Tag Archives: single-family homes

Can a “gigantic luxury house” meet LEED standards?

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Kain Benfield recaps an argument that LEED standards may really no be up to par if they big houses can obtain the awards:

In particular, did you know that this latest LEED-Platinum home – the highest rating bestowed by the Green Building Council, in theory only for the very greenest of green buildings – is nearly three times the size of the average new American home?  Would you be surprised to learn that it sits on a lot occupying two-thirds of an acre, consuming nearly twice as much land as the average new-home lot in a US metro area?  How about that it is located in a “gated community” on the far outskirts of Las Vegas (Mike Tyson is a fellow resident), 1.2 miles to the nearest transit stop?  Or that its Walk Score is a miserable 38 out of a possible 100 points?…

The building in question is the latest in a series of showcase homes featured by The National Association of Home Builders every year during its annual trade show.  It’s called “The New American Home” and the idea is to celebrate and publicize the state of the art in American homebuilding.  This one has 6,721 square feet of floor space, nine bathrooms (but only three bedrooms, plus a home office and library), and extensive “water features.”  The house also includes 17,261 square feet of “outdoor living space.”  (The average size of a newly completed American, single-family home in 2011 was 2480 square feet.)…

All this means that a household living in the New American Home, all things considered, is as likely to be brown as green in its environmental performance if the measure of that performance is determined by a full accounting of the home’s characteristics, no matter how many efficiency gizmos are built into it…

In other words, since we can’t stop people from building trophy houses in the desert even if we wanted to, we should at least encourage them to build those trophy houses a little better:  if you’re determined to build a house almost three times bigger than the average American house, in a gated luxury subdivision where you have to drive long distances to do anything, it’s better to do so with green technology than not.

But, come on, platinum?  The Seven Hills development wouldn’t come close to qualifying for a certification under LEED for Neighborhood Development, which takes location and neighborhood design into account as well as building technology.  LEED-ND includes a prerequisite that a development applying for a rating, even at the lowest level, include certified green buildings.  As a leader of the environmental groups involved in constructing that system, I supported that prerequisite.  I wanted us to create a system that defined and encouraged smart growth; it’s my belief that, in this day and age, smart growth isn’t really smart unless it includes green buildings.

I’ve wondered about this myself – it seems like the context in which the house is located should matter.

But, I still think there is a bigger issue here that bothers some people: how can a really large house, in this case just over 6,700 square feet, ever really be considered green, even with all of the green bells and whistles as well as the greener context, when that amount of space is simply unnecessary and wasteful.

From modest homes in a Canadian prairie town to McMansions

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R.J. Snell returned to the Canadian prairie town of his youth and was surprised to find that its modest homes had been replaced with McMansions:

Having just returned from a two-week visit, I’m struck by the visible demise of modest restraint, particularly in the homes. Driving about the countryside, for this is what one does there, I saw many new homes of a preposterous scale, many thousands of square feet (one even had an outbuilding to house all the mechanicals), with multiple garrets and turrets, all jutting conspicuously from the fields and into my purview. They could not be hidden, nor were they meant to, and on the treeless flatness were visible for great distances.

Right beside them, sometimes just across the road, stood the old farmhouse, diminutive, overshadowed. In the towns, a kind of segregation had taken place, with the older neighborhoods a mix of homes smaller or larger (but of a kind), but new developments on the far side of town housing looming monstrosities dwarfing the older places.

This was not neighborly. This was not modest. This was a thumbing of the nose at those with less, a demand to be noticed, seen.  Roger Scruton writes of the bad manners of much contemporary architecture compared with older patterns, saying:

The principal concern of the architects was to fit in to an existing urban fabric, to achieve local symmetry within the context of a historically given settlement. No greater aesthetic catastrophe has struck our cities—European just as much as American—than the modernist idea that a building should stand out from its surroundings, to become a declaration of its own originality. As much as the home, cities depend upon good manners; and good manners require the modest accommodation to neighbors rather than the arrogant assertion of apartness.

Rod Dreher follows up with an interesting question:

The question is, did money cause this cultural revolution in domestic architecture, or did the arrival of wealth happen to coincide with a cultural revolution in the way people thought about themselves and their desires, causing them to build their houses in a certain way now as opposed to then?

Which comes first: the cultural values or the material conditions? If looking at this from the production perspective in the sociology of culture, changes in material conditions like how architects are viewed, how single-family homes are viewed (as Snell suggests, should homes fit into the neighborhood or stick out?), how houses are constructed, how the real estate business operate, how zoning laws and local regulation encourage or discourage larger homes, etc. In other words, architectural styles or consumer desires don’t just change because individuals desire this. Rather, they change in conjunction with material and cultural change.

