Lennar’s The Home Within A Home® – is featured in this new article from Janet Morrissey of The New York Times. The article highlights the experiences of the Conrad family from Spanaway, Washington, and how Lennar’s multigenerational Next Gen homes were an ideal fit for them.
Bob and Myrna Conrad, both 65, share a house with their son Wade, 41, his wife Dana, 42, and their grandson Bryce, 21. Isn’t it crowded? Don’t they cramp one another’s style? Actually, no.
“We just set some ground rules, and it’s been working great,” said Wade Conrad, who has been living with his extended family since late 2013 in a NextGen multigenerational home, built by the Lennar Corporation, in Spanaway, Wash., near Tacoma.
The Conrads are among a growing number of families who are seeking specially designed homes that can accommodate aging parents, grown children and even boomerang children under the same roof.
The number of Americans living in multigenerational households — defined, generally, as homes with more than one adult generation — rose to 56.8 million in 2012, or about 18.1 percent of the total population, from 46.6 million, or 15.5 percent of the population in 2007, according to the latest data from Pew Research. By comparison, an estimated 28 million, or 12 percent, lived in such households in 1980.
Most multigenerational families, of course, live in ordinary houses, but the homebuilding industry is responding quickly to this shifting demand by creating homes specifically intended for such families.
The Lennar homes don’t offer just a spare bedroom suite or a “granny hut” that sits separately on the property or a room above a garage. The NextGen designs provide a separate entranceway, bedroom, living space, bathroom, kitchenette, laundry facilities and, in some cases, even separate temperature controls and separate garages with a lockable entrance to the main house. Family members can live under the same roof and not see one another for days if they so choose.
Multigenerational living is “growing in popularity,” said Robert Curran, a managing director at Fitch Ratings. With roughly 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day for the next 17 years, interest in such arrangements is unlikely to wane anytime soon.
Lennar was one of the first major builders to tap this market when it introduced its NextGen homes in 2012 in Phoenix.
“We were seeing a lot of people doubling up as a result of job losses or foreclosures, so we saw this as a solution to help accommodate that,” said Jeff Roos, a regional president at Lennar.
Lennar has since expanded the model to more than 200 communities in 24 markets.
