Friday, March 23, 2012

Smaller, cheaper, more flexible — and 5 other ways new homes are changing with the economy (cont.)

New homes are changing with the economy
4. Smaller
For 35 years, the American home grew larger. In 1973, when the Census Bureau started keeping track, the median house was 1,525 square feet. Homes swelled to 2,277 square feet by 2007 and then began to shrink. By 2010, the median single-family home was 2,169 square feet.
The downsizing may have stopped. The American Institute of Architects' Home Design Trends Survey shows signs that home size is stabilizing. Census figures from the third quarter of 2011 show the median new home at 2,242 square feet, a bump up.
Nevertheless, in this economy, harried middle-class buyers equate big homes with escalating utility bills and housekeeping and maintenance burdens.
Buyers today look at a huge, 20-foot vaulted ceiling in the family room and wonder how they can afford to heat the space.
In the boom, buyers based home purchases on the expectation of big profits at resale. Demand grew for everything oversized and lavish, whether the features would be useful to the current buyers or not.
Today, the math is quite different. Quick profits from resale are out of the equation. That puts emphasis on design and on features that buyers will enjoy now.
5. Stripped down
The cheapest structure to build is a simple box. Accordingly, new designs are simpler, according to the AIA Home Design Trends Survey. Builders are analyzing their designs and processes to cut costs. Shrewd designers work with off-the-shelf material sizes and minimize labor-intensive measuring, cutting and nailing and material waste.
Halls are narrower. Voluminous interior spaces are gone. What's left in a new home is what's essential. They're taking square footage out of master bathrooms to make them more functional.
You need a bedroom for the kids, but you don't need a media room. Even a home office — if you have a handheld device and a laptop, you don't necessarily need it.
Look for changes such as:
  • Construction economies. Fewer niches, nooks, window seats and protruding fireplace areas. Bathrooms will be stacked atop each other to minimize long runs of plumbing. Roof lines will be simpler, with fewer gables, because complex roofs require numerous expensive trusses.
  • More standardization, less variety. You may find just three or four window sizes in a home, for example, to let the builder save on bulk purchases on a smaller variety of materials.
  • Fewer rooms. Prepare to see fewer mudrooms, three-car garages and three-bathroom and four-bedroom homes. Home theaters, pet rooms, safe rooms, greenhouses, exercise rooms and wings for children or guests are out. Even living rooms, dining rooms, sunrooms and hobby rooms are being jettisoned.
  • Pared-back features. Builders are adding cheaper pantries and scaling back on expensive kitchen cabinets. They're replacing basements with slabs and building straight runs of stairs with no turns or landings. Luxury whirlpool tubs, once standard in master bathrooms, are on the way out. Busy parents rarely take long soaks, anyway. Instead, builders are expanding master-bath showers. "Luxurious bathrooms don't always need a fancy tub," one agent posted on Realtor magazine's blog this past fall.
  • Options. Features such as fireplaces, high-end appliances and master whirlpool baths, once standard, are increasingly relegated to a menu of optional upgrades, available at extra cost.
The best builders try understanding buyers' needs. Their products have a sense of purpose. They're creating more house that people will love and getting rid of things people don’t want.
Recent improvements in components, furnishings and durable, low-maintenance materials have increased quality of life so that small doesn’t necessarily mean compromised. My home can be 10% smaller than it used to be, but I have better lighting, better flooring, better circulation, better acoustics, better siding — it’s a better home.

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