Testing “affordable housing for the affluent”

At a time when many Americans are having trouble affording the mortgages on their primary residences, developers of vacation homes are getting creative in their efforts to convince buyers to take on second homes. According to the Wall Street Journal, one popular tactic is to offer cabins and cottages — dubbed “affordable housing for the affluent” — that are pre-built instead of custom and located on smaller lots. Home builders are “offering discounts by doing almost everything except for slashing prices” in an effort not to bring down the property values of existing homeowners in vacation communities, said the Journal’s Juliet Chung.