Those luxury bathrooms that are large enough to hold a block party are reportedly shrinking. So are huge expanses of hardwood floors, marble counters and cedar roofing.
”We took a lot of the gingerbread out of the houses,” Martin Alloy, a Virginia-based builder, told the Wall Street Journal this week. ”Today, every inch of space has to count,” added Myril Axelrod, who conducts buyer focus groups.
But a quick check of builders in the Chicago area reveals that neither the quantity nor the quality of flourishes have dropped substantially.
”Local buyers want space, but they still want their amenities, too,”
says Roger Mankedick, executive vice president of sales for Lexington Homes.
”They don`t want to give up their spacious baths and nicely appointed kitchens. Our pendulum never got as far out of whack as it did on the East Coast; so we didn`t have to come back.”
