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Sun In An Empty Room

June 12, 2008


The last four lines of  Sun In An Empty Room by The Weakerthans refers to the empty apartment left behind, a casualty of the failed relationship:

Take eight minutes and divide (sun in an empty room)
By ninety million lonely miles (sun in an empty room)
Watch his shadow cross the floor (sun in an empty room)
We don't live here anymore (sun in an empty room).

Now, a new phrase has been coined by Carlton E. “Tuck” Nichols of Nichols & Stone, “undernourished homes,” meaning that many rooms in homes in the U.S. are as empty as the song describes, but by financial circumstances.

Amey Stone in an article in Business Week called the phenomena All house, no furniture.

Here’s a new trend a colleague just told me about — in certain New York suburbs, buyers are putting so much of their savings and monthly income into the purchase of big beautiful homes that they don’t have enough money left to furnish it.

He tells of families in his Orange County, N.Y., neighborhood that have toddlers running around vacant rooms while the parents try to gather enough savings for a trip to Ethan Allen. Basically, they’ve taken the conventional wisdom of buying as much house as they possibly can to a new extreme.

I called my mortgage broker, and asked her about the finances of buying big homes today.  I started with the house across the street, asking price $925,000.  Typically, in order to qualify for a jumbo mortgage, the buyer would put down 20% or $185,000, and the monthly payment would be about $5400 at this day’s prevailing interest rates.  If you had only 10% down, you would need mortgage insurance and the payment would be at least $1000 higher.  In neither case does the monthly payment include taxes and insurance.

However, those aren’t typical loans.  The conforming loan is in the $400,000 to $500,000 range.  These loans would have a monthly payment around $2,400 for that $500,000 house at 20% down. What kind of income do you need to qualify for such a conforming loan, three times the monthly payment, including taxes and insurance?  No, she said the payment, can range from 33% to 45% of gross income.

 Katherine Salant writes in Big House, Bigger Furniture Budget

…most people moving into houses (of 5,000 square feet) do not have enough furniture to fill them up, observed Susan Orlie, an Arlington, Texas, interior designer who has worked with many people buying the brand new big houses.

"Twenty-five hundred to five thousand square feet is a big jump," Orlie said. "Nobody has 5,000-square-feet worth of furniture. And, unless you have $35,000 to buy some more things, your house will look half-empty." What's more, Orlie added, "you can't assume that all the furniture you have now will work in a bigger house - the style and size may be wrong. In your new and bigger family room, your sofa may look too small and squatty."

Many people don’t realize how much it costs to furnish a house and don’t budget for it.  Orlie estimated that the furniture for a 5,000 square foot house in the Dallas area where she works would be about $70,000.
With houses built almost on top of each other, many new homeowners are more concerned with privacy that comfort.  Springing for shutters can run $16,000 to $20,000.

I know what it’s like to make a new house a home.  My second home that I built, had seven levels and for several years the dining room one level down from the entry and the living room, two levels down were undernourished until we had enough money for furniture.  In 1980 that our camel wool sofa for the living room cost $3,000.

My first apartment after the divorce was filled with cheap rental furniture.  My ex-wife kept all the furniture. My second was a condo that was used as the model for the complex.  I paid $25,000 for all the furnishings that were in the rooms.  My first apartment after my second divorce had a futon on a wooden base in the bedroom and a wicker sofa in the living/dining room and a small dining table where I wrote hours of poetry.  My ex-wife kept all the furniture.

In Portland, according to my friend MaryAnn McDowell, who works with a lot of condo buyers, she’s seen the opposite problem.  People are moving from big homes to condos in the Pearl and the Westside.  With the openness of the floor plans, they are finding they either have too much furniture or it looks a little worn.  One man swears his wife is selling something from their home each day.  He has labeled this phenomenon, “Anorexia of Decorating!”

Are we undernourished or anorexic?  I like to read your thoughts.  Send them to landfair3554@comcast.net

Posted by Mike Landfair on June 12, 2008 | Comments (0)