Buyers want to sleep downstairs

Boomers' aching knees swing pendulum back to first-floor bedrooms

Chris McCarthy knew what she wanted before she went house shopping a few months ago -- a master bedroom suite on the first floor.

Her knees hurt from running up and down stairs in her current house. And because her children are no longer toddlers, she doesn't need to sleep on the same floor as them anymore.

"Every time I'd forget something, I had to walk up the stairs," said McCarthy, 45. "I wanted to eliminate all the up-and-down."

McCarthy got her wish in the 2,600-square-foot house that she and husband, Pat, are buying in the Brookstone subdivision in Cary between N.C. 55 and Jenks Carpenter Road. Unlike previous homes, McCarthy expects to be in this one for a while.

"This is our 15-year house, McCarthy said. "When the kids go off to college, we're free to move."

First-floor master bedrooms are enjoying a resurgence after falling in and out of favor over the years.

The National Association of Home Builders says more than 40 percent of new homes have master suites downstairs, a 15 percent increase over a decade ago. This time -- no surprise here -- baby boomers with bad knees and creaky backs are being credited with increasing demand.

"Five or six years ago, it was rarely a question," said Jill Flink, a broker with York Simpson Underwood in Raleigh.

Not every buyer wants one, and the biggest driving force is still price, "but after that, it is on the short list of very, very many clients," Flink said.

Builders and architects have responded to the demand.

Pulte Homes is building 1,200 homes with first-floor master suites at Carolina Preserve, an active-adult community under development in Cary. So far, 520 homes have been sold.

Georgia-based Frank Betz Associates, one of the Southeast's largest residential designers, offers first-floor master bedrooms in 90 percent of the plans it sells to builders. Ten years ago, only 40 percent of plans had master bedrooms downstairs, president Russell Moody said.

Meg McLaurin, a Raleigh residential architect, said about half the 80 designs her firm does each year include a master bedroom downstairs, about a 400 percent increase in 10 years.

Recognizing the interest, the Triangle Multiple Listing Service in January changed its Web site so that its members can search listings by keying in first-floor master bedrooms.

There are plenty to choose from. Out of 16,148 listings on Monday, 8,874 had master suites downstairs. Of 5,733 new homes that the service listed, 3,174 -- or 55 percent -- had master suites downstairs.

Old is new again

Consider it residential real estate going full cycle.

Downstairs master bedrooms have been a fixture in American homes since the Colonial days. In the 18th century, the best "chambers," as bedrooms were known, were not only on the first floor, they were prominently featured to convey the social status of the head of the house. Lesser mortals got the upper floors. That has changed through the years: In the 19th century, health worries led to sleeping porches, for instance. But by the 1950s and 1960s, when one-story ranch homes were popular, the master suite had no choice but to share the same floor with every other room. That changed again in the 1970s and 1980s when rising land prices caused developers to build up, with multistory homes. Bedrooms were moved upstairs; again it was a case of builders heeding the wishes of baby boomers.

"The 1980s was when the baby-boom generation was having their children and wanted to be [sleeping] close by," said Raleigh residential designer Carl Skinner. "Now they're older and want to be away from them -- and the bedrooms are coming downstairs."