Perhaps one of the reasons is that we love to out-do our neighbors, but the underlying root is that we Americans just love houses and homes. Homes are featured on all media outlets, often as double- page celebrity home layouts or as renovating ideas or introducing trendy fads for the home. Homes make good entertainment material!

However, homes have changed over the years and once the home was considered to be only a modest place to hang your hat and not the showcase it often is nowadays.

After the lean years of the Second World War, newly built homes were an average of only one thousand square feet. Not quite the two and a half thousand square foot monster which represents the average home built today.

Our love affair with homes is all encompassing and all aspects of the housing market seem to appeal to us from decorating them, renovating and designing them to building and expanding them. When one room or area of the home is to be decorated, it is a family affair and everyone has an opinion on the new design and decor.

If you can actually renovate yourself you will get all the glory for the new look of your modern home. In most cities these days, the local Home Depot is practically the largest store you will ever find.

The real story line is in the mega-rich houses. The percentage of homes costing over $1 million has doubled since the 1970s and the sale of these homes has increased by 500%!

Filling the space in our new large homes is not a problem, as people have a list of amenities that they now want in a home. They include luxuries like his and hers showers, mini-theaters, home offices, media areas and walk in pantries.

But size counts, the garage is now the largest sized single space in the modern home, and the master bedroom is creeping up to be almost double the measurements of the other bedrooms.

When renovating a home for sale, do not do away with too many bedrooms when you are modernizing. Some people make the mistake of developing one of their smaller bedrooms into a luxury bathroom.

Real estate agents tell us that the number of bedrooms in a home is still a factor in boosting the price; it also still counts in boosting the prestige of the property!

One of the reasons that our homes started to get bigger was simply because we bought more possessions. More clothes encouraged the idea of two separate closets and/or the walk- in dressing room. More cars and more recreation vehicles meant bigger garages. Even the TV is now bigger and many people have a home theater in their own home.

Between 1950and 2006 the average U.S. home measured has risen by 150%. The amount of homes that have three car garages has doubled in that time period. But, there are a couple of factors about modern day homes that are getting smaller! However, neither of them relate to the size of the house - one is the plot of land that the house is built on, and the other is the family that is living inside the house!