Is Bigger Better? Scaling Down The American Dream

By: Roshawn Watson

Builders everywhere are scaling down home sizes, amenities, and prices. Today’s post-crash buyers are not willing (nor able in some cases) to extend themselves like before, and the impact on the housing market is substantial.

New Home-Buyers Forego the McMansions
No longer are 5000 square feet homes the expected norm for your typical upwardly-mobile middle-class family. Builders are axing private-theaters rooms, and grand “impress the neighbors sized” foyers, and unnecessary fireplaces.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, applications for mortgages have hit a nine-year low, plunging a seasonally-adjusted 11.7% in the week ending Nov. 6. New home sales in the U.S. have fallen sharply as well, from 1.3 million in 2005 to 485,000 last year. The latest Census Bureau data suggest that this year’s sales will be even lower: only 294,000 new homes were sold through the first nine months of this year.

Builders believe most of today’s buyers of new homes want smaller and simpler. Note that the average new single-family house peaked at 2,507 square feet in 2007 and has since slipped to 2,392 square feet (per Census Bureau data). Average new home prices are sliding, too, by 16% — to $269,200 — between the first quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of this year, the Census Bureau reports.

The Driving Forces Behind the Shift
Although it is true that Americans have been embracing a new-found frugality in the recession, there is more to this change in consumer preference than meets the eye. In the past, many Americans were clearly overextending themselves financially to purchase homes they couldn’t afford, and mortgage lenders were all to happy to facilitate their indebtedness with a variety of “creative” financing products. As reported previously, 40% of homeowners were overextended. Some of us were completely ignorant while others were speculating on increased property values. The rationalization was if homes are assets, we should borrow to get as much home as possible, so that we can capitalize from the increasing values of our investments. However, the crash has awakened our awareness of the precarious state that all that debt placed us in.

Additionally, credit worthiness criteria has been tightened, so some buyers of new homes no longer qualify for the larger mortgages. Unemployment is also a factor, as some Americans struggle to put food on the their tables, there are simply fewer people in the market for new homes.

What all of this means is a need for more economized home models to fit the changing preferences of the American consumer. For example, many have undoubtedly questioned the financial wisdom of paying $15,000 annually in property taxes and exorbitant heating and cooling bills for a family of two with relatively low net worth. Being house poor for appearance sake seem silly, yet 73% of homes worth $1 million or more are occupied by non-millionaires. Perhaps, the market downshift may reflect a fundamental change in the way people want to live. Real estate is cyclic, so time will surely tell.

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Image Credit: Atelier Teee

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