From the nytimes.com:
Taylor Morrison, a housing developer based in Arizona, was set to break ground on a 304-unit condominium development in Sunnyvale, near San Jose, when the bottom fell out of the housing market in 2007.
The company went back to the drawing board, and last month it gained approval for a drastically different plan: a town house project aimed at extended families, where children, parents and grandparents can all live comfortably under one roof.
Such multigenerational housing is specifically aimed at the booming immigrant population in the Bay Area, and is emerging as one of the few growth niches in a moribund housing market.
“If you’re selling in certain areas of the Bay Area, you have to be more extended-family-oriented,” said Cheryl O’Conner, government affairs consultant to the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area.
Asian buyers, in particular, “come with the whole family,” Ms. O’Conner said. “They come with their parents and grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins.”
Even when several generations are not living together permanently, more and more families are looking for housing alternatives that can readily accommodate extended visits from overseas relatives.
Census figures released last month show the Bay Area’s Hispanic and Asian populations each increased by more than 350,000 over the past decade, while the region’s non-Hispanic white population declined. Those groups are about twice as likely as whites to live in multigenerational households, according to a 2010 study by the Pew Hispanic Center.
In 2008, an estimated 49 million Americans lived in a house that included at least two adult generations or a grandparent and at least one other generation, the study showed. In 1980, that figure was just 28 million.
“Immigrants are a source of growing demand, and their household composition is different in fundamental ways from the domestic-born,” said Kermit Baker, a senior fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard and the chief economist of the American Institute of Architects.
In Taylor Morrison’s development in Sunnyvale, called Duane Court, most units will be approximately 2,000 square feet, featuring a bedroom and a bathroom on the ground floor so older-generation residents do not have to use the stairs; a kitchen, a living room and a dining room on the middle floor; and three additional bedrooms and two bathrooms on the top floor for the traditional nuclear family unit.
Local officials are enthusiastic about the trend. Melinda Hamilton, mayor of Sunnyvale, said the new project “has more community support because it’s more in tune with the neighborhood, and it provides what we need: housing for families.”
Such designs are particularly popular in the South Bay, observers say, because of the large influx of engineers from China and India who want large homes to accommodate their extended families and who can afford an expensive new townhome.
But multigeneration housing is gaining popularity in less wealthy neighborhoods, too. In East Oakland, the developer Korin Crawford finished a nine-unit townhome development with a design similar to Duane Court’s in 2009; he was unable to sell the units in the middle of the housing bust but has rented them out and is pushing ahead with similar projects.
On Third Street in the Bayview district of San Francisco, the affordable-housing developer Bridge Housing completed its 124-unit Armstrong Townhome project in 2009. Seventy units have sold, and Bridge Housing’s project director, Kevin Griffith, said he believed the rest would sell by early next year.
Mr. Griffith said his company’s architects were also mindful of multigenerational needs, designing some units with a bedroom and a full bath on the main level so the elderly could avoid the stairs.
Design preferences can vary among ethnicities, social classes and income levels. Amar Gupta, managing editor of the Indian-interest magazine Siliconeer, is not convinced that South Asian immigrants will go for town houses like those at Duane Court, for example, because they prefer large, detached single-family homes built across either one or two floors.
“If you want to have the older generation, you can’t have stairs,” said Mr. Gupta, whose home includes seven residents across four generations, from his 78-year-old grandmother, Shanti, to his two sons, 11-year-old Vanish and 5-year-old Janam.
Mr. Gupta’s family rents a 3,500-square-foot home off Mission Boulevard in Fremont. Most of the bedrooms are on the second floor, but his grandmother’s is on the ground floor with the kitchen, the living room and the den.
“It’s slightly different than the American system of living,” he said, “but that’s how we do it in India: we put culture and family first.”
Mr. Gupta’s father, Ashok, a real estate agent who specializes in South Asian families, said the three-story townhomes with a bedroom and a bathroom on the ground floor were “perfect for an engineer in Silicon Valley whose mother is going to come for a few months a year.”
“The rest of the year, they can use it for an office,” he said.
Sandra Vivanco, a San Francisco architect, also sees a growth market for properties that allow for comfortable extended visits by family members. Ms. Vivanco designed a house in Menlo Park where a couple — the husband is Sri Lankan and the wife Finnish — live with two young children. When the Finnish grandmother returns to Europe, the Sri Lankan grandfather arrives from Asia. Sometimes, both come at the same time.
Because the composition of the household keeps changing, Ms. Vivanco said, the home’s design had to be flexible.
“There is no master suite in the house, just four equally sized large bedrooms with bathrooms that are easy to share,” she said.
“There are two equally sized bathrooms next to each other,” Ms. Vivanco said, “one with a shower and a toilet and the other with a bathtub and a toilet. Outside in the hallway, there is a double sink, so four people can use the bathroom at the same time.”
She added, “Our normally held ideas of privacy are being questioned and reinterpreted.”
Ms. Vivanco also designed a two-story house for an elderly Salvadoran couple and their three grown children in the city’s Excelsior district.
