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An American cultural revolution is killing cookie-cutter homes — here's what homebuilders are selling instead (PHM)

The companies that popularized the cookie-cutter neighborhood have left the model behind — a shift that reflects an American cultural evolution.

The cookie-cutter neighborhood is an iconic American symbol of suburbia — the architecture is uniform, the lawns manicured, the colors drawn from the same palette. Facades of the houses may vary, but local kids immediately know where to find the bathroom or kitchen when they enter a neighbor's home, since it's structured exactly like their own. From above, the streets exhibit a striking similarity.

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Concord Green, a subdivision in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, is one such development. It was built in 1959 and consists of three cul-de-sacs and 50 homes with just two floor plans.

Barbara Dinneweth moved there with her husband and two daughters in 1976.

"We drove through the subdivision when we were just looking to buy a house, and we noticed how the neighbors were outside talking and interacting and the kids were playing out front, and we thought, 'This is a really nice place to raise children,'" she said.

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But subdivisions are no longer being built in the same style they were during the postwar boom of the '50s and '60s. Growing wealth inequality, shifting demographics, and changing consumer demands have led US homebuilders to leave the original cookie-cutter model behind — a shift that reflects an American cultural evolution away from the traditional image of suburbia.

Dinneweth and her husband still live in Concord Green, and except for alterations that residents have made to their homes, she says the subdivision hasn't changed much. The company that built it, however, certainly has.

Concord Green was the first subdivision built by Bill Pulte's company. After the neighborhood was completed, Pulte's business expanded rapidly across the country — it eventually became PulteGroup, now the third-biggest homebuilder in the US by revenue. At its outset, PulteGroup seized on a popular trend: suburban tract housing, informally known as the cookie-cutter neighborhood.

The undisputed pioneer of this type of housing was Abraham Levitt, whose company, Levitt & Sons, developed a 1,000-acre plot of land on Long Island in 1947. Levittown, New York, was filled with rows of identical homes intended to house white war veterans.

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"Following World War II, there was this incredible deficit in the housing market," said Kathy Dorgan, an affordable-housing expert and the principal of Dorgan Architecture & Planning. "Housing hadn't been built at all for a number of years because men were at war, so there was a huge burst in the need for that with the middle class coming back."

That housing shortage, combined with the baby boom and President Dwight D. Eisenhower's freeway-construction program, led tract housing developments to balloon across the country. The lack of variation in the home designs was simply a way to keep the houses affordable — materials could be ordered in bulk and components could be mass-produced on site.

"You couldn't go too crazy with architectural features," said Ralph McLaughlin, the chief economist at Trulia. "To produce quality homes that are somewhat inexpensive, you basically have to have a factory-line production process."

Pulte visited Levittown, Pennsylvania, for inspiration when homes in Concord Green weren't selling as quickly as he wanted.

"Levittown was a miracle," Pulte said at the time, according to a company biography. "He did so many things speedy fast, production-wise. After I saw this, I knew mass production could be done easily."

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The miracle eventually came to an end, however — Levitt & Sons was an early victim of the recession and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2007.

PulteGroup was hit hard by the housing crisis as well. The company built more than 45,000 homes in 2005, but just over 15,000 in 2011. During the same period, its stock dropped from $46.81 a share to $3.95, and its staff shrunk by about 75%. In 2016, the company built nearly 20,000 homes — still a far cry from its peak during the housing bubble.

Lennar and DR Horton, the two other largest US homebuilders, also suffered severely; Lennar's share price went from $67.27 in 2005 to $13.54 in 2011.

The economic downturn wasn't the only reason cookie-cutter construction took a plunge. Depictions of subdivisions in pop culture began to highlight the darker sides of life there, with dysfunctional suburbia becoming a common setting in the late '90s and early 2000s.

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The film "The Truman Show" portrayed suburbia as a constructed set in 1998, and "American Beauty" focused on the unsavory forces behind the facade of the American dream in 1999. The TV series "Desperate Housewives," which premiered in 2004, made suburban secrets and scandals its centerpiece, while "Weeds," which came out in 2005, used "Little Boxes," a 1962 song about middle-class suburban conformity, as its opening song.

