Small time: Cottages are a cohesive element in the master plan for New Town in St. Charles, Mo., a community designed by DPZ and built by Whittaker Homes.
Credit: Whittaker Homes
Small, modestly priced new homes are gaining popularity points, and it’s easy to understand why. Tighter lending standards have left buyers able to afford less. The threat of higher energy prices and concerns about global warming have tempered their willingness to pay for conditioned space they don’t use. Teardown ordinances in desirable neighborhoods are capping heights and floor-area ratios as a pest control measure against McMansions. And the average American household is shrinking as more homeowners enter their retirement years, get divorced, delay having kids, or choose not to marry. Census data released last month indicates that singles living alone account for 27 percent of all U.S. households.
But placing the new small home in the right context is important, in that the surrounding neighborhood often must make up for whatever wiggle room the house gives up on the inside. Builder looks at four settings where small detached, single-family homes are in tune with their environments and thriving.
Credit: Courtesy Ross Chapin Architects
Single Serving
The setting: Infill pocket neighborhood
Few in the building industry had ever heard the term “pocket neighborhood” before Seattle architect Ross Chapin began garnering awards left and right for a succession of pint-sized projects that have since become icons of the small-house movement. The pocket concept, which orients a handful of cottages around a central green, has won acclaim not only for its “small is beautiful” philosophy, but also for demonstrating efficient uses for tiny land parcels that most developers consider unusable.
On the sales front, the prototype has struck a chord with certain buyer groups—particularly single women and retirees—who want the privacy and autonomy of a detached home, coupled with the security that comes from having neighbors close by, Chapin says.
Degree in economics: Designed for maximum ergonomic and energy efficiency, McNeill Burbank’s floor plans have no dead spaces. Traditional exteriors are clad in durable, earth-friendly fiber-cement siding.
Credit: Courtesy McNeill Burbank
One of the most recent pocket neighborhoods to take root in the Pacific Northwest is Spring Valley, a cluster of 10 BuiltGreen homes on one acre in the historic seaport of Port Townsend, Wash. Bordered by an apartment complex for seniors and an Alzheimer’s care facility, the boutique project opened for presales in 2007 and is now half sold. Three of the units, which range in size from 600 to 1,200 square feet, were purchased by single women.
“Port Townsend is located at the end of a peninsula and is not an affordable place,” says builder and master carpenter Fred Kimball, whose company, Kimball & Landis, did custom cabinetry for several Chapin projects before teaming up with the architect to create two pocket neighborhoods from scratch (Umatilla Hill, their first joint venture, is now sold out; Spring Valley is the second). “You can hardly buy a building site for less than $100,000 here.”
That leaves a pretty slim margin on a product for which the starting sales price is $200,000. But the math works, Kimball says, because the building forms are simple. All of the homes are boxes, more or less, built on a 4-foot grid (24 feet wide by 32 feet long) without complicated rooflines or bump-outs. What makes them special—and irresistible to one- or two-person households—is that they are outfitted with the kind of trim detailing and millwork you’d normally find only in a larger custom home.
“There’s a big advantage to having a cabinet shop attached to our business,” Kimball says. “We can prefabricate a lot of things ahead of time, but then roll with the minor differences between buildings. And we’ve realized some cost [and time] savings through repetition and using the same cast of characters [subcontractors] every time.”
Magic numbers: SRG Homes owns more than 150 scattered lots in historic Springfield. Its next infill move: bungalow enclaves.
Credit: Chris Donovan/Exit Realty
Little Feat
The setting: Urban historic district
When times were good, SRG Homes was building mostly two-story infill residences amidst the venerable colonial revival, stick style, and Mediterranean homes of Jacksonville, Fla.’s historic Springfield neighborhood.
But when the market shifted, CEO Mack Bissette found himself dusting off a smaller, single-story bungalow plan in his portfolio and giving it a facelift. He kept the charming clapboard exterior and 1,200-square-foot envelope, but knocked out non-structural walls to open up the interiors (a move that not only reduced construction costs, but also improved cross ventilation and natural lighting), allocated more square footage to bathrooms, and added a few choice goodies such as landscaped patios and dual-head showers.
“We [saw] a lot of people selling their larger historic homes and moving into cool loft spaces around town that were anywhere from 900 to 2,000 square feet,” says Realtor Chris Donovan, who handles sales and marketing for SRG Homes and bought one of the first bungalows for himself in July.
Credit: Chris Donovan/Exit Realty
Quaint and yet contemporary, the little houses are now vying to grab a piece of that market by offering perks that lofts don’t such as larger closets, private outdoor space, and freedom from shared walls—bundled with the traditional details you’d expect to find in a historic district such as crown molding and brick porch columns. And starting at $205,000, they’re affordable.
Of course every historic district has its idiosyncrasies, and approvals for the diminutive bungalows have come with a twist. Whereas most infill projects must adhere to strict height limitations (established to prevent new houses from dwarfing older homes), the opposite rules of scale applied here. Permits for the first few bungalows were granted only on lots with sight lines extending to other single-story homes in the neighborhood to ensure the new kids on the block wouldn’t look too puny in comparison with some of the two-story residences built between 1890 and 1920.
