California homebuilder Trumark Homes plans to build a new luxury townhome community in Concord, its first project in the city as it expands its reach in the Bay Area.
Dubbed “Penny Lane,” the planned community would have 70 three-story townhomes, ranging from 1,611 to 2,430 square feet, and would offer four different floor plans, according to a news release this week. The smallest of those plans would include three bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms and the largest would have four bedrooms, four bathrooms and a den, the release said.
“Our new community will help ease the East Bay’s significant supply-constrained housing market in one of the most appealing areas of our region,” Tony Bosowski, Northern California division president at Trumark Homes, said in the statement. Bosowski told The Real Deal on Thursday that it’s too early to discuss pricing for Trumark’s Concord townhomes.
Concord home prices surged 19.8 percent in July from a year earlier, while the median price for a townhome in the East Bay city jumped 17.2 percent to $442,500, Redfin data show. The East Bay in general — which includes Alameda and Contra Costa counties, the latter of which includes Concord — is a seller’s market as buyer demand for homes outpaces supply.
One telling statistic: months of supply inventory, or MSI, which is used to indicate a balanced housing market.
The average MSI in California is about three months of supply. Yet in April, Contra Costa County had an MSI of 1.3 months of supply for condos and townhomes, according to California Association of Realtors data. That indicates the county’s condo and townhome markets both favor sellers.
“The East Bay housing market has seen a surge of activity as ‘work from home’ orders provided opportunities for people seeking more affordable housing to live further from employment centers,” Bosowski said in an email. “People leaving the high-priced areas of San Francisco and the Peninsula are seeking more affordable alternatives, and the East Bay has been poised to soak up this demand.”
Trumark Homes expects to begin constructing its new Concord townhomes in January and plans to begin opening them to the public next fall, according to Bosowski and the release. The homebuilder signaled its intent to develop a project in the East Bay city back in May, when it spent about $9.7 million to acquire nearly 3.4 acres of land at 3512 Clayton Road, according to Old Republic Title records. The site’s previous owners worked with Catalyst Development Partners to come up with a project with 70 townhomes that would cover the entire site plus a portion of a neighboring property at 105 Roslyn Drive.
The Concord City Council approved Catalyst’s plans in April 2020, but the company didn’t apply for a building permit for its 70-townhome project before Trumark Homes essentially acquired it in May, according to the city’s online permit center. Trumark applied for a building permit last month that’s under city review, according to the permit center.
Concord marks Trumark Homes’ latest expansion into a new residential market in the Bay Area. In June, the company spent $25.1 million to acquire 5.7 acres of vacant land in Morgan Hill from developer City Ventures, which received city approval last year to build 101 townhomes on the site.
The project is Trumark’s first in Morgan Hill, which is on the southern end of the Bay Area and whose downtown is about 22 miles south of San Jose’s. The homebuilder plans to start pre-selling homes there in December so that it can reportedly close escrow on the project’s first units next summer.