Here's a 3,300 square foot footprint of a house with a pool and patio.

But is it a mania? This week, I spoke with a friend who bought a 2,000 square foot house in Orange County, California, in 1999. He paid $235,000. Two years later, he sold it and moved out of state. He got $350,000 for it. His son, who remained in California but did not buy a home, tells him that it just sold for $800,000.

We installed it in the same footprint as the original, although our target is 6 by 10 foot and the original target might have been only 6 by 6 foot.

[Victor Diaz and his wife Helen moved last month to a 5,800-square-foot house in Stony Point with their twin girls, 8, and 5- and 3-year-old sons.] I never thought I would want or need a house this large, ... But we wanted more space for the kids, and this proved to be doable for us. Now that we have it, it is everything we imagined and more.

There have been a number of firms in the 50,000- to 100,000-square-foot range that are seeking office space in the Loop 360 corridor, and the largest block of (existing) space in Southwest Austin is 40,000 square feet.

You have to ask yourself if it's really smart to leave a 160,000-square-foot facility open at all times to anyone.