Instead of demolishing older Shore houses, this company moves them down the road

Bungalows and small beach houses are becoming rarer in towns along the Jersey Shore, as block after block is overtaken by three-story homes with decks and balconies. But instead of falling to the wrecking ball, some of these older homes are finding new life in communities a few miles away.

That’s where SJ Hauck Construction comes in. The company has built a booming business picking up homes and trucking them to locations more in line with their aesthetics.

At the Shore, “houses are always getting demolished to make nicer, bigger houses,” said Steve Hauck, the company’s president. But the two- and three-bedroom ranch houses being replaced often fit nicely 20 or 30 miles inland, where there’s a market for them, according to Hauck.

Hauck says his company, based in Absecon, is the largest of its kind in the area, and moves 20 to 25 houses a year.

“We do demolition also, so people will call us to demolish their house, and when we look at it, we say we can take it for a fraction of the price of demolition,” Hauck said. The company owns inland lots where it moves the houses — or it might buy a house and sell it to an investor who owns a lot, he said.

Either way, he said, “there’s significant cost savings” by relocating a home instead of tearing it down.

“Our culture as a society just assumes if I want another house, I’ll have to throw the other one away,” he said. “That’s just not the case. We can recycle it, and it can be a house for another hundred years.”

Hauck has had some high-profile jobs, notably the 2020 move of a Victorian home from Avalon to Cape May that required dismantling the house in sections, and a Mamaroneck, N.Y., move that involved cutting a house into nine pieces because the route it had to travel was “too tight,” Hauck said.

The company also moved the “pizza slice” house, a longtime Wildwood landmark, to Upper Township in June. That operation, performed on a 1960s A-frame, involved cutting off the triangular top.

“The main house we move is a ranch home or Cape Cod,” Hauck said, “but we can move anything. It’s just a feasibility issue.”

A recent example is the move of a church that is more than 130 years old from Egg Harbor City to Historic Smithville, where it will become a shop, Hauck said.

Pomona Union Protestant Church sold the property because its membership had dwindled over the years as the surrounding area became developed, said Pat Scamoffa, trustee and treasurer. “Since COVID, we haven’t had a service,” she said. “Before that, we met about three times a year.”

The church was built in 1890 on what used to be a farm. “We wanted to preserve the building that we love so much and has so much history,” Scamoffa said. “We wanted it to be safe, and we wanted it to be acknowledged in its beautiful condition.”

Drew Fishman of Coldwell Banker Argus Real Estate represented the congregation in the sale. “You don’t want something destroyed if you don’t have to because it’s beautiful inside,” he said.

Smithville is an “ideal” location for the move, Fishman said, as it has a cluster of buildings that fit with the church.

House moving isn’t a new trend at the Shore. Visitors might not know it, but several Victorian-era buildings aren’t in their original locations. Cape May’s Angel of the Sea bed and breakfast, for example, was moved in 1881 and then again in 1962.

“House moving’s been around since the 1500s,” when workers used horses, turntables, and logs to transport structures, Hauck said. In the old days, “it took them months to move a house, compared to years to build one,” he said. “Now it’s easier to build new ones.”

For Hauck, house moving has been in the family for two generations. “I learned the business from my father,” he said. “He did it when I was a kid.”

Moving a house as opposed to demolishing it benefits the environment, Hauck said. The average house weighs 60,000 pounds, so if the company moves 25 of them a year, “that’s 1.5 million pounds of debris we save from going to a landfill,” he said.

“If you think about where the world is going and the lack of supply of materials, house moving should be taken much more seriously,” Hauck said. “We just need the general public to understand it can be done.” Anyone planning on demolishing a house “should always inquire whether their house can be saved before they send it to the wrecking ball,” he said.

The typical move costs $25,000 to $50,000, Hauck said. Like any construction project, the cost depends on time and materials, he said.

Rommi Drozdov of Mays Landing was looking for an income source when her four kids were in college — and Hauck’s business led her to start a family operation buying and developing transplanted houses.

“I think I’ve done seven of them now,” she said. “They’re really good starter homes for people.”

Drozdov usually buys houses from such towns as Longport, Margate, and Avalon, where land values tend to be higher than the values of older homes. She finds houses with good layouts and quality features such as hardwood floors.

“If I can find a lot somewhere, I buy a lot, because I know eventually I’ll have a house to move on there,” Drozdov said.

The permit process can be complicated, Drozdov has found, and the houses often need renovations. But once the homes are fixed up, “they usually sell right away,” she said.

Most of Drozdov’s buyers are first-time homeowners who prefer the quality of the moved houses — which can be 50 or 60 years old — to the average starter home. “They don’t make houses like that anymore,” she said.

Home sellers also appreciate having their houses saved. Drozdov bought one Ocean City house that had been “completely redone,” and the seller was pleased that his “baby” wouldn’t end up at the dump, she said.

“My kids say I need to get a show on HGTV called Recycled Houses,” Drozdov said. “It’s hectic at times, but overall it’s a fun thing to do.”