Irvine Housing Blog

There are some places where the building of McMansions will not come back for a long time - parts of FL, AZ, Vegas?  An article on the McM says that people will go back to close-in neighborhoods.  In our area, the prime close-in ‘hood, has lots of 4-5000 sqft homes which might be McM’s, but also 8-10000 sqft homes that easily take the Mc out of it.  They were built between 1900-1950 and may be seen to have more character than newer homes.

Lots of 4000 sqft homes constructed today would be 2500-3000 sqft homes 50 years ago because many have finished basements or what was once left as attic space.  There are energy benefits to using basement space, especially in summers.

The current move to smaller homes is more brought by cost issues than any push for sustainability.  As for new construction, minus the land costs, financing new construction is lower than it was 4-5 years ago, but there’s a lot less of it going on - and that’s everywhere, not just the bubble areas.

” I will settle for whatever I can afford, but I will always prefer a big detached home to a small condo at a transit stop. And so does everyone else.”

There are a fair number of people (probably no near a majority, but much greater than zero) who like living in the big city, and will take an urban condo over a suburban house.  Of course, at least some of that is being near their jobs, but some people like the bustle of the city.  (And when I mean city, I mean something like Manhattan, probably not anywhere in Irvine.)

Austerity and “minimalism” are reaction-formations formed in response to the extravagance and emphasis on consumption and accumulation of the past few decades.

I’ll never be a minimalist, but I understand people who are. I like space and beautiful things but make it a point to keep my possessions contained within the confines of my 900 sq ft apt. If the apt feels cluttered, then I have too much unnecessary garbage around, and get rid of it. If I’m not using it, I get rid of it, and these days, every time I hanker after something, I ask myself: a)Do I need it? b) Was it something I planned to buy? c) Do I really even DESIRE it? d) Can I afford it without putting it on a credit card, and e)what benefit will I derive from owning it?

Last month, my upstairs neighbor, a young woman, moved out of her large 5-room 2 bed to a studio apt that could fit in her living room, leaving behind a 40-year accumulation of her mother’s and her own possessions. Two china cabinets, 3 sets of fine china one of which was Lenox and another of which was a service for 16 people, enough glassware and stemware to stock a restaurant, about 50 pieces of good wood furniture, table and bed linens, expensive Wedgewood bric-a-brac, and enough clothes to stuff about 40 large plastic storage bins and 6 closets and 6 chests of drawers. It took the building staff about 2 weeks to work their way through it all and get it out of there.There was also an infinity of paper napkins in unopened packages, paintings, table linens, serving pieces, books, and other stuff.

The woman took only her futon, her cats, a minimum of clothing, and her jewelry making things to her tiny new home.

The stuff was literally making her sick. She couldn’t clean around it, or move it, and she derived no enjoyment or benefit from owning it.

I also helped another friend through the Move From Hell, that involved 2 60’ moving vans, 6 men,and weeks of packing, to move about 10,000 lbs of stuff from one apt to the other. And there still remains a triple storage locker STUFFED with things.

I see the ads for storage facilities, a very fast-growing industry- and realize that people have equity-stripped their houses and maxed their credit cards to buy all this stuff that oftentimes they never even take out of the package, and never even really wanted to begin with. Useless garbage. They see it, think they like it, take it home, throw it on a stack, then move it to the garage then to the locker.

What a waste.

LANDUARY ????

IMO, the rich will always want bigger homes.  In So Cal this will further stratify the housing situation.  Clusters of poor and middle class housing will surround the large homes of the rich.  A wall along the 405 freeway will need to be erected to keep the peasants on the east side from infiltrating the land of the rich on the west.  The Wall will eventually fail.

Been reading it for quite a while:

http://tinyhouseblog.com

Bigger isn’t always better.

Ironically, new housing maximizes indoor space at the expense of outdoor space in a part of the country that has nearly year round temperate weather.