As this perception of cookie-cutter neighborhoods spread, competition in the housing industry led companies to seek affordable ways to vary streetscapes, architecture, and housing elevation. Newer subdivisions were designed to appeal to consumers who rejected the uniformity of earlier developments.

"If you read about Levittown, people were really happy with it. They were a great housing product," Dorgan said. "But, I mean, I liked my first iPhone, but I like my iPhone 6 better."

Mark Ash, PulteGroup's national director of design, says the company thinks about neighborhood development differently now than it did when Concord Green was built — houses are given identifiable architectural styles, and outdoor spaces are integrated in subdivisions.

Many aspects of the tract homes built during the '50s and '60s are outdated, requiring residents to make upgrades. Kitchens were generally designed for a person to cook rather than as a space to gather, garages were built for one car, and living-room designs did not account for the increasing prominence of TVs and media stations in the home.

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Dinneweth and her Concord Green neighbor Clyde Herring both say they've enlarged their family rooms, as have many others in the subdivision.

"I think we're still kind of in that phase where the consumers are pushing back against this cookie-cutter mentality," Ash said. "Now I think there's more of a thoughtful approach to design from a community aspect: You're trying to create a destination — someplace that engages our buyers."

Many of the original buyers of cookie-cutter houses were young couples and families who were part of the growing postwar middle class. Rising economic inequality has since led housing developers to decrease the proportion of developments built for that demographic. Families near the top of the US economic spectrum in 2013 had 12 times as much wealth as families in the middle, compared with six times as much in 1963.

Jay Mason, the vice president of market intelligence at PulteGroup, said its initial clientele consisted of two groups: first-time homebuyers, and what it referred to as move-up buyers — families moving from a smaller space to a bigger one, likely because of having children or advancing in their careers.

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"The biggest difference between that and today is just diversity of offerings," Mason said. "We're in a lot more metropolitan areas. We're, geographically, across the whole country. We're trying to hit a variety of price points to have a diverse portfolio."

"The amount of tract construction that is designed for the lower or middle of the economic [spectrum] has declined precipitously, as has the gain of value in the lower end of the market compared to the upper end," Dorgan said, adding that there's simply more money to be made in building and selling big houses.

Young buyers also aren't demanding homes at the same rate as their baby-boomer parents once did. Millennials are putting off marriage and having kids later, which changes the types of housing they consider. They're also saddled with an unprecedented amount of debt.

While companies like PulteGroup are no longer building the same kinds of cookie-cutter neighborhoods, they've found new ways to thrive. PulteGroup has shifted its business to incorporate a new demographic: adults 55 and older.

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PulteGroup separates this group into two categories. First, there are the empty-nesters, who are still working but have children who are grown or in college.

"That buyer is prominent for us right now because they have borrowing power, they're willing to spend, they're not saddled with student debt, they're not facing some of the challenges that a younger buyer in today's economy may be facing," Mason said.

PulteGroup refers to the second category of older Americans as "active adults" — those looking to move into planned retirement communities that consist mostly of single-family homes but come with amenities. Combined, these two groups now make up over a third of PulteGroup's nearly $6 billion annual business.

Anticipating the housing needs of America's aging baby-boomer generation — the people whose parents were the company's earliest buyers — might have allowed PulteGroup to beat Levitt & Sons at its own game.

Other big developers have followed the same trend. Lennar launched an active-adult division before PulteGroup, and DR Horton in 2016 introduced its Freedom Homes brand focusing on affordable homes for active adults.

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Dinneweth and her husband will soon become the older buyers PulteGroup is seeking out. The two are in their 70s, with grown daughters, and don't expect to stay in Concord Green longer than another year or two.

"We're going to be one of those families who will have to downsize quite soon," she said. "It's going to be a very hard transition because I don't want to do it."

Dinneweth said she hopes to move closer to her daughter, who also lives in suburban Michigan. She said she would be sad to leave the subdivision and the memories tied to it, but she doesn't see any way to avoid a move. Even in the comfortingly familiar neighborhood, things can't stay the same forever.

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