The Relationship Between the Rising Price of Oil and Gas and Real Estate - Part 3

This week we are on a discovery of how increasing oil and gas prices are effecting real estate from a design perspective. More and more we are seeing a concern for maintaining large homes and the associated energy costs. There is more pressure on developers, designers and builders to provide less square footage.

We will see, and are already in some cases, a demand for smaller, more efficient floor plans. That means much more open floor plans with very little space wasted in hallways. This also means one eating area instead of our traditional formal dining room and informal nook. Instead we will see one dining area that can be dressed up for formal occasions, or dressed down for informal ones.

It means smaller room sizes over all, as well as rooms that will be multi-purposed. An example of this would be a secondary bedroom also acting as a media room and home office by using innovative accessories such as a Murphy bed wall unit that encompasses the guest bed and home entertainment wall unit, as well as desk and filing cabinet drawers.

In this respect we have much to learn from population dense countries such as Japan as regards their architecture and design which are traditionally much more compact than ours.


Best Regards,
The Debbie Simmonds Lifestyles Real Estate Team