Bill Gross from Pimco ranting on the Fed in his recent monthly investment outlook:

Well we’re living here in Allentown
And they’re closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line
And we’re living here in Allentown – Billy Joel, 1982

“We’re all Allentowners now. Granted, 90% of the workforce is still reporting for work on time, but our standard of living, our confidence in the future – we’re standing in line in Allentown. Lost in the policy debate surrounding the elections and the subsequent demonisation of the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing (“QE2”) policies has been any recognition of why we no longer live on Ronald Reagan’s shining hill or how we might possibly reclaim higher ground.”

“The real beneficiaries however, are the mega-millionaires of Wall Street and Newport Beach. And yes, policymakers at the Fed write trillions of dollars’ worth of checks under the guise of quantitative easing, a policy which takes Charles Ponzi one step further by purchasing the government’s own paper in a last gasp effort to support asset prices.”

Bleh… smaller housing is more about maximizing profits (builder) and reducing costs (buyer) than actually simplifying lifestyles.

The Irvine Company is already going that way (check out how dense all the new projects are). In Stonegate and Laguna Crossings (nee Altura), they’ve already reduced the number of pocket parks to fit in more homes.

New lots aren’t even wide enough to fit a 3-car wide garage… ack!

Since I like to do pretty much the opposite of what everyone else is doing, I think we will go with the ‘bigger is better’ and ‘go big or go home’ theme.

Who in their right mind would buy a Maytag Box place like this thats 30+ years old with a $ 385 a month HOA? NOBODY. Thats why it will sit till its price gets slashed. You got to love that tiny bathroom for 2 to share in the morning. This place should rent for $ 1200.00. No rental parity here. Move along. New, Bigger IAC 2 Bdrm goes for $1800.00 and you get 2 baths.

I would say that people’s choices on size of homes depends on what they consider to be their “living space.”  I have a rather small ranch house, but it’s placed on 2 acres (and I’m a gardening fool).  My living space is the house plus the land.  People who choose to live in condos in urban settings probably feel that their living space is the condo PLUS the city.  If you live in a McMansion, that house is your living space, and you probably tolerate whatever yard you have, and couldn’t be bothered to even walk around the block. And this is the problem I have with suburbs in general—there is no community and there is no connection with nature aside from some prettified park that you can look at while you drive by it in your car.

Hear the house or trailer in wheels is popular with some folks instead of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. Just live on your beachfront property and enjoy it, and when the next hurrican warning comes, just hitch the house up and move it somewhere safe until the storms over. Very practical approach.

From the WSJ ...

Number of the Week: 492 Days From Default to Foreclosure

The average borrower in the foreclosure process hadn’t made a payment in 492 days as of the end of October, according to LPS. That compares to 382 days a year ago and a low of 244 days in August 2007.

In other words, people who default on their mortgages can reasonably expect, on average, to stay in their homes rent-free more than 16 months. In some states such as New York and Florida, the number is closer to 20 months.

Millions of Americans still are paying their mortgages even though they owe more than their homes are worth. The more banks’ backlog grows, the more likely they are to join it, adding to the already giant pile of foreclosures weighing on the housing market
———————————————————

The number on cause for foreclosure is not job loss, but rather negative equity.

I have been interested in the small house movement for some time now and I’m glad that it’s finally starting to get some mainstream attention.  For me, the catalyst was when I visited Temecula a few years ago and I saw all of the streets lined with enormous three story houses.  Looking at those mcmansions made me realize that there was something seriously wrong about the way we think about houses.

I don’t think smaller is necessarily better, just as bigger isn’t necessarily better.  Susan Susanka said it best in her “Not So Big House” books—it’s not about building bigger, but building smarter.  The thing about building a smaller house is that it forces the designer to be smarter, to use space efficiently.  From limitation comes innovation—or so they say.  Even for me, those Tumbleweed Houses are a little too small for my comfort, but I can still appreciate the ingenuity that goes into these tiny designs.