For the first time in four decades in the luxury-home business, executives at John Wieland builders are thinking the unthinkable: Maybe houses in the South don't really need a fireplace.
They're also wondering whether new homes require 4,700 square feet of living space. Or private theaters with 100-inch screens. Or super-size-me foyers.
"You have to keep taking things out until you hit a critical point where people reject your product," said Jeff Kingsfield, senior vice president of sales at Smyrna-based John Wieland Homes & Neighborhoods.As they draw up blueprints for the house of the post-recession future, builders are struggling to distinguish among what home buyers need, what they want and what they can live without -- Jacuzzi by Jacuzzi, butler's pantry by butler's pantry.
It's an experiment brought on by necessity. Two years ago, closely held Wieland was building 1,800 houses a year in posh subdivisions in Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas, selling for an average of $650,000 apiece. Today, the company is closing on just 600 homes annually, according to Wieland. It has slashed staff to 330 employees from 1,100.
The American housing market continues to drag, with the Mortgage Bankers Association reporting Thursday that applications for home-purchase loans have hit a nine-year low, plunging a seasonally adjusted 11.7% in the week ending Nov. 6 from the previous week. U.S. sales of newly built homes have fallen sharply as well, from 1.3 million in 2005 to 485,000 last year. The latest Census Bureau data suggest that this year's sales will be even lower. Just 294,000 new homes sold through the first nine months of this year.
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