Butler County new home sales surge in 2014

When PPG Industries Inc. transferred Thomas Maziarz from Louisville to Cranberry last year, he and his wife, Kelly, first looked at homes in northern Allegheny County.

The Maziarzes, with four children, settled instead in Adams, Butler County, in a home a little more than a year old along Longbow Lane. Not only was it closer for their oldest son, Ryan, 15, to attend classes at the new Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School in Cranberry, but the property taxes were lower.

The couple estimated they are saving thousands of dollars annually by living in Butler County.

“Everything is right here for us,” Kelly Maziarz said, citing local shopping, Treesdale Country Club and other amenities in the Adams-Cranberry area. “It's a great place to be.”

Local officials point to lower taxes, undeveloped land, lower crime rates and suburban amenities as some of the reasons people are buying in Butler County in increasing numbers.

Butler County's new home sales surged 25.7 percent in 2014 from the previous year, to 425 homes, according to a five-county study by the South Side-based real estate statistics firm RealSTATs. RealSTATs studied housing trends in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties. Only Washington also had an increase, to 282 new homes in 2014, up 4.4 percent.

Local officials said Butler County is benefiting from growth in southern-tier communities including Adams, Middlesex, Jackson and Cranberry. Washington County is witnessing growth in areas including Peters and Cecil.

Butler County is the only county in the 10-county Western Pennsylvania region where population grew between 2013 and 2014, according to the Census Bureau, up 574 residents, or a 0.3 percent increase.

However, Chris Briem, a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research, noted that most Butler County communities, including the city of Butler, lost population in recent years. Those losses were offset by gains along the Butler-Allegheny county line. Allegheny County lost nearly 1,700 residents, with census numbers indicating that people are moving within the region, such as from Allegheny County to Butler County, Briem has said.

Overall home sales in Allegheny County fell to 17,296 in 2014, from 17,572 in 2013.

Some prospective Butler County homebuyers noted the county's lower property taxes and Allegheny's recent reassessment problems, said Gina Loebell, president of the Butler County Association of Realtors. “People are a little nervous as to what's happening with taxes (in Allegheny County).”

Allegheny and Butler counties are using 100 percent of market value to calculate taxes, but Allegheny County uses 2012 market value, while Butler County uses 1969's.

Butler County has not reassessed properties since then, and county commissioner candidates recently indicated they're not eager to do so.

“It's been relatively underdeveloped,” Loebell said of land in Butler County. “There are a lot of open spaces that are finding new home projects.”

Officials in Adams, where several housing plans have been built in recent years or are under construction, said they're seeing benefits of farmers selling off large swaths of land to developers. They in turn are attracting homeowners who want larger lots and breathing room.

Westinghouse's move from Monroeville to Cranberry several years ago, bringing thousands of jobs, has helped spur business and home sales growth, said Ken Raybuck, executive director of the Butler County Community Development Corp. FedEx is building a regional distribution center near Interstate 79 in Jackson, which is expected to employ several hundred people. For the first time in recent memory, the same number of people are coming into Butler County for work as leave it each day, Raybuck said — more than 40,000.

“We're creating jobs here; it's not just a bedroom community,” he said.

Within the five counties RealSTATs studied, Butler had the lowest unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted at 4.4 percent, according to the most recent figures available. Washington County had a 5.2 percent unemployment rate.

“The township leaders in Cranberry, in particular — and now we're seeing it in Jackson and Zelienople — they've planned for growth,” Raybuck said. “They required sidewalks and developed parks to go to. Foresight by the local elected officials is a very big factor.” He noted that if a petrochemical plant under consideration is built in neighboring Beaver County, Butler County could have more business and residential growth.

The easiest commute into Pittsburgh from any direction, said Daniel Murrer, vice president of RealSTATs, is from the north, on Interstates 79 and 279.

“They don't have the crime there like they do in the city of Pittsburgh,” Murrer said. “There's more green space there.”

Bill Vidonic is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-380-5621 or bvidonic@tribweb.com.