Doggie Couches
Some Pulte model homes include a room decorated with a doggie couch, chew toys and "dog eye chart" with pictures of a bone, a cat and paw prints -- stretching the extended family concept beyond the human species.
"We heard from our buyers: We have pets and we consider them a part of the family, and we'd rather have space that's allocated to the pet, just like we would a bedroom for a child," Scott Thomas, Pulte's director of architecture, said in a telephone interview from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
"Gateway cities" on the coasts and along the Mexican border are prime markets for multigenerational housing because first- and second-generation immigrants are the most likely to live with extended families, said Richard Gollis, a principal at the Concord Group LLC, a real estate consulting firm in Newport Beach, California.
According to Pew, 25.8 percent of Asians, 23.7 percent of blacks and 23.4 percent of Hispanics live in multigenerational households, compared with 13.1 percent of whites.
Luxury-home builders are among developers tapping into the multigenerational trend, Gollis said.
Toll Brothers
Toll Brothers Inc., the largest U.S. builder of luxury homes, is now offering kitchenettes and second master bedrooms as an option in its "midsized" houses, which are as small as 3,200 square feet, said Tim Gehman, director of design for the Horsham, Pennsylvania-based builder.
At Lambert Ranch in Irvine, California, a 169-lot subdivision where sales are scheduled to begin in April, the New Home Co. plans to offer houses starting at about $900,000 that can be connected to form a two-unit compound, said Joan Marcus- Colvin, vice president for marketing and design at the Aliso Viejo, California-based company.
"It's not a new concept," she said in a telephone interview. "But for today's market it hasn't been introduced."
The median price of an existing single-family house in the Orlando area was $128,200 in June, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. That's when Barnes paid about $280,000 for his 2,565-square-foot house with the additional master bedroom, in KB Home's Mabel Bridge community, to accommodate his 71-year-old mother-in-law, Linda Roulley.