Living small — Some Utahns discovering the charm of cottages

Counting the basement, the home is 1,800 square feet. (Or 450 sq. ft. per person.) Not tiny. Still, there are just two bedrooms upstairs, so the Shosted's two boys share. And when company comes for dinner, it can get pretty crowded around the kitchen table.

In short, this house is homey. As Shelly cleans the kitchen or plants petunias, she often thinks about Erick's grandmother and how proud she was of this place. Shelly likes knowing that "she raised her two children in this house and now we are raising our two."

If the feel of the place is one reason for living small, mortgage payments are another. Says Christine Peterson about their town house in Orem, "We like the price. Obviously that is a big issue. It's why we are still here."

Peterson bought the 2,100-square-foot-home 10 years ago, when she was single. She had two roommates. They moved out when she got married. Then there were only two people in all that space and the town house seemed huge.

Now Peterson and her husband, Mark, have three children. (Their living space averages 425 square feet per person.) They will eventually buy a bigger home, she predicts. In the meantime she loves living in a place where someone else takes care of the lawn and where the front yard is not divided by driveways. In her neighborhood, the sidewalk is a safe place for children to play.

Her home may have gone from feeling big to feeling tiny, but actually the size of Peterson's house is probably average for homes being built in Utah these days.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average new U.S. home is 2,230 square feet. That size is holding steady after decades of increases. However, it can be tricky to compare the national average to the Utah average, says Mike Mineer, vice president of Construction Monitor, a company that tracks building permits and other trends.

Mineer explains the problem: Some counties include unfinished basements in their numbers and others report only the finished square footage. Mineer knows that many new homes are starter homes, with unfinished basements that will soon be finished. So his data show the average new home in Utah is 1,994 square feet — but he knows that's low. Still, he says, he's sure Utah homes are smaller than the national average.

Mineer just came back from Denver where he saw starter homes that started at 2,600 square feet (selling for $200,000). They were not as cute as Utah starters, he added. They were boxy.

If a starter home can feel boxy, a big home can sometimes feel too big, especially after the kids grow up.