Silicon Valley techies spur home building and remodeling boom

Taking advantage of Silicon Valley's robust economy, affluent techies are building or remodeling homes, transforming parts of the area's older housing stock and fueling a boom for Bay Area architects and interior designers.

"The problem is finding time to sleep," said architect Roger Kohler, of Palo Alto, whose firm has more than 20 projects in construction or just completed in Los Altos, Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton.

The tech workers range from midlevel engineers at startups or at tech giants like Apple (AAPL), Facebook and Google (GOOG) to older CEOs or founders selling their companies. Some are doing relatively straightforward, if pricey, remodels, while others are leveling old homes and building new ones with basement game rooms, large garages and the latest in high-tech features.

Catherine Jhung, a vice president at Cleantech.com, and her husband, Brian Buchholz, who works at Google, are including "a lot of the new technologies for green building" in the San Carlos Craftsman-style home they will soon break ground on. The existing home -- which they bought seven years ago -- was torn down. Construction bids are coming in at $270 to $285 a square foot, or about $900,000.

"We're doing a lot to make it look lived in," Jhung said. That includes tongue-and-groove wall paneling, ceiling paneling and vintage-looking fixtures.

The new home will be wired for plug-in electric cars and solar panels, and have the latest in energy-efficient windows, a smart thermostat, top-of-the-line insulation and solar-powered skylights.

'Floodgates opened'

San Jose architect Eugene Sakai, who designed the San Carlos home, said surging demand has the architects, contractors and interior designers who survived the recession "super busy."

"The valley's money machine never stopped running, but people were socking it away. When the economy came back the floodgates opened with pent-up demand for projects."

He estimated 80 percent of his clients are in tech or have profited from investing in tech stocks. "We're definitely benefiting from the tech economy."

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Silicon Valley techies spur home building and remodeling boom