SACRAMENTO HOME OWNERS NOT CUTTING BACK

For years now, urban planners have predicted that homebuyers would opt for smaller houses in more urban-style neighborhoods when the real estate market recovers.

That's true for some. But with housing the cheapest it has been in decades, some buyers are returning to the large suburban tract homes that were hallmarks of the housing boom.

Homebuilders and housing experts say sales of larger homes have picked up in recent months, driven by customer demand.

"There's a sense of recession fatigue. People are just tired and ready to move on," said Chris Cady, Central California division president for KB Home.

KB, a national home builder with projects in FOLSOM, LINCOLN and ROSEVILLE, said it has seen a 24 percent increase in the size of homes that its customers are buying in the Sacramento region, compared with a 17 percent increase nationwide.

The austerity of the recession and housing collapse, when the few homes that did sell tended to be smaller, has given way to increased confidence and renewed demand for more square footage, company officials said.

KB, which aims its products toward middle-class buyers, said its homes sold here increased from an average of less than 1,700 square feet in 2010 to more than 2,100 square feet in the second quarter of 2012.

Low prices, low interest rates and the marginally small cost of getting a bigger house are fueling the demand. It's sort of like a super-sized drink at a fast food restaurant; it doesn't cost that much more than a small one, compared to the extra soda you're getting.

"Affordability is a key driver to making decisions to buy bigger homes today," Cady said.

At the company's Silverleaf at Twelve Bridges community in Lincoln, models range from a 2,052-square-foot one-story plan that starts at $319,500 to a 2,589-square-foot two-story that starts at $341,500. The larger plan is proving popular with buyers opting for extensions that bump it out to about 3,100 square feet, said company spokesman Craig LeMessurier.

Zak Kriegel, 31, a Silverleaf buyer who closed escrow on Sept. 13, bumped his floor plan out as far as it would go. "I did all the pop-outs I could," said Kriegel, who runs an air conditioning and heating company.

Kriegel and his wife, who are planning to have children, moved from a 1,300-square-foot home in Loomis. "The wife said it's time to do the family thing," he said. "We needed room to grow."

Their model started as a 2,600-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath home with a two-car garage at a base price of $330,000. For $60,000 more they opted for a five-bedroom, three-bath house with a three-car garage.

He said a similar home would have cost upward of $700,000 at the peak of the boom in 2005, when suburban houses were selling for nearly twice what they go for now.

"For the value of what you're getting, you might as well add square footage," Kriegel said