| About
MARIAL
|
|
About MARIAL MARIAL in the News Rooms to grow: Metro homes get bigger Atlanta Journal Constitution
That's been Georgia's housing trend the last decade, especially in metro Atlanta's northern suburbs, according to new census data. In census-speak, the average Georgia "housing unit" grew from 5.52 rooms in 1990 to 6.24 rooms in 2000 -- a 13 percent jump. Metro Atlanta averages 6.27 rooms,significantly higher than the national average of 5.3 rooms. Housing units include houses, apartments and mobile homes. Lifestyle changes explain part of the increase: We don't just live at home. We work there, play there, exercise there. Yesteryear's three-bedroom, two-bath yields today to behemoths with home theaters, home gyms and home offices. Four bedrooms are becoming the modern standard. Increased household incomes reveal something else: Families have been providing children their own bedrooms. The days of sharing a bunk bed in the same room are disappearing. "They need to have their own space to have their own shelves to put their own Little League trophies and knickknacks," said Kellee Lively, whose family of five moved to Forsyth County in 2000. Each of Lively's three children -- 6-year-old Madison, 9-year-old Hunter and 13-year-old Austin -- has a separate bedroom. The boys show off their Nintendo, PlayStation 2 and model cars. Madison revels in her pink bathroom and pink bedroom. When friends come to play, she breaks out the Barbies and the American Girls. Shaquille O'Neal could find elbow room here. There's a basement playroom with a pool table. There's a guest room for grandparents visiting from Tennessee. Lively's husband works in the home office off the master bedroom. They upgraded the three-car garage with 2 feet of extra length, or else the Chevy Suburban might not have fit. "I wouldn't have even looked at a home if it didn't have five bedrooms," said Lively, 40, a part-time pharmacist in Gwinnett County. Roomier homes epitomize the nation's work-hard capitalistic underpinnings, said Bradd Shore, director of Emory University's Center on Myth and Ritual in American Life. "It's a marker of class status and economic success to be able to give your kids their own room," Shore said. House sizes have burgeoned in pockets north of I-285 in suburbs such as Cobb, North Fulton, North DeKalb, Cherokee, Gwinnett and Forsyth counties. The census counts whole rooms in occupied and vacant housing used for living space. Bathrooms, open porches, balconies, utility rooms and unfinished attics or basements are excluded. Forsyth County boasts one of the area's stoutest gains in house size. In 1990, Forsyth houses averaged 5.84 rooms. Today they're bursting with more than 7.32 on average -- a 25.3 percent gain, exceeded in the metro area only by the 25.4 percent jump in Pickens County. It's all part of the equation that made Forsyth the state's fastest-growing county and third-hottest in the nation. The jet fuel in the tank has been median household income of $68,890 -- a gain of 45 percent in 10 years. "You're basically looking at an affluence measure," said Bart Lewis, chief of the research division for the Atlanta Regional Commission, a planning agency representing multiple governments in the area. Much of Forsyth's expansion comes from residents moving from neighboring Fulton County in search of lower taxes, more land and bigger homes. "Forsyth was essentially rural in 1990," Lewis said. "The county has spent 10 years building suburban housing." Warren Owen grew up in Atlanta on Peachtree-Dunwoody Road in a standard three-bedroom, two-bath. He shared a bedroom with one of his brothers growing up, until his family moved into a four-bedroom house. "A big change is that the old formal living room has become a study or home office or in some cases a main-level bedroom," said Owen, a real estate broker who sells property in Cobb, Cherokee and north Fulton counties. "But absolutely the biggest change is the perception that each individual person should have their own room. Today it's gotten to where every little kid has his own bedroom," he said. One of Owen's clients is a family with two children looking to move from a three-bedroom to a four-bedroom. "They want a house with a bonus room or a basement because they need an office," Owen said. "The home office is a real big deal now. There are a lot of people that telecommute now. They know there's going to be a Friday or Monday when they won't come in, or a Wednesday when they can't come in." Jeff Rader of the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association of
Georgia, downplayed the uptick in home size as a short-term phenomenon.
Over many decades, income has increased and so has house size. Though the average number of rooms increased in every metro Atlanta county, expansion was smaller in counties with the oldest residential development, typically those nearest downtown Atlanta. In DeKalb, where some homes are a century old, the number of rooms grew by just under 5 percent. Homes in Cobb County, metro Atlanta's fastest-growing county in the 1960s and into the 1970s, grew roomier by less than 9 percent. However, spots in decreasingly rural west Cobb posted some of the strongest gains in all of metro Atlanta. In contrast, an area with relatively young homes, like Forsyth County, started out with homes that had a lot of rooms, regardless of price. "Now you have dens and keeping rooms and media rooms," Rader said. "People used to be less affluent and couldn't afford special rooms for special things." < More MARIAL in the News |