Levittown’s Luxury Makeover

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When newlyweds Jean and William Heacock moved into their new 800-square-foot home in 1950, it had four small rooms, a carport and a built-in television—just like every other house on its street in Levittown, N.Y., America’s first planned suburb.

Today, that Levitt ranch home has morphed into a 2,700-square-foot Mediterranean-style villa with a wrought-iron balcony and a stone and stucco façade, thanks to a 2006 gut renovation by its current owner, Jeff Moran. Terracotta tilework and 7-foot sandstone columns decorate the living room, and there are three new bedrooms upstairs, including a master suite with a cathedral ceiling. The total cost of the remodel was about $200,000—or 25 times the home’s original $7,990 list price.

“We took the house down to the studs. I wanted to be more comfortable, I wanted to upgrade,” said Mr. Moran, 65, who works for the state government. He said that he and his wife, Becky, a 61-year-old teaching assistant, became the home’s third owners when they bought it for $154,000 in 1994.

Jeff and Becky Moran bought their Levittown home for $154,000 in 1994 and spent another $200,000 on improvements in 2006. Here’s the open-plan living room.

Heather Walsh for The Wall Street Journal

When Ms. Heacock and her husband took a nostalgic drive through their old neighborhood eight years ago, she didn’t recognize her old home until she spotted the fire hydrant out front, a familiar landmark. “It’s amazing,” said Ms. Heacock, who is now 90. “You can hardly see the original house there—it’s completely encased in the new house.”

Seventy years ago, the first families moved into Levittown, N.Y.—a community of mass-produced homes built on a 6.9-square-mile chunk of Long Island once planted with onions and potatoes. Between 1947 and 1951, Levitt & Sons built 17,477 homes there. Since that time, most of Levitt’s modest cookie-cutter houses have been remodeled and expanded beyond recognition.

“In the past seven or eight years, the prices have really skyrocketed,” said Dara Crawford, a real-estate agent for Century 21 who has lived in Levittown since 1988.

The Moran home when it was built in 1950 and purchased by Jean and William Heacock.

William Heacock/Heather Walsh for The Wall Street Journal

“A lot of the houses are still on the original footprint, just gutted and completely redone,” she said. “The family up the street knocked down the house and rebuilt it at 2,800 square feet—it’s orange stucco, with a heated saltwater pool.”

Average home listing prices in Levittown have risen 5.4% in the past year, despite a 14.4% increase in supply, according to realtor.com. The average list price of the 117 homes currently on the market is $455,000, with about 5% of the listings priced over $600,000.

A dilapidated Cape Cod-style house on Corncrib Lane was recently demolished to make way for a new four-bedroom spec house, with construction to begin this fall. It is now under contract for $720,000, according to Chris Montalbano, an associate broker and partner in Realty Connect U.S.A., who represents the developer.

The same home in 1963.

William Heacock/Heather Walsh for The Wall Street Journal

“The market is so vibrant now, we sold it based on the plans,” Mr. Montalbano said. “There’s no inventory for new construction in Levittown—the buyers in this particular situation wanted to stay and keep their kids in the schools.”

Levittown was the first of four planned suburban communities created by developer William Levitt. With affordable housing in short supply, Levittown touted a vision of quiet streets and well-kept lawns, along with new schools, swimming pools and shopping districts. Levittowns would later spring up in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Puerto Rico.

The developer’s marketing targeted service members returning from World War II. Veterans could buy the homes with no money down—but only if they were white. Levitt’s restrictive covenants prevented sales or rentals to African- Americans. Those restrictions were later struck down.

The home as it looks today.

Heather Walsh for The Wall Street Journal

The Nassau County community’s proximity to New York City, as well as its affordability and schools, are drawing a diverse mix of home buyers now, according to Shehriar Islam, a real-estate agent with Coldwell Banker who moved to Levittown from Queens in 2015. “I’m a microcosm of what’s going on with other buyers,” Mr. Islam said. “When you go to open houses, 95% of the buyers are from the New York boroughs—it’s much more diverse than it was seven years ago.”

Other families have lived in Levittown for generations. Kevin Magnus, a 51-year-old former clerk at the New York Stock Exchange, bought his childhood home from his father in 2000.

“The house had plenty of potential—I came back here and blew this thing up,” said Mr. Magnus, who spent a decade and over $150,000 remodeling the house with his wife, Kathleen, 49.

They expanded the home from two bedrooms to five, put in a new kitchen, added a porch, and built a backyard gazebo with its own bar and television. When the Magnus’s youngest daughter graduated from high school, they decided to sell. After seven days on the market and multiple bids, the home went into contract for $670,000. “They gobbled it up,” said Ms. Crawford, who had the listing.

“It’s a good community—we have a lot of friends in Levittown,” said Mr. Moran, who occasionally finds an onion growing in his backyard.

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