Escaping McMansion Hell.
The average cost of a new home in the state of Georgia in 2016 was $155,000. In 2023, that has grown to a hefty $315,000. Normal inflation aside, that massive increase in price over time is driven largely by two factors: housing scarcity—the fact that population growth continually exceeds new housing stock, making homes more valuable because of high demand/low stock—and because the size of the average home has grown to 2,500 square feet in the same time period.
Much of the draw around suburban growth and thinking is that “more space = better”. The suburbs were seen as a way to spread out, get more bang for your buck, have a yard for your family to play in. Over time, home builders and housing developers stopped prioritizing quality and started prioritizing scale and cost. This meant building bigger, cheaper homes as much as possible. It's the kind of thing that led to the popularity of the blog/book McMansion Hell, which points out the often absurdity of these overscaled, poorly thought-out designs that are driven almost entirely by that prioritization of scale and cost. Suburban home development adopted the philosophy “subsidy through subpar quality”, and that has driven many folks like us at MicroLife to try and re-aim that to “subsidy through density” instead to bring back a sense of quality.
Image courtesy of McMansion Hell.
One of the attractors of buying an older home is often that they have “character”, which is basically due to the fact that they were built at a time that considered craftsmanship a value worth prioritizing. The reason many of these homes last upwards of 100 years is because of that craftsmanship, and the care and upkeep of generations of homeowners to retain that value. That quality is part of the reason why older, urban neighborhoods—like those inside the perimeter of Atlanta—have experienced a much higher level of value growth over that of the newer suburbs outside the perimeter.
The other major factor is the age old saying in real estate, “location, location, location”, meaning the adjacency to amenities, vibrancy of pedestrian and human-scale infrastructure, and quality of life of these older neighborhoods are more desirable and more valuable to potential home buyers. There are countless homeowners in the Atlanta suburbs who would gladly give up their grueling commute into downtown for a home 10 minutes away from work—but they can’t afford it. Buying a home in Morningside or the heart of Decatur can easily run you a million dollars, and homes that fall below those prices often require so much renovation work that you’d end up spending a million anyway.
At the same time, American Society has spent decades romanticizing the ideal nuclear family. Zoning ordinances and home builders encouraged that same dream of owning a four-bedroom house with a lawn and a fence. Anyone who didn't have that dream was dubbed an urbanite—who surely must want to live in a shining apartment tower in the heart of the Central Business District. And thus only those two options saw continued growth, while the middle became missing save for dotted examples “grandfathered in” to many aging urban neighborhoods. Incredibly dense and car-centric townhomes became the only option for those looking for an alternative, and even they, like the McMansions, prioritize “sellable square footage” over quality, human experience and community growth.
The reality is, society has a continually declining number of people who fit the description of the nuclear family. Fifty percent of American households in 2024 have only one or two individuals living in them. Empty Nesters continue to grow as a large demographic. Young people are living longer and therefore waiting longer to get married and have children, if they even have kids at all. In the meantime, 80% of our housing stock is still geared towards that four-occupant family, meaning there is a massive mismatch between our prioritization of square footage over quality of life.
So, what if we could build right-sized, affordable units that still retain craftsmanship and character? This is one of the major issues of today's housing world that drives MicroLife and likeminded urbanists to continue to encourage the growth of that missing middle housing. When thought out and designed for experience, a 500-600 square foot cottage or apartment can be plenty of space for a couple to live in without feeling the walls crushing in on them. Coupled with the large, shared amenities of a cottage court, there still remains plenty of space to get out of your house—where you can interact with others and feel part of a community, to boot. And shared ownership also means shared responsibility—meaning people like those aging Empty Nesters can still retain their own private residence without the expense, upkeep, and maintenance of a private lawn and yard.
Perhaps most importantly, creating subsidies through density lowers the barrier to entry for potential homeowners. While that median home price continues to grow north of $300,000, the price for a cottage in one of our pocket neighborhoods can be as low as $200,000 for a one-bedroom unit. These prices are in line with affordability targets for those earning 80-100% of the area median income (AMI)—which means the true average income for someone living in the city spending 30% or less of their income on housing.
Not only does this “subsidy through density” and smaller scale housing types allow even further naturally affordable home ownership opportunities in underserved areas, it also creates opportunity for access to already great neighborhoods for homeowners that would be otherwise priced out. Residents in neighborhoods that are experiencing growth and gentrification can have a pathway to selling their homes without having to relocate outside of their zip code for affordability. Those Empty Nesters—or the folks who live in homes where, all of a sudden, their property tax burden becomes a barrier to continued ownership—can actually sell, take that equity out of their now higher-valued home, use some of it to move into an affordable unit nearby, and keep the profits to themselves for retirement or simply continued comfortable residence in the neighborhood.
All of this illustrates how we need to shift our lens of thinking from “bigger = better” to “more diverse = better”. The great thing about missing middle solutions is that they can blend right into existing single-family neighborhoods without sticking out like a twenty-story apartment tower. They introduce neighborhood-scale, gentle density to start to infill with a more diverse set of housing options, and then connect those diverse neighborhoods through human-scaled design that helps us connect with each other and find a sense of community.
Devin Vermeulen
MicroLife Director of Design & Development