“We don’t see it as a bad thing that we’re all grown up and still living with our parents,” said Lizzette Henriquez, 47, one of the three adult siblings. ”We’re helping each other.”
“It’s part of our culture,” said Ms. Henriquez’s brother, Juan Carlos, 43, who moved in last August after living for a decade in an apartment near Golden Gate Park.
“There’s no negative,” he said.
Definitely noticed the trend here in SD also when touring new houses lately. One bedroom with one bath on the first floor. Good feature all around visiting foreign relatives or not.
Agreed, I’m seeing them more and more, and builders are trying to find their way.
A single-level house solves just about all the concerns a multi-generational family would have, but, yes, it takes a bigger lot and more concrete. But I think buyers would pay more too.
I’d love to see a daring builder do a whole tract of decent one-story houses.
When I bought my house in CV, a requirement was 1 bed and bath downstairs for in-laws or my parents when they come visit. Same thing I will looking for my investment property as well.
It’s quite normal in Asian culture to have parents to live and babysit their kids while the parents work.
Just make sure the downstairs bedroom is not below yours.
Our 70’s vintage condo floor plan fits this bill. I’d also like to see decent and practically laid out one stories, with the formal living and dining rooms elimated completely in favor of larger combined kitchen/dining area/great room design.
If two story homes were constructed such that the stairwell had adequate width and angles to easily accommodate a stairchair, I think there would be greater utility for the multigenerational family.
I’d love to see builders offer standard universal design features such as:
– all doorways with 36″ openings to walkers and wheelchairs can pass through.
– all baths with a minimum 6′ width to provide sufficient clearance after grab bar installation such that wheelchairs and walkers can pass through.
– all toilet cubicles with sufficient clearance such that wheelchairs and walkers can maneuver.
– stop placing the microwave above the cooktop. This is an extreme safety hazard for children and the elderly.
Design trends in housing are always changing and it seems that the builders have always focused on the baby boomer generation. In the 1970’s builders built a lot of small starter homes at an affordable price point. They then built a bunch of huge McMansions for the successful boomers to move up and now they’re likely to build homes that accommodate an aging population.
Disability access is going to be important and one of the primary reasons you might not be able to move back into that 1970’s starter home when you want to downsize without investing in some modifications.
Extended family living arrangements is another major factor. Privacy within a home can be done with the right design.
“Green” efforts like good insulation, double pane windows, thermal mass, maybe even solar water heating are all probably characteristics that an ideal new construction would have. Problem is always whether or not people can afford those costs.
Good point Thaylor – it makes for some uncomfortable conversation when I bring this up to buyers! 😉
JtR- That daring builder would need to dare to charge probably around 150% more per square foot of what a two story goes for. Do you think the market would support that or would it be ridiculed?
Is this a personal preference or are you seeing this as something Buyers want?
To me, I grew up in a 1 story home where my view extended all the way back to our 6′ high fence in the back yard. To this day I need to have two stories to not be claustrophobic. Seeing over and through the tree tops suits me better.
I think people would pay more for a single-level home (about 10-15% more $/sf) and can live with a smaller home.
If you look in La Costa Valley (I’d give examples but our trusty MLS is down on a Monday….) there are 2,000sf one-story houses around $700,000, and we’ve seen 3,300sf two-story houses selling for that in the same ‘hood (though they have been pushing higher lately).
There has to be a sweet spot for builders with smaller one-story houses. If it were just the baby boomers that they were hoping to attract, I think most could get by with 1,600sf.
There’s a tract of 20 all 1-story homes in the final phase near me in El Cajon. Prices fell considerably since they started, but they continue to build through the project: http://www.theranchatvistagrande.com
It looks like they sold 4 homes over three months. One is MLS #110003873. This is a new street, so Redfin’s map cannot pinpoint the location:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/El-Cajon/804-Liberatore-Ln-92019/home/39538914
The only major difference between building costs along north county vs something like riverside county is the cost of the land. They managed to sell stuff at about $100/sqft new in riverside county and make a profit back in 2001-2002. What does a lot cost out here? $100K? Building cost $100-150/sqft? Nicely designed 1500 sqft at a cost of $300K could probably be sold for $300-350/sqft in the right location. Starting at $499K in the outskirts of Carlsbad doesn’t sound too bad.
Granted if I’m a builder I’d rather parlay a $100K lot into a 3000 sqft bomber and sell it for $800K+ (net $300K instead of $150K), but there’s still a profit there and I can probably sell it quicker.
Having grown up in RB, the “Downstairs Master” was a relateively common thing to see on houses of the 1960s vintage. Now that I’m on the East Coast, I’ve never seen that, and my house is of the same vintage. Guest rooms and baths on the main level are a sometimes thing. You also get the in-law suite in the basement thing a fair amount out here. No basements there…
Seems when I was looky-looing in the late 80’s and early 90’s the 1br/1ba downstairs was pretty common in larger homes, only it was always characterized as the “maid’s quarters”. LOL.