Sign of the CoolTown times: Condo mania

It’s become common knowledge in the real estate industry that people are buying condos like crazy.  Condo buyers make up 13% of the housing market, a 33% percent increase over the past ten years, and more noticeably, have appreciated in value at an unprecedented double-digit pace for the past four years, according to a recent real estate report.  I know - I bought a condo five years ago.

Why?  The report says that traditional homes are too

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What are the latest trends in loft housing?  Which cities are leading the way in loft development?  How much are lofts going for?  What kinds of floor plans are selling?  How much should they be going for?  Who’s buying them?

All of these answers are explained and illustrated in the newly published 14-page CoolTown Loft Housing Report, which is paired with the Emerging Retail Report for $119 and can be ordered by emailing here.

Conclusions are based on the following loft projects:  Orenco

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What are the different types of lofts?

Bi-Level/New York-Style/Artist Lofts These units have lofted bedrooms and no interior walls. The have very high ceilings (15’+), and often seen as bachelor pads in movies. These attract a premium and were the lofts upon which the movement began.
Industrial Lofts - The most common form of loft today, usually converted warehouses and sometimes entirely new buildings, with high exposed ceilings, no interior walls, expansive windows and no lofted bedrooms.

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What is a loft and where did it come from?

A loft was originally defined as a small space built above a larger room, such as in a barn for storing hay (inset image), or even a bed for kids.  It is also presently defined as a living space not partitioned into rooms.  Here’s what happened in between, and as so often the story goes, it begins with artists.

A few decades ago, NY artists seeking dirt-cheap space to work and live in found abandoned warehouses ideal.  They quickly built loft

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Convertible housing in Seattle?

A lot of us enjoy driving or riding in a convertible, feeling the open air rather than being enclosed at all times.  Well, there’s a place in Seattle where one can own their own one-of-a-kind convertible… home.

Each of the residences in these Seattle lofts has a garage door (literally) that opens up to the outdoors.  Sales agents say the feature has been a huge hit with buyers, and for good reason.  The blog from a few days ago mentioned how popular outdoor

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Next generation urban housing

Urban housing for the 75%+ of the country’s households that aren’t married with kids is evolving:

10’ exposed ceilings replace 8’ hung ceilings.  More light.  More air.  Who cares if you can see the ductwork?  It’s more authentic.
Large windows replace small windows.  More light.  More air.  Great view.  Technological advances help windows insulate better despite more glass.
Open floor plan replaces compartmentalized rooms.  Larger sense of space.  More

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30-55%.  That’s the projected demand by 2010 for denser, more walkable neighborhoods (compact cities) according to a USC study.

The summary, funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation, is highlighted and illustrated in a brochure by the Congress for the New Urbanism.

In a nutshell, it takes a 17% overall home buyer preference for these types of communities (which is the same suburban-biased survey revealed in yesterday’s blog), along with a 30%

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Beware the national housing survey!

Here’s another reason why new communities are often so undesirable: opportunistic surveys by the nation’s home building association, which in turn guides what is built in the future.  Their 1999 survey concludes that only 9% of 25-34 year olds want to buy a townhouse in a neighborhood like the one on the left (Glenwood Park, Atlanta GA), whereas 91% prefer a single-family home in suburbia with a longer commute to work.

Hello?

Maybe it’s because they

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‘Live-above’ live-work units for the rest of us

Wouldn’t it be great to live above your own business, just like each of the people who own ‘live-above’ units as in the image, located in Kentlands, Gaithersburg MD?

Got $400,000?

Maybe that’s why the live-above type of live-work unit just isn’t in most of our fields of future vision, and perhaps why urban loft live-work units are.

It doesn’t have to be that way though, not unless you’re one of the early buyers (or better yet, a beta

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Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Not So Big Homes

Last week the blog illustrated the virtues of the Not So Big House.  Yesterday the blog profiled the picturesque town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.  Today, a combination of the two.

The most immediate and noticeable value of these homes is that they’re within walking distance of the town center.  They just wouldn’t seem half as charming otherwise.  On the other hand, if they were all twice as big on much larger lots, there’d be half as many people walking

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Better than Bigger: Personalization

OK, so the images are a bit Martha Stewartish, but one of the key principles of The Not So Big House is to make the place your own.  As the author states, a well-designed personalized home can have more truly livable space than a home twice its size.

Just at its more interesting to walk into a restaurant with the ducts and pipes exposed under a tall ceiling compared to a low, flat, plaster hung ceiling with fluorescent lighting, a home that shows what

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Now here’s an example that takes full advantage of Not So Big living, courtesy of the Tag Front architecture firm.

Work at home?  Live at work?  Would you believe this loft is so space-efficient that it’s nestled right in the middle of the firm’s architecture office?  Brings new meaning to the words ‘commute’ and ‘late night at the office’.  It’s really most appealing if the architecture office is already in a cool neighborhood.

Kitchen or dining room?  Since we really only need one of

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Applying ‘Not So Big’ to CoolTown homes

By the way, in reference to yesterday’s blog, here’s Sarah’s link to the not so big house as applied to communities.

While the examples in The Not So Big House (NSBH) are generally single-family homes in the countryside, the not so big design principles are ideal for CoolTowns:

Open floor plan  As in the rooms not being ‘compartmentalized’.  The kitchen blends into the dining area, blending into the living room.  At parties, people gravitate to the

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Cool is ‘Not So Big’

A few years ago while running the National Town Builders Association (NTBA), I hosted a round table with Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big House.  Her book was just starting to gain notoriety (it was #1 on Amazon at one point), and I felt she should meet members of the NTBA whose mission as a trade organization was (and still is) building entire communities of not so big homes.

A few months later, the sequel to her best-seller, Creating the Not So Big House,

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Why are lofts so popular?

It’s partially a combination of the experience economy (below) and the Not So Big House movements.

People are realizing that there’s more to ‘experience’ than what’s in the confines on one’s home and TV set, and that involves rich, interesting and diverse layers of life and activity in the immediate neighborhood.  Maybe that explains the popularity of reality TV?  Anyway, that intensity of life can’t exist without a critical mass of concentrated residences, and a

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