Category Archives: McMansions

Democratic McMansion in Maryland

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A newly renovated home in Maryland may just be a Democratic McMansion:

If you are a Democratic politician getting wined and dined in D.C., chances are you’ve spent an evening or two at the Norton Manor, a faux-Old European estate in Potomac, Maryland that arrived seemingly out of nowhere last year. After a six-year renovation, the extravagant Neoclassical McMansion on nine acres, owned by the Indian-American technology entrepreneur Frank Islam and his philanthropist wife Debbie Driesman, is now fêting guests like Vice President Joe Biden and the Afghan ambassador. Apparently all you have to do to get well-connected politicians at your dinner table is build a pastiche of a Gilded Age mansion, an 18th-century French chateau, and (of course!) the gardens of Versailles in a rich suburb of D.C. Fittingly, the couple says they built Norton Manor as a tribute to the American dream. The Washington Post recently profiled the house, unloading a slew of facts about the place. Here now, 10 of the most interesting details:…

10. This couple prefers Democrats. Just this year, they’ve hosted a dinner for Vice President Biden, a fundraiser for Senator Al Franken, and an event for Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, among other important left-leaning politicos…

6. $1.5M was spent on landscaping, and now there are 1,600 boxwoods, 11,000 outdoor lights, several artificial streams, waterfalls, and stone bridges. Also, there’s a backyard teahouse with a koi pond and a reflecting pool…

2. The house was built by GTM Architects, and decorated by DC interior designer Skip Sroka, who is known for his methods for hiding electronic appliances (so as to not detract from faux-Old European flourishes). He spent three years decorating this “American palace,” as he called it in the Washington Post.

Two quick thoughts:

1. This is definitely a mansion, not a McMansion. Given the costs, 40,000 square feet, and the extra features, this is beyond normal McMansion territory. Indeed, I suspect a normal McMansion would definitely not be up to par for hosting important politicians.

2. I thought McMansions were for conservatives? The headline may be playing around with these stereotypes by suggesting that Democrats with money also live in and visit such homes. Going further, I would guess the homes of wealthy Republicans and Democrats may not differ all that much.

Florida vacation home McMansion built on the wrong lot

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I’ve seen this story in a number of places but only some are calling it a McMansion: a large Florida vacation home was built one lot over from its correct location.

Their three-story vacation rental house with an estimated construction value of $680,000 actually sits on the lot next to the one they own in the gated Ocean Hammock resort community.

“We are in total disbelief, just amazed this could happen,” said Mark Voss, who owns a property management and real estate company in central Missouri. “We may have moved (to Ocean Hammock) someday. But, with this headache and grief, we’re not so sure. The Midwest is looking pretty good right now.”

The Voss’s builder, Keystone Homes, which is based in Ormond Beach but builds primarily in Flagler County, has contacted the two lot owners and other parties and is trying to negotiate a settlement, said Robbie Richmond, company vice president…

The house has five bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms. It also includes a home theater, game room and screened-in pool.

The builder and owner say the initial survey of the land for construction is at fault. On one hand, this story is getting headlines because it seems like an egregious mistake, perhaps the builder version of the doctors who perform surgery on the wrong arm or leg. On the other hand, one lot over is not actually that much land and the article notes that there are about 10 vacant lots in a row without any distinguishing features.

Boing Boing likely claimed the home is a McMansion – which appears to have some validity – to help draw readers.

“Ugliest new build McMansion ever”?

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Take a look at this McMansion in Vienna, Virginia:

A quick analysis of the home based on the four traits of McMansions:

1. Absolute size. This home seems to have at least 3,000 square feet.

2. Relative size. Quite a difference between this home and the mid-20th century ranch home next door. It is hard to know for sure from the picture but this new home could be a teardown.

3. Poor architectural design and quality. The home has some interesting proportions, ranging from the relatively bland sided area above the front doorway to the popping-out balconies at each corner of the front. It is bulging in all the wrong places. (I would be interested to know whether these two second-story corners mean that these are separate suites, each with their own balcony.)

4. Tied to other social issues like consumption and sprawl. The suburban aspect is clearly implied by this picture, particularly with the looming water tower in the background. (The water tower is reminiscent of this famous photo from Plano, Texas.) Compared to the home next door, this new McMansion does look excessive. Sadly, the same angle that helps invite comparison to the home next door and the water tower also blocks our view of the likely large garage in the back.

Is this the worst designed McMansion ever? There are a good number of contenders for this crown. Just look at these 10 McMansions from New Jersey…

Do you want a “McMansion of Micro-Houses”?

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A new 900-square foot home in New Haven, Connecticut drew some conflicting reviews:

A micro-home debuted in town, a possible solution to New Haven’s pressing absence of affordable housing.

