Empty-nesters looking to downsize may have another housing option beyond condos and active-adult communities in the near future. Called pocket or cottage neighborhoods, these smaller 55+ communities include 10 or so clustered residences and are built around a central common space. Washington Post’s Michele Lerner spoke with a real estate agent from the newest application in Northern Virginia called the Railroad Cottages. Read more on the story below.
The Railroad Cottages community, Twiford says, is the first new cottage neighborhood in Northern Virginia. Local governments and developers are studying whether to replicate it to address the “missing-middle” housing problem — the lack of homes in the market for middle-income people.
While developers found creative ways to cut costs by building on less land, they acknowledge that more work needs to be done to make the houses — which range from $750,000 to $800,000 in Railroad Cottages — more affordable.
“Ideally, this idea could be implemented at a variety of price points and for different purposes such as workforce housing or for adults with intellectual or physical disabilities,” she says. “That can only happen if jurisdictions take the lead and tune out the noise from typical neighbor pushback.”
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