New Tennessee and Georgia developments lure Boomers and second-home buyers

Chairs are set up to take in the view from the Brow Wood subdivision in Lookout Mountain, Georgia.

Soon, there will be cabins near the entrance of John "Thunder" Thornton's high-end Jasper Highlands development atop Jasper Mountain, and prospective residents will have a chance to sample mountain life for real before investing in a home lot.

Soon, the rustic new sales office and headquarters off Exit 152B in in Kimball, Tennessee, will be finished. It will have a display of home interior accessories - cabinets, light fixtures, tile, toilets - just like a hardware store.

On a recent spring afternoon, Thornton, driving a white company Suburban, turns onto a brand-new blacktop road leading from Kimball up the mountain to his Jasper Highlands development.

At the top, Thornton stops at the pavilion at Pat's Summit near the entrance to Jasper Highlands, which looks out over a bend in the Tennessee River and the blue bridge of South Pittsburg. Building plans lie unfurled nearby showing a small general store and a swinging bridge to be built here at the overlook park, which is owned collectively by residents of Jasper Highlands.

Thornton envisions a thriving community of vacation and retirement homes. It's a dream he believes retirees across America will share after one whiff of crisp, East Tennessee air on a mountain morning.

Thornton poses a question: Do you know what retirees say they want in a development these days? Turns out, it's not golf. It's walking trails, which Jasper Highlands has in abundance.

At Jasper Highlands there's no fancy clubhouse, and there are no Par 3 tee boxes. Instead, there's a lot of green space, views of the Tennessee River Gorge, and the real potential of waking up to a gang of wild turkeys strutting through your front yard.

This isn't your granddaddy's retirement community.

But that stands to reason, because this isn't your granddaddy's retirement climate or housing market, either.

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Upwards of 10,000 Americans turn 65 years old everyday, and that trend will continue for nearly the next 20 years, according to the Pew Research Center. By 2030, the nation's baby boomers (those born between mid-1946 and mid-1964) will have all hit 65, and nearly 20 percent of the country's population will be retirement age, according to the research group. By comparison, only 13 percent of Americans were 65 or older in 2010, and only 9.8 percent of Americans were 65 or older in 1970.

These are significant numbers for developers, as the National Association of Realtors reports baby boomers make up roughly 30 percent of recent home buyers in the United States.

According to National Association of Realtors statistics, young baby boomers (ages 50-61) have relatively high incomes and make up about 16 percent of recent home purchasers. Older baby boomers (ages 61-69) account for about 15 percent of recent home buyers. In the universe of home buyers, boomers are the most likely to move the long distances, often to be closer to family.

Thornton bought Jasper Highlands in 2008, and thanks Lady Luck he didn't buy it only two years earlier in 2006. Like all second-home developers, he had to ride out the hard times brought on by the Great Recession from 2008 into 2011 and beyond.

But all the news wasn't bad, especially for consumers.

"There's no question that there was a big correction," says Thornton. "Lot prices have not come back."

He talks about pre-2008, when buyers would purchase lots site unseen. Now, buyers are looking for value, he says.

"We think we can have 300 sales up here this year," says Thornton, of Jasper Highlands.

Currently, there are around 26 homes already built, but Thornton says many buyers have claimed lots and been transparent about their intentions to not build for two or three years. Some are winding down careers, others are saving up. But driving throughout Jasper Highlands, there are small yard signs lining the curbed streets with the names of families from Florida, Arizona and other places around the country who have bought lots here.

Lot sales tripled here, and hit 200 in 2015, says Thornton. Lots (all of which are a minimum of at least one acre) range from $45,000 to $190,000 with a few premiere lots priced north of $300,000.

Homes average $125 per square foot, and the minimum single-level home must be 1,450 square feet, while the minimum two-story must be at least 1,850 square feet. Home and lot prices combined, it's possible to move into Jasper Highlands for roughly $250,000.

Thornton says in his experience, buyers are still looking for quality, and second home and retiree buyers like that even at $250,000, Jasper Highlands has community-owned brow property all residents can use and share.

"It is consumer confidence - not in the overall economy, but in our development," he says. He touts the low homeowner dues ($300 a year) and taxes ($1,350 a year) on a $60,000 lot, without a house, in the community.

This has long been Tennessee's pitch to retirees: property is cheap and taxes are low.

