Sunday, April 05, 2009

Home Sizes

Just a random thought... when we bought our little home in California, it was 1,200 square feet.  It had started life at 900 square feet, but someone built a new 1-1/2 car garage out back and then walled in the attached single car garage to add an extra 300 square foot bedroom.  Starting out life, it was a nice size.  And, when we bought it, affordable.  But we watched the people around us expand the size of their houses, and we looked at all the new homes being built and we realized... soon, there would be no more tiny houses, no little starter homes.   By last year, the average new home was 2,800 square feet.  That is a lot of area to clean. 

But, for the first time, the trend has reversed.  The new average home built is 2,300 square feet.  Home builders suggest that the larger homes were becoming unaffordable and that it didn't make sense to continue to make larger and larger homes as familes began getting smaller and smaller in size.

While I've never had the opportunity to really develop any of the techniques, I'm a fan of Sarah Susanka and her "Not So Big" houses books.

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