Hangar Homes

Crashnburn

Crashnburn

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Crashnburn
As an aspiring pilot, I've read threads where pilots complain about the lack of adequate hangars, and the outrageous costs of same. When I retire, or I get a bucket list job out of state, I plan on finishing my PPL, at least, and buying my own plane, so hangaring it is a concern.

I've seen a lot about hangar homes, but haven't really talked to anyone about them. I'm wondering if anyone on here has, or is living in one, or know someone with that experience. What are their pluses, and minuses, and any other comments would be welcome.

We are planning on building (via contractor) our own retirement home, so we could do it on an airpark lot as easily as anywhere else, I think.

Thanks
 
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I don’t live in my hangar, but I live on an airport and I have a hangar right beside my garage. Minuses? To sleeping 100 feet from your plane, walking out and flying on a whim? I can’t even dream one up.

Whatever size hangar you are thinking of, make it bigger. Make the house smaller to pay for it if you have to.
 
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I've got one.
 
First, I have a lot for sale if you're interested. It's 3.79 acres, Lot #44. I even have a set of plans I can toss in if you want...

AerialPlat.jpg

I ended up building on another lot at the same airpark (Holley Mountain Airpark 2A2). I have no regrets on the lifestyle. I can walk outside the kitchen and be inside my hangar.

This is the front of the house shortly before I moved in...
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This is Katamarino's 182 in front of my hangar...IMG_0571.JPG

This shows the side that faces the taxiway...

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And finally, this is an aerial shot showing my place. It's the one with the dark green roof...

Anymouse Manor.jpg
 
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The biggest con is there just aren't airparks located nearby. The nearest from me that I am aware of are 60+ miles away. I know a couple of farmers that have strips on their land, but I am far from able to buy a section of land for my own.
 
My best friend lives in an airpark. It is so cool to be able to fly up there for a weekend and taxi right to his house.

The only con I can think of would be the price, but if you can handle that, then you will have a lot of envious POAers asking for pictures (and invites).
 
There are two cons for me:
  1. Location--well over an hour's drive to work
  2. Prices seem to be at least double what I paid for my home on 2 acres with a pond, adjacent to a major lake, way back in 2015.
Were it not for those two, I might live in one. Oh, one more H-U-G-E issue: almost all airparks that yiu can build on, with some exceptions in the desert and way back in the Rockies, are on the outskirts of Big Cities, and I'm deathly allergic to Big City Life. I currently live in the country; my mail comes from a nearby town of 1000 and I work in a city of 5000. When I visit the nearby college town for shopping / restaurants, I complain about the traffic. And I work hard to avoid Atlanta . . .
 
I don't know what you mean by outskirts. CLT is over 30 miles away. We're out in the middle of a very rural county. The city that my mail comes from (and I'm five miles or so out of the city limits) has a population of 603 (and I think that's an exageration).
 
midwestpa24 said:
The biggest con is there just aren't airparks located nearby. The nearest from me that I am aware of are 60+ miles away. I know a couple of farmers that have strips on their land, but I am far from able to buy a section of land for my own.
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This. I live in southeastern Wisconsin. Milwaukee and surrounding counties have nothing. :( The two nearest airports near me on the FAA database are both closed - One became part of a county park/nature preserve at some unknown point, and the other was a guy's backyard strip that appears to still be intact, but he died over a decade ago and nobody told the FAA. :(

6P3 near Madison - a good hour and a half drive from where I live - is the only one in southern Wisconsin that I know of. There's a couple of lucky folks who have through-the-fence at OSH, which would be sweet (how many airparks have a tower and an ILS?).

There's a few in the Chicagoland region, but they're pretty expensive.

Hank S said:
There are two cons for me:
  1. Location--well over an hour's drive to work
  2. Prices seem to be at least double what I paid for my home on 2 acres with a pond, adjacent to a major lake, way back in 2015.
Were it not for those two, I might live in one. Oh, one more H-U-G-E issue: almost all airparks that yiu can build on, with some exceptions in the desert and way back in the Rockies, are on the outskirts of Big Cities, and I'm deathly allergic to Big City Life. I currently live in the country; my mail comes from a nearby town of 1000 and I work in a city of 5000. When I visit the nearby college town for shopping / restaurants, I complain about the traffic. And I work hard to avoid Atlanta . . .
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Yep. But we live far enough outside the zone of influence of Milwaukee that I'm OK. With no traffic, 31 miles and 36 minutes to downtown, but I have two acres and no traffic to worry about out here. I just wish the plane was closer. I've gazed longingly at some farm fields that look like they could be made into airparks...
 
