2 ms·

I gotta wonder - if everyone has less stuff than they did in 1960 then why are homes getting so much bigger? The average amount of living space per person in a

by __z 11y ago

I gotta wonder - if everyone has less stuff than they did in 1960 then why are homes getting so much bigger? The average amount of living space per person in a new home has almost doubled in just the last forty years. Do these people have a lot of empty space or are they filling up that extra space with a lot more stuff? I'm inclined to think it is the latter.

VLM 11y ago
Speculative real estate option, at least until 2007-ish, "real estate only goes up". A lot of approval processes etc are based on $/sqft so obviously if real estate always goes up 10%/yr then you'll make much more money off a 4000 sq ft house than a 1600 sq ft house. So always buy the largest most expensive house the subprime lender will approve to maximize future return. Which works really well as a strategy until prices stop going up, or drop. There is also a cultural trend aside from any financial issues where big and bland beats small. See SUVs and trucks, or rather stark looking big box CRE architecture. Factual small scale observations can be made off TV size/resolution vs sofa position. You need a very large living room indeed to handle the angular viewing dimensions of an 80 inch TV. You need a large living room, certainly over 20x20, to pull off 4 player kinect video games (or suffer lots of impact). Empty space is easy to build and cheap (free) to furnish.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> I gotta wonder - if everyone has less stuff than they did in 1960 then why are homes getting so much bigger? Because: (1) everyone doesn't, just the median person, and its by value, not volume of stuff. (2) means aren't medians. > The average amount of living space per person in a new home has almost doubled in just the last forty years. Averages (arithmetic means) are often misleading. If the biggest 10% of new homes added 15 times the old average to their size (which would be a much smaller multiple of the size of that largest-size cohort), but the bottom 90%, on average, reduced their size by 5/11 the old average, the average (arithmetic mean) size of a new home would have doubled, even though most new homes were significantly smaller. (And that's even assuming that you can accurately assess the size of homes people live in by measuring the size of new homes -- which is obviously flawed to start with.)
fizgig 11y ago
Zoning has a lot to do with it, as it's damned near impossible to build anything less than a 1500 square foot home anymore unless you build on property not in a subdivision or under city ordinances. There's now a whole counter-culture, with people building small homes where they can (out in the woods), and some going so far as to build and live in small tiny homes in truck beds or on trailers in city lots or trailer parks. Also -- and I don't know if this is cause or effect -- we're becoming more detached as families. Everyone has their own room and own stuff. Back in the Leave It To Beaver / Brady Bunch era, kids shared rooms much longer, you had a single family room TV and you ate together at the table. Now, everyone has their own rooms, their own TV/console/entertainment, and often don't eat or entertain as a family unit.

by __z 11y ago

VLM 11y ago

Speculative real estate option, at least until 2007-ish, "real estate only goes up". A lot of approval processes etc are based on $/sqft so obviously if real estate always goes up 10%/yr then you'll make much more money off a 4000 sq ft house than a 1600 sq ft house. So always buy the largest most expensive house the subprime lender will approve to maximize future return. Which works really well as a strategy until prices stop going up, or drop. There is also a cultural trend aside from any financial issues where big and bland beats small. See SUVs and trucks, or rather stark looking big box CRE architecture. Factual small scale observations can be made off TV size/resolution vs sofa position. You need a very large living room indeed to handle the angular viewing dimensions of an 80 inch TV. You need a large living room, certainly over 20x20, to pull off 4 player kinect video games (or suffer lots of impact). Empty space is easy to build and cheap (free) to furnish.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> I gotta wonder - if everyone has less stuff than they did in 1960 then why are homes getting so much bigger? Because: (1) everyone doesn't, just the median person, and its by value, not volume of stuff. (2) means aren't medians. > The average amount of living space per person in a new home has almost doubled in just the last forty years. Averages (arithmetic means) are often misleading. If the biggest 10% of new homes added 15 times the old average to their size (which would be a much smaller multiple of the size of that largest-size cohort), but the bottom 90%, on average, reduced their size by 5/11 the old average, the average (arithmetic mean) size of a new home would have doubled, even though most new homes were significantly smaller. (And that's even assuming that you can accurately assess the size of homes people live in by measuring the size of new homes -- which is obviously flawed to start with.)

fizgig 11y ago

Zoning has a lot to do with it, as it's damned near impossible to build anything less than a 1500 square foot home anymore unless you build on property not in a subdivision or under city ordinances. There's now a whole counter-culture, with people building small homes where they can (out in the woods), and some going so far as to build and live in small tiny homes in truck beds or on trailers in city lots or trailer parks. Also -- and I don't know if this is cause or effect -- we're becoming more detached as families. Everyone has their own room and own stuff. Back in the Leave It To Beaver / Brady Bunch era, kids shared rooms much longer, you had a single family room TV and you ate together at the table. Now, everyone has their own rooms, their own TV/console/entertainment, and often don't eat or entertain as a family unit.