I’m kind of addicted to Google Maps aerial views - I love looking at towns from the air and seeing the way they’ve developed. But one thing frequently puzzles me. I see lots of planned communities that are obviously for fairly wealthy people - the houses are big, they have swimming pools etc, but they are crammed together really tight with hardly any garden or yard space.
What’s up with that? I guess you’d have to be fairly well-off to live somewhere like this. If I was forking out top dollar for a house, I would want more of a garden than that! Do Americans value house size over yard size, or what?
Probably either the land is very expensive so the builders want to maximize their profits by cramming in more houses.
Or the builders want to maximize their profits by cramming in more houses.
I pretty much hate all new housing developments, at least in my area. All the houses look the same.
And I think yes people are starting to value a huge, empty house over a nice, smaller house with a big yard that people spend time in. Personally, when I get to the house buying point of my life, I want an older house that isn’t a duplicate of another, and a yard for pool, BBQs, trees for shade, etc. Or just give me a loft with cool architecture. You can tell how huge someone’s house is driving by, not necessarily how much land it’s sitting on.
I think it gives you all the comforts of a condo, without the stigma. Honestly, they drive me nuts. I don’t understand the appeal at all. For the record, I would have bet money your image would have been of Tampa. Distinguished only by it’s use in the movie “Edward Scissorhands” for the ultra-conforming cookie cutter houses.
I think the mentality is the same for people that drive really nice cars and live in dumps. Have you noticed most of them have a garage as their most prominent feature?
My guess would be yes, they do. Or at least the ones who are into buying the new houses in new developments. People who value lots/yards/gardens, houses with character, etc. look for houses in old neighborhoods. Let’s face it, if you can afford to pay that much for a house, you can probably look just about anywhere.
My first thought is that these are aimed at a specific set of people–retirees. Persons who are 60-80 years old, in good health, but not interested in the maintainance which comes with having a yard–and possibly, if these are really condominiums or condominium-like, there are maintaince people for indoor-work as well.
I believe–but am too lazy to look for a cite–that the average size of an American yard has shrunk dramatically over the years.
Of course, now that I type that, I’m reminded of a house I toured recently that was built in the 1920s by people with plenty of money (for that small town) which had a postage stamp sized yard. So maybe I’m wrong.
I lived in a beautiful planned community in Arizona and it was quite nice, I knew my neighbors and had a generally good time. Nice pool, adobe fire place outdoor kitchen etc…etc…what I didn’t have was the privacy to walk around naked in my backyard if I saw fit. Not that I do that sort of thing anyway, but I’d like the opportunity if I so desired.
Sufficed to say, my wife and I moved back to CT and we love our acreage and home, and yes, if I want to walk around naked I can, again, not that I do.
Those houses in the urban sprawl, planned communities averaged 600k for each one. Try getting that in todays market…ain’t gonna happen.
Around here they are called McMansions / McMansions communities. Big houses on tiny lots. Basically it’s a trend developers have followed to maximize profit, the most houses they can cram in a spot, and the larges houses usually mean highest profit.
In this particular instance, I believe that could be it. That view appears to be Whisper Walk, FL, of which Wikipedia says: “Whisper Walk is an “active adult” community. By deed restriction, at least one member of the household must be age 55 or higher. The majority of residents are retired Jewish couples from the New York area, and other northeastern cities.”
But it does seem to be a fairly widespread phenomenon. Considering how big the USA is, it seems odd that expensive houses are crammed together so tightly. Even out in the desert in Arizona, they’re not exactly widely spaced. (Funky house designs there, though!)
Often you’re find community parks scattered among the big houses. Small yards, big houses (maximum profit) and scattered parks to have your recreation in.
I think it reflects some changing habits of Americans (pet theory alert!). More and more group sports, less “solo” play. Desire for larger houses with giant master bedrooms and 500 sq foot bathrooms. Houses get bigger, yards are deemphasized since they’re not good for group events.
You are no doubt aware that Florida is the epicenter of the deflating US housing bubble? What you call “Upscale” probably isn’t. Or at least it won’t be within a few more months.
I guess it depends what you’re used to. My wife grew up in a nice development, but the houses were on 1/3 to 1/2 acre plots. I grew up with a house on a full acre.
When we started shopping for a house together, I insisted on trying to find something on at least an acre of land. Surprise, surprise - houses on 1 acre plots are increasingly hard to come by on Long Island. They don’t make 'em like they used to. Even the McMansions are piled on top of one another on 1/3rd or 1/2 acre plots.
I talked to my contractor buddy who does a lot of business with home builders and he said pretty much the same thing that was said earlier in the thread - the builders will cram as many homes as the zoning allows onto a given piece of land, to maximize their investment in the land.
