Home sizes fall as builders, buyers embrace economic reality

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By Steve Kerch, MarketWatch

This update clarifies that the home-size data refers to new homes that were completed in a given year.

LAS VEGAS (MarketWatch) — New-home buyers responded to the tough times in 2009 by opting for smaller houses, driving down the average size of a house built in the U.S. for the first time in 27 years.

Data released Wednesday by the National Association of Home Builders found the average size of a new home that was completed in 2009 fell to 2,480 square feet from 2,520 square feet in 2008. The last time the average completed-home size fell by a statistically significant amount was 1982.

Has commercial real estate bottomed?

Commercial real estate values fell so sharply that some analysts believe the prices may have stabilized, Christina Lewis reports.

“You’ve heard the mantra ‘downsize me’ and ‘small is the new big?’ Well, last year was definitely a downer,” said Carol Lavender, president of Lavender Design Group, a residential design firm in San Antonio, Texas.

Homeowners surveyed by Better Homes and Gardens magazine said downsizing was becoming a bigger priority: 36% said in November that they expected their next home to be “somewhat smaller” or “much smaller” than their current home versus 32% who said that in 2008.

“Not surprisingly, we see a ‘cents and sensibility’ approach when it comes to buying or improving a home, with practicality and price being the top priorities,” said Eliot Nusbaum, the magazine’s executive editor of home design.

While the small-house movement in the U.S. has been gaining steam for a number of years, the recession has accelerated it and home builders have responded, housing analysts speaking at the International Builders Show here this week said.

“The era of easy money is over. You really have to think before you go out and decide you need that five-bedroom, five-bath home,” said Rose Quint, the NAHB’s assistant vice president for survey research. “Couple that with the energy [cost] concerns of consumers today and I think we will continue this trend. Houses will not shrink drastically but they will shrink.”

Although actual square footage of homes didn’t fall until 2009, the percent of homes with four or more bedrooms in them has been falling since 2007, NAHB data show. And in 2009 the number of homes with three or more bathrooms fell for the first time since 1992.

First-time and older buyers drive changes

Two other trends in home construction are contributing to the declining square footages: The prominence of first-time buyers in the housing market and the increasing number of households with members 55 and older who are buying homes.

First-time buyers, driven into the market in good part by the availability of an $8,000 tax credit, are more likely to compromise on home size in exchange for a lower price. And the 55+ crowd tends to purchase single-story homes, which generally are smaller because of the land costs that favor the more-efficient two-story plans.

“Barely over half of new homes today are built with two stories or more,” Quint said. Two-story homes peaked at about 55% of the market in 2006.

For 2010, home builders say they will focus on lower-priced models and smaller homes. More than 95% of builders surveyed by NAHB in January said that was the way they saw their business evolving this year.

The penchant for smaller homes will necessitate some design changes. See the Top 10 must-have features that home buyers say they want in their houses today.

Builders, attempting to respond to those consumer demands as well as hold the line on prices, told the NAHB surveyors that they were most likely to include these features as standard in their houses this year:

• Walk-in closets in the master bedroom.

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By Steve Kerch, MarketWatch

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• Laundry rooms.
• Insulated front doors.
• Great rooms.
• Energy-efficient windows.
• Linen closets.
• Programmable thermostats.
• Energy-efficient appliances and lighting.
• Separate shower and tub in master bathrooms.
• Nine-foot ceilings on the first floor.

Among the things that builders said they were least likely to add to houses in 2010:

• Outdoor kitchens.
• Outdoor fireplaces.
• Sunrooms.
• Butler’s pantries.
• Media rooms.
• Desks in kitchens.
• Two-story foyers.
• Eight foot ceilings on the first floor.
• Multiple shower heads in the master bath.
• Smaller kitchens.

“You can see that builders are concentrating heavily on energy-saving features,” Quint said. “But a lot of the luxury items are on the chopping block or on hold as builders try to lower costs.”

Steve Kerch is assistant managing editor and personal finance editor of MarketWatch in Chicago.

We’ve turned to experts here before, geriatric professionals of various sorts, to explain the intricacies of long-term care insurance, geriatric care management, choosing an assisted living community and the like. But intergenerational living, however common it was in decades past, is no longer the norm and seems to me a subject best explored by the “real” experts — the families actually living this life successfully.