I also wonder about larger factors affecting this community. Where did residents get this money to spend on bigger houses? I ask this after lecturing this week about the Ferdinand Tonnies’ ideas about gemeinschaft and gesellschaft as well as Emile Durkheim’s concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity. Both theorists were interested in the shift from small town life to more urban life. Both suggested urban life contained fewer strong interpersonal relationships and systems where people were joined together by interdependence and external constraints rather than tradition, family ties, and shared values. Is a similar process taking place in this prairie town, perhaps through suburbanization or the rise of a good nearby job source or the Internet which opens up more possibilities for residents to connect to the outside world?

The home of the future will be controlled by your smartphone?

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A report from CES 2013 suggests the smartphone could unlock the potential of the wired home of the future:

There will be some 24 billion connected devices by 2020. That figure certainly doesn’t seem beyond reach given the number of smartphones out there (300 million shipped in the first half of 2012, according to Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs) and the number of connected devices and appliances seen at CES 2013. The theme of LG’s entire booth, for example, was “Touch the Smart Life.” The Korean company had 20,000 square feet of space dedicated to showing people how appliances that can communicate with the web, and one another, will transform their lives for the better. Dozens, if not hundreds, of other booths stretched across the North and South halls of CES showed how this “world of tomorrow” technology is here now, in everything from web-connected TVs to vacuum cleaners…

Your smartphone or tablet is perhaps the best, most capable and feature-filled TV remote control on the market, if you don’t mind that it doesn’t have easily tappable gummy buttons…

For home appliances, a mix of apps and proximity-based technologies like NFC will let you start your washing machine remotely, give you vital stats about what’s going bad inside your fridge and even check on that roast in the oven…

And whether you’re focused on energy efficiency or just want to set the right mood, your smartphone can take the place of light switches and thermostat buttons — and then some.

In my mind, this seems like a shortcut to the wired home of the future promised decades ago. The best way to do this would seem to be to have everything hardwired: lights, security, sound, etc. Of course, this is best done at the construction of the home as it is cost prohibitive later. This goes a different route: every device has to be wired and then controlled by a central hub. Alas, no indication here about the cost for these upgraded home items or what happens if you lose your smartphone.

I see the benefits of some of these devices. On the other hand, some seem quite frivolous. A vacuum cleaner controllable from your phone? Do consumers need a refrigerator that tells them when food is bad as opposed to being able to look through the refrigerator? In the long run, would these devices save time on housework or give a householder more to keep track of? This was the promise decades ago with new appliances but time spent on housework has not been reduced dramatically.

 

PulteGroup says majority of Americans want equal size or bigger homes

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A spokeswoman for PulteGroup says data they collected shows a majority of American homeowners want equal size or bigger homes in the future:

Across all demographics, the millennials (age 28 and younger), Generation Xers (born from the early 1960s through the early ’80s) and baby boomers (born 1946 through the early ’60s) said they want their next house to be the same size or larger. An overwhelming majority, 84 percent of homeowners ages 18 to 59, said they don’t intend to downsize.Larger homes are what people dream of. People told us they yearn for large spaces, for large backyards and big patio spaces. Large closets. A nice master suite. They yearn for large kitchens, oversized mudrooms. No, I don’t think the McMansion is dead. People want that square footage…

They want to maximize the use of every nook and cranny. They expressed a strong desire for homes that are designed in such a way as to make them feel organized. They want smart use of the space. Take those bigger mudrooms, for example. They’ve come to be called the owner’s entry, off the garage, and though they may contain the laundry equipment, they’re also places to stay organized — they’re drop zones for the laptop or the kids’ backpacks and all that other stuff we carry in through the garage…

Only 28 percent of those ages 55 to 59 said they want their next home to be smaller.

One reason for this is that they have a lot of stuff, and they don’t want to let go of all that stuff. And stuff has to have a place to go. In our Del Webb properties (for residents 55 and older), we’ve installed fixed stairways from the garage into the attic, instead of the rope that pulls down stairs to the attic, because it’s safer for the homeowners — they want that unused attic space for their stuff. We call it a storage loft.

Summary: Americans want big yet organized homes, partly to hold all of their stuff. Of course, matching the dream for the big home to economic realities might be more difficult.

I’m also a bit curious about the demographics of this study. Is it a nationally representative sample?

“The typical American home” is a reminder not all American homes are new

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The 2011 American Housing Survey provides a summary of the traits of the typical American house:

This Is What the Typical American Home Looks Like Now

A little bit more on the changes to American houses over time:

Some aspects of the American home have changed dramatically since the first survey was conducted in 1973 (which makes sense because half of the occupied homes today were built in 1974 or later). Central air conditioning was a luxury that only 18% of households enjoyed back then, but the number grew to 43% in 1993, and today 66% of dwellings have central AC.

The number of bathrooms in a typical home has also grown. From 1973 to 1991, one bathroom was the norm, and for the next 20 years, it was one and a half bathrooms. The 2011 survey is the first time that the median residence was found to have 2 or more.

