AUSTIN (KXAN) - Developers make money according to the amount of square footage they construct. So they have an incentive to build bigger and bigger houses. That's what led to the "McMansion" controversy four years ago, a controversy that ended when the Austin City Council imposed limits on the size of homes that can be built on smaller lots.
Forced to downsize, developers went back to the drawing board and produced a new approach that appears to satisfy various factions. The design usually features two living units on the same piece of property. They're called, "detached condos," free-standing condos" or "urban bungalows."
What sets them apart from traditional single-family homes is that shared property element. Individual owners have title to their own structures, but they share the land. As a practical matter, though, surveys mark territory that while jointly owned, is none-the-less controlled by whoever lives on each section.
So when Sheila Fox wound up buying a free-standing condo in near South Austin, she was able to add a carport, a deck and a stone walkway to her part of the yard. She is a resident of the Barton Hills neighborhood and the director of education at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden.
"Circumstances changed in my life so I couldn't really afford on my own to stay in Barton Hills," Fox said.
Not that she didn't try, though.
"Houses with this same square footage were significantly more costly, not quite as energy efficient," she said. "They were built more in the '30s and '40s. But I did want to stay close to downtown. I was looking at a home -- I can't remember if it was built in the '20s or '30s --really nice woodwork inside and it was selling, the asking price I think was $345,000, a little bit out of my range," she said. "I could have maybe made that work but I would have stressed every month. I would have worried about, you know, making the mortgage, keeping the yard up, all those kinds of things and I didn't want to put that stress into my life."
So she went shopping, driving around neighborhoods near the central city, determined to save money by finding something without the help of a Realtor. She saw a house for sale on Havana Street and inquired, only to decide it was too much for her wallet. That's when she noticed another home in the back yard of the first one.
"This place, the original asking price, I think was $289,000; I got in for $283,000," said Fox. "I have no homeowner association fees. My city bills are $100 a month total, water, electricity, waste, everything."
The tradeoff, though, is a bit of neighborly coziness. A fence separates the two condos, but the structures are still rather close to each other, so Fox and the man across the fence have had to have a few conversations.
"We have talked about things like lighting," she said. "If his back porch light is on at night, my bedroom is flooded with light upstairs. So we just had a simple conversation: 'You know, it would be really nice if before you went to bed, you thought about turning off your light,' and my neighbor was like, 'You know what, you're right; I never thought about that.'"
"So then I asked him about my carport light," she explained. "I said because, 'I bet my carport light bothers you,' and he said, 'No, it doesn't.'"
One issue down, a few more to go.
"We both have dogs; our dogs need to get along and not bark at each other or us when we have company in the yard and things like that," Fox said. "So we've talked about how we can become friends with each other's dogs, sharing biscuits and just letting them get to know each other and things like that. He's planted a row of bamboo; it's called a fencing bamboo and it should grow 20 feet high, maybe, and that will be a nice little privacy barrier between the two of us."
So things seem to be working out on Havana Street, but what about the future? What happens if the neighbor sells out to someone else who is less easygoing?
"I guess we'll see when that comes along," said Fox, "but I feel like someone looking at the home would see the close proximity. If it were me, I'd want to go meet my neighbors before I moved in and I'm hopeful that that will happen down the road."
Meanwhile, there is just no stress.
"I could not have bought both of these together but I could afford half of it," Fox said, "and here I am, happy as can be."
She is not alone in her happiness. She was sold the property by Marina Lawson, a real estate broker whose husband built the two condos.
"I would say about 50 percent of the homes I've sold this year are this style," she said.
City officials' delight, as well. For them, the payoff comes in the form of higher tax revenues since a property that might sell for $450,000 with one house on it can bring two sales of perhaps, $365,000 and $275,000 respectively.
Environmental advocates like the idea of reducing the number of people commuting from far off bedroom communities and fouling the air with exhaust in the process.
If anything is holding the process
