Houses are gettingetting

New freestanding houses in Australia are more than 30 per cent bigger than they were 30 years ago, according to a 2017 CommSec report, coming in at an average of 233.3 square metres, though the United States can lay claim to the biggest houses in the world.

Academics André Stephan and Robert Crawford from the Melbourne School of Design have researched the relationship between the size of a house and the energy use over its life, concluding “larger houses use signifificantly more resources, both for construction and operation”.

That may be changing and might partly explain why the tiny house movement is gaining momentum in Australia. The hallmarks of this trend are high architectural quality, a real sense of indoor/outdoor integration, low cost and very small buildings, from tiny mobile prefabs to charming structures of 90 square metres and less.

It’s a good idea but not one that is being embraced everywhere. In Vancouver, Canada, for example, tiny houses are illegal, prompting advocates to build display homes. A site is also being planned for a Tiny House Village on vacant land in Melbourne’s South Yarra.

Perhaps return on investment – that real-estate staple – will be the clincher. In inner London’s Wandsworth, a small home with a 2.3-metre frontage went on sale in early February. The asking price? One million pounds (about $1.8 million), or close to $20,000 per square metre. Small home, big price.