Hank S said:
There are two cons for me:
  1. Location--well over an hour's drive to work
  2. Prices seem to be at least double what I paid for my home on 2 acres with a pond, adjacent to a major lake, way back in 2015.
Were it not for those two, I might live in one. Oh, one more H-U-G-E issue: almost all airparks that you can build on, with some exceptions in the desert and way back in the Rockies, are on the outskirts of Big Cities, and I'm deathly allergic to Big City Life. I currently live in the country; my mail comes from a nearby town of 1000 and I work in a city of 5000. When I visit the nearby college town for shopping / restaurants, I complain about the traffic. And I work hard to avoid Atlanta . . .
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Not in the Rockies, but I am in the Ozarks. And, as I mentioned in my previous post, you can build here.
 
I moved to a hangar home last month. Empty nest. Time to downsize the house. I walk out the kitchen door to a finished 55 x 60 hangar with a 50 x 14 door. The house has two bedrooms and two baths. The hangar has a lounge area and a half bath. Plenty of space for my two planes. The taxiway parallels the runway about 75' in front of my living room. Pretty sweet.
 
The negative in my mind is selling it when the time comes...it’s a relatively small population that would be looking, so it’d possibly take significant time for you (or your estate) to sell it.

I’ve owned a few things like that over the years...Staggerwing project, baby Maule, pickup with a lift gate, etc....significantly harder to sell than the run-of-the-mill versions.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
6P3 near Madison - a good hour and a half drive from where I live - is the only one in southern Wisconsin that I know of. There's a couple of lucky folks who have through-the-fence at OSH, which would be sweet (how many airparks have a tower and an ILS?).

There's a few in the Chicagoland region, but they're pretty expensive.
Click to expand...

I should mention, just in case anyone calls me out on it - Yes, I know of Lake Geneva Aire Estates (WI89). I just don't consider Lake Geneva to be part of Wisconsin. :rofl: It's full of FIBs and you'd be hard-pressed to find a Wisconsin license plate in the place during the summer.

It's fairly expensive, and RIGHT next to US 12 (4-lane divided freeway).

Oh well. :(
 
Negatives: $$$

Are there hangar homes out there for less than$400,000?


Tom
 
Wow! Thanks for all your responses. They are informative and entertaining.I found a few with Living with my plane and some with Dogpile search. We'll probably build when the time comes. I own 80 acres of grass near the KS Going Hills, but I doubt we retire there .My wife can barely handle Silicon Valley weather, and I'm not much of a KS weather can either! Thanks again
 
MauleSkinner said:
The negative in my mind is selling it when the time comes...it’s a relatively small population that would be looking, so it’d possibly take significant time for you (or your estate) to sell it.

I’ve owned a few things like that over the years...Staggerwing project, baby Maule, pickup with a lift gate, etc....significantly harder to sell than the run-of-the-mill versions.
Click to expand...

That’s why even though I really want one, the only way I’ll own an airpark home is when I find the place I want to live out the remainder of my life.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
Negatives: $$$

Are there hangar homes out there for less than$400,000?


Tom
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But can you just look at it as how much you pay for an airpark home with hangar versus what another home in the same general area would cost? The savings in hangar rent, the gas money saved driving to/from the airport, and just the convenience of it add value.
 
Hank S said:
I currently live in the country; my mail comes from a nearby town of 1000 and I work in a city of 5000. When I visit the nearby college town for shopping / restaurants, I complain about the traffic. And I work hard to avoid Atlanta . . .
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You must live in the boonies to think of 5,000 as a "city". :D That's a large subdivision on the north side of Atlanta. I live inside the perimeter (just barely) in Atlanta. My morning commute to downtown is +/- 15 min.

The air parks look neat, but are just too far from work. One of the places we are thinking looking to buy (downsizing) is just 9 min from FTY. That's a short drive to go flying.
 
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Location must matter. Hangar homes in Alaska sell quickly at a high premium. Quality of lot, quality of home, quality of community all add up. Walking out to the plane inside a well lighted and heated hangar in my stocking feet is pretty darn cool.

