Will small be the new black?

One of the ideas that some commentators have mooted as a way forward for the Irish housing sector and a way to get more people owning their own homes was to reduce the average size of the family home.

 During the Celtic Tiger years, the size of the average home underwent a significant increase and big spaces became ever more desirable as time went on.

With the decreasing size of families, the lack of housing and increasing environmental considerations, small seems to be back on the agenda. 

There is the evidence in Dublin of a trend towards apartment-building again, but is it really part of a solution or is there any evidence of this as a trend on the ground?

“I know that a lot of people were talking about it being much better for people to have smaller houses,” says Pat Davitt, CEO of IPAV, “but I think that the standard three-bedroom semi for people of around 1,100ft or 1,200ft is a fairly well-established standard – it’s a set standard that young first-time buyers want and that doesn’t seem to have changed over the years. It’s still a very popular property to build and still a very popular property to buy.”