Is “Traditional” Avoided Like the Plague?

I was out for a stroll this morning and noticed an interesting catch phrase on a real estate sign, “anything but traditional.” Sure it could refer to opeertions and attitude, but my guess is they wouldn’t have chosen the phrase if traditional was a hot feature in homes.

If you’ve been out looking for homes you may have noticed finding a traditional-looking home with lots of walls doors and square symmetrical spaces can be difficult. More often there are big, open spaces, multi-purpose rooms, built ins and large windows.

This all makes it difficult to find places to put stuff. A traditional home can accomodate lots of things because there are lots of walls and spaces in corners, between windows, in hallways and atop stairways. There just isn’t a lot of room for stuff in many of the homes being built now.

I don’t think its necessarily that home buyers want to be minimalists, the open spaces don’t offer places for too many things even though there may be more space over-all. It would be nice to see a traditional form come back to home building.