What strikes me most about this summary is that this is a very different picture of housing than we typically see and hear about. A lot of attention is lavished on new housing: people are interested in the size (new homes are on average about 2,500 square feet so way above the full average for US homes), new building trends (McMansions, green homes, homes of the future), new features (less granite countertops and stainless steel appliances?), and new housing starts. There are good reasons for all of this: housing is a big industry with lots of money involved.

At the same time, most houses in the United States are not new houses. They are homes that need maintenance, updating, and aren’t necessarily bringing in similar amounts of money into the economy. They are probably more accessible to average Americans and are probably located in older, more established communities. In other words, we need to also pay attention to the existing housing stock to think how both the existing and new stock can be effectively utilized.

USA Today in an updated version of “the home of the future”

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USA Today takes a long look at “the home of the future”:

On Microsoft’s sprawling, rustic campus, this home is a maze of futuristic rooms, a digital kitchen and interactive walls. Recipes are projected onto the kitchen counter, children can play video games from a table’s surface, and bedrooms have interactive wall posters that can be changed daily, based on the occupant’s mood.

No one lives there, but it is a template for the future. Indeed, many houses throughout the USA already have hints of Microsoft’s model home. Might this be a working blueprint for better things, of a life that just decades ago seemed possible only in the world of science fiction?

What once seemed conceivable only on The Jetsons is a real prospect in the next few years. If you’ve heard these utopian and futuristic promises before, only to be disappointed, this story is for you. Because as Americans embrace 2013 and the new year that is upon us, know this: The future of American homes is now.

The rise of intelligent devices, ongoing breakthroughs in robotics, cloud computing and other newfangled technology promise to usher in a new phase in luxuriant and wired home living. Hyperbole of years past has quickly melted away as a pantheon of tech titans — ranging from Apple and Google to Samsung and Microsoft — vie for home-field advantage. Home increasingly is where billions of dollars are expected to be spent on technology as consumers nest in their living rooms and bedrooms on smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles.

I remain skeptical that most Americans will be living in fully wired homes in the near future. In contrast, people with lots of money who can afford new big homes and all of the work that goes into making new homes completely Internet friendly can already do all the article suggests.

It is also intriguing that big tech companies are interested in branding their own homes. Want to live in a Google subdivision? How about an Apple cul-de-sac? Actually, the typical Google or Apple fan would probably rather live in a trendy condo in a New Urbanist neighborhood. Perhaps Microsoft could corner the suburban market…or maybe Samsung?

Tradeoff between making a stricter energy code for new homes and higher costs for buyers

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While there is growing interest in more energy efficient homes, this doesn’t come without an upfront cost. This is illustrated by the debate in Illinois about how much new energy standards might add to the costs of new homes:

A new statewide building energy code that takes effect Jan. 1 strives to make homes more comfortable and residential energy bills less costly by making the building’s “envelope” tighter. The adoption of a substantial amount of the International Energy Conservation Code for homes puts Illinois at the forefront of such efforts among states.

But the updates to the building energy code, required by state law every three years, have not been without controversy. While proponents say the changes will increase the cost of a new home from $958 to $1,775 in Illinois, or about $1,500 in the Chicago area, detractors of the new rules peg that Chicago-area cost increase at $4,600, a sum they say will price some first-time buyers out of the market…

The changes won’t be obvious, and even the code’s proponents agree the upgrades in energy efficiency won’t be as easy to market to consumers as, say, granite countertops and crown molding.

They include upgraded insulation in attics and basements, more energy-efficient windows, upgraded bathroom vent fans, the use of some high-efficiency lights, insulated hot water lines to kitchens and air sealing around furnaces…

Supporters of the changes say consumers living in a Chicago-area home of 2,400 square feet with a basement should save an estimated $350 a year on their energy costs, compared with the current building regulations.

If these estimates about savings each year are correct, these code changes would be worthwhile over the the full lifetime of a home. However, how many homebuyers take this long perspective? In a mobile country, how many would be willing to pay upfront for costs from which they may not personally benefit?

This seems like the classic dilemma about a number of green products in the United States: will people pay upfront for savings down the road? It will be interesting to see how builders try to sell these code upgrades , massage the price points of home to account for these new costs, and also try to appeal to greener buyers overall.

“The downside of retirement downsizing in a McMansion world”

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Downsizing has its challenges:

Anne Tergesen at The Wall Street Journal explored the problems of moving from a larger home to a smaller home at retirement: “But downsizing isn’t always simple, painless — or even all that beneficial financially. With the real-estate market still fragile, many baby boomers are getting a lot less than they expected for the old homestead. All too often, they have little cash left over after buying a new place, and their monthly expenses don’t fall as much as they thought — or may even rise instead.”