The ultimate man cave. A room with a view. :)
 
Maybe 9 or 10 years ago, I worked for a builder and we had the opportunity to bid on building a home at an airpark (5NC5). I was the one who put the bid together and had to figure out the design (modern) with the homeowners. I really enjoyed the process, and I SO wanted to build that home. In the end, we did not get the job, and I don't know if they ever built. The price was higher then they were hoping for. But I was so envious of that place.

Every home had to have a hanger built into the home, just like you would integrate a garage for your cars into a home, whether you had a plane or not. The streets were the taxiways. I thought it would be so cool to live there.
 
To play devil's advocate, I live in a townhouse complex, which shares some of the potential negatives of an airpark without any of the aviation upside. :) There are also two airparks near me and I know / have known multiple folks who have lived on both.
  1. As you should do before moving into any new community, check the homeowner association rules/bylaws, if any. These can vary widely in both restrictions on homeowner activities, and in enforcement. Make sure they don't overly constrain what you'd like to do on your plot, and that you're okay with the freedoms your neighbors will have on theirs.
  2. Similarly, check the airport association bylaws and any other rules unique to the community and make sure everything's copacetic. (Are they overly lax or overly restrictive on guest visits? Tie-downs vs. hangaring? Etc?)
  3. Check the financials of the association(s), including monthly/annual fees and how the airport has managed past major expenses or their plans for funding future ones (runway resurfacing, lighting improvements, etc.). Do they seem to have adequate reserves? Does maintenance seem adequate, and do they manage to do what needs to be done based on monthly/annual fees, or do they call for special assessments for big projects? If the latter, are you okay with getting an "unexpected" big bill for such projects? How have the fees changed over time? (Are they likely to go way up in the short term?) What's the insurance situation?
  4. How are the "small town politics"? Are the folks who are active on the association board(s) reasonable folks? Does everybody get along? Are you likely to fit in well with the big personalities in the small pond you're jumping into?
  5. If the airpark is in or near other neighborhoods, or could be encroached on in the near future, how well does/will your airpark get along with the neighbors? Will it survive, or get closed down by the NIMBYs? (I have a friend on an airpark deep in a suburban neighborhood, and one of his concerns is that while they've never had a problem in 40+ years, they're likely one "major incident" away from being closed down/sued into oblivion.)
  6. One aviation consideration: If you might fly in such conditions, what are your options when weather is low? Does the airpark have an IFR approach? Would you really want to use it? What's the next-nearest airport with an approach you'd be comfortable using, and how will you get back and forth to your house if you need to exercise that option?
 
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Jim_R said:
To play devil's advocate....
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I don't know what the typical airpark does, but the one where I bid on building a home, at least at that time, did not have any fuel. So dealing with fuel could be a negative. Having to land somewhere else frequently for fuel, or hefting 5-gallon cans at your home, could be a pain.
 
Jim_R raises good concerns (even for non-airport homes with 1-4). We have a pretty good group of people all there has been a few instances of neighbor-vs-neighbor issues but that seems to be settling out now. My wife's head of the HOA board and she's got a pretty level head for defusing things (years as a school teacher).

As for IFR, most airparks do not have IFR approaches because private use airports are pretty cost prohibitive to get one put in (I've looked at it). Fortunately, I do have a couple of options. I've got an airport 5 miles away with many approaches including two ILSs. We also have another field that's 4 miles away whose non-precision approach crosses about where you'd turn base-to-final at our field, so a lot of people use that as sort of an ersatz approach into ours.

No, we don't have fuel. There are a few homebuilts who bring in E0 autogas for their planes. Most of the rest of us just pop over to one of the nearby fields for gas. 19 miles gets me to either two of the cheapest selfserve fuel islands in the are.
 
We have a self-serve fuel pump on the field but I have my own fuel tank and pump next to the hangar. Now I can take the 100 gallon tank out of my truck. Another plus.
 
Jim_R said:
To play devil's advocate,
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Fallsrider said:
I don't know what the typical airpark does, but the one where I bid on building a home, at least at that time, did not have any fuel. So dealing with fuel could be a negative. Having to land somewhere else frequently for fuel, or hefting 5-gallon cans at your home, could be a pain.
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http://www.holleymountainairpark.com/

Our airpark covers a lot of what Jim mentioned. We have a GPS to both runways, the runway is paved, lit at night and was re-paved just a couple years ago. We're working on redoing the taxiways. These things are budgeted years in advance and we get financial statements frequently.

