Farewell McMansion: Compact is the new black
Announcement posted by Talking Brand 29 Jul 2013
Australia’s leading builders and developers predict that an appetite for small homes will be the dominant theme throughout the coming decade, according to a new report.
Three other major trends to impact the residential housing sector in the next 10 years will be affordability, diversity and walkability.
“What leading industry players told us in our interviews is that we are seeing a maxing out of the average house size,” says Deon White, managing director of urban design and town planning firm RobertsDay, publisher of the new report.
“The trend of the McMansion is on the decline; Australians are turning away from the super-large Australian home. Instead, they’re starting to engage with the concept of the smaller home. People want to live a little more; they want less of their income drained into their weekly mortgage payments.”
Affordability is another key theme that will impact the Australian property sector over the next decade, and not just in terms of a home’s initial price tag.
“Increasingly we will see consumers assess the affordability of running a home,” White says. “In fact, valuers are telling us that rather than affordable running costs being a ‘maybe’ factor in home-buying decisions, houses that are cheaper to run will be a significant influencer within the next 10 years.”
Two other key themes to dominate the next decade will be a focus on housing diversity – in sizes, styles and densities – and a suburb’s walkability, one of urban planning’s major global trends for the next decade.
The findings are part of Mixing It, a new report published today by urban planners RobertsDay available free to download here.
More information & media requests:
Dan Pearce
Senior Associate
RobertsDay
T: +61 8 9218 8700
M: +61 400 209 823
E: Dan.Pearce@robertsday.com.au
RobertsDay is a town planning and urban design firm with 20 years’ global experience. With branches in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, it works with developers, councils, designers and builders to create great places. Its record includes both the most awarded new town and the most awarded urban renewal project in the country.