Are there any financial advantages to owning a not-so-big house?
The long-term maintenance costs of a not-so-big house should be substantially lower than an average house. There’s less square footage to heat and cool. The walls, ceilings and windows are better designed and more energy efficient. There is a hidden benefit to a not-so-big house: It will maintain itself much better over time. That’s a big part of the not-so-big mentality; it’s not all show. There’s real substance beneath the walls. These houses will be around 300 years from now. You stress making homes beautiful. Why are the aesthetics of a home so important? Isn’t utilitarian design more “green”? There’s something that’s become even clearer to me in the last 10 years: Beauty is, by its very nature, an extremely green action. Beautiful houses built 100 to 200 years ago are still around. The ugly ones are torn down rather quickly. So, you can build a green house that has all the energy-efficiency bells and whistles, but if it’s ugly, it’s not going to be around 60 years from now. My poi
