ARIZONA DAILY STAR:  Weds., May 23, 2007

Bigger houses becoming common in Tucson, U.S.

By Becky Pallack

 

A bigger share of American homes are big, at least when measured by the number of bedrooms they have, and Tucson is included in the upsizing trend.  One in five American houses had at least four bedrooms in 2005, up from one in six in 1990 despite shrinking families, according to a new analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Among homes in the Tucson metro area, 16.8% had four or more bedrooms, up from 13.7% in 2000. Metropolitan figures for 1990 weren't avaliable. The majority of Tucson-area homes, around two-thirds, had two or three bedrooms.

"I'm not sure bigger is always better, but homes certainly have gotten larger," said Bill Viner, CEO of Pepper Viner Homes, which is building new homes in Oro Valley, Sahuarita and the Southeast Side.  "People want more flexibility. They want rooms that could grow into a bedroom but in the interim could be used as a den, a game room or an office," he said.

New houses feature great rooms that typically combine a living room, dining room and kitchen area, and sometimes look out on livable, furnished outdoor spaces, like a covered patio, he said.

The trend may be fueled by demand for luxury homes, which are selling well in Tucson, said John Strobeck of Bright Future Business Consultants, a market research firm that studies home building and development. Nineteen homes that cost more than a million dollars were sold last month alone, he said.

But when it comes to newly constructed houses, the average size decreased about 80 square feet from 2005 to 2006, Strobeck said, due "probably more to affordability than anything else."

 Arizona ranked No. 28 among the states, with 19.7% of homes having four or more bedrooms. Arizona has an average 2.65% per household.  Nationally, the average household size shrank slightly from 1990 to 2005, to an average 2.6 people. Meanwhile, the average new house grew by nearly 400 square feet, to 2,434 square feet.

U.S. homes are also becoming more expensive. The median home value jumped more than 40 percent from 1990 to 2005, to about $167,500. The median price of homes sold in Tucson in April was $221,472, according to the Tucson Association of Realtors.

Some other Tucson housing facts of interest from the study include:

● Houses are the most popular type of home, making up 57.7% of homes. The next most popular are apartment complexes with 10 or more units, with 14.3% of the housing, and mobile homes, with 11.3% of all homes.

● About one-third of homes were built between 1960 and 1980. Only 12.3% of homes were built after 2000.