Honey, I Shrunk the House

Home builders are slashing costs and square footage

Newly built homes are shrinking. Home builders facing the competition of better-priced foreclosure and distressed properties are reversing their decades-old philosophy that bigger is better. They’re now offering smaller, more basic homes designed specifically for first-time buyers.

Features that were important to buyers during the boom of the 1980s — massive square footage; granite countertops; separate living rooms, family rooms, and home theaters; a bathroom for every bedroom plus a spare — don't seem to matter right now. Today, home buyers will deign to have the children do their homework in the kitchen rather than the library — if that’s what it takes to save a little extra cash and get a low interest loan.

Weight Watchers for houses?

A drive around many American neighborhoods confirms it: Houses have become morbidly obese. According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average American home swelled from 983 square feet in 1950 to 2,349 square feet in 2004 — a 140% increase in size. And it's not just the footprints of these Garage Mahals that are huge; everything about them is huge:

three- and four-car garages, professional-grade kitchen appliances, and soaring cathedral ceilings.

Is the Hummer house really obsolete?

To be precise, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median square footage of newly built homes fell by 7%, down to 2,065 square feet, in the first three months of 2009 compared with the same period in 2008. But does a 7% decrease in square footage really mean that the romance between Americans and their monster homes has finally cooled? Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big House thinks so: … click here to read the rest of the article titled “Honey, I Shrunk the House“