Credit: Whittaker Homes
Social Scene
The setting: New Urbanist small town
Sometimes small houses in groups become greater than the sum of their parts. This couldn’t be truer at New Town, a New Urbanist village built by Whittaker Homes in St. Charles, Mo., where cottages ranging in size from 1,024 to 1,760 square feet are essential threads in the community fabric. Crisp siding and welcoming porches give the homes an all-American appeal that’s hard to resist, but collectively, they also serve a larger purpose.
Consider first their location (the urban planners of New Town did). In a site plan that places the densest housing typeslive/work units, row homes, and residential over retail—at the core and then spreads out, the cottages serve as hyphens connecting the town’s bustling center to its outer periphery of lower-density, single-family homes.
Intimate in their groupings, the little houses also serve as social connectors, helping to create opportunities for neighborly interaction. Some are oriented around courts with detached garages off to the side, while others are aligned in neat rows to activate street edges. In one case, a span of six identical cottages serves as the backdrop for a triangular civic green and amphitheater that hosts live performances in spring, summer, and fall.
Cute on a budget: Cottages in New Town are value-engineered with concrete stoops, cropped overhangs, and a simplified window schedule (three sizes only) to keep costs down.
Credit: Whittaker Homes
“We’ve actually abolished monotony codes [which mandate variety in elevations that are next to each other] so we can get away with these kinds of moves,” says Tim Busse, vice president of architecture for Whittaker Homes, who also serves as town architect. Monotony codes, he argues, can result in streetscapes that look too forced in their perfection, “whereas six houses painted the same color in the right location become a memory point.”
Architecture aside, the cottages have also made the housing mix—and, by association, the town population—more diverse. The smaller units (particularly those under 1,300 square feet, with prices starting at $159,000) have been popular with what Busse calls “transitional” home buyers—singles who are recently divorced, young couples just starting out, or individuals who recently relocated due to a job transfer.
The unqualified success of these small homes (nearly 100 cottages have been built and sold since the town’s groundbreaking in 2004) has now led the builder to experiment with several variations on the theme. New Town’s newest crop of small homes includes duplexes inspired by the New Orleans Garden District; single-story, 900-square-foot cottages for seniors in a village-type setting; and a stretch of tall, skinny detached homes (16-foot-wide structures on 23-foot-wide lots, separated by gardens) modeled after city homes in Charleston, S.C.
Credit: Courtesy McNeill Burbank
Live and Learn
The setting: Master plan in a college town
College towns tend to be pro-gressive by nature, and Briar Chapel, a 1,589-acre TND by Newland Communities in Chapel Hill, N.C., is continuing that tradition. Located just around the corner from a trio of powerhouse schools (University of North Carolina, Duke University, and North Carolina State), the town is giving area residents a lesson in sustainability.
Its master plan incorporates tree preservation, stormwater management, wetlands protection, native landscaping, and 900 acres of open space with miles of walking trails, boardwalks, and bike paths. Natural construction debris (such as wood and granite slab derived during site grading) is pulverized to make roadbeds and mulch. Roadways are designed to preserve the natural beauty of the setting and to maximize tree canopies for native birds.
Credit: Courtesy McNeill Burbank
That same “waste not” ethos applies at the house level as well. All homes at Briar Chapel are built to rigorous North Carolina Green Build Initiative standards to maximize energy efficiency, indoor air quality, and water conservation. That includes two collections of reasonably priced (starting at $210,000) and exceedingly pretty cottages by McNeill Burbank Homes, a subsidiary of regional builder Saussy Burbank. The smallest cottage clocks in at 1,500 square feet.
Outfitted with air-tight ventilation systems and high-efficiency appliances and fixtures, the cottages are super energy savers, but one of the greenest things about them is their size, says Joe Robinson, a project manager for McNeill Burbank.
“We build homes that are well-designed and right-sized,” he says. “That in itself is sustainable. If a home is built with integrity and character, then 100 years from now the owner might tear out the kitchen countertops or remodel a bathroom, but it’s less likely the entire home will be razed [and sent to the landfill].”
Degree in economics: Designed for maximum ergonomic and energy efficiency, McNeill Burbank’s floor plans have no dead spaces. Traditional exteriors are clad in durable, earth-friendly fiber-cement siding.
Credit: Courtesy McNeill Burbank
It’s a philosophy the builder hopes will resonate with design-conscious, budget-conscious, environmentally conscious buyers including professors, graduate students, and health-care workers from nearby universities. Presales for the first offering of cottages began in May of this year, and so far seven have sold.
The community officially opened in late September, and buyers thus far seem to be appreciating its light imprint and not-so-big lifestyle. Plus, there are plenty of bonus amenities to love at Briar Chapel including courses, workshops, and lifelong learning programs created in partnership with the academic institutions next door—to keep minds fertile and open to new ideas.
COMING NEXT MONTH: The second part of our series: small attached affordable homes.