Karp Associates - Custom Homes, Renovations, Construction Management


		Towns Debate: Can Big Houses Be Too Big? By Fred Musante - The New York Times, November, 15, 1998 "It's a difficult thing for us who love New Canaan, said Mr. McEwan. "We want to see the nicer elements of town preserved." That's not always possible, however. Arnold Karp, a New Canaan builder, said he was forced to demolish one old house because it had too much termite damage to move it. In another case, he said he spent an extra $30,000 renovating an older house rather than demolishing it, "but nobody's come forward and said, 'Gee, thanks for doing it.' The easiest method would have been to rip it down and start anew." The problem with many existing homes, Mr. Karp said, is they have seven-foot ceilings, no insulation in the walls, small rooms, only one bathroom, narrow staircases, antiquated heating systems and no air conditioning. His customers want higher ceiling and larger rooms, energy efficiency and numerous bathrooms, he said. Even though he profits by it, Mr. Karp said he though the movement for McMansions was excessive and occasionally insensitive to architectural concerns. "Sometimes, in a builder's haste, they give little thought to the other houses in the neighborhood," he said. But if the customer didn't create the demand for big houses, they wouldn't be built. Mr. Karp said he believed that some of his customers wanted more rooms than they would ever use. He said he's met people who start off with modest ideas, but than start adding to their wish lists - a library, exercise room, sewing room, guestrooms, a home office, a three-car garage - and it ends up making it impossible to simple renovate a house. Mr. Karp said he has seen new houses with exaggerated frontages and roof heights, that looked like houses copied on a wad of Silly Putty and then grotesquely stretched horizontally and vertically. "What do you call that style?" he asked. "Marriott? Hyatt?" But the scarcity of land is the biggest factor in the controversy. Wall Street money and big corporate salaries have driven up the going price for otherwise modest houses. Mr. Karp said a vacant, two-acre building lot in New Canaan now goes for $700,000 to $800,000 and it doesn't make sense not to build a $2 Million house on land that expensive.