There Is No Place Like Home (Published 2006) (2024)

WHAT was lost in all the frothy discussion last year about soaring real estate prices was just how much the homes themselves have changed.

The average home has increased 39 percent in size since 1974, and it has grown taller as well, according to the current issue of House & Garden.

In the last 32 years the average single-family home grew to 2,349 square feet from 1,695, even as family size decreased to 2.6 from 3.1 people. In the 1970's, the average ceiling height was 7 feet 9 inches. Today a standard ceiling height is nine feet on the first floor and eight on the second.

Here are some other comparisons from House & Garden:

In 1974, one in four homes had at least four bedrooms. Today it is more than one in three.

In 1974, people living in the Northeast had the smallest homes (1,600 square feet); today they have the largest: 2,543 square feet, a 59 percent increase.

"On the West Coast today, one in three garages can hold at least three cars. In 1974, only half of all new homes had room for two."

It's not your imagination: kitchens really have become bigger. In the early 1970's, they took up about 150 square feet, 9.3 percent of the home. Today the average kitchen has almost doubled, to 280 square feet, and represents nearly 12 percent of the house.

REALTY RETURNS -- Owning your home gives you a sense of security; investing part of your portfolio in real estate -- through a real estate investment trust -- gives you better returns with lower risk.

That is the finding of a study by Ibbotson Associates, a financial advice and research firm, reported in the current issue of Financial Planning.

Looking at the period from 1972 to 2004, Ibbotson found that a stock portfolio with 20 percent of its holdings in REIT's returned 11.6 percent a year, compared with 10.9 percent for portfolios without them.

"And the inclusion of REIT's reduced a portfolio's volatility by 0.5 percent," Marshall Eckblad wrote, adding "similar results occurred when fixed-income portfolios with and without REIT allocations were compared."

WWW.REDO.COM -- "The Internet is broken. It is time to replace it." So says the cover article in the current issue of Technology Review.

The argument is summed up neatly in the article's subhead: "The Net's fundamental flaws cost companies billions, impede innovation and threaten national security. It's time for a clean-slate approach."

And the National Science Foundation is trying to create one. "N.S.F. managers are working to forge a five-to-seven-year plan estimated to cost $200 million to $300 million" to develop "architectures that provide security, accommodate new technologies and are easier to manage," David Talbot writes.

Security is a prime concern. The Internet, in the words of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, is "highly vulnerable to premeditated attacks with potentially catastrophic effects."

As the article makes clear, the Internet was never created to handle all the different types of communication that are traveling over it today. The original intent was to ease communication among a few hundred academic and government users.

"The system assumed that all users on the network could be trusted and that the computers linked by the Internet were mostly fixed objects," Mr. Talbot writes.

Over time "a slew of patches arose: firewalls, antivirus software, spam filters and the like," but each patch makes the system a bit more cumbersome. Starting over could make the system more efficient.

FINAL TAKE -- Here's something to think about on Tuesday: Jan. 24 ranks among the most depressing days of the year, according to Health magazine.

The designation is "calculated by a formula based on weather, debt, failed New Year's resolutions, events to look forward to and general motivation levels."

For football fans, the news is even worse. Come Jan. 24, the Super Bowl will still be 12 days away. PAUL B. BROWN