WHEN SMALLER IS BETTER

IN THE AGE OF THE MCMANSION, DON AND SYBIL Smith are rebels. They left what others yearn for - an elegant 2,200-square-foot home with a sprawling, lush yard - and moved into a condo. Gone are the lawn, the four bedrooms, and the Wellesley Hills address. And they love it. Upon first glimpsing their three-bedroom duplex in Wellesley's town center, Sybil Smith saw only possibility: Knock out a wall here, expand a bathroom there, and, oh, what they could do with the kitchen. "This smaller space has become us," her husband now says.

In real estate, downsizing can have an upside. For some, it's a life-enhancing trade-off, where the compensations include easy access to urban pleasures like restaurants and theaters as well as drastically shortened commutes and diverse neighborhoods. For others, particularly in this rapidly softening market, it's a financially smart choice. That was the case for the Smiths. Both in their 60s, Don retired in 2003, and three months later, Sybil was unexpectedly laid off. Things never got desperate - despite borrowing to send their kids to college, they had built equity over 23 years in their large home - but the Smiths decided to downsize in order to safeguard their retirement savings and to get maximum use from the value their home had acquired over the years. But even homeowners who didn't plan to leave can discover that the advantages of big homes and big yards are exaggerated.

Longtime Brookline real estate broker Chobee Hoy says moving into smaller homes is "a growing trend, especially among seniors and 50-plus empty nesters. It makes sense ecologically. It's a lifestyle issue." Many in her industry agree. Stephen Melman, an economist with the National Association of Home Builders, cites a poll of architects his organization conducted in 2005, asking what new homes would look like in five to 10 years. "They all said a smaller footprint with quality design and lots of amenities," he says. "With the big baby boomer cohort coming up, they'll have lots of equity and an empty nest and no longer need a five-bedroom home."

And, like it did for the Smiths, small makes sense for people whose kids are gone, who don't bring the energy they once did to cleaning gutters, and who are approaching the twilight of their careers. "We had to face that we might not get another job," Sybil says. In addition to practical considerations, she says, "we felt we needed to change our lives."

While job searching they house hunted, too. Sybil says she thought it would be tough to find an affordable place smaller than 2,000 square feet in the community where they had lived for so long. But then they found their condo on Linden Street, one block off the main street in Wellesley. Although it is 500 square feet smaller than their four-bedroom house, Don says the condo matched a lifestyle they had already eased into, since they had been using only a few of the rooms in their home. Once they bought, the Smiths didn't skimp while remodeling the condo. With the help of Christina Oliver, a Newton interior designer who has maximized a lot of small spaces, they united the dining, living, and kitchen areas and converted a first-floor half bath into a full one. They installed recessed lighting and a deck. They gutted the kitchen, upgrading to energy- and space-saving appliances, like a two-drawer dishwasher that uses less water for smaller loads and won't crash into an open oven door behind it. "These are all things I wanted to do in the old house," Sybil says, "but we never had the money for it." By downsizing, the couple were able to get the up-to-date home they wanted - and they are carrying a smaller mortgage than they had before.

BUT IT'S NOT ALWAYS EASY. CHOICES ARE LIMITED for families like the Smiths. When the couple looked to downsize, they didn't even consider searching for a newly built smaller home. And for good reason: Only 34 percent of single-family homes sold in the Northeast in 2005 were smaller than 2,000 square feet, a percentage that has steadily shrunk over the past two decades, according to data from the National Association of Home Builders. In 1988, 56 percent of new single-family homes nationwide were smaller than 2,000 square feet; in 2005, 39 percent of new homes were that small.

Looking only at the numbers in new-construction homes, it would seem that New Englanders are still super-sizing, not downsizing. Melman, at the National Association of Home Builders, reports that last year the average new home built in the United States was 2,414 square feet; in the Northeast, it was 2,601 square feet. Both numbers have jumped several hundred square feet in the last five years and about 40 percent over the last 30 years. Those giant footprints, however, don't tell the full story. Developers in the Northeast are building far fewer new homes of any size than builders in the rest of the country.

Diana Pisciotta, a spokeswoman for the Home Builders Association of Massachusetts, points at zoning laws. Many towns within the Interstate 495 belt, she says, prohibit new construction on lots smaller than one acre. Because land is scarce and therefore expensive, developers build large homes they can sell for top dollar in order to recoup what they spent on the lots. Pisciotta - and her association's builder clients - think that this kind of zoning is a mistake. There is, she says, "a lot of interest in and need for smaller homes on smaller lots." When newly built 1,500-square-foot homes do go up for sale, she says, "they get snapped up."

