For the first time in four decades in the luxury-home business, executives at John Wieland builders are thinking the unthinkable: Maybe houses in the South don’t really need a fireplace.
They’re also wondering whether new homes require 4,700 square feet of living space. Or private theaters with 100-inch screens. Or super-size-me foyers.
As they draw up blueprints for the house of the post-recession future, builders are struggling to distinguish among what home buyers need, what they want and what they can live without — Jacuzzi by Jacuzzi, butler’s pantry by butler’s pantry.
“You have to keep taking things out until you hit a critical point where people reject your product,” said Jeff Kingsfield, senior vice president of sales at Smyrna-based John Wieland Homes & Neighborhoods.
I think this *is* an upside.
We downsized when we built our home 5 years ago. We are empty nesters and decided that if all the kids and grandkids came home at once (and they rarely do), renting nearby hotel rooms was cheaper than building a house to accomodate. We put in extras (tile, hardwood, fp, jetted tub, etc.) but instead of a third bedroom did a sunroom which has a trundle for grandkids. We love it !!!!!!! Less is more time for fun and less time for housekeeping!
Me on the other hand, I anticipate that my mother will eventually live with me. I have also extended an invitation to a friend to move in until she gets back on her feet. Given the economy it would not be surprising if I have friends or extended family living with me for several years. The next several years will be difficult for most people. It is going to be extremely hard during the next 10-15 years for even a hard working, well educated dilligent kid to stay gainfully employed throughout the duration of the coming depression. I wish a home where, if my kids (and potential grandkids) needed to move back home, they could do so. That way I could also assist in baby sitting, tutoring etc. These things may be important in the future. Certainly in third world countries, that is what established older people do. They assume the mantle of patriarch/matriarch. “Patriarch/Matriarch” is a mantle that does not depend just on age. An 80 year old having fun in a 2 bedroom condo on a Florida beach, while her children struggle with unemployment and her grandchildren flounder in school, is not a matriarch. She is just an elderly adolescent and just a selfish as the teenage variety. I hope to be the sort of matriach that my grandparents and great grandparents were. They did not flee or retire as soon as the children finished college. They stuck around, assisted materially as well as with time and money. They advised, cajolled, helped keep marriages together, helped tutor/discipline/civilize unruly teenagers/college students/young adults and their house was always open to the poor, especially the poor of their own families.
They chose their housing to accomodate the needs of their families, not to accomodate their own needs. I plan to model my older years on theirs.
Don’t need no butlers pantries, private theatres, jacuzzis or hot tubs. However, the 2 fireplaces warms the (heavily insulated) house completely and I can cook over the wood stove in the upper fireplace if rolling blackouts become the new normal. The whole house fan cools it, and can run off a solar panel.
We live in a good school district (despite sending our youngest to private school) have enough beds to sleep 10 comfortably in beds/trundles/roll aways, (and 20 or more using sleeping bags).
The vegetable garden/mini orchard/tilapia breeding backyard is sized to feed all of them. (Any excess can always be donated to the food bank, after all).
Thanks for your testimony #2.
3. Dear Clueless: My wife and I did just that……we “stuck around,” and we’re glad we did. We are a very close-knit family, and we see our three granddaughters every day, taking the twins to and from high school, and our youngest to grade school. And we love it! We were able to help their parents financially until they got on their feet, and it’s a great feeling, knowing that they will reciprocate when the time comes. Another distinct advantage to living in a small town where there are few pretentious upscale palaces.