I wouldn’t call it a trend. Not yet. Maybe a trendlet.
I’m talking about smaller homes. Notice, I didn’t say “small” homes — Americans are never going to be accused of any form of self-denial.
But I’m seeing signs that folks who could afford to build just about any big ole house they wanted are starting to think smaller. And they’re part of the same group who a decade ago inspired the term “McMansion” — our very own Baby Boomers.
A number of voices have been pushing for a change in our thinking about how big a dream home ought to be.
One voice belongs to the anti-sprawl faction, the ones who keep screaming that by building subdivisions farther into the countryside in order to get more house in more yard, we’re turning our landscape into one big strip mall.
It’s a fair point, but they’re not the reason.
Another voice belongs to a Minnesota architect, Sarah Susanka, who has written a couple of surprisingly successful books that show ways to build more utility into less square footage. The Founding Mother of what is now called the “Not So Big House” philosophy doesn’t scold so much as she soothes. I went to a building trade show a while back where she was a speaker, and the audience arrived carrying copies of her books as if they were holy tracts.
She’s influential, but not the reason, either.
A potential biggie is energy. Most of us would rather be handed a subpoena than a January heating bill for a 6,000- or 10,000-square foot home. Rising energy prices, no doubt, will influence our housing decisions, but at this point they’re too new to affect what’s actually being built out there. So energy isn’t the reason — yet.
These motivations for scaling back in size may be noble ones, but, really, “noble” has little to do with what suits our fancy about our homes. The real push, for my money, comes from something that’s just a new spin on materialism. I’m sure there’s a nicer word for it than that, but I just can’t think of it.
The real reason: Americans haven’t given up on wanting it “all.” People like me have made their careers out of writing about housing as a form of fashion, waxing ecstatic about granite countertops and steam showers. Having a house that’s “dated” has come to imply some kind of moral inadequacy. We’ve made otherwise-reasonable people worry about whether their laundry rooms are elegant enough.
With the escalating cost of land, something has to give, and so I am expecting to hear word that it’s now chic to have a smaller house in exchange for all the interior embellishments.
Steve Pjesky is president of Kensington Homes in Naperville, and he’s also the president of the Northern Illinois Home Builders Association. He put it pretty succinctly to an industry roundtable recently:
“We’re in the land of $6,000 ovens and $2,500 refrigerators, and you’ve got to have two of them,” he told us. “People are saying, `How do I get that for me?’ … A big share of the market is saying, `Can’t I have pendant lights and granite countertops?’
“Well, you can’t get that unless you have a horrendous budget. So, in Chicago, they’re making compromises on space. (They’re saying) `if I go with a smaller kitchen, I can get those fancy countertops.’
“They’re starting to realize that they can’t get those things on a half-acre lot in a 3,500-square-foot house, unless their budget is high.”
Of course, a lot of budgets still are high, relatively speaking, but for my money, the quest for “stuff” is starting to push us to settle for a smaller box to put it in. Some signs are there:
– Orren Pickell, arguably the most visible custom builder on the North Shore, has just opened a model home he calls “The Jewel Box.”
At 3,600 square feet, it’s hardly tiny, but it’s about half the size of most of his previous showcase homes. The draw here, he says, is room after room of fancy finishes and fabulous fittings — household jewelry, if you will.
– Susanka tells me she’s talking to PBS about a weekly television series based on her less-is-more style of home-building, and I think we all know what Bob Vila and PBS did for rehabbing.
– The anti-teardown contingent is starting to succeed at portraying anybody who wants a mega-house on a village lot as the devil incarnate.
The world awaits the marketer who can turn smaller — but not small — houses into status symbols. Like Lola, whatever Boomers want, Boomers get.
