if birthrates continue to decline, will that put long term pressure on housing?
Families without children or with a single child will prefer condos and townhouses.[/quote]
patb, I don’t think the reduced “family” size will be an issue, so far as housing is concerned. I’m a mid-to-late baby boomer, and here are my observations of housing trends over the 20th century:
My grandparents’ generation (7 to 10 kids) lived in one- or two-room apartments, or a small (800 to 1000 sf) house, often shared with several members of an extended family.
My parents’ generation (3 to 7 kids) moved into little (1000 to 1200 sf) suburban ranchers and split levels in the thousands of postwar “Levittowns” that sprang up all over America.
Early Boomers (2 to 4 kids) decided that an extra room (i.e., the family room) was needed to actually “live in”, and moved on up into 1600 to 2100 sf domiciles.
Late Boomers determined that each child MUST have their own room, so mortgages were stretched to cover 2200 to 3000 sf.
Somewhere in there, the McMansion was born, and middle-class families with a couple offspring were trying to fill 4500 to 6000 sf and more with rooms for every possible activity (home theater, craft room, gift wrapping room). The foyers in most of these homes are larger than the entire house in which my parents raised five kids.
So I’m guessing that the next housing evolution will be 10,000 to 12,000 sf estates for singles or childless couples (perhaps one very small child would be acceptable).
In all seriousness, patb, energy prices are going to guide the location of neighborhoods and the size of houses. Commuting costs will increase to the point that people will have to move closer to the cities, and the lack of open space will curtail their ability to express themselves in brick, mortar, and aluminum siding. The upside to this is a reversal of the trend of developers to move into beautiful pristine rural areas, and turn them into even more hideous faceless overcrowded exurbs.
