Speaking of shelter:
America's biggest homes are getting even bigger.
The average size of homes built last year hit 2,600 square feet, an all-time high that surpassed even the housing bubble years, when homes averaged around 2,400 square feet, according to the Census Bureau.
But there is a clear difference between the days when everyone was building McMansions and what's happening post-housing crash.
First of all, the rich have gotten richer.
"If you had a lot of money in the stock market, it has doubled since 2009," said Stephen Melman, director of Economic Services for the National Association of Home Builders.
And many have used those riches to buy even bigger places, he said.
At the same time, relatively few first-time homebuyers -- the biggest market for smaller homes -- are able to buy homes, said Melman. Many young buyers are having trouble getting mortgages or are heavily in debt with student loans.
As a result, the market for smaller homes, of 1,400 square-feet and less, has shrunk to just 4% of homes built. That compares with 9% in 2005.
Meanwhile, extremely large houses -- 4,000 square feet and up -- have been making up a much larger slice of the new homes built.
Last year, these mega homes accounted for more than 9% of new homes. In 2005, they represented 6.6% of homes built.
Houses that are a little smaller but still verging on mansion territory, those between 3,000 and 4,000 square feet, made up 21.7% of new homes in 2013, up from 15.6% in 2005.
Not only are the homes bigger, they have more rooms as well. There's the obligatory playroom, the home office, the den and the FROG, or family room over the garage.
And, of course, few children have to bunk up in an older siblings' room these days. Only 59,000 homes built last year came with less than two bedrooms, compared with more than a quarter million with four bedrooms or more.
"It's like growth is accelerating," said Melman.
https://money.cnn.com/2014/06/04/real_e ... home-size/New homes in Canada and the US are big and getting bigger. The average size of a newly constructed single-family detached home is now 2,600 square feet in the US and probably 2,200 in Canada. The average size of a new house in the US has doubled since 1960. Though data is sparse for Canada, it appears that the average size of a new house has doubled since the 1970s.
We like our personal space. A lot. Indeed, space per person has been growing even faster than house size. Because as our houses have been growing, our families have been shrinking, and this means that per-capita space has increased dramatically. The graph below, from shrinkthatfootprint.com, shows that, along with Australia, Canadians and Americans enjoy the greatest per-capita floorspace in the world. The average Canadian or American each has double the residential space of the average UK, Spanish, or Italian resident.
Those of us fortunate enough to have houses are living in the biggest houses in the world and the biggest in history. And our houses continue to get bigger. This is bad for the environment, and our finances.
Big houses require more energy and materials to construct. Big houses hold more furniture and stuff—they are integral parts of high-consumption lifestyles. Big houses contribute to lower population densities and, thus, more sprawl and driving. And, all things being equal, big houses require more energy to heat and cool. In Canada and the US we are compounding our errors: making our houses bigger, and making them energy-inefficient. A 2,600 square foot home with leading edge ‘passiv haus’ construction and net-zero energy requirements is one thing, but a house that size that runs its furnace half the year and its air conditioner the other half is something else. And multiply that kind of house times millions and we create a ‘built in’ greenhouse gas emissions problem.
https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-size/Totally unsustainable.