From the OC Register – Lansner on Real Estate:
The Register asked for 10 ideas of what life would be like in 10 years.
The future of housing from Marji Knitter, president of real estate planners The Moote Group in Santa Ana …
1. You’ll buy your next home at Costco, Lowe’s or Home Depot. Prefabricated homes make a comeback, shipped from warehouse constructed in days.
2. Goodbye to 5,000-square foot McMansions. Hello to cozy, two-story 2,000-square foot houses — affordable and energy efficient.
3. High-tech marijuana grow rooms – legal in California for anyone with a doctor’s recommendation for medicinal marijuana — will be offered as options in some new homes.
4. Cruise industry finds new niche market – assisted living facilities. Seniors will call a cruise cabin “home” with meals, specialty physicians and therapists.
5. Planting of grasses, mosses, vegetables and herbs on the roofs of homes to save on energy costs and reduce your carbon footprint.
6. In a state where 86% of adults do not smoke, expect smoking bans to extend to condo, townhome and even single-family home communities.
7. Solar panels will be offered by most homebuilders, including opaque solar glass that can generate enough electricity through your window.
8. Rather than renting, single women who expect to remain that way — whether by choice or default — will buy large houses together with a shared kitchen.
9. Backyard windmills – so Dutch! Residential wind generator will supplement your utility service.
10. Your home theater might be your only theater. Look for more people to stay home and make their own (better) popcorn.
What do you think?
Yes: 2, 4, 5, 7, 10. Several of these are already happening.
Maybe: 6, 9 I think 6 has legal issues, especially for SFH, but if done through an HOA, then maybe. Enforcement probably close to inpossible, though. 9, I don’t think winmills will happen, but maybe some other energy friendly add-ons, but this is one the HOAs in California may try to smash.
No: 1, 3. 1 has no chance. This isn’t Idiocracy (the movie, not the actual state of being); Costco doesn’t sell everything. 3 is certainly something we’ll see, but not as an option by builders. Too much of a niche.
I left 8 off this list. I’m not sure that’s really a trend. People who aren’t married, have bought houses together before. I’m not sure I would restrict this just to women living in some high-end convent.
High-tech marijuana grow rooms… CHECK!
She forgot “personal airport for our flying cars”.
Not so fast. Sears used to do a modest line in kit homes from 1908 – 1940. Today they’re considered something of a collector’s item. So it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
#5 . Planting of grasses, mosses, vegetables and herbs on the roofs of homes to save on energy costs and reduce your carbon footprint.
Nobody is going to spend money on a item that gives them utility value. People spend money on pools, kitchens, bathrooms, flooring, landscaping, and 100 other items. Not moss
#1: Trend correct, sales method totally clueless. Home builders, not home buyers, will be buying from the factories. Home builders are one of the last industries to rely on 19th century manufacturing techniques. The path out the current new home slump will be led by efficiency gains of off-site construction. The shift from onsite construction will mean lower costs, faster construction (close to weather in 3 days rather than 2 months), better quality, wider selection, and possibly even an end to the rows and rows of identical boxes.
Aren’t #3 and #6 mutually exclusive?
Love all the suggestions. Think this radical of change may take more than 10 years, but her ideas sounds very practical to me.
All it takes for #1 is Costco to put Huf Haus online order only. It could happen.
http://www.huf-haus.com/en/home.html
I think she was sampling some of her own crop from her high-tech grow-room when she came up with this list of complete mishegas!
2. Goodbye to 5,000-square foot McMansions. Hello to cozy, two-story 2,000-square foot houses — affordable and energy efficient.
As an aside, I like how 2,000 sq ft. is now “cozy”
2000 sq ft would seem like a palace compared to my bungalow…..
I thought they already had been, for at least 25 years.
One of my first jobs out of high school was working on some home construction software. You’d input a plan off a blueprint, and the software would spit out framing diagrams and a bill of materials. The software was licensed to a few prefabricated home builders (Wickes is the only name I remember), who would build wall panels on a giant table, then truck the walls out to the site where they’d be erected and nailed together.
Home buyers had some limited customization abilities (you couldn’t move load-bearing walls, for instance). The pre-fab builder would modify the plan, and the computer would spit out the new framing diagrams.
The software company died long ago. I’ve no idea what happened to the pre-fab builder; Google claims to have never heard of them…
#1: Ikea already has a division in Europe called BoKlock that sells assemble-it-yourself homes.
#7: Why hasn’t this already caught on in the Southwest United States? You all live in perpetual sunlight!
#10: Already been there for years. I simply don’t go to movie theaters anymore. They’ve become incredibly uncivilized in the last twenty years.
Paradise ‘found’ 🙂 Milton lives again
Cute:)