Before you ask “Well, why doesn’t local government simply mandate 1-acre zoning?” know that builders in this area will wait things out until their lobbyists at the local level and their expediters are able to get them what they want.
It doesn’t only happen in planned communities. Where I live, which is near some extremely expensive real estate, the neighborhood used to be largely composed of modest houses with nice-sized yards. Now, whenever the resident of one of the older houses sells, it is torn down and replaced with something many times larger.
Large yards, by taking up more space per house, make it harder to walk from your house to shops and other amenities. Walkability is a feature that’s being built into some new housing developments.
Yards require maintenance- you have to mow, rake leaves, and all sorts of other non-fun (at least for most people) activities. I at least think that yard-care activities are generally more and harder work than housecleaning. You can also neglect housecleaning for a while, and nobody but the people who live in the house will know if you don’t invite people over- you can’t do that with yard work unless you’ve got a really high fence. Households tend to be smaller than they used to be, which means more yard work per person as well. I know that, when I was looking for a house, a large yard wasn’t really a plus- I wanted enough room to grow some flowers and vegetables, but a minimum amount of grass that we’d have to take care of. That’s pretty much what I got, though I don’t think our yard is as small as the ones in the development you linked to.
People spend more time inside than they used to, so yards are less useful. Air conditioning has a lot to do with this (probably particularly so in a place like Florida- the heat and humidity in some parts of Florida can be brutal). Remember, air conditioning is a lot more common in the US than it is in Europe. Allergies are more common, which results in people spending more time in an air-conditioned house (my allergy to lawn grass is one reason I didn’t want much of a yard). You wouldn’t want to spend time outside sniffling and sneezing if you could stop the allergy attack by going inside. People work longer hours than they used to, and spend more time commuting, which means less time available for spending time outside (and for maintaining a yard). For a number of reasons (including video games, more school activities, and parental fears of kidnapping), kids don’t spend as much time playing outside as they used to.
Or the noise issues inherent in shared walls. I wanted a single-family house so I wouldn’t have to worry about noise issues the way you do in a condo or townhouse (either me having to hear noise from neighbors, or having to worry about disturbing them by making noise), but didn’t want the yard-care issues you get in a house with a large yard.
Most of the houses in my neighborhood were built between 1900 and maybe 1940 (my house was built in 1920). The yards tend to be small, with the houses fairly close together.
I’d believe that average yard sizes were pretty small for the first part of the 20th century, got bigger in mid-century, and are now getting smaller again. They might have been small early on because walking to shopping and transit was more important in pre-car-culture days, got bigger when everyone got cars and there were lots of Baby Boomer kids playing outside, and are now getting smaller as people spend less time outside, the Boomers get older and less able or willing to do yard-care tasks, and at least some of their kids decide that the suburban home with a big yard that their parents had, with all the yard maintenance that went along with that, isn’t for them.
Of course, this is going to vary from place to place- you’re generally going to see larger yards where property values per square foot are lower, for obvious reasons.
I don’t know if you knew this, but Florida is famous in the US for having large numbers of retirees.
What is one going to do with a big yard in the Arizona desert? You’re not going to be spending much time out there in the summer, not when it’s 120 degrees out (almost 50 C for you Europeans). You’re not going to be growing much of anything without putting a huge amount of time, effort, and money into keeping it watered.
Colophon, that’s the Great Wide Open compared with the cookie cutter crammed together planned community I’m in now (temporarily, I hope). Here’s a pretty typical example. What you can’t see is that every house is painted the same color, streets have stupid names like Shimmering Sunset Drive, and dour Home Owner’s Association ladies drive by in golf carts to make sure your weeds are less than 3" high.
But, as Phlosphr said, the issue is privacy. I live in a small house, which is actually end-of-terrace (a rowhouse, I believe they’re called in the USA). But even so, my garden is at least double the floor area of my house. Here’s an example not far from where I live. But the houses are still pretty crammed together, and the main reason I’d want an expensive house is to have a big garden, not be overlooked by neighbours, and feel like I had my own space. And yes, if I wanted to, walk around naked!
Well that happens here, too. Quite a lot of people with big houses and gardens have either sold up, and developers have built 4 or 5 houses on the plot, or else sold off part of their garden so a house or two can be squeezed in.
By European or Asian standards, those are not mid-size houses with tiny yards. They’re enormous houses with mid-size yards. If you zoom in, you’ll see the size of a driveway on each house, large enough to park 2 cars. The yard is several times the size of the driveway, at least.
Also note that each house includes a 2-car garage (I think) in addition to the driveway.
