Columbia’s city manager has said several times that the city is grappling with a housing crisis.
The Columbia Board of Realtors says the median home price sold in Columbia in April was about $313,000. Making housing more affordable was a discussion topic Saturday morning on 939 the Eagle’s “CEO Roundtable.” Homebuilder Orie Hemme says they’ve received their first eight building permits for Amberton Place, which is near Valley View Gardens. Mr. Hemme tells listeners that they’ll build 118 new homes near Columbia’s West Gibbs road, north of I-70:
“It’s 118 homes and it’s all focused on more affordable, attainable housing. So we call it cottage-style,” Mr. Hemme says.
Columbia’s Hemme Construction has built 135 new homes in Nursery Heights and is currently building homes in Old Hawthorne, the Glades and in Chapel Hill Meadows. The Columbia Board of Realtors says the median home sold price in Boone County in April was about $309,000. Mr. Hemme tells listeners that a growing number of Columbia-area residents are remodeling their homes, rather than building a new one:
“We have a full remodel division now in our business. And remodel is probably half of our business now,” Mr. Hemme says.
The 29-year-old Hemme was part of the first graduating class at Columbia’s Fr. Tolton high school. He earned a business degree from the University of Central Missouri (UCM) in Warrensburg. You can hear host Fred Parry’s full one-hour interview with Orie Hemme here.
