Bigger may have seemed better during the housing boom, but since the market went bust, many homebuilders have shifted to constructing smaller houses with less extravagant amenities in an attempt to sell at a competitive price and meet buyers’ price demands.

From first-time homebuyers to retirees looking for a vacation home, people are searching for ways to save cash on home purchases because of the tough economic times, builders said. The result is that some builders have become more mindful in planning and building new homes in an attempt to keep home prices low.

“I think everybody right now is in a mode to save money,” said Dennis Pahlisch, founder of Bend-based Pahlisch Homes.

While large homes were commonplace a few years ago, most builders are shaving off a few hundred square feet to knock a few thousand dollars off a home’s price.

Pahlisch said some builders are cutting or reducing features such as extensive exterior architectural rock.

And while builders might have at one time installed an extra full bathroom in a home, now they might go without, he said.

It’s what Pahlisch calls value engineering.

“Every few thousand dollars makes a difference nowadays,” he said.

The same trend is true elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that builders and architects across the nation are taking Jacuzzis, extra pantries and additional square footage out of initial home plans to rein in home sizes and prices.

Thinking small

Not every home is shrinking in size or losing the high-end appliances. Scott Steele, of Steele Associates Architects, said that cost reduction is happening primarily in midsize homes, while the most expensive and largest homes are remaining more or less the same.

At Greg Welch Construction, the owner said he’s seeing people shying away from larger homes. The company’s average new home is around 1,600 or 1,700 square feet, whereas the average was far more than 2,000 square feet a few years ago, said Greg Welch. The smaller size cuts an average home’s price by tens of thousands of dollars, he said.

Most people who recently bought his homes are couples whose children have grown — empty nesters who want a high-value home that is smaller and easier to maintain. Along with a smaller home, however, comes a smaller utility bill, an additional incentive for people to buy, and for builders to build, smaller.

People also might have learned a lesson from the housing market crash and the high volume of larger homes that are now in foreclosure due to people buying larger homes than they could afford, Welch said. Also, some of those empty nesters would rather invest their money in a low-cost home than in the stock market, he said.

“I think it just has somewhat to do with a shift in the buyers,” Welch said.

Those reasons are why Mike and Janice Stewart bought a 2,400-square-foot house from Pahlisch Homes off Sydney Harbor Drive in Bend. The couple, who will vacation in Bend and keep another home in Silverton, said they looked at a larger house that was on a short sale, but liked the Pahlisch company’s home design and wanted a smaller, more efficient home that was easy to maintain.

“We wanted to be able to accommodate our kids, our grandkids, but still do it with a smaller package,” Mike Stewart said.

The home is part of a development that Pahlisch built this year.

Getting picky

Dan Pahlisch, Dennis’ son, said most of the houses currently built by Pahlisch Homes are between 300 and 500 square feet smaller than the ones built in 2006 or 2007.

Previously, he said the company would build a home, then use that design to build others. But after sales and home prices dropped — the median home price in Bend for October was $220,000, 44 percent below the peak in May 2007 — Dan Pahlisch said they began to take more time analyzing the details of each home, walking through with sales managers, architects and construction supervisors to find where they could save money and bring the price down.

“Now we’re really spending a lot of time on a plan,” he said. “We just pick it apart.”

Welch said appliances are among the small savings builders have found. It could mean a few thousand dollars in savings if a builder installs a high-quality appliance from The Home Depot, rather than more expensive designer appliances, he said. The types of flooring, the number of windows and the kind of counters are small details that also can turn into big savings.

Other builders and buyers are following the trend of going small, but it isn’t necessarily because of cost.

Jim Chauncey, president of Bend’s SunTerra Homes, said many of his customers are retirees who want a smaller, more efficient home. That doesn’t necessarily mean cheaper, but “really a more sensible home,” he said.

He said customers pay the extra costs for eco-friendly, more energy-efficient and healthier homes.

Cost-conscious

Tim Knopp, executive vice president of the Central Oregon Builders Association, said smaller homes will be the trend as more baby boomers move into retirement. He said members of that generation, as they try to find the home in which they’ll live their final years, will still try to build the perfect home, even if they spend less than planned on it.

“Because budgets have decreased, builders are looking to build the same home that somebody wants, but build it for less money,” Knopp said.

People also are looking for discounts from architects, like Howard Spector, principal of Mt. Bachelor Design Studio. Not only are customers pushing architects to figure out ways to make building their homes more cost-efficient, but Spector said his firm is forced to charge less in order to compete in a market without much work.

“When we give people estimates, they’re lower than the ones we used to do,” Spector said, adding that the estimates are 10 to 20 percent lower than before the housing market crash. “People are very cost-conscious.”