Anyone can tell you that building a large house will cost more than a small one. Every additional foot of space in every room takes more labor and materials. More space adds more foundation and roof, and more stone, brick or siding. Larger homes take more structural materials to build, more interior finish products (cabinets, flooring, drywall, paint, windows, doors), larger systems for heating and cooling and more furnishings. Large lots require more landscaping. Whatever your budget, the larger the space the larger the percentage of funds will go to base construction cost, leaving less for high-performance features and amenities.
A common misconception is that larger homes are more economical to buy, with an analogy made to volume purchasing, where the price per square foot is lower than for similarly built smaller homes. We often hear salespeople say that they get better pricing from their subcontractors for larger homes, because “they are already on the job” so adding more square footage does not significantly increase their bids. The truth behind square- foot pricing is that some of the larger ticket item costs are basically the same regardless of home size, like the kitchen, the water heater and a couple of bathrooms. Since these costs are averaged out over less square footage in a smaller home, they have a greater impact on the average square-foot price. So let’s take a minute to think about this whole idea of valuing homes by their square footage cost. Builders have figured out that by building larger homes they spread these fixed costs over more square footage and get that per square foot cost down to some number that they think will impress potential buyers. Two-story homes are also less expensive per square foot, because they need half the foundation and roof size of the same home built as a one story.
However, the flip side of that value equation is that most property taxing authorities use home size as one of their main calculations to determine appraised values. Typically, the values of comparable properties (called “comps” in the industry) of similar style, construction and age are used to determine this square foot value. Of course, the larger your home, the more you should expect to pay in property taxes.
Pricing homes by the square foot for comparison purposes just does not make sense. It is no different than pricing our automobiles by the cubic foot of cargo space, when cars can differ widely in quality, amenities and finish. In fact, even when we buy certain appliances (refrigerators, water heaters) by their capacity, we don’t calculate their cost per foot, we just compare their total cost, features and benefits.
Just as we are now acutely aware of what kind of gas mileage our cars should be getting, we should also plan for how efficiently our home will use our energy and water resources over its lifetime, as those resources are also being depleted and their costs rising. We certainly hate wasting these resources, but many are wasted due to poor construction, poor system design and poor resource management. We should be building smaller homes with highly efficient systems designed not to waste resources.
So be wary of getting caught up in square foot pricing. Our goal should be to get the most beneficial features possible in the smallest area that meets our needs. Look at real, usable space, and amenities, amenities, amenities. Use the money that you save on cutting down the size of the structure to spend on better systems, equipment and interior finishes. We will provide guidance on those choices in future chapters. Just remember to keep your total budget in mind knowing that saving money here will keep that money available to you to have later when you make those selections. When it comes to size, think in terms of inches (instead of feet) and maximize the space with classic features that will last the test of time.
If you’ve never seen a copy of Sarah Susanka’s Not So Big House, we highly recommend that you invest in one. Full of insights and incredible photo ideas, it helps you realize the true value of space and creating a design that represents how you really use it. You should really start here before you think about a floor plan.
Assessing Your Needs
Take time to anticipate your current and future needs in designing the home. How large a house do you need? You should start this thought process by sitting down and making a list of your family’s current and anticipated future needs in housing.
Changing Needs Over Time
Are your kids still at home, and, if so, how many more years would you expect them to stay? What are you going to do with that space after they are gone? Could you design that space to serve some other purpose, to continue to be usable, valuable square footage, or maybe even design it to eventually become a stand-alone apartment? As our family dynamics change over time, our needs for how the home functions will also change over time. It is important that we design a home that will serve our needs over the long term.
In Analyzing Your Building Site article, we talked about homes built in the US currently having an average life expectancy of at least 75 to 100 years. If we think about who might occupy the home over that time period, we realize that many of the decisions we make when constructing it should be expanded to include considerations beyond our current wants and needs. This not only makes better use of resources over the long term, it also protects the resale value of your home.
Single adults will soon be raising a family. Their tiny babies become crawling toddlers, rambunctious kids and then large teenagers with herds of friends and, eventually adults themselves, moving out. The parents, now empty nesters aging in place, find that the abandoned second floor of their two-story home continues to impact their utilities and property taxes and, therefore, their retirement savings. This may cause them to have to move away from their beloved neighborhood in order to downsize.
What about later in life, when your parents are older and might need to come live with you? Do you have a space that could function for them? Or as you yourself age, is there a live-in apartment for a caregiver? Maybe that space might serve to supplement your income in the interim to help pay the property taxes, as this may provide the means for you to afford to stay in your home.
How well will your home adapt to these changes? Can you design a home that will have a flexible enough design to conform to these changing needs over time? Many young couples buy homes in anticipation of a growing family, and then as empty nesters often do move to a different neighborhood in order to downsize. This is because we often fail to think of the other possible scenarios and thus fail to act accordingly in our planning. As the old proverb says, “We never plan to fail, but we often fail to plan.”
Accessibility
If you have ever spent any time on crutches or in a wheelchair, you have gained an awareness of how accessible areas of your home were (or weren’t) during that period. Now is the time to think about some simple design specifications that would allow you to live more comfortably in your home if your mobility were ever temporarily or permanently compromised. Are the passageways wide enough to be navigable? Can you get into a downstairs bathroom with room to turn around? Can you get in and out of the shower or tub without losing your balance?
