FEAST AND FAMINE
Nancy and Scott Cornelius are the kinds of buyers critics love to cite as evidence that McMansions are on the outs. At 65, the couple recently sold their big house in Oak Hill Reserve, a Fairfax County, Va., development where homes run as large as 8,000 square feet, and downsized to a new, smaller home in a nearby 55+ community. Reduced home maintenance and lower utility bills were part of the rationale for moving.
Not surprisingly, they had trouble selling the big house, which was originally built in 2002. But not for the reasons the anti-mansion brigade would assume.
“It had about 3,000 square feet on its main level and a little over 2,000 square feet on the lower level, meaning it was one of the smaller homes in that area. Plus this was a rambler in a neighborhood of mostly three-story colonials with three-car garages,” says Nancy Grasman, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker. “Most buyers who were looking in that neighborhood wanted a bigger house with all the bedrooms upstairs.”
After a year on the market, the house finally sold at the end of July for just over $1 million—to a single woman with no kids. “It was a move-up that was manageable for her, ” says Grasman.
Proof, perhaps, that ability—not need—is still what drives most purchasing decisions by home buyers who are concerned about resale value. And in the resale market, value is still measured largely by the square foot, not the quality of the built-ins or the efficiency of the kitchen layout.
Lang, for one, isn’t too surprised. And he doesn’t necessarily view such anecdotes as anomalies. “I think there will eventually be another boom, and home sizes will go up again,” he says. “Maybe not as dramatically ... but they will go up. You can’t gauge the extent of the population’s taste when its buying power is constrained.”
History has shown this to be true. Before the housing bust of 2007, the largest annual decline in median square footage occurred between 1979 and 1982, when new-home sizes dipped 8.2 percent, observes NAHB chief economist David Crowe (see page 45). Four years later, house sizes were back up above their previous peak.
Atlanta builder Brendan Murphy sees this as evidence that old habits die hard. “We Americans have always associated bigger with better,” he says. “Look at how many crises the automobile industry has gone through with gas prices. And yet it always returns to large vehicles because that is what sells.”
Is America’s appetite for big houses trending toward more moderate portion sizes? Or is it a cyclical craving that will ramp back up once money is flowing freely again?
Wait and see.
The number of homes with garage space for three or more cars peaked in 2005 and is now on the decline.