Of Dinosaurs and Houses . . . McMansions Face Extinction

The real estate equivalent of the Ice Age is upon us. Like the prehistoric behemoths that roamed the earth millions of years ago, the McMansions and ever-more elaborate homes that popped up all over the landscape during the boom years are being crushed under the weight of their own bloated "over-the-top-ness." The icy winds of change that have contracted our economy are doing the same to the footprint of new homes being designed and constructed.

Smaller is the new black. 

New home buyers -- unfettered by the need to sell a house before buying -- are now making up an ever-increasing share of the home buying market. No longer looking to buy a house with the expectation of selling it for a huge profit in two or three years, new buyers are looking at a house as a long-term investment. What appeared desirable in a home that you were only going to have to sustain for a few years -- soaring cathedral ceilings, out-sized rooms, and too many of them -- now looks like an awful lot of impractical space to heat and cool.

Waning too, is the demand for ever-more-opulent upgrades that were merely window-dressing. In their place is a market for energy-efficient upgrades like programmable thermostats and more efficient appliances. New 'green' developments are resonating with buyers who are looking not only for a house with a smaller footprint, but for environmentally-friendly technology like wind turbines and solar panels.

Here in the North Georgia second-home market, building has slowed to a crawl. Many of the spec cabins that were built in 2007 and 2008 -- rustics on steroids -- are sitting idly on the market because they are too big and too overpriced. The builders of these spec cabins are having to choose between making deep cuts in prices or going into foreclosure.  What new construction is going on in these mountains is reflecting the national trend: smaller cabins with fewer luxury amentities, and a price tag to match.

So it would seem that there is a housing equivalent of "survival of the fittest." Charles Darwin -- whose 200th birthday was last week -- would no doubt have approved.