving to be fruitless and frustrating. Out of financial necessity, the couple set their sights on one of those new Craftsman-style town houses sprouting up on residential streets all over the city. But those they could afford were either in neighborhoods where they didn't want to live or designed so poorly they gave fits to Wechsler's professional sensibilities.

Friends since graduate school, Wechsler and Lorentz hatched a plan. What if they and a couple of other friends pooled their resources and invested in a residential lot they could redevelop themselves? They then would be able to design their own homes and build their own community to their own specifications.

It was every architect's dream. But could they pull it off financially?

Their boss, Brian Runberg, overheard the conversation and became the catalyst to turn their idea into reality. Runberg saw the benefit not only for his employees, but also as their employer. If he could help budding stars in his firm secure happy homes in Seattle, the chances of retaining them as happy employees would go up.

"About a year ago, we had a run of at least four staff members in the office getting beat out or priced out of the Seattle housing market," says Runberg, who recalls his own apprentice days when work hours were long and paychecks were thin. "I had been there myself."

Runberg is the principal of Runberg Architecture Group, which employs 20 people -- 16 of them in the Pioneer Square office. A specialty of the firm is designing workforce, student, low-income and other affordable housing.

"What does that say about this market," Runberg says, "when we can't even house employees whose jobs involve creating affordable housing in Seattle?"

Runberg offered to purchase the lot, have employees collectively design and develop the property, and then sell each of the four homes to a different employee at cost, well-below market value.

The search began last spring for just the right lot to build the four new homes for Runberg employees. Runberg found it on a hillside in Magnolia on 31st Avenue West. While taking his daughter to swimming lessons, he saw a "For Sale" sign in front of a postwar-era duplex -- one of several rentals on the block being torn down for higher-density town houses.

The Seattle Housing Authority owned the duplex. The low-income housing agency is in the process of selling off more than 100 duplexes and single-family houses across the city, replacing those homes with units within larger multifamily buildings. The agency, looking to cut costs, says it is easier and cheaper to maintain several units concentrated within a single building.

Runberg's bid for the lot -- $665,000 -- was slightly lower than the highest. But the housing authority, impressed by Runberg's plans to develop affordable housing and also favoring technical aspects of his bid, sold him the lot last July.

For Lorentz, 32, the idea of designing his own community was especially enticing. He and his wife, Wendy, currently own a Green Lake town house.

"The Magnolia home actually will be a smaller place, but the opportunity to design our own home is really what is driving us," Lorentz says. "Obviously, we could not have done this on our own."

Wechsler and Lorentz have been working during their off hours, under Runberg's guidance, to design the community and the individual homes. Rather than build tall-and-thin town houses, they are designing four two-level homes that surround a common courtyard. Each home will have two bedrooms, 2-½ bathrooms and be between 1,200 and 1,400 square feet.

Runberg hopes construction can begin by summer, with move-in by early 2009.

So far, only two Runberg employees, Wechsler and Lorentz, have bought in. Runberg hopes the still-unspoken-for homes, as well as any subsequent resales, will be purchased by employees of his firm.

The project is complex logistically, legally and financially.

Although Wechsler and Lorentz are designing the interiors of the homes, Runberg sometimes has to rein in their dream-house visions to keep the project within budget.

And in order to protect the integrity of the project, Runberg is drawing up legal papers in the event one of the buyers resells soon after purchasing the home. That homeowner would not earn the full equity benefit of the resale, since the home was purchased originally at below market value.

The final sales prices of the homes won't be determined until actual project costs are known, but Runberg figures they will be in the ballpark of $400,000, which they consider well below market value for new construction in Magnolia.

"It's still a stretch financially for me and my husband," Wechsler says. "But it's a more feasible stretch."

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com