Toll Bros.: Back to the suburbs
More McMansions for Chester County
Toll Bros.: Back to the suburbs
Joseph N. DiStefano
Even with Toll Bros.' recent record selling homes in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Center City, and other urban centers, the Horsham-based company has continued buying up suburban property for eventual conversion into the next generation of McMansions, as home prices slowly rebound from the late 2000s collapse, while failed projects remain cheap and ripe for conversion.
Last week Toll Bros.' Gibraltar Capital and Asset Management LLC subsidiary said it has spent $33 million buying four packages of loans gone bad, at discount prices, from banks holding property in Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Georgia.
Toll didn't list the properties -- which it said include "retail shopping centers, residential land, and golf courses" -- but Gibraltar boss Roger Brush told me one of the tracts, "capable of being develped into a residential subdivision should we end up with title," is in Chester County, where Toll is also managing the Applebrook Meadows project in Malvern, the Preserve at Chadds Ford, Creekside at Byers Station in Chester Springs, plus big homes at the former du Pont estate north of Newtown Square in neighboring Delco.
Comments (29)
Really good discussion in this thread! There's a number of interesting questions here.
1. For the people who have lived in these areas since they were much less developed and enjoyed the peace, quiet and open space, what about the others who want to enjoy the same? Should they have just waited until you and your neighbors passed on or moved out to buy your houses? You can't really fault people for wanting to live in the same place you lived in and that's what has driven the demand Toll Brothers is supplying to. What we as a society need to do is start push hard the benefits of density, walkability, urban and inner-ring suburban, and car-free while also helping people realize they don't need 5000 square feet homes (especially if they don't have 8 kids) to be happy.
2. In this region, we can help this process by figuring out a way, as a region, to support a revitalization of our urban and inner-ring suburban core. There are plenty of nice places to live in, for example, Jenkintown but Septa needs more funding so that people who live there have more trains running back and forth from there to get them to work in Philadelphia.
3. If you live in Lower Gwynedd or Exton or Montgomeryville, can you put a dollar amount on the harm you have experienced since these developments were built (time spent in traffic, increased noise, destruction of the visual environment). Now, would you have paid some amount up to the value of that harm if it would have helped prevent it? (Just a thought experiment.)— Dixon
Soon, the next housing bubble will see these properties abandoned and if not by economic catastrophe then by the 4 ft deep blizzards that will strand people without electricity or heat in the middle of nowhere where no plowing will get to them in time. Too bad. It's so much nicer at 22nd and Market now that the mafia is gone.- Chester County does NOT need more Toll Bros monstrosities blighting the landscape. Frankly, I'm amazed there are that many people with enough income to afford their notoriously shoddy construction.— STS_PA
- Time to buy some stock in Toll Bros.— Jacob
- Meh. I want a walkable neighborhood, public transit, and things to do. I'm also okay with not having a lot of space for stuff I don't want that needs to be heated and cooled. I'm guessing about 1/2 the people of my generation require these things, so Toll Brothers has something of a market there. I'm also guessing my generation is the last to desire homes that are far away, cheaply built, and on golf courses. Reality will eventually settle in for everybody.— gfstallin
- Great, more sprawl garbage.— phillyPeteZ
- I don't know about their houses but, their cookies are awesome!— bluevalues
Toll Brothers is an example of everything wrong with this country. Greed running roughshod over communities and the environment.- No one is forcing anyone to buy their homes. The free market (whatever may be left of it) will determine the future of the Toll Bros.— spineseller
- They are going to be waiting for a long, long time if they think their McMansion cookie cutters before the '08 crash are ever coming back anywhere near their boom numbers.
I would have to know more about the specific land but that's the real play here.
