Second Homes 411

Another story of Besting 

From: www.Wsj.com

Buyers Snap Up Small Homes;
1,000 Square Feet for $599,950

By SARA LIN
July 18, 2008; Page W Kirkland, Wash.

Peter Moon’s family of six snuggles into bench seats for dinners together. Their house is 1,100 square feet, a bit smaller than two squash courts. “We really don’t need more space,” says Mr. Moon, a 46-year-old software designer. “I don’t mind being cozy.”

Mr. Moon says he and his wife dumped a much larger home in Boston three years ago to seek a simpler, greener life here. Mr. Moon recently persuaded his parents to sell their 2,000-square-foot house on New York’s Long Island and retire to a small neighboring cottage. “We’ve lived in bigger, older houses, but this is by far the most livable,” says Mr. Moon. “There’s no place to accumulate junk.”

The designers of the Moon family house, Ross Chapin and Jim Soules, think small in a way that is practically un-American. They build tract houses that are half the size of the average U.S. home and cost a lot more per square foot. What is surprising is how quickly they sell them. The men are building their fortunes with buyers willing to pay more for less. Customers, such as the Moons, say they prefer taking up less room and using less energy.

Mr. Chapin, an architect, and Mr. Soules, a developer, met by chance in 1996, when nearly everyone else in the housing market was thinking big. Now, as the surplus of unsold McMansions increases, other developers are starting to lean their way.