Chicago Tribune
Article on Pre-Construction
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Builders Start
to Rethink the Design of the American Home
Chicago Tribune
October, 2003
By Barbara Ballinger Buchholz, Chicago Tribune
Some changes
will take longer. The typical American home still has a choice of
formal and informal living and dining spaces and three or four
bedrooms, even though entertaining has become more casual and families
are smaller.
Household
size has declined 20 percent over the same 30 years, and the No. 1
buyer of new homes, a husband and wife, may no longer have children.
Right up there are single men and women, whose homeownership has
increased to between 12 percent and 14 percent from 3 percent and 4
percent 25 years ago.
So,
why hasn’t the design of houses kept pace with the changing family
composition and way of living? For multiple reasons:
Keeping
up the trend of smaller families buying bigger homes reflects a
lifestyle decision rather than
one based on common sense or economics, Ahluwalia says. Builders
say consumers drive this ecision.
“We’re
the suppliers. Our consumers still want bigger since they’re in the
mainstream of their earning power and raising children,” says Roger
Mankedick, executive vice president of Concord Homes Inc. in Palatine.
Letting
investment and resale dictate.
For most of us, houses remain our biggest investment and if we opt
for anything too idiosyncratic, we hurt our chances to sell, says
Clifford Clark, professor of History and American Studies at Carleton
College in Northfield, Minn.
If
you are applying for a loan for your construction project, remember
that both the lender and the appraiser are concerned with the
functional utility of the project.-Webmaster’s Note.
This
is intensified by a transient society. “Homeowners are fearful of
building a house tailored to the way they live because they move so
frequently. Instead, houses get built for a mythical client,” says
Charles Miller, special issues editor of Fine Homebuilding magazine.
Builders
agree. “Even if you don’t want a big house or traditional living room,
the next buyer may. Buyers purchase with a fear of selling,” says Ed
Fitch, executive vice president of community planning and marketing at
Town &Country Homes in Lombard.
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