Changeable designs, floor plans, or easily moved walls are popular features

Many homebuyers are looking for a house they can grow with, from their days as newlyweds through years with toddlers and teens — and then without them.

But often, walls get in the way.

That’s why flexible options have become popular in recent years, with architects and builders offering changeable floor plans or features such as pocket doors and easily moved walls so that homeowners can reconfigure the house as their needs change.

Housing search sites ApartmentGuide.com and Homes.com moved up five places on the Hitwise list of most-visited real estate Web sites in June compared to the previous month.

Hitwise, a Web metrics company, also reported that the MSN Real Estate site, at realestate.msn.com, dropped three spots on the real estate top-20 list, which ranks sites according to the market share of visits to that category. The company ranks about 1 million unique Web sites daily.

Bobbie and Justin Scanio didn’t want a big house in the suburbs.The married 26-year-olds moved to San Antonio this year from Austin, and bought a 107-year-old home comprising about 1,500 square feet in the Roosevelt Park neighborhood, south of the King William Historic District.

“We wanted something close to downtown because we wanted to be able to ride bikes for entertainment and to go to restaurants,” Justin Scanio said.

They are not alone.

Homeownership among the under-30 set has been increasing. In 1993, fewer than 15 percent of people under 25 owned a home. In 2006, one in four people younger than 25 were homeowners, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.