In a typical teardown situation, an older home, often in a pleasant neighborhood, is torn down and replaced by a larger, modern home. One Greenwich, Connecticut realtor suggests this pattern might be reversed in the future:

Pruner is also detecting a trend away from “McMansions” with massive square footage to smaller-scale well-built homes.

“I can foresee the newspaper headline: ‘McMansion taken down for more modest house,'” he said.

It is not bold to suggest that Americans want smaller homes: a number of sources, including the National Association of Home Builders, have noted this. But to suggest that larger homes will be torn down and replaced with smaller homes seems more unlikely. In order for this to happen, the McMansion would have to be relatively cheap and the property really desirable. Even after the drop in housing values, a big house is going to be relatively expensive and with many critics suggesting McMansions are also built in terrible suburban neighborhoods often made up of a lot of McMansion, I’m not sure there are many locations that fit this bill. And building a “more modest house” doesn’t necessarily mean a cheaper house – small homes can have a lot of features that drive up the price. But to tear down a larger space, whether it is a McMansion or a big box store, it seems like the conditions would have to be perfect and then it would be difficult for this to be a trend.