Rather than moving, many choosing to renovate

Redo, don't relocate: It's a spreading mantra among homeowners who already live in desirable neighborhoods in the Philadelphia region.

For myriad reasons - lack of equity, love of neighbors and neighborhood, the abject refusal to pack even one box - people who once might have moved when house and stage of life didn't match are choosing an alternative route:

Instead of combing real estate ads for the right houses, they're transforming where they live into homes that are right for them now.

"To move into another home, buy all new furniture, all new everything - they'd rather keep [everything] where it is," said Chester County-based contractor Jeff Morrison. "That is the theme I have overheard and overheard."

It's happening in Jodi and Jeff VanDerveer's Phoenixville neighborhood, and where Heather and Stephen Stigall live in Berwyn, for example.

Interior designer Kat Robbins said she saw other artisans of renovation - electricians, contractors, plumbers - in the same Ardmore community where she was working on an $830,000 home renovation.

"There was construction going on [elsewhere] in the neighborhood," said Robbins, of Wayne.

The trend transcends this region. National home-improvement spending data from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University (the so-called moving rate of change) shows first-quarter 2011 spending was minus 1.5 percent in 2011 and 10.7 percent in the first quarter of this year. In third-quarter 2011, it was 6.3 percent; the 2014 anticipated third-quarter spending is 14.5 percent. This year's fourth quarter is expected to quiet down.

Bucks County builder Thomas K. Fischer, whose clients know privilege, said reasons for the trend include the post-bubble real estate market and the fact that older Americans want to stay put.

Housing and real estate and the international financial crisis are "part of the equation," he said.

In 2005, according to Federal Reserve estimates, homeowners pulled $750 billion worth of equity from their homes. By 2011, a CNNMoney report says, real estate value had plunged $6 trillion, or 30 percent of its value.

For many homeowners, renovation reflects changes in their lives. Some, like the Stigalls with their five school-age youngsters, added a bedroom, a bathroom, a pantry and a mudroom.

The fifth pregnancy prompted the addition in 2010. Morrison, their contractor, helped make the new space look like part of the original center-hall Colonial.

Heather Stigall confessed that the mere thought of moving was another motivator to go bigger rather than go elsewhere.

"We changed to meet our needs," she said. The couple had bought the house in the mid-2000s, and mild claustrophobia was manageable, even with the fifth child, "but when our parents visit . . . "

Architect Ed Rahme, based in Kennett Square, noticed the trend about four years ago.

Before that, Rahme said, "if I had four projects in one year, one was, 'Stay where we are,' and three were, 'Let's move.' " Lately, it's been the opposite.

Susan Bennett, 67, of Villanova, shares Stigall's angst about resettling, saying: "I can't imagine moving all this stuff."

Bennett lost her husband three years ago and is making the couple's once-shared space "conducive to my lifestyle now. I need my gym and office," which WPL Interior Design of Ardmore is working on. The firm has redesigned her entire four-story house, some of it in the last two years.

Walter Peterson, WPL design principal, said his clients are "looking to do projects they postponed," and they are "spending more this year than in 2013, and more in 2013 than in 2012."

Morrison said his business grew 33 percent, in dollar value, from 2012 to 2013.

The VanDerveers built their four-bedroom home in 2000, expecting to stay about seven years, said Jodi VanDerveer, 41, human-resources director for CSL Behring in King of Prussia.

But then, three children later, "the kids love the neighborhood, and the school, and we're happy with our neighbors."

So the upgrades began. The kitchen is the latest room to go under the saw.

She sees herself and husband still there in 20 years.

"I see my kids coming back. I do think we plan to stay," VanDerveer said. "In a world of chaos, it is nice to come home."