Laurie Frost Wilson, an at-large planning commissioner, remembers when the lot across the street from her Lorton home was densely wooded. When a developer outlined plans to build 16 houses on the lot, they were sold within a month, sight unseen.
From her post on the Planning Commission, she sees applicant after applicant asking to build what she calls "cookie-cutter houses on little teeny tiny lots." The houses offer about 6,000 square feet of usable space and tend to run in the $400,000-$500,000 price range.
"They all look the same," she said of these so-called "McMansions."
"They may have a little bit bigger lots, a little bit smaller lots but they all look the same," be they in Sully, in Dranesville, in Lorton or anywhere in the county, she said.
SOARING LAND PRICES in Fairfax County in the last decade have forced residential developers to target more upscale customers, said Charles Langpaul Jr., the vice president of sales for Creekstone Communities.
"The land dictates that we have to build a little bigger, a little more upscale product," he said.
All of Creekstone's properties are in Great Falls and sell for more than $1 million.
But the creation of more upscale neighborhoods drives land prices up further, forcing the developers to build still larger homes. Langpaul notes that a larger home does not cost a lot more to build but that with skyrocketing land prices, builders are forced to build larger, more expensive homes in order to turn a profit.
In 1991, Creekstone's properties ranged between 2,800 and 4,000 square feet with a two-car garage. The range is now between 4,000 and 6,000 square feet with a three- or four-car garage.
The land prices have also kept the larger homes on same size lots. Most of Langpaul's customers will build on a one-acre lot, the minimum lot size in Great Falls.
"You've got enough land for a potential swimming pool, enough to have a nice little play yard for the kids, but it's not so much that you spend half the weekend maintaining it," said Langpaul.
While large houses are popular in McLean and Great Falls, the trend in much of the rest of the county is to build smaller, more affordable homes, according to Steven Alloy, the president of Stanley Martin Companies.
For the past two years, Alloy said, the affordability and traffic crises have caused some builders in Fairfax County to start bucking the trend for bigger and bigger houses.
"People want less house closer to work," said Alloy.
"Fairfax County has well-established areas where you can't build," he added. "But they want more density. To provide for the future of public transportation these are areas where they want more density," which results in smaller houses on smaller lots.
Alloy also attributed this counter-trend to changing demographics. Traditional families, he said, have historically been the population group looking for bigger houses.
"But traditional families are a rapidly diminishing part of the market. We're seeing a whole cross section of different house buyers: empty nesters, one-parent household, unrelated people. It's a whole cross-section of America."
But while the number of married-couple families has been declining in Fairfax County, that decline has been slow. Census data shows that those households accounted for 59.4 percent of the population in 2000, down from 61.65 percent in 1990.
PLANNING COMMISSIONER Wilson does not share Alloy's view.
"I'm surprised people buy [the 'McMansions'] but they do," she said.
"Americans want space inside," said Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute of Virginia Tech, in Alexandria. "There's more coverage of the lot."
According to Lang, the Washington region — tied with Salt Lake City — leads the country in terms of the number of houses with nine bedrooms or more.
"But Salt Lake City has larger families," he noted.
Fairfax County does not keep figures of average square footage of homes.
Yard space is not as popular among homebuyers as floor space inside the house, resulting in properties that come as close as they legally can to the property line. The setback required by the county varies according to the zoning.
"It gets to be at the point where your side yard was 10 feet and it's now 6 feet," said George Poulson, a partner with Keystone LLC. "They're typically looking for more square footage in the house."
According to Alloy, working households have little time to spare on yard work and therefore are not looking for big yards. "I don't know hardly anyone who cuts their own grass," he said. "Kids these days don't cut the lawn."