Designing houses people don't want

Have you ever looked at a new house for sale and just knew the layout just didn't work for you? Maybe you've even wondered how anybody could like it. Perhaps your next thought was to wonder what the architect was thinking. Or what the developer was thinking. The answer is that often times, it wasn't what the architect or developer wanted to do in the first place.

In housing, like anything else with a design element, fads sometimes come and go. Sunken living rooms were all the rage in the 1980s, but one would be hard pressed to find new houses with these features today. Although they provided for some added height, they were not perceived well, were costly, and people don't like negotiating the stairs. So for good reason, these fads went away.

Diagrammatic plan showing a
push-back garage on a 46'x100' lot.

Some fads are difficult to shake, even when their time has gone. For instance, one can still find push-back garages on new small lot subdivisions. The idea was that these houses would have a better curb appeal with garages no longer dominating the streetscape. While minimizing garage appearances continue to be a desired trait, the push-back garage has largely disappeared from newer homes because people are loathe to buy them. While they have a nice front facade, the width of the house is squeezed since you need a driveway bypassing it. There is a concrete swath in your side yard for cars to maneuver into the garage, which can be a difficult task, given an S-turn backout, often through a porte cochere. More than once, people have taken out chunks of house with their car from attempting this backout so developers have started putting in bollards to protect the corners. As a result, more cars tend to be parked on the street or in driveways, another undesirable trait in communities. This concrete swath, while sometimes useful for a child to play basketball on, tends to be undesirable since it eats away from usable yard space. Finally, speaking of yard space, the backyard is buried since a garage takes up much of the connection between the house and the rear yard.



Don't get me wrong. The push-back garage can be used to great effect. The Martin House by Frank Lloyd Wright masterfully tucks the carriage/garage at the rear of the house, preserving great aesthetic along the street. But that house sits on a lot that is well over an acre in size, not 46 feet by 100 feet with five foot side yard setbacks. The impact of a driveway bypassing the house isn't nearly as great on a large lot as a small lot.

Martin House by Frank Lloyd Wright. Carriage house to the left, porte cochere and the street off the image on the right side.

So if these are such poor designs for these lots that people generally don't want to buy, why do developers continue to build these types of houses? Their margins are typically much lower for these since they have to discount them to attract a buyer so it's not because of money. The answer lies within cities' design guidelines. For example, Fremont's Small Lot Design Guidelines states:

25% of the lots should have rear yard garage (in the back half of the lot) with a side-by drive.

This means if you're building small lots in Fremont, a quarter of your houses must be a design people don't want, which is a lost opportunity in the land and a mismatch of supply and demand. Thus, consumers don't get what they want and developers lose money which discourages them from building until a certain market value is met. Though this is not be the sole reason, this restriction has caused small lot development to decline greatly in Fremont.

This isn't exclusively a Fremont peculiarity. This condition is prescribed in the Mountain House Specific Plan as well:

Garages are encouraged to be located in the rear half of the lot with access provided by rear alleys or narrow driveways from the fronting street, whichever condition serves the lot. Garages may be detached or attached. Detached garages are encouraged.

Although Mountain House doesn't direct a certain percentage, I have seen situations where the first occurrence of the word "encouraged" had seemingly been interpreted as "mandated" for at least a portion of houses in a new development by city staff. Thankfully, that interpretation was not so for the "detached garage" portion of the code, which have also tended to be an undesirable trait in houses. Governments have slowly progressed, however, as Vallejo has removed push-back garages from their guidelines, but reactions to people's desires would be much quicker if these guidelines were never adopted in the first place.

Imagine if this was true for ice cream parlors. If they are directed by the city that 25% of all the single scoop ice cream served must be bubble gum ice cream, people would revolt. Even if you like bubble gum ice cream like some people like push-back garages, it's not difficult to see the perverse outcomes this would create. But for some reason we think it's reasonable for local governments to dictate what kinds of houses people must build.