An overwhelming majority of Americans seem to be in complete denial or ignorance about the future of suburbs though especially in regards to the price of gasoline. The era of cheap sweet light crude is over and with it gas under $3/gallon unless we have a severe economic downturn/depression. Even conservative like Corbett now are coming around to the realization (at least at the state level), that the gasoline excise tax has to be raised and indexed to inflation in order to begin to address their deteriorating infrastructure. Doesn't even get into the mortgage housing interest deduction which I guarantee the Feds are going to come after at some point when the fiscal situation deteriorates enough & additional revenues are necessary.— PhillyGuy77 - @west philly- I agree but for a different reason. Localities extract all kinds of "throw ins" from developers when these communities are approved with respect to infrastructure, roads etc. The real cost that is "under-considered" is the costs for the school districts.— Wiseman6
- I'm going back to before I payed much attention to zoning laws but if memory serves me, Toll Bros overwhelmed LG with lawsuits. The township board couldn't compete with the money Toll Bros could throw at them.
— wokmaster - sure my house is built if low-grade cardboard, but it's HUGE!!!— box297
- I'd like to see how this model does with $4 gas.— meteo30
- I agree, McMansions are going to hurt our nation as time progresses. 20 years ago, you could actually drive down the road and get somewhere. Where these houses are built, are old country roads no meant to handle 1000s of cars. If it snows 1 inch, forget it. I feel anxiety when I read more houses will be built. The way these houses are built is inefficient in so many ways. Way to waste the planet, and assure future people will be packed like cockroaches in the region so the quality of life will be the pits.
— road515 - Great more over priced homes!!— slade1955
- @Wiseman6: You're right that localities have been misguided. But they are also wrong to assume that the kind of development Toll Bros. builds will be beneficial from a tax standpoint. Studies have shown that roads and other infrastructure to these McMansion developments costs more to build and maintain than they will ever produce in tax dollars back to the municipality. They are far too sprawling to bring a positive ROI.
Just some food for thought.— WestPhilly_BR - Actually, the developer usually pays for the cost to put in the infrastructure for communities like this. Perhaps wise government officials (sorry about the oxymoron) saw the study you refer to and began making infrastructure a requirement of the building permits. Municipalities don't start paying for road maintenance and the like until the community is complete and has been dedicated, which the municipality must approve. Usually they are very thorough in making sure everything is perfect before accepting dedication. — BeFrank
- Hey wokmaster - Lower Gwynedd is country. Do you actually live there? Retail stores on every conceivable piece of land? There are no big shopping centers there, and those that are there are old and dated (probably because people like you don't want them improved). You are naive if you think Lower Gwynedd is overdeveloped.— bpp1999
- I should have specified that every inch of Montgomeryville has been turned into retail and McMansions while LG is primarily McMansions. How long have you lived in the area? Do you remember before "Gwynedd Knoll" and the property behind (what used to be) Moore Products and GMC was turned into sprawl? — wokmaster
- The destruction of Central Bucks County: brought to you by Toll and the commissioners of each township..........— Northcountry
- @wok- Who is to blame? Toll Bros or the localities that approved the zoning so they could increase the tax base?
Nice, serene townships with plenty of open space don't feed the local governments ever increasing appetite for tax dollars....— Wiseman6 - Agreed. — wokmaster
- The Toll Bros ruined my hometown (Lower Gwynedd) a few decades ago. They built McMansions and unnecessary retail stores on every conceivable piece of land. They helped to destroy Montgomeryville also. What were once nice, charming, serene townships with plenty of open space, have become examples of suburban sprawl gone bad. They are unrecognizable from when I was a little kid.— wokmaster
- Toll is a corporate eco-criminal. They are destroying open space, filling it with their over-priced products. "The Preserve at Chadds Ford"...what an insult.— johnny rotten
- Yeah that's it ruin some more suburbs, like the way you ruined mine (Glen Mills). In 10 years it went from beautiful PA town to Springfield/Clifton Heights. Here is an idea; build along the river in chester. Plenty of open space there. I would never buy a cheaply built toll bro home.— streamerzzz
- Good for them. I guess you'd rather they go bankrupt, michael?— Genghis
- The land barons like the Tolls will be able to weather almost any recession due to the amount of valuable, hard to acquire land they have their hands on....— michael2_19030
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Joseph N. DiStefano blogs about the latest news in the Philadelphia business community and elsewhere. Contact him at 215-854-5194.
Reach Joseph N. at JoeD@phillynews.com.
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