the luxury of small space

In my last post, I talked about Abito, which I like because they create small, smart, intelligent houses that have minimal impact on the environment. This kind of philosophy really appeals to the hippie in me. Perhaps the reason I love small spaces is because unlike many people (especially those who lived through the depression), I don't have compulsive hoarding syndrome.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has been designing the homes of the future. According to the philosophy, people really only need 2.5 meters all around in order to be comfortable. That's a little extreme, but certainly believable. The philosophy further implies that people who live in these small (but very organized) homes become less materialistic, and have more time to "expand outside of themselves," reaching out more, and fulfilling more artistic goals. And did I say the designs look really beautiful? Well, they do.



Here's another extreme: A 10-sqm home. That's the size of a small walk-in closet (and the average size of a small bedroom here in the third world). But it has everything -- and it's stylish, too. Kinda extreme for me, but certainly inspiring:



Many others who have chosen to live in small houses exactly like this cite three reasons why they live the way they do:

(1) No mortgage

(2) Which means more money

(3) And more time to travel, read, do the things they love (because they don't have to work as hard as they don't "need" that much cash to maintain or pay for a conventional house)

If you think about it, living in a small, simple home affords you MORE LUXURY and FREEDOM. This makes me appreciate the small space we own, and just how ideal it really is for a lifestyle of work-travel-work-sleep. In that order.

And it also makes we want to buy this tiny home in Indiana. I am just kidding. I think. They don't let foreigners buy homes, do they? Maybe I'll just get this portable cube home from Japan and bring it here to Manila.

So, how big is your home?


****EDIT****

With property rises around the globe FALLING by 30 to 50 percent, why bother getting a big ovepriced expensive house, right? Last week there was the real estate bubble burst in Spain, and now China's property prices are likely to halve. According to The Financial Times:

Cao Jianhai, professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a leading government think tank, said an apparent rebound in the property market was unsustainable over the medium term and being driven by a flood of liquidity rather than real demand. He told the Financial Times he expected average urban residential property prices to fall by 40 to 50 per cent over the next two years from their levels at the end of 2008. “Prices may not fall in the near term but I expect a collapse starting next year, followed by many years of stagnation,” said Mr Cao, known as one of the “three swordsmen” of the real estate market because of his influence as an official economist.

***

Read my entry on the impending real estate crisis in the Philippines in the coming year. It looks like indicators of a price collapse are staring to show:




1. HLURB legal officer Mike Denava says he had noticed an increase in the number of complaints and those seeking refund assistance since December 2008, majority of which come from families of overseas Filipino workers.

“These families said they no longer wanted to continue to pay because of hard times,” Denava informs Inquirer Property.

He surmises that the increase in the number of refund claims could already be a direct result of the global economic crisis.

“In my opinion, this might already be the effect of the global recession. Many of the buyers of houses and condominiums didn’t anticipate this crisis to happen,” Denava says in Filipino.

Source

2. Inquirer Property reported last week that, according to the GPG report, prime 3-bedroom condo prices in Makati fell 2 percent in 2008 after an 11-percent rise during 2007. Proof that troubled times has landed on our shores as early as late 2008 is evident in Global Property Guide’s survey of publicly-available house-price time-series for 2008, which showed prices declining steadily. And seen from a global perspective, the downturn is still accelerating.

Source