Back to the family home

Forecasters call it "the Waltons effect". Instead of a millennium marked by 4 million of us living alone, as predicted gloomily by the Government, we could swing the other way. We could see a return to three generations of a family sharing the same house, as they do in the sentimental American TV series, The Waltons. Instead of building inner-city one-bedroom flats, goes the theory, developers should be concentrating on five- and six- bedroom houses. It rather scuppers John Gummer's plan for inner-city regeneration to protect green field sites.

But Graeme Leach, of the Henley Centre for Forecasting, says it would depend on the family members getting along. Not everyone has a brother like John-Boy. Not everyone would want a brother like John-Boy.

"We don't think the large growth [of single home owners] the Government is projecting will come to pass," says Graeme Leach, who outlines the Waltons effect in the Centre's newly published Housing Futures. "Economic and social factors are intertwined. Rising affluence in the Eighties permitted people to move out of the family home and buy their own. We don't expect the build-up of economic growth to be as strong over the next few years. The demand for smaller properties could be reversed. We are dubious about the Government's projections and we think they should be toned down."

Two major financial factors could encourage living en famille: expensive childcare, and residential care for the elderly, which gobbles up inheritances at pounds 500-plus a week. The two could possibly be resolved by using the equity from the sale of the grandparents' home to buy a bigger house with granny annexe. And while parents are at work, children could be cared for by granny. A sprightly granny, of course, may resist this plan.

"Inheritance is the boom that's never happened," says Leach. "So many couples have had to sell up in advance of one of them dying, while the other goes into residential care, estates are not being passed on. At some stage, people may well look at the cost and say `hang on, this is daft'."

It may explain a flurry of interest in houses like the one under offer through Hamptons in Broadway, Worcestershire. 110 and 114 High Street are two detached, self-contained cottages linked by a conservatory. The main house has three bedrooms, the annexed cottage two. At offers over pounds 285,000, the price is within the reach of two generations, each with a property to sell.

This possibility has not gone unnoticed by builders who took the Government at their word in the Eighties - and found themselves burdened with a huge stock of poky studio flats you couldn't give away. They are not about to have their fingers burnt again.

If, however, your family is more Addams Family than Waltons, living alone might seem a better option. And it needn't mean living in a box.

"It's one of the great myths of household projections that single people need small houses," says Roger Humber, director of the House Builders Federation. "The equation is dangerous and wrong. We've had the experience in the Eighties of trying to build specifically single units; now most are unsaleable."

Though 35 per cent of the people who bought flats in Crosby's Brindleyplace development in Birmingham were singles, they wanted at least a second bedroom for friends, family visitors, to use as a home office, or - in extremis - for a lodger. More than 60 per cent of the new or renovated flats Cluttons has sold in Docklands have two bedrooms.

"Young single working men are more likely to find a one-bedroom flat ideal," says Mr Humber. "They are out a lot. As they begin to cohabit they leapfrog the first-time buyers market, buying bigger properties. Increasingly, late 20s and early 30s buy three-bedroom houses. Mr Gummer drew attention to divorce. But for a divorced 35-year-old mother, a one-bedroom flat is the last thing she wants. And divorced fathers want space for their children's access visits."

Mark Wilkins, a 23-year-old duty manager for Bass Tavern in Birmingham, fits Mr Humber's single-man profile. He bought a one-bedroom flat in Crosby's Symphony Court development. "I'm too busy to worry about looking after a bigger place, and anyway I have enough room to fit in my desk and computer. I don't plan to marry in the near future."

Roger Humber sounds exasperated with the theorists who don't work at the sharp end of the property trade. "Small houses are not a neat solution. We reject the idea that people should be crammed into little boxes on an old, industrial city site, which of course appeals to environmentalists.

"It is a dangerous political illusion. We have got to build bigger houses because people value space and privacy."