Elizabeth Mullins (left) and her mother, Katie Goff. (Courtesy Elizabeth Mullins)

Bozena Smith (right) and her mother, Helena Rymarowicz. (Courtesy Bozena Smith)
For that I’ve turned to Elizabeth Mullins, 33, in Santa Cruz, Calif., and Bozena Smith, 60, in Concord, Mass. Both of these women, like the incoming First Lady Michelle Obama, integrated their mothers into their households at a time when their children were small, allowing Grandma to provide backup child care and an extra pair of hands in a busy household.

Ms. Mullins and Mrs. Smith have other things in common: relationships with their mothers that seem uncommonly free of the baggage of childhood and adolescence and are built on mutual respect, adult-to-adult. Husbands who are totally on board with the living arrangement and themselves close and comfortable with their mothers-in-law. And the wisdom to carefully plan in advance for how they would all live together and then adjust as circumstances changed.

Now for Ms. Mullins’s story. She is a full-time graduate student and her husband, Nick, 35, is a community college instructor. Her mother, Katie Goff, 66, relocated about an hour and a half away from them after going through a divorce, though she was then still working as a school librarian and teacher. Ms. Mullins says that all enjoyed the frequent visits and the chance to get to know each other in a new way and to “include her in our lives more casually.”

Then, just as her mother was about to retire, Ms. Mullins and her husband announced they were expecting a baby, the family’s first grandchild, and the whole clan began considering living even closer than they already did. First, Ms. Mullins’s mother moved to her own apartment just five minutes away. All of them could see the benefits of Grandma’s helping with baby Natasha in the early years and then the couple reciprocating later, as her health declined.

They considered condos in the same building, looked at duplexes, and eventually bought and remodeled a private home, with clearly defined living quarters for Ms. Mullins’s mother, who by then had a partner, Bob, 10 years her senior. Along the way, they kept asking each other questions: “What about our squeaky bed?” “What about toddler tantrums?” “What about money?” At this point, they’ve all been under the same roof for two years, “sharing one super soundproof wall, the big back room and the yard,” Ms. Mullins said — and a life that seems to be working for everyone.

Here’s how Ms. Mullins did it:

“If at all possible, let the idea sit for a long time and through many, many conversations. You are re-making your family. It’s not something to rush if you can help it.”
“Figure out what is family time, personal time and big extended family time. For instance, we like to all have dinner together a few nights a week but my daughter, husband and I still want a few nights just to ourselves.”

“Divide up household responsibilities. Everyone in our household is responsible for something that helps the whole, regardless of physical ability.”

“Divide up utility bills, and rotate. For instance, Mom pays the water, we pay for garbage, we’ll switch in January (we have separate electricity meters).”

“Think about how much and what kind of space you will need. Maybe the house isn’t huge — ours isn’t, we share 1,800 square feet — but make sure there are places where you can be alone or places you can cultivate away from home to be alone (a favorite coffeehouse, for example) to make sure you are not cooped up with one another too often.”

“Devise a system to deal with household questions and problems. We have a monthly meeting, or more often if needed. Problems can be anything from leaving the hose out in the yard instead of putting it away to possibly getting a new family pet.”

“Be flexible. The plan for a living arrangement will need to change after living it for a month or two. And often, as the years go by, the plans will need to change again. We expect that though my mother is focused most on helping us raise a small child now, we will be more focused on caring for her as she gets older and has more need for assistance.”
As for Bozena Smith, she was a computer programmer for many years and then a stay-at-home mom for two daughters, now 21 and 24 and out of the house. Currently she is compiling her mother’s memoirs of a childhood in Poland, the German occupation during World War II, the Warsaw uprising, her time in a labor camp and finally her migration to Chicago, where she worked as a keypunch operator. Mrs. Smith’s husband of almost four decades, also 60, is a scientist. Her widowed mother, Helena Rymarowicz, who is now 87, has been a member of their household for 23 years, after giving up a comfortable retirement in her native Poland to help raise her granddaughters and otherwise be part of the family.

During the five years after Mrs. Rymarowicz retired, she visited her daughter’s family for three months at a stretch each year. Those visits persuaded everyone that combining households would work. “My mother has always been a supportive, upbeat, nonjudgmental and respectful parent and friend with a lively sense of humor,” Mrs. Smith said. “She is open-minded, adaptable, unconventional, patient and willing to admit mistakes, a model of positivity.”

In addition, Mrs. Smith said, “having my mother living with us is a logical extension of my husband’s and my home-and-family-centered lifestyle. We have built strong family bonds day by day through quality time at home preparing and sharing meals, working on house and garden projects, and engaging in long discussions (including stormy arguments) on all manner of topics.”