Even as developers build "bonus" rooms into new homes, Buz and Dorie Weintraub chose to leave several extra rooms behind. They moved last fall from a Newton Colonial to one-half of a Queen Anne Victorian in Arlington, losing 600 square feet in the process. The new place has one less bedroom, no formal dining room, and no family room. "If we really wanted to, we could refinish part of the basement in the new house," says Dorie, an architect with Margulies & Associates in Boston. "We thought we would. But we don't need to." Now they have a bigger kitchen than before, and it connects to both a dining area and the living room. "We joke to visitors, 'Welcome to our New York apartment,' " Dorie says. Their kids are long gone, but the move made the pair feel as if they were starting over - just with better furniture than the last time they lived in an apartment.

Buz, who is an attorney in Boston, says that the move had another advantage. "Our Newton house was old, and we didn't want to do the renovations," he explains. "This place offered us a chance to move to something more modern and to downsize, but not radically so." Buz says that their decision to relocate was both a smart financial move for the pair and a chance to enjoy the pleasures of an urban lifestyle - they could sock away more money for retirement and live in a neighborhood close to more amenities.

The Weintraubs spent two years figuring out exactly what they wanted before they bought the Queen Anne. "With our kids grown, the school system was not a concern," Buz says. "We eliminated being near the ocean," Dorie adds, "it was just too expensive. But we wanted to be near a city or town center, something lively with restaurants and things to do and close to public transportation." Though Dorie is an architect, the Weintraubs also wanted a home they didn't have to change or update drastically, and their new duplex had been renovated nicely by a previous owner. "We were very taken with all the details of the house," says Buz. "We loved the fireplaces with mantels, the woodwork, and the tiny porch off the master bedroom."

SARAH SUSANKA, THE NORTH CAROLINA-BASED author of The Not So Big House, is often credited as the prophet of the movement toward smaller homes. She says the trend includes families with small children, too, even though baby boomers are best poised to downsize as bedrooms empty and they approach retirement. Susanka says that no matter their age, people who choose smaller homes do it because they've changed or reevaluated what's important in their lives. "Most people are looking for something that makes us feel at home, not on show," she says.

For Patricia Marks-Martinovich and her husband, Alan Martinovich, who are both in their 30s, feeling at home meant moving with their nearly 2-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, from a 3,500-square-foot four-bedroom home in Colorado to a two-bedroom condo half that size in Beacon Hill, just a short walk from the boutique Marks-Martinovich owns. They thought about a big house in Boston's suburbs - Martinovich works outside the city - but chose convenience, community, and a simpler lifestyle instead.

"When I was living in a big house, there were rooms I never went into. I almost heard crickets in the rooms, they were so big," Marks-Martinovich says. Then there was the big yard the couple had thought they would enjoy. "The happiest we were was when we found a good company to do the landscaping for us," she says. "Yardwork is overrated."

Although much of their furniture remains in storage and Marks-Martinovich admits to missing some of it, she says their city space is plenty big for a family of four. "There are still places I can go and have time to myself," she says. Even better, without a driving commute, her family life has improved. "I get to see my kids more, walk to work, have everything I need at my fingertips without putting a key in the ignition."

Susanka says she hears this a lot. "A smaller space changes how we live," she says. "The city becomes part of the living room." While Martinovich does commute to his consulting job in the suburbs, he runs in Boston in the mornings and on the weekends, and he and his wife both find themselves spending more time enjoying their home and less time maintaining it.

Christina Oliver, the interior designer who worked with the Smiths on their new place, says her clients make this tradeoff, too. "People want access to culture and community without having to drive," she says, "or dig themselves out of the snow." She does say that many homeowners worry that they will miss their outdoor space when they move into an apartment or a condo. Sybil Smith simply gardens for the whole condo association now and plants flowers in containers on their deck. Don Smith at first refused to sell the lawn equipment he had amassed over the years, but after the move, he surprised himself. "After we'd been here a while, I sold my stuff to the landscapers," he says. "I don't miss it at all."

Another hurdle the Smiths took on in this move was creating flexible spaces they could live in comfortably both now and later, as they age. The den and a study can be used as guest rooms when family members visit, but the first-floor den could become a permanent bedroom if either Don or Sybil were unable to navigate the stairs at some later date. And the new full bath on the first floor has grab bars in the shower, just in case. "It was a good move," Don says. "We achieved what we wanted. Financially, we're in a safer position, with a smaller mortgage, and we got rid of stuff now instead of later, when it will be harder. The unexpected upside is our proximity to the college, town, church, and train station."

Both Don and Sybil have found new jobs, and each of them works less than 15 minutes from home. In fact, Don often goes home for lunch, and they both enjoy dining and shopping at nearby restaurants and clothing, grocery, and book stores. Now that they're settled in their new place, Don is waiting to see all of his peers do the same thing. "We wanted to get ahead," he says, "before a plethora of big houses floods the market."

Janice O'Leary lives and writes in a 600-square-foot condo in Boston. E-mail her at janice_oleary@comcast.net.