Are Smaller Home Plots Better, Worse or Just Different?
The plots on which most new homes are built has been shrinking steadily for more than 20 years. But what does this trend mean for buyers of today’s newly constructed homes? The question is intriguing, though the answer isn’t entirely clear.
The median plot size for new detached homes shrank to a record of 40 by 80 metres. That’s a loss of 1,500 square feet, enough for a second house on the same lot.
The median doesn’t mean all lots are exactly that size. In fact, most plots are either larger or smaller than the median, which represents the middle of all of the sizes.
Why Lot Size Matters
Buyers tend to focus on a home’s square footage and how many bedrooms and bathrooms it has. But plot size is important, too. It can affect:• The home’s square footage
- The amount of outdoor space a home has
- The ratio of a home’s square footage to its outdoor space ( “lot coverage”)
- The home’s purchase price and property value
- The distance from the home’s walls and windows to the walls and windows of neighbouring homes
If your dream home has a large compound, garden, swimming pool, or playground, outdoor kitchen, patio, guest house or other amenities that require plenty of land, you’ll need a lot that’s big enough to accommodate those features. Bigger plots also give you more privacy from your neighbours.
Smaller Plots, Same-Size Houses
Smaller plots don’t necessarily come with smaller homes. The national median size of detached homes increased to 2,436 square feet. Apart from a downward dip in the previous two years, the longer-term trend has been toward larger homes for the past 20 years.
People don’t want less house [even though] the plots have gotten smaller.
The Affordability Factor
Conventional wisdom is that smaller plots make homes more affordable. That means buyers should be able to purchase a larger or nicer home or one in a more desirable neighbourhood for a comparable price if the lot is smaller.
Moreover, new home communities with smaller plots enable buyers to live in more desirable areas with the cultural amenities, walkability and strong schools that they want.
Another possibility is that smaller plots don’t make homes more affordable, but rather more available. That’s because, builders say, many new home developments don’t make economic sense without the smaller lots. If larger lots don’t pencil out with an acceptable profit margin, builders will use smaller lots or they won’t build as many houses.
Although 10,000 square-foot lots used to be common in Chicago. Today, builders have to calculate carefully and work with local officials to divide parcels into more lots.
The primary advantage of smaller lots is the lower land acquisition cost for the builder. Therefore, that can tie back to affordability for the buyer.
Smaller plots are less expensive to develop. They reduce the overall cost of the home. They allow a potential homeowner to purchase ‘more house’ and often in a closer-in location than a larger plot would permit.
Smaller plots are a particular benefit for buyers who don’t want to spend a lot of time or money to keep up a large compound or big home full of rarely used rooms. And smaller plots tend to spawn tighter communities with more neighbour-to-neighbour interaction. In older communities, residents tended to spend more time in their own homes or fenced compounds.
The Cost-to-Own Question
Buyers might also wonder whether smaller plots are less costly to own than homes built on more land. The answer depends largely on the home—and the homeowner.
A larger home on a smaller plot has less outdoor space. That can mean lower costs to install fences and maintain hardscape such as walkways and driveways. It can also make other chores such as planting, grass cutting, weeding, tree trimming, brush clearance and snow removal less expensive.
However, if the only outdoor spaces that are landscaped and hardscaped on a larger plot are those closest to the home, with the rest of the plot left in a state of nature, the savings of a smaller lot might not be that significant.
One more feature of smaller plots is that they force builders to get creative about floor plans.
For example, It’s more of a challenge to design a 3,200 square-foot house with spacious rooms and volume ceilings in a box of 50 x 40 or 50 x 50 than it is when you have an oblong plot that’s 100 x 65 or 100 x 70.
The result is that newer homes tend to be narrower and deeper. They don’t look as big from the front as they feel—and actually are—inside.
The bottom line for buyers may be that smaller plots aren’t better or worse than larger ones. They’re just different.