Here are Mrs. Smith’s rules of the road:

“Use trial and error – tweaking, refining and fine-tuning the rules and boundaries to help maintain harmony. We pay careful attention to one another’s needs, moods, strengths and weaknesses and act quickly, forthrightly and decisively to ensure that things continue to run smoothly. We are a rational, ‘conflict-averse’ household where we speak up for ourselves, support and listen to one another, and readjust our behaviors and attitudes for the greater good.”

“Define functions clearly. From the start, my mother had a well-defined function. It started with ‘helping raise the kids,’ but now that our two daughters are grown, she continues to contribute significantly to the smooth functioning of the household by doing the dishes and laundry and helping around the house as much as she is able (right now she is sweeping the floor). She literally will not allow us to help her with what she sees to be her chores, cheerfully and firmly claiming that we’ll take away her function if we do.”

“Avoid power struggles by agreeing by consensus on the ‘best’ way to do things. My mother is happy to do things our way sometimes rather than insisting on her way. She modified her way of making mashed potatoes, for example, and now even agrees that my way is better. Similarly, I bow to her superior way of making chicken noodle soup. These examples may sound trivial, but they illustrate that we deliberately choose to resolve conflicts, however small, to maintain a peaceful atmosphere at home.”

“Respect privacy. Before inviting my mother to live with us, my husband and I noted her respect for our privacy as individuals and as a married couple. The upstairs is my husband’s and my private area, and she does not go up there at all. To respect my mother’s privacy, we knock before entering her room. She senses when we prefer to be undisturbed and gives us our space by making herself unobtrusive and encourages us to spend time alone together. She treats my husband as lovingly as if he were her own son.”

“Encourage independence. While we gladly help my mother when she needs it, we expect, encourage and support her in being independent whenever possible. She arranges her own doctors’ visits, senior citizen events, rides and other appointments over the phone, even though she speaks with an accent and is hard of hearing. She is in charge of remembering to take her medications and ordering them from the mail-in service, and sorting through her own mail. Whenever possible, we use community resources such as the Council on Aging for rides to and from doctors and other appointments. We encourage my mother to participate in senior citizen events independently.”

“Socialize. During our daily walks, my mother and I catch up on what the other is doing and thinking. While we all have healthy social lives of our own, we enjoy coming together to relax at home at the end of the day. We go to church together on Sundays, where she has her own group of friends and acquaintances. Every evening I drop in on her at bedtime to say goodnight and linger awhile in her room. Weekend dinners are traditionally festive and leisurely, with the three of us cooking and enjoying our meals together. And since we live in the same house, we have many friendly encounters throughout each day.”

Mrs. Smith closed out her observations this way:

“Re-reading this, I hope it doesn’t come across as one of those holiday letters in which everything is spun to seem perfect. Life is indeed good here, but this is not to say that we never have problems. We occasionally do get on one another’s nerves. The key is that there is a long history of mutual respect and affection which guides us in getting through any rough spots and allows us to share a chuckle afterwards.”

Many elderly people have vision problems. But the Good Housekeeping Institute says it’s found a few tech gadgets that are designed specifically to deal with this.

“We were looking for products that are marketed toward the elderly, especially for areas of vision and hearing loss.,” says Stacy Genovese, Engineering Director, Good Housekeeping Institute. “So we found some great phones and a great remote control. We brought them back here. We tested them at the institute, and then we tested them with some elderly people at a senior center.

Compact-sized cordless phones can be a problem for senior citizens because it can be hard to read the numbers and letters. Thats why the Clarity C430 cordless phone caught the eye of the Good Housekeeping Institute.

“This is a cordless phone that has extra big buttons and an amplification button to jack up the volume of the incoming call to the handset. It also has red lights that light up whenever you get an incoming call. And it has big buttons for fire, police and emergency pre-dialing,” says Genovese.

The Ameriphone Amplified Photo Phone P-300 is also easy on the eyes. This is a corded phone that has buttons that are twice as big as a normal phone,” says Genovese. “It also has red lights that light up when a phone call comes in. But its memory buttons accept pictures. You can put pictures of your family in it and you just press that face and it dials that person.

And the Tek Partner Universal Remote Control makes it easy for seniors to find the shows they want to watch. The oversized buttons light up when they’re touched. The Good Housekeeping Institute tested the Tek Partner remote for durability and found that it still operated properly after being dropped repeatedly.

Another tip: Good Housekeeping says that older people with hearing problems might want to get an alarm clock that vibrates to wake you up, if you put it under your pillow. You can also get a portable device to vibrate when the doorbell rings.

