The Case for the Millennial Dingbat

My wife and I just got back from Napa and Sonoma, where I learned they’ve yanked roughly 4,000 acres of vines out of the Sonoma Valley. That was sobering to learn. Millennials aren’t drinking wine the way prior generations did, so to help stabilize prices, growers are literally pulling supply out of the ground.

Rest assured, I am doing my best to help reduce supply as well.

But two observations from our brief wine country trip made me rethink housing affordability.

The first wasn’t agricultural. It was technological.

Waymo Than I Thought

Waymo driverless cars were everywhere. Hundreds. At one intersection, I counted ten of the same white Jaguars in traffic. It’s not just a California thing, nor a blue state thing – they are / will be almost everywhere soon. Why? Because there is demand for them.

Millennials, broadly speaking, are driving less and owning fewer cars, especially in dense markets like San Francisco. Between Uber, public transit, remote work, and now autonomous fleets, the cultural tie between adulthood and a driver’s license, let alone car ownership, is fading fast.

And that got me thinking about housing affordability.

The Housing Affordability Curve

A few weeks ago, I was at the HousingWire Economic Summit at the George Bush Presidential Library. I watched a fascinating interview with Wade Jurney of National Home Corp. His thesis was refreshingly blunt: affordability is math.

I’m a nerd that likes math, so I was all ears.

For every $1,000 increase in the cost of a home, the National Association of Home Builders estimates roughly 100,000 buyers are priced out nationally.

Wow.

Small cost increases don’t just sting. They eliminate entire swaths of potential homeowners.

So National Home Corp cuts cost. Everywhere.

Smaller homes.
Standardized kitchens across models.
Same window sizes.
Laminate instead of solid surface.
Manufactured flooring.
Six-inch LED puck lights.
And my favorite: eight-foot ceilings instead of nine, saving about $5,000 per home.
Note: thats $17k over a 30 year mortgage.

It makes sense. These aren’t homes for the middle-income or wealthy buyer. So cut what doesn’t matter.

In the 1950s, the average American home was roughly 1,000 square feet. By 2017, it ballooned to around 2,700 square feet. Today we’re back under 2,000 square feet nationally. We oversized during cheap money. Now we’re recalibrating.

But here’s the line item we don’t talk about enough: parking.

Garages. Carports. Driveways. Structured parking. Underground parking.

What if some folks (Millennials) didn’t need as much, or any parking in midtown environments where transportation options are strong? Or perhaps even in the near-burbs where a Waymo waits for your call.

In many markets, structured parking can add $30,000 to $70,000 per unit. Even surface parking consumes land that could otherwise hold another unit. Parking minimums, often mandated by cities, quietly inflate costs.

What if we questioned the assumption that every first-time homeowner needs a car?

The Housing Solution for Dingbats

The classic Los Angeles dingbat, those mid-century apartment buildings with units stacked over parking, were built as efficient rental housing after WWII. Simple and repetitive. The were named for the quirky art tacked to the trim that made each one unique. But mostly, they maximized yield on modest land.

Many wouldn’t pencil today because parking minimums and modern code requirements demand more stalls than the original design allowed.

But what if we flipped the model?

Perhaps the next affordability breakthrough doesn’t come from a subsidy (I hope not). Maybe it comes from a production builder. Imagine if NHC, Lennar or Pulte were building modern dingbats: smaller units, transit-oriented, no mandatory parking, but built for ownership instead of rent.

If a household avoids a $700 car payment, $200 in insurance, and another $200–$300 in fuel and maintenance, that’s roughly $1,000 per month.

That’s real mortgage capacity.

That’s the difference between renting and owning in many markets.

Younger buyers already trade space for proximity. They value walkability over square footage. They care more about access than acreage.

Millennials have different needs than my Gen X cohort did at the same age. Less space. Less driving. More flexibility. More proximity.

Wine growers adjust to demand. Tech / Car companies do as well. Builders should pivot to reduce features and cost in the same way.

That doesn’t mean smaller dreams. It means smaller line items that don’t matter.

We’ve spent decades building larger homes with higher ceilings, upgraded finishes, attached garages, and yes, wine fridges, almost by default. Meanwhile, rates are higher, prices are sticky, and first-time buyers are squeezed.

Wade Jurney said it plainly: home prices are too high.

Builders can’t control interest rates. They can control inputs.

Smaller footprints with simpler finishes and fewer parking requirements.

The future first-time homeowner doesn’t need a large garage. They need a payment that fits.

They don’t need granite and a wine fridge. They need equity.

And maybe the modern dingbat, smaller, simpler, car-light is part of the housing answer.