Think about having your home designed to meet the Americans with Disabilities Act.1 This act does not apply to private residential structures (except some that may receive certain federal funding), but can be useful as a guideline for designing and installing features to address these issues. Again, think about who might occupy the home over its hundred-year life. Certainly someone during that period will benefit from your foresight, possibly increasing your resale market value
Many accessibility features are easy to incorporate into new construction and usually do not add any additional cost to the budget on a new home. Yet they can be very expensive and difficult to retrofit if added afterwards. These include blocking inside the walls in showers and tubs that enable the easy installation of grab bars in the event they are needed; electrical outlets installed no lower than 18″ and light switches no higher than 48″ above the finished floor; a no-step door threshold that provides easy entrance for a wheelchair; and wide hallways and doorways to allow navigation through the main living areas and first-floor bath. Even if you never have a temporary injury, these features become more valuable as we age.
Flex Space Flex space can mean a lot of things. It can define a space in your home that can serve more than one use at the same time or can be transformed to different uses over time. For example, consider a home that is occupied 99 percent of the time by empty nesters. They look forward to having their family home for holiday feasts, but having a formal dining room just does not make sense for a number of reasons. With limited time to visit while preparing a meal or cleaning up, having an eat-in kitchen increases their time spent together. This arrangement also suffices for the occasional friends- over-for-dinner affair, but does not accommodate a large family function. What if we designed the home with a large cased opening between the dining space and the living room? We could buy a gate leg table and some folding chairs that can be set up to add an additional six seats to our existing table. This functions wonderfully for the whole family to enjoy holiday meals together but doesn’t create a wasted space the rest of the year.
Think about innovative ways to use every nook and cranny of space within the exterior walls. Do you have a space that can serve as a home office if needed, or maybe a hobby room? This could be an open area adjacent to the kitchen that could also be used as a formal dining room or guest room. Again, think about how future homeowners might use the space and its resale value.
Flex space can be in the form of built-in bookcases lining stairwells, or an under-stair day bed that functions as reading nook or guest bed. Or it could be a Murphy bed in the study to offer guests more privacy, a folding table in the laundry room that converts to a craft table or has a sewing cabinet built in with cabinets above that store office, sewing and cleaning supplies.
There are lots of great examples of creative space design. We recently visited a new home where the owner had designed a pass-through closet from the master bath to the laundry room, with direct access to the dirty clothes hamper and shelving for towels. Many walk-out basements are pre- plumbed for later conversion to apartment-style housing for supplemental income or an in-law suite. Or a garage apartment could also be a home office or temporary housing for the teenager off to college transition.
Operational and Maintenance Costs
When analyzing home costs, it is important to recognize the overall cost of ownership over time. Think about home size in terms of operational and maintenance costs. Certainly it will cost more to heat and cool a larger space. As energy costs continue to rise, larger homes especially will face even higher utility costs in the future. The same is true for homes that are not plumbed for efficient use of water.
So think about how large a home (and yard) you want to maintain. All homes require maintenance, whether periodically repainting the interior rooms or trim, or replacing a roof. The larger the home, the more it will cost to maintain. The larger the yard, the more landscape maintenance, mowing, weeding, watering and leaf raking.
Think about the home’s durability: how long the materials used to construct it are expected to last and how often and what kind of maintenance, upkeep, repairs and replacement cycles are expected of each component. Are you planning a home that you will be able to maintain in the future? Certainly, as we get older and become less able physically and economically to do these tasks, having less maintenance and fewer repairs is more important to us. And as resources continue to become scarcer, materials for repairs and replacement will be more expensive as well.
Furnishing Larger homes require more furniture, whether it goes in additional rooms or larger spaces. But more furnishings also include more window treatments, more lighting, more floor coverings, more decorative accessories, even more kitchen gadget appliances. When we have more storage space, it tends to make us want to buy more stuff: more clothing, more holiday decorations and more toys. Many of these products contain toxic materials that impact indoor air quality and our health (more on this in Chapter 7). And all of these material possessions are further depleting our natural resources and contributing to environmental degradation. Over time they wear out and must be replaced, as those large spaces continue to dare us to fill them, creating a whole new cycle of impacts.
Cleaning
Think about how large a home you want to clean. It takes time, energy and water to clean, and most off-the-shelf cleaning products contain toxic chemicals that affect your health. Even if you use non-toxic natural cleaners, having a larger home certainly means that you have more to keep clean and it will cost more time and money to do so.
Paybacks on Right-Sizing Your Home
A huge dining room for large family holiday meals may not be the best solution when you realize the expense of building, heating and cooling that additional area, as well as keeping it clean year round. Then there’s the investment in that large dining table and twelve chairs that will only be used once or twice a year. The same is true for the large family room you thought might be the best solution for spending time with your children when you realize how much furniture it takes to fill it up and how that might result in separate seating areas that create spaces apart from each other.
Build a home to meet your needs. We don’t know of anyone that needs a McMansion. Building a smaller home can save you money in both initial construction costs and in operational and maintenance costs over its lifetime. The savings from reducing square footage should be used to build a more durable, well-designed and better insulated home with high-efficiency systems and healthy home finishes. The paybacks on this combined strategy are beyond description-it just doesn’t get any better! Some are determined by net energy and water consumption costs, while the value of your family’s health and that of our planet cannot be quantified. Green building is about supporting sustainability at every level, including conserving resources and keeping our environment healthy, but in the final analysis, it’s really about how these things affect your quality of life.
