Skip to main content
  • Aging in Place - It's Not Your Builders Fault

    Aaron D. Murphy

    Book your home assessment with us!

    It's not your builder's fault. There was never a way that your spec home could be ready for you at 50 plus years old. Hi, my name is Aaron Murphy, owner of Forever Home. We have a website with stock plans and spec books for Aging in Place. I'm a licensed architect in Washington state. And I just wanted to tell you why it's not your builders fault. When someone has 10 acres of forested land, you probably see this as we're all having a housing crisis here in 2024, pretty much nationwide for affordability. Somebody will take 10 acres and do what's called a plat, which is to subdivide it into as many parcels as possible. Because for that owner, that is the retirement plan as far as selling the property and having a financial income that comes from that. So what happens is you make the roads and you make the detention pond for the stormwater and you make as many buildable parcels because that's your sellable product as is legally possible. So to do that you have made the smallest buildable parcels so that you can get as many as you can. But then your next buyer is the builder, and they buy a lot that you made as small as legally possible. And then their sellable product is heated square feet. But you've given them a postage stamp to work on, and then it has setbacks from the side yards, and the front, and the street, and the back, and the height limit. But typically, the only way that they can design as many sellable heated square feet as possible on that postage stamp is to create a two-story solution. So until every home has an elevator and until they're as cheap as your iPhone or your, everything eventually gets smaller and more cost effective. But we've had this happening for 50, 60, 70, 80 years of spec builder development that that was the MO. That is the process. So you're in a house that does not suit you after 50. So am I. Most of us are. We bought a house that is near the high school so our four teenagers can get to and from as needed, get picked up by friends back then, ride the bus or ride the bike if they miss the bus, right? So you know you pick a place by school or you pick a place by amenities and a spec builder built on a plat in your neighborhood. So it's not your builders fault but. 95% of our housing stock was built by spec builders in the US, which means your house isn't ready for you after 50 because they only build first- and second-time home buyer homes. They build the move in and they build the move up. Our house is 2400 square feet because we needed four or five bedrooms because we have four kids and us. So that's how we got here. But the problem now is that boomers and Gen X are moving into age ranges where mobility changes, mental things change about your acuity and the house didn't do anything to think about that. So anyway, that's why we're here is to offer you solutions, whether it's home assessments, whether it's stock plan for your agent in place, final forever home solution. That's what foreverhome-us.com is. It's for the homeowner and finding your solution to your needs on your property. And thanks to technology now anywhere. You the adult child, somebody my age, 50-ish, can take an iPhone and go scan mom's house anywhere in the country. You can find more out about that at our website, foreverhome-us.com, and get ahold of us if you need some help with assessments for aging in place. That's what we do, and now we can do it nationwide. So if you're a homeowner in a spec home, come talk to us. We have a way to help you with your next 30 years in the home you'd like to stay in, which is Aging in Place. Thanks. Talk to you later and have a great day. We'll be back with more insights for the homeowner in episodes to come. Take care.

We use cookies to improve the performance of our site, to analyze the traffic to our site, and to personalize your experience of the site. You can control cookies through your browser settings. Please find more information on the cookies used on our site here. Privacy Policy