The three-floor, 900-square-foot ski chalet-looking home on a fine elegantly landscaped setback on Scranton Street in West River received generally rave reviews at the debut Thursday afternoon. It also drew a critique: That it’s still too large, too expensive, not a cool enough interior or replicable enough, yet a fine experiment and first step.

That critique came from the guy whose idea the house was. He called it the “McMansion of micro-houses.”…

The house was designed and built by first-year Yale School of Architecture students such as Katie Stege (pictured with her teacher Avi Forman) as part of their required coursework. The work is done under the Jim Vlock First-Year Building Project.

The home – which features some interesting design – is going for $155,000.

The general idea of the new house makes sense: the goal is to build relatively cheap new housing in New Haven yet this home is a bit too big and expensive to fit that bill. But, pairing the negative term McMansion with ideas that are generally lauded – affordable housing and micro-homes – is an odd approach, particularly coming from the funder of the project. It is like saying, “Thank you to the professors and students for the efforts but this home is like the poorly-constructed, overly-large mass produced suburban tract homes built across America.” If you are trying to build good affordable housing that the public will accept, it would behoove you to not apply the McMansion label to it.

Spoiling a waterfront location with an ugly “mini McMansion”

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Curbed National does not like a development of “mini McMansions” in Detroit:

We’ve been befuddled by the Shorepointe Village at Grayhaven development before. It has such a nice waterfront location and such terrible home exteriors. But this interior seems to be one of the better ones. This 3,000 square foot home previously asking $479K just sold for $440K. It feels very early aughts but who doesn’t enjoy a little throw back? It has a neighbor still for sale asking $420K.

Even looking at the earlier pictures of the development, I’m not sure why this particular project draws much attention. Sure, the houses have some exterior oddities. But, are they really much worse than the average McMansion, let alone some of the more extreme examples involving turrets, features of castles, multi-gabled roofs, and other garish architectural quirks? The development may be cookie-cutter so are a lot of single-family home developments.

Perhaps the key here is the waterfront location. Such desirable property that tends to prompt higher housing values often feature large houses but often not such bland design.

McMansions are not necessarily in gated communities

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One writer suggests both McMansions and gated communities are alive and well in the United States:

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the real estate market saw an explosion of “McMansions” and sprawling estates across the nation. The economic downturn toward the end of the decade brought the country back to earth and shifted the trend in new housing from giant luxury homes back to moderately sized residences.

While many have claimed that the McMansion boom is over, others beg to differ…

While the tiny house trend has been intriguing to observe, it’s not terribly indicative of where the country is headed in general. For every house that’s being built on wheels, at least one other is moving into a luxurious gated community.

To be honest, experts who voiced a death sentence on McMansions, estates, and gated communities probably spoke too soon.

This piece seems to suggest that homes in luxurious gated communities are necessarily McMansions. However, I’ve never seen evidence that would suggest this is the case. There is little doubt that these two trends were occurring around the same time with gated communities picking up steam in the 1970s and 1980s and the term McMansions arriving by the late 1990s even if the homes started growing in number in the 1980s. But, not all gated communities necessarily include large houses. From what I can recall from the 1997 book Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States, gated communities can often include middle-class or more average homes as can even be in urban neighborhoods with smaller homes. Gates may project the image of exclusivity but this can be relative or as Blakely and Snyder point out in the book, the gates are often just ornamental rather than serving as real barriers.

At the same time, it would be interesting to look at some data on this. Yet, it is relatively hard from survey data to define a McMansion beyond basic features like square footage and number of rooms.

Adding an observatory to an “otherwise ho-hum OC McMansion”

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Already have a saltwater pool, a four-car garage, and 6,000+ square feet? Follow the lead of one Orange County McMansion and add an observatory:

Behind the doors of this “custom,” yet seemingly cookie-cutter mansion in pricey, master-planned Laguna Niguel, lies a definitively unique feature: a “commercial-grade telescope” in a private observatory. The owners have spent “Over $450,000 in upgrades since 2010-11 to perfect an already gorgeous home,” according to the listing (via the LA Times), but a large portion of that probably went toward putting that star-gazing equipment in place. The 6,073-square-foot, four-bedroom house also comes with a saltwater pool with waterfall, a fire pit, four-car garage, wetbar, and built-in outdoor barbecue. The property last sold in 2010 for $2.75 million, according to Redfin; it’s now asking $3.188 million. There’s a potential sale in the works, but it’s still accepting backup offers.

And they say McMansions lack customization. I would guess that this family did not recoup their entire investment in this observatory though given the large population of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, there has to be one household that really wants an observatory.

