More Americans – and Coloradans in particular – are living in larger homes, according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey released Tuesday.
Twenty percent of Americans occupied a home with four or more bedrooms in 2005, compared with 15 percent in 1990, according to the bureau’s American Community Survey.
Out of all 50 states, Colorado tied with Minnesota for fourth place, with 26.2 percent of residents living in homes with four or more bedrooms, behind Utah, Maryland and Virginia.
Centennial came in fourth among U.S. cities with populations of 65,000 or more, with 52.5 percent of its homes containing four or more bedrooms.
Jeremy Anderson, an associate broker in the Centennial office of Real Estate of the Rockies, said the larger homes are his top sellers.
“Four bedrooms have become a necessity for a lot of buyers,” he said.
The homes are in high demand in part because of the growing affluence of baby boomers and because more Americans are working from home, according to several local agents.
“While people’s families have gotten smaller over the years, a lot of people have brought their offices home, so they want more space,” said Robert Bielenberg of Centennial’s Bielenberg & Associates, a Metro Brokers Inc. office.
Andrew and Tatiana Morrell fit that bill.
The couple, who are relocating to metro Denver from Seattle with their 1-year-old daughter, are shopping for a four-bedroom house with at least 4,000 square feet of space.
“We want a house we can stay in for a long time,” said Andrew Morrell, a software engineer for Raytheon.
His wife plans to work from home full time.
“We’re going to turn one bedroom into a home office,” he said. “And we’d like to have a bedroom for guests, like when my parents come down from Wyoming.”
But Eric Wittenberg, president and chief executive of Louisville’s McStain Neighborhoods, said he expects escalating energy prices and environmental concerns to eventually curb homebuyers’ “bigger is better” mentality.
“Sensitivity to the environment and the cost of energy and gasoline are really weighing on people today,” he said. “I think we’ll soon start seeing a trend to smaller, more efficient, smarter designs.”
The average Colorado family consisted of 3.1 people in 2005, according to the census bureau.
KB Home Colorado recently replaced two of the smaller floor plans at its Parkfield community – a development of about 300 homes near Denver International Airport – with larger four- and five-bedroom layouts because of high demand.
“We’ve seen this trend here in Colorado for the last four to five years, which is why a lot of our homes have the option for additional bedrooms,” KB Home Colorado president Rusty Crandall said.
Colorado’s population more than doubled from 2.21 million in 1970 to 4.75 million last year, according to the census bureau. That has led to a residential construction boom that has given the state a higher inventory of larger homes, several agents said.
“We even have a few designs that have an optional sixth bedroom,” Crandall said, adding that he’s seeing an increase in multigenerational families looking for larger homes.
Staff writer Julie Dunn can be reached at 303-954-1592 or jdunn@denverpost.com.
26.2%
Colorado homes with four or more bedrooms, fourth in the nation; Utah leads at 39.2 percent
52.5%
Homes in Centennial with four or more bedrooms, fourth in the nation; Sandy, Utah, leads at 63.8 percent
62.7%
Portion of U.S. housing made up of single-family homes, the nation’s most common form
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
