After years of growth, the Census Bureau recently reported that median new home size fell to 2,135 square feet in 2009 after peaking at more than 2,300 earlier in the decade.
Now, the typical U.S. owner-occupied home has six rooms, with three of them being bedrooms, according to the Census Bureau’s annual American Housing Survey. The most common number of baths is two or more.
“Home buyers are asking for less, cutting back on options and reducing square footage,” said Steven Pace of the North Carolina-based Pace Development Group, which builds both custom and tract houses ranging in price from below $250,000 to more than $2 million.
“They’re saying, ‘Maybe we don’t need that 5,000 square footage;” he said. “‘Maybe our bath doesn’t need to be big enough for our whole family and all our neighbors to take a shower at the same time.’”
Kermit Baker, chief economist for the American Institute of Architects, pointed out that consumers don’t ask for as much for spaces devoted to single purposes, such as media rooms for watching videos and game rooms for shooting pool. Instead, the requests are for rooms with shared uses.
“We continue to move away from the ‘McMansion’ chapter of residential design,” he said.
For those who remember the days of long, hot summers. Those are over, too. Nearly 90% of all new homes now have central air conditioning. And 63% of all homes are now cooled.
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