JOHNSON COUNTY – Building a new home in Greenwood is going to cost you more in the future, and a company claims it's the city's fault because of new architectural standards.
The new standards, created last September, are for all new homes. They include rules like higher roof pitches, more brick being used, and bigger garages.
It’s a change the company Arbor Homes says could cost builders $20,000 to $30,000 more per house.
Arbor filed the lawsuit alongside the Builders Association of Greater Indianapolis and the Indiana Builders Association.
The suit claims Greenwood's new architectural standards are “detrimental to citizens of Indiana and Greenwood in need of affordable housing.”
“We’re talking about potential government overreach,” Arbor Homes Vice President of Sales and Marketing Steve Hatchel said. “They’re driving prices up to where it’s the middle class that’s going to suffer.
Hatchel says the changes are unnecessary and only aesthetic. His biggest issue is that the city is requiring the changes be applied to homes in the Briarstone Subdivision, which Arbor Homes has been developing since 2013.
“We’ve been doing this for 21 years around Indianapolis,” Hatchel said. “And never in any instance have we been asked in the middle of a project to change what we are doing.”
The City of Greenwood, on the other hand, says the architectural changes are not about aesthetics, but about quality.
“We wanted to make sure we were protecting the biggest purchase our residents make in a lifetime, which is their house,” City Council member Brent Corey said. “We wanted to make sure that the builders were building the best quality of house they can at each price point.”
Corey says yes, the city has an agreement with Arbor for development. But he says that has to with the land, not the type of home, so Greenwood stands behind the new standards.
According to the National Association of Home Builders, regulations imposed by government on all levels, on average, account for nearly a quarter of the cost of building a new home.
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