The End of the McMansion?
Insight, one of our REALTOR® trade magazines had the following interesting tidbit;
From 1973 the square footage of houses built in the United States grew steadily – until last year when the size of the typical home shrank by 11 percent. “People are realizing ‘Hey, I don’t need the Lexus anymore’” says Wayne Elde of the Development Group, builder of the Terraces in Yuma, AZ. “I can live with the Camry.” About 90 percent of the homes that members of the National Association of Home Builders are building this year are smaller now than in decades.
If you think about it, you can certainly see this trend in Durham, especially in starter homes. In older neighborhoods, like Northgate Park and parts of Parkwood, the average home is a two bedroom with 1,000ish square ft. home, sometimes renovated later to three bedrooms. As we went into the Eighties, the starter home became 3 bedrooms and about 1,500 sf, like Villages of Cornwallis or the later parts of Parkwood. In the early part of this decade, that starter home started to have a fourth bedroom and was getting close to 2,000sf.
Will this trend towards smaller homes continue? How has the financial crisis changed your view of a “typical home?’
Tags: general news