Aging in Place empowers older citizens with Choice and Control, Dignity and Independence – the essentials of happier homes, better lives and more economical housing and care.

Louis Tenenbaum is the nation’s leading authority on Aging in Place. He has years of experience helping individual families, builders/developers and communities set the stage for folks to remain safe and comfortable in their own homes.

What is Aging in Place?

Aging in Place integrates design, equipment, and services to provide the opportunity and ability to remain in the home of your choice indefinitely. Aging in Place works best when people prepare their home environments in advance of accidents or injuries using Universal Design to preserve independence and create ergonomic care environments. Aging in Place relies on a comprehensive and dynamic management system to use human, financial, and medical resources efficiently. Aging in place preserves housing stock, fosters community continuity, and strengthens families.

What isn’t Aging in Place?

Forced moves in a crisis from expectable health changes.

What is Universal Design?

Universal Design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. –Ron Mace

Universal Design is…the process of embedding Choice for all people into the things we design. The intent of universal design is to simplify life for everyone by making products, communications, and the built environment more usable by as many people as possible at little or no extra cost. Universal Design benefits people of all ages and abilities.

What is home modifications?

Home modifications is remodeling homes for comfort, ease of use, and safety. Basing home mods in the principles of Universal Design assures that remodeling provides lasting value.

What is Independent Living Strategy?

Independent Living Strategy is the consultation process that empowers clients to make good choices about a mix of remodeling and services. A good strategy makes good use of assets over time preparing for Aging in Place.

Louis’s Rules for Aging in Place

1. Older folks can return to their own homes following expectable health crises.
2. (Corollary) If we can build a system that allows people to return home, lets use it for Prevention, Wellness & Planning

Aging in Place implies the realignment of spending so care in the home is the norm -Waivers needed for nursing homes!

Please click on the audio icons located throughout this web site to hear Louis talk with you about aging in place and universal design.

It is time to take control of the specification of your new or remodeled home.  Ask me how this can make a difference??

Turn off the electricity on your main breaker to all area’s of your house except for the basic needs – Heat and Cooling, Refrigeration, Oven etc..  Unplug your phones turn off your cell phones and turn off your laptop – just unplug.. 

I think that after a while you will be amazed at how hectic life is and that there is a huge amount of interference that just needs to be cut out of your life.  I also bet that once you power up – you will be thankful for all that we have.

Merry Christmas un-plug then plug in

ChristianPF.com

If you are paying attention to the buzz, it would appear that some people think that social media will save the world. Some people think that social media and social media tools helped get our new president elected by spreading his brand message of hope and change.

Having said that, I want to explore somethings about social media that I think you may find helpful.

What’s social media?

Social Media is a collection of online tools and sites that function on the premise that people are interested in talking to and engaging with other people.

Some people refer to social media as Web 2.0, and to a certain extent the two terms are interchangeable simply because they both imply that people want you to know about them just as much as they want to know about you.

When properly managed, this new paradigm can help add value to your brand.

Social media can help reinforce your brand, but social media cannot create your brand. You create your brand. All social media can do, is help spread your brand message.

BTW, according to Dr. Ben Mack, your brand, is not your logo or your color palette. Your brand is that about you which makes people want to buy from you. Your logo and your color palette can change, but that which makes people want to buy from you does and should not change.

Social Media is a great research tool

You can go into a social media tool, and search to see what people are talking about. Once you know that, then you can join the conversation about the topic.

You can also find out about events, great restaurants, things to do and places to see.

A great tool for researching current events is twitter. If you want to try to get an idea for what people are talking about, head over to the twitter search tool and type in a keyword.

For example, type in the keyword “wordpress” without the quotes. What you’ll see is a real time feed of posts from people typing in the keyword “wordpress” on twitter. You’ll also get to see what they are talking about.

Pretty neat huh?

Social Media can drive traffic to your site

When used properly, social media tools can drive lots of traffic to your site.

Social bookmarking tools, social profile sites, social video sites etc. can help drive more pre-qualified and interested people to your site. Putting links in these different outlets can go a long way in creating links back to your site, which could help your position in search engine results.

All you have to do, is figure out how to get in front of the people that are looking for what you are offering.

Extending your audience and extending your customer base.

Social media tools, can help you expand your audience and expand your customer base in the sense that you can drive people to your site. You can also bring your message out to people that perhaps would not have seen or have been exposed to your message.

Every business needs customers to survive, once you have those customers, you need to either sell more to these same customers or acquire more of them. Social media tools can bring you to where your customers are. You can find your customers and engage them, instead of waiting for your customers to find you and come to you.