House & Home September 1972 Article

(Title of Article) For buyers who want the best of two worlds: pinwheel fourplexes that live like detached houses.

" A suburban lifestyle without suburban hassles." That, says builder Don Bahl, is what a lot of young, childless couples want in Sunnyvale, Calif. And that, he adds, is what they get at Bahl Cluster Homes.

Bahl's architect, Jones & Hom, designed the fourplex project to provide the following:

Privacy on small lots (density is 12 units per acre). The fourplexes are arranged in a pinwheel pattern (sit plan, opposite page) so that no windows look directly into neighbors' yards. Windows and doors are partly screened from neighbors by fin walls (photo, opposite page). And gardens are enclosed by high walls or fences. The pinwheel arrangement also makes it easier to enter driveways from the one-way loop streets.

Variety. Buyers have a choice of three elevations and four floor plans ranging from 1,163 to 1,529 sq. ft. Prices average $31,000.

Minimal gardening. The walled patios are large enough for comfortable outdoor living - some buyers have put in swimming pools - but small enough for easy upkeep.

Bahl started selling last March, has sold 63 units and eventually plans to build more than 200. His financing - conventional mortgages at 5% down - is a strong sales point with his buyers, most of whom are former tenants of high-rent apartments.

Although the buyers are young (average age: 27), their incomes are high (average $27,180) because both husbands and wives work. But their savings are slim because they haven't worked long enough to amass much capital. For the most part they are leisure oriented couples, who want to avoid time-consuming home maintenance but realize economic advantages of home ownership.

Oddly enough, however, Bahl's buyers are not a homogeneous group. Both their occupations and their leisure interests vary widely, and most of their friends come from outside the projects. So, Bahl notes, there's no need for community recreational facilities that promote social mixing.

Shortly after he opened, Bahl got a clue to zeroing in on prospective buyers. He noticed that shoppers were driving up in sports cars and imported compacts - "But not new ones," he says. "They didn't seem to want to tie up that much cash."

So he got a copy of the county motor vehicle registry, which also tells whether a car owner rents or owns a home, and pitched a direct-mail campaign at apartment dwellers who owned two and three year old Volkswagens, Mustangs, Ect.