As for the by-laws, their easily downloaded from the airpark's website and, at least to me, are rather reasonable. Designs must be approved by the architectural committee, but they're just making sure that the design meets the minimum size as stated in the covenants (also downloaded from the website).

Haven't had any neighbor issues that I'm aware of, although it is generally thought that we're a bunch of rich people. I'm sure that's the same at just about any airpark.

The fuel that Fallsrider mentions can be an issue, the powers that be at our airpark specifically decided not to install fuel pumps. There is another airport about 5 NM away with fuel and unless you're burning kerosene, it's not an issue at all.

Politics haven't been too bad here. Typical whining type stuff.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
Negatives: $$$

Are there hangar homes out there for less than$400,000?


Tom
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Sure there are. We purchased our airstrip home in central Georgia 5 years ago for well less than $400K. The home is 2300 sq ft, 3BR, 3BA, huge screened porch that adds another 800 sq ft of livable space. Also has a 50'x50' hangar in the backyard with a 48' x 12' door. Easily fits two planes, boat, and jetski. Did I mention that our home is also 1/4 of a mile from a beautiful resort lake? It's also 7 minutes for me to work. Downsides: grass strip (not necessarily a downside though as some prefer grass), 1/2 mile unpaved road to the house, no fuel on field, no lights on field, no approaches for field. None of those are deal breakers for me, though. I love it here.
 
midwestpa24 said:
The biggest con is there just aren't airparks located nearby. The nearest from me that I am aware of are 60+ miles away. I know a couple of farmers that have strips on their land, but I am far from able to buy a section of land for my own.
Click to expand...
There are quite a few near Cincinnati (you can even live next to Sporty's!).
 
Crashnburn said:
Wow! Thanks for all your responses. They are informative and entertaining.I found a few with Living with my plane and some with Dogpile search. We'll probably build when the time comes. I own 80 acres of grass near the KS Going Hills, but I doubt we retire there .My wife can barely handle Silicon Valley weather, and I'm not much of a KS weather can either! Thanks again
Click to expand...
Going hills?
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
Negatives: $$$

Are there hangar homes out there for less than$400,000?
Click to expand...

Yes. I was just looking at the aforementioned 5NC5, and there was a place there that sold for $322K in 2016: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/5507-Pegasus-Ct-Mebane,-NC,-27302_rb/

DutchRoller said:
That’s why even though I really want one, the only way I’ll own an airpark home is when I find the place I want to live out the remainder of my life.
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Which may be why we don't have too many of them in Wisconsin. :rofl: I mean, this is a fine place to live out your life, but you'll want a second one down south somewhere. February gets harder to tolerate every year.

That said, there aren't a whole lot of places that don't suffer from bad weather or natural disasters. We have all kinds of cold nastiness and the depressing gray days of winter, but our main natural disaster is tornadoes, which are pretty localized and thus don't affect 99.99% of people. California has nice weather, and earthquakes.

Hawaii has really nice weather, and it seems they don't have too many big storms or tsunamis, but those are risks. And it's kinda isolated. I don't think I'd want to live there unless I had my own jet that could reach the mainland.
 
Is there a way to see all hangar homes for sale? Seems like you have to specifically look at each airport, figure out if it’s an airpark and use zillow to show a map view.
I found a couple of websites but they weren’t updated.


Tom
 
I contacted a realtor once whose sign was in front of a house on an air park & told them I was interested in the house they had on the air park (I didn’t have the listing number). They couldn’t find the listing because “people don’t want houses near airports, so we can’t find it based on that.”
 
Sinistar said:
All I see is a taxiway...where is the runway :)
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The grass is the runway...we don't need no stinking asphalt. The paved stuff you see there is for the cars.
 
I had a friend who was one of the initial lot owners over at the Douchy. There was a lot of shenanigans with the developer over there. He made enough of a stink that they bought his lot back.
 
flyingron said:
I had a friend who was one of the initial lot owners over at the Douchy. There was a lot of shenanigans with the developer over there. He made enough of a stink that they bought his lot back.
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That might explain why there are still lots for sale all this many years later.

Part of it could also be that there is a very limited market for this type of neighborhood, I'm sure.

That's too bad that it worked out that way for your friend.
 
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