Are Bigger Homes what Individuals want?
Saturday, October 14th, 2006Recently, I have seen a trend that many individuals are wanting a smaller home, which they can manage. Individuals are thinking about all the headache of cleaning and maintaining a larger home. As well, individuals are thinking of older age, and the issues of climbing stairs. They are therefore looking at 1st floor condos or rambler homes. People simply want to live in a small home which they can maintain themselves and can have as little stress as possible. What I am seeing is a gradual shift for individuals wanting to purchase a smaller home and pay more money for it - when it has all of the amenities in close proximity. These are things like shopping malls, golf, grocery store, health club, swimming pool, and basically anything else that makes their lives easier.
A few months ago, I was actually taking a class on land development and a very large builder came in to speak about the development he was doing. It was interesting, because the entire way in which he plans his developments is on amenities. These are not the amenities which we are used to seeing, but basically everything which we would need to leave our home for. He did not though just throw them anywhere in the community, he put them right out the outskirts of the development. In this way, when individuals came into the community they would be able to go there. I was surprised to see that he had basically an entire amusement park within the subdivision. It had numbers of games and rides for the kids to go on. As you can imagine, every individual’s children automatically wanted to live in that neighborhood, and property prices were escalating at an unavailable rate. I call that smart planning!
So what do you think? Are we going to be moving from a larger home to a smaller home with more amenities? If so, then what is going to happen to all of these large homes which are all around us?