> Flimsier Cabinets and Fewer Windows: Home Builders Are Skimping on the Basics

Home builders are looking everywhere for ways to slash costs. They are finding them in cabinets, faucets and even the garage-door remote.

Builders are opting for cheaper materials and rejiggering designs with cost savings top of mind. Particle-board cabinets are in. Hardwood is out. Countertops are becoming thinner. Walls now feature smaller and fewer windows. An automatic garage opener is sometimes a frivolous luxury.

The cumulative effect is changing the appearance of newly constructed American homes. “It kind of looks incomplete,” said Erika Phelan, a real-estate agent at Buyers Broker of Florida.

She said the latest single-family homes lack the basics, such as cabinets with crown molding, that used to be standard.

The cost-cutting is part of an effort to offer more affordable homes when buyers are concerned about high prices, elevated mortgage rates and an uncertain economy. The largest builders, such as D.R. Horton and Lennar, are offering expensive mortgage-rate buydowns to close sales.

But with new homes selling for more than $400,000, mortgage relief isn’t always enough to unload builders’ excess inventory. Meanwhile, higher labor costs and materials prices are also cutting into margins. So builders are trying to find ways to protect their profits while passing on savings to home purchasers.

In Florida, where homes have traditionally been built of stucco, builders are increasingly opting for siding, which is less expensive to install, said John Madson, chief sales officer at siding company James Hardie.

Builders find it even easier to trade down in places that home buyers are unlikely to spot, according to Bill Christensen, CEO of door and window manufacturer Jeld-Wen.

For example, they are giving up sound protection by hanging lower-tier doors with hollow cores. “It’s effectively reducing cost where the customer doesn’t see,” Christensen said.

Layouts are also changing. Home builder Taylor Morrison has said it is now designing homes with fewer hallways to reduce material needs.

Many builders are shrinking their entire footprints. McGibney said 65% of KB Home’s communities now include homes with less than 1,600 square feet. The median square footage of new single-family homes was 2,153 in 2025, down from 2,466 in 2015.

Meanwhile, John Burns expects that the average number of windows in a home will fall to 18 in 2027, compared with 21 in 2015. 

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