Such a feature could be viewed by some as the sort of customization lauded by the Not-So-Big-House movement and other architects and psychologists who tout the fit of the home with the occupants. Yet, guessing again, I imagine more people would see this observatory as another garish symbol of the McMansion.

McMansions “bloom” in China

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One fact about McMansions and one assertion: they are in China and they are “growing.”

In the Dianshan Lake region, less than 40 miles west of central Shanghai, the appetite for speculative real estate has driven developers into China’s most fertile land, the Yangtze Delta. Only about half of the luxury villas like those on the following pages, which can be as big as 6,300 square feet and sell for as much as $1.5 million, are occupied — mostly as second homes. The rest sit empty, as the housing sector staggers under a surplus. The photographer George Steinmetz, who visited the area last fall, describes the transition as converting “rice farms to high-end McMansions.” As that process plays out, the country’s domestic rice consumption is set to soon outpace rice production.

This highlights two small trends in reporting on McMansions:

1. People like to note the spread of McMansions around the world. I’ve seen articles talking about McMansions in China, Russia, and different parts of Europe, Africa, and Latin America. It is a unique American export that requires a supporting infrastructure of a wealthy upper middle-class, roads, power, and sewers, and space for large single-family homes. Outside of the United States, McMansions are most common in Australia and still limited elsewhere.

2. The idea of McMansions “growing” or “blooming” fits in with ideas about suburban sprawl as well as the land McMansions often replace. Critics of McMansions lament the loss of open land or fields, particularly when replaced by energy inefficient homes. At the same time, blooming might suggests McMansions are like flowers while some would prefer the comparison be made to weeds.

A video tutorial on how to build a McMansion in The Sims

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Two players put together a McMansion in The Sims and you can see the process here.

A few thoughts:

1. If I heard correctly on the video, this originally took 3 hours to build.

2. The builders note that this is a modern home yet the headline says it is a McMansion. While it is a large home and clearly has some wealth (located on a canal), the design does not necessarily make it s stereotypically American McMansion.

3. This has over 21,000 views in 2+ days.

4. The designers intended to have a fountain outside the house but alas, it was never constructed. That fountain would have contributed to a McMansion style.

5. Interesting that this features two Aussies. If there is one country in the world that can rival the United States in McMansions, Australia is it.

6. I get the impulse to design things in games like this. While I have never done much with The Sims, I’ve spent a lot of time doing similar things with urban planning in SimCity. Yet, I’m curious to know how much homes like these enhance the gameplay. How much better is it to have a family of Sims living in a custom-designed home like this compared to the average home?

Wherever you go, you just can’t escape those pesky McMansions…

Builder magazine: are millennials ushering McMansions out?

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Builder continues the debate of whether millennials will help McMansions disappear:

But the millennials inhabiting high-tech, yet cozy student housing and apartments don’t have outsized space expectations. Over the next decade, their preference for the walkable convenience that often accompanies smaller living spaces will collide head on with their parents’ (and grandparents’) insatiable addiction for square footage.

Will millennials’ maturation force home builders to come up with walkable communities and smaller, more innovative homes that might, finally, kill the McMansion? Or will it lead millennials to make the decision to abandon walkability and convenience for more square footage?

No one really knows the answers to these questions, but trends demonstrate that Gen Yers—many of whom currently are living in student housing and apartments—have different expectations than the generations before them. Even if they eventually end up in single-family homes in the suburbs, their acceptance of efficient spaces might change the game for many builders. But without public policy changes and rethinking what home value really means, their preferences for efficient spaces may do little to cut square footage…

Despite these testimonials, even the most resolute urbanist wouldn’t proclaim that millennials are going to forever eschew the size and acreage of the suburbs to gather in cramped apartments in the city. For many, life will evolve, priorities will change, and the desire for a yard, more space, or a good school system for children will win out over having multiple trendy bars down the street…

Even if millennials do follow their parents’ path to the suburbs, many architects predict (and hope) that the efficient designs they’ve become accustomed to in college and apartments will follow them to their single-family home.

As noted elsewhere, no one really knows what will happen yet there are plenty of people with opinions and hopes. Give it a few years and decades to play out.

At the same time, even changing tastes among millennials as a group doesn’t necessarily mean the disappearance of McMansions. Millennials are unlikely to completely kill McMansions. Like now, there could still be a significant minority of that generation that still want McMansions and because of the higher profit margins with such homes, there will be builders ready to build them. Additionally, there will still be a lot of existing McMansions that, like other homes, will continue to generate sales and interest. Unless, of course, there is some sort of rapture for only McMansion owners – perhaps this is the sort of scenario those who dislike McMansions could get behind.