Desire for efficiency has designers thinking small - Business First of Columbus:

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The Eco moniker, explained M/I Chief Marketingt Officer Bill McDonough, stands for economical living, eco-friendly and The house costs less to buyand maintain, has a smallet impact on the environment and incorporates the latest technology to help homeowners managr their increasingly Internet-dependent lives. Becaus of its size, the Eco homes incorporates someof Susanka’s philosophies. “We have fewer rooms because people are livingmore efficiently,” McDonougb said. “The flexibility is builr in.” M/I’s Eco homes are modest in price and size they startat $120,000 and range from 1,266 to 2,350 square feet.
“People want smaller homes and want to livemore efficiently,” McDonough said the company’s consumer researcyh found. Beyond the desire of a growingg minority, economic reasons are reducing the footprint of new Smaller homes appealto first-tim home buyers who can’tf necessarily afford a largre home, McDonough said. And first-time buyers are the ones the entirse home building industry is focusing on now becausethey don’tr need to sell a home to buy one. Not only McDonough said first-time buyers have a built-in down paymentf in the form ofan $8,000 tax credif they will receive from the federal government as part of the economixc stimulus package.
Still, M/I isn’t abandoninv its high-end homes The company’s latest entry to the 2009 ’ds Parade of Homes in Dublin isa 4,700-square-foog Georgian listed for $799,999. Another client of Doug Covell, said he and his wife Eileen probably could have affordedsa high-end Parade of Homes house, but when they decidex to build new five years ago, they came away decidedlh against the concept. “What we saw in a typical spec home was more of a focusa on dramathan livability,” Doug Covell said. But the Covellx didn’t exactly go small, or at least as smallo as they wanted.
The Covellsa worked with Taylor to desigj aCape Cod-style home in Powell that totalw has 2,800 square feet. The Covells wanted only 2,400 squaree feet, but the neighborhood building code forced them tobuild bigger. “We absolutely did not want what is referred to as a Covell said.