This question comes from my mother-in-law, Cathy’s mother:
Why do builders make yards so small?
This is a question that applies to the Phoenix area, but I know it fits in many markets in the southwest.
Phoenix was settled in sections, 640 acre square-mile parcels. A farm might be a section, a half-section, rarely smaller than a quarter-section. When parcels were split to become housing lots, the one acre lot was a very common size. There are still thousands of acre lots in Phoenix, vast and lush.
But most new homes are built 6, 8, 10, 12 or more homes to the acre. Why is that?
Land isn’t cheap, for one thing. But neither is landscaping. If you work in town and commute 45 minutes each way, you may find that your enthusiasm for yard work in the 115-degree heat is not as robust as it could be.
The bottom line is: New home buyers don’t want larger lots enough to pay for them. They might say they do, but when it comes time to write a purchase contract, they tend to buy more house for their money, or a pool, instead.
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jf.sellsius says:
The solution is to find a low maintenance yard where bigness won’t add to your work load. The corner property was always a hard sell–all that lawn to mow, bushes to trim, trees to prune. Maybe I’ll take that condo after all.
September 26, 2006 — 8:12 am
Greg Swann says:
> The corner property was always a hard sell-all that lawn to mow, bushes to trim, trees to prune.
Here, a corner lot also has substantial additional exposure to sunlight, resulting in higher AC costs. Some people like having fewer neighbors, though.
September 30, 2006 — 1:21 pm