Having just about recovered from being led astray at the RealWay conference last week I am posting a news release on the demise of the McMansion from Greg Watson which we issued to the media recently. Greg sees a move to more modest homes and less suburban sprawl in the future some information. What do you think, will we miss mowing the grass on the weekend?

According  to RealWay Managing Director, Greg Watson, Queensland  is fast moving towards smaller houses and units.

“With the impact of the Global Financial Crisis, rising interest rates and shortages of available land for development, we have to adjust to smaller homes and blocks of land,” Mr Watson said.

“This will contribute to solving the housing affordability issue in Australia.

“Land is more expensive, we have planning bottlenecks and increasing building costs which mean the Australian dream of home ownership is getting too difficult for many first home buyers.

Mr Watson whose RealWay group has 15 offices across Queensland says the environmental and infrastructure costs of outlying suburbs on quarter acre blocks are just too high.

“The whole property industry and government needs to look at how to make housing more affordable and while we have to drop our traditional aspirations in terms of building size and land, designers are already responding with quality designs with high environmental credentials.

“As Australians become more conscious of sustainability issues such as global warming, the desire to build big is waning – the new imperative is to demonstrate you are a frugal, environmentally savvy consumer.

“In the post GFC world people are realising smaller homes are so much cheaper to run and maintain than McMansions.

“In some areas we can already see that higher density residential areas are working successfully from a community perspective. And it is fair to say a sense of community has not always existed in some traditional low density suburbs.

“Smaller houses can help families communicate better too – do we really need to have exclusive games rooms and formal dining rooms?”

 “The feedback from our agencies is that rental properties are becoming harder to source and while property prices have come down in Queensland, it is now more difficult for buyers to get bank finance which compounds the problem of accessibility to housing.

“We really do need our elected representatives and bureaucrats at all government levels to get serious about meeting future housing needs – if there is a vision and plan for Queensland it is not clear yet,” he said.

Mark Casey

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