Tergesen also wrote about the emotional pain downsizing might cause: “They can’t bear to sort through or part with all those boxes in the basement, or argue with the adult children who want to keep the house where they grew up. Sometimes they downsize only to find they miss their old lifestyle and stuff.”…

Of course, downsizing doesn’t necessarily mean a scaling back in comfort. Architect Sarah Susanka, author of the best selling “Not So Big House” series of books, writes about how people can live in smaller homes that seem bigger because the design eliminates the wasted space in homes — such as dining rooms and formal living rooms.

Buying and selling homes, though, has its own challenges. Jacob Goldstein with NPR looked at the question of whether homes are cheap right now: “Houses are much cheaper than they were six years ago. Of course, six years ago was the peak of the biggest housing bubble in the history of America. So does ‘much cheaper than they were six years ago’ mean cheap? Does it mean ‘cheaper, but still overpriced’? Or does it mean ‘about right?’ ”

Moving can be difficult. But, downsizing can be viewed as a good thing: it gets people out of unnecessarily large homes that take up too much space in the first space; it could help people get rid of stuff they accumulated over the years (American consumerism at work) as well as begin a lifestyle where they can’t accumulate as much because they have less room to store it (though there could be problems with passing down heirlooms); and it might reduce housing and utility payments.

So, if downsizing is a good thing, can’t someone figure out how to make it easier? How about some sort of company or program that matches people who want a larger house with people who want to downsize? How about communities or perhaps governments that would guarantee people a certain value for their home if they live there a certain amount of time and then leave for downsizing purposes? What if a company promised to buy a downsizer’s home if they purchase an somewhat equally priced new Not So Big House? These ideas might be out there but if we wanted to promote downsizing, there are things companies or governments could do help the process along rather than just leave the process to the twists and turns of the real estate market.

New Yorkers who find their dream home

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The New York Times looks at seven New Yorkers who worked really hard to acquire their dream home:

These people go to remarkable lengths to snag their dream home. They hound real estate agents, besiege landlords, tack notes on doors, drive doormen crazy. They plant their names on waiting lists for hard-to-access buildings. They send beseeching letters to owners, promising to be model tenants. Even if they don’t spend the rest of their days in the home of their dreams — because even the happiest love affairs sometimes wind down or crash entirely — they rarely express regrets.

There’s a reason such obsessions flourish in New York. “In this city, we’re all walkers,” said Andrew Phillips, a Halstead broker who has received his share of “Call me the second the place becomes available” entreaties. “We pass the same building again and again, we walk down the same block, and we think, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to live there?’ Being a New Yorker is being slightly voyeuristic. And as we take the same route over and over, our dreams start forming.”

The fact that demand typically outstrips supply compounds the yearning. “The available housing stock is so limited, so fought over,” Mr. Phillips said. “Plus, most people can’t afford exactly what they want. Plus everyone wants what they can’t have.”

Reading these seven stories, I was struck that each of these New Yorkers seem to have a heightened sense of space or rootedness. This means that particular locations or housing units were really important to them and then prompted them to center their lives around their home. The article suggests this could be due to the tight housing market in New York City, simnply supply and demand, but I wonder if there are other cultural factors at work. This behavior sounds like it is in contrast to many Americans – after all, 11.6% mobility over one year is an all-time low. For more mobile Americans, either they have many dream homes or they don’t have the same attachment to places. Both of these attitudes could be related to consumerism which would suggest homes are just another commodity or product. It could also be tied to a more suburban lifestyle where homes are more plentiful and the specific neighborhood might matter less than the features of the home or the idea of living the suburban lifestyle.

Toll Brothers experiences strong growth

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Toll Brothers, known for their construction of large homes (McMansions to critics), recently reported strong growth:

The company hasn’t figured out some amazing new way to build houses more efficiently and get more money out of every house built; instead, it is just building more. A lot more. Compared with a year ago, revenues were up 48 percent, and the number of homes built rose 44 percent to 1,088. Toll Brothers’ gross margin—which measures revenue from sales—was 24.6 percent in this quarter compared with 24.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011.

The full year was successful for the company as well. Its net income was $478.1 million compared with $39.8 million last year. Pre-tax net income shows a more stark story of decline and recovery: for this year it came in at $112.9 million versus a pre-tax loss of $29.4 million in 2011.

One figure that most directly shows this significant increase in building activity is the company’s “net contracts per community,” which is comparable to what retailers report as “same-store sales.” This measure shows how much Toll Brothers is building in the areas in which it already operates. As such, it directly reflects the increasing demand for homes, as opposed to the company’s expansion into new markets. Net contracts per community were up 33 percent from the fourth quarter of last year and 60 percent from this fiscal year to last, the highest yearly gain for the company since 2006 and the highest quarterly increase since 2005.

The housing market may still be lagging but this Toll Brothers data suggests the demand for larger homes has increased in the last year. See more of the financial details here.