Retire Tennessee, a state agency that promotes Tennessee to curious retirees, even offers a relocation calculator, encouraging out-of-state residents to see how much they can potentially save by coming to the Volunteer State, with its lack of a state property tax, lack of personal income tax and recently retooled Hall Income Tax, which now exempts tax on dividend and interest on bonds and stocks up to $26,000 a year for single filers and $37,000 a year for joint filers.

Thornton says he sees local, down-sizing retirees moving into Jasper Highlands, but he also sees a lot of out-of-state interest.

"They want to wake up and see a 12-point buck in their back yard," he says.

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At Cloudland Station off Highway 193 near Chickamauga, Georgia, Atlanta developer John Tatum is preparing for a sneak peek of the Southern Living-inspired creations he and his team have been working on for the last year. Cloudland Station is Tatum's picturesque 450-acre development in a grassy glade at the foot of Lookout Mountain. The development offers natural, community-shared common areas (like a swimming hole and an open theater) and the great outdoors.

Lots at Cloudland Station range between $100,000 and $175,000. Traditional homes start in the low $200,000s, and Tatum says Cloudland Station is also about to develop a handful of "not-so-tiny-home neighborhoods," featuring smaller-footprint permanent homes, primarily for second-home buyers.

Those homes will cost around $235,000, lot included. Eventually, Tatum says there will also be a treehouse club with fully climatized, family-sized treehouse homes.

Like Jasper Highlands, there is no golf course, at Cloudland Station. Instead, there are craft homes, a craft tree house, a creek and a white chapel with windows that let in golden waves of Southern sun and that look out over the rolling green foothills of Lookout Mountain.

Go far enough west on Tatum's land and you'll find an historic Cherokee cabin and eventually a mountain cave in the side of Lookout Mountain. Like Jasper Highlands, Cloudland Station is designed to lure second-home buyers, and in recent years has felt the pinch of recent tough economic times.

Tatum said during the depths of the Great Recession, he decided to close the development's doors to customers, but kept developing the property in hopes that the housing market would eventually bounce back. During that time, he built the white chapel and the event house, and also a small country general store and water mill.

Since early last year, the market has picked up, he said.

"People are definitely on the move, looking," says Tatum.

Today, Cloudland Station is hosting tours weekly and Tatum has even introduced a program for out-of-town guests to stay on the property for a weekend while they look at homes and home sites. Southern Living magazine recently named Cloudland Station one of its seven "Southern Living Inspired Communities" and This Old House magazine also completed a house in the development in the last year.

There are about a dozen homes in Cloudland Station now, and a handful more are currently under construction.

By-and-large interest in the development is above where it was only four, five years ago.

"So yeah," Tatum says, "I would say things are pretty much booming."

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Clear, warm tones from a grand piano carry through the excited crowd at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Thrive Assisted Living and Memory Care at Brow Wood, the brand-new facility that recently opened off Scenic Highway on Lookout Mountain in Georgia. It's the first senior living facility ever built on Lookout, where residents have resisted past efforts to build senior living developments.

Beth Harrell, a Realtor with Real Estate Partners in Chattanooga, represents the Brow Wood development across Scenic Highway from the assisted living facility. Brow Wood is a 150-acre mountainside development of high-end second homes designed specifically with active seniors in mind by Lookout Mountain local and former Covenant College president Frank Brock.

Brock dreamed up the idea for a Lookout Mountain community for active seniors nearly a decade ago, and despite the failure of his first plan, Chapelbrow, he persevered through the Great Recession and was successful in finding investors willing to put their money on the line for the project.

Today, Brow Wood is a growing, 51-lot community with 12 existing homes and handful of new homes in the works. Lots start at $85,000 and new, three-bedroom spec homes will be available soon. They start at $395,000, while new two-bedroom homes spec homes will start at $297,000.

Harrell mingles with guests at the April ribbon-cutting for Brow Wood's sister project, Thrive. This brings the entire development together, she says. It's a total retirement community.

"Aging in place. That's our goal," she says.

The idea at Brow Wood is that independent, healthy seniors buy a single-story home on the side of Lookout Mountain and live there until they need a greater level of care. At that point, Brow Wood residents move across the street into Thrive.

It's a different kind of retirement lifestyle. Like Jasper Highlands and Cloudland Station, it's one that goes after retirees with the temptation of quiet, mountain-top living. There is no golf course here, either.

Brow Wood is instead a self-described "front porch neighborhood, "designed for those who have an appetite for living active, healthy and happy lives," according to sales literature. Homeowners fees for the best lots at Brow Wood are $150 a month. The development has also set aside acreage for preservation.

"We fight to keep it pure," says Harrell.