CNN reports that McMansions just may be on the way back:

During the past three years, the average size of new homes has grown significantly, according to a Census Bureau report released Monday. In 2012, the median home in the U.S. hit an all-time record of 2,306 square feet, up 8% from 2009.

During the recession, Americans downsized and the average new home shrunk in size by 6% over two years to 2,135 square feet. At the time, many industry experts said the days of the McMansion were over.

The shrinkage was supposed to indicate that a new era had begun, with young buyers seeking to live closer to urban cores and settling for smaller places and baby boomers downsizing after their kids had flown the nest.

But it wasn’t that consumers wanted less space, many just couldn’t afford more, said Jeffry Roos, a regional president for home builder Lennar. And now that the economy is improving, they’re demanding bigger homes again, he said.

This is what I suspected might happen: once the housing market picked up again, some Americans would go back to buying bigger houses. But, this article has a few problems as it relies on (1) the median home size and (2) talking to several large builders.

Regarding home size: the figures cited more often is the average home size. The average size for new houses went from roughly 900 square feet in 1950 to nearly 2,500 in the mid-2000s. The median home size might be more accurate as the extra big homes can’t skew the data as much but the average is used more often. Also, the median hasn’t changed all that much in the last few years – this is only a difference of 150 square feet, a 12×12 room. Why can’t we see figure about the number of big homes that have or have not been built rather than relying on these overall figures that are a snapshot of a varied housing industry?

Relying on just a few large builders also does not reveal the big picture. The builders cited, particularly Toll Brothers, are big players but the housing market has a lot of different builders and developers. Overall, how are lots of different builders feeling about big houses? Are they actually building these bigger houses? What do real estate experts say? The news for Toll Brothers has looked good recently but there is more to the big house market than just Toll Brothers.

This seems like an article that would benefit from better data and also may not really be able to be written until some more time has passed and the trend is more clear. In the meantime, simply invoking the term McMansion and discussing a possible trend is apparently enough…

UPDATE 6/5/13: As the CNN story is repeated across the web, there is some confusion. For example, look at how this retelling mixes the idea of an average or median:

A new Census Bureau report says the average size of a new home has grown eight percent in the last three years, up to a record 2,300 sq. ft. in 2012…

According to the National Association of Homebuilders, buyers prefer a median home size of just over 2,200 feet, in line with the Census average.

Two different figures for the “middle” size mean two different things…