Forbes magazine has just announced the 10 most expensive homes for 2003, properties on the market for as much as $75 million.

Such homes represent the extreme edge of an ongoing trend, the growth of American housing to the point where many residences are now two to three times larger than those built 50 years ago.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, a home built in 1950 usually had 700 to 1,200 square feet while today, says the association, "the typical new home averages more than 2,200 square feet and has 2 or more bathrooms and 3, 4 or more bedrooms."

It's not just that we have more interior area, we have also packed more features into today's houses.

"Amenities," says NAHB, "such as whirlpool bathtubs, gas fireplaces, gourmet kitchen appliances, state-of-the-art home security systems and low-maintenance exterior materials, make new homes more comfortable and livable than ever. Also, homes built today are also more energy efficient. In fact, new homes are about twice as energy efficient as new homes were just 20 years ago."

In most communities you can almost date the housing stock by the size of local palaces. The trend seems to be massive footprints on small lots -- an approach which creates a lot of interior square footage with little exterior space to maintain.

At a time when there is a strong need for affordable housing, huge and expensive homes are virtually required by the economics of land acquisition. You can't build small and cheap in most metro areas because the cost to acquire and develop property is so great. In addition, zoning ordinances and minimum lot sizes assure an effective housing shortage in many areas -- thus a major reason for rising prices.

I am elated that some of us can buy $75 million homes, but I am more interested in the 40 million people who are unemployed or paid less than $18,500 a year and have a need for decent, basic housing.

People with large holdings and big incomes have choices while those on the cusp of subsistence do not. The failure of our housing market is that we are very good at plans, restrictions and zoning -- and not so good at affordable housing. We've taken the reward motive out of affordable housing because builders in many communities cannot profitably construct cheap homes and still meet zoning requirements.

But less expensive homes are possible, sensible and necessary. Smaller lots combined with smaller homes can certainly be built -- if allowed. And such homes can easily work for many households: Just look at the typical home sizes from five decades ago -- and then look at the number of occupants per house. According to the Census Bureau, the average household had 3.37 people in 1950 -- and 2.58 people in 2002.

What we have now are fewer people per household and cavernous, echo-filled structures in which they are housed. This makes little sense in terms of land usage, energy consumption, environmental issues or cost.

Today we increase home values by limiting supply, a better approach would be to increase home prices by enlarging the pool of qualified buyers. We'd have more buyers if we had more affordable housing, homes that can appreciate in value and allow owners to build equity, increase household wealth over-time and re-enter the marketplace as move-up buyers.

As an owner it's in your self-interest to want the largest possible pool of move-up buyers, a group that represents some 60 percent of the existing home marketplace. Increase the number of move-up buyers and your home is likely to sell faster and for more money. The catch is that you can't have move up-buyers unless they have properties to replace -- thus the need for affordable housing.

Community planning today favors the upwardly mobile, the already settled, growing congestion and a numbing architectural sameness. We are using land regulation to limit affordable housing at the very same time we claim that affordable housing is an attractive and desirable goal -- except where we live.

For more articles by Peter G. Miller, please press here.

Published: October 21, 2003

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