Tag Archives: lot

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.

Liechtenstein losing the equivalent of a McMansion

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The Wall Street Journal notes how the small country of Liechtenstein just got a little smaller, about the size of a McMansion.

Last month, Liechtenstein’s government said it altered its official map, part of a move to a more precise, satellite-based surveying system. The result: Bits and pieces amounting to about a quarter of an acre disappeared.

The land, cumulatively big enough for a McMansion, didn’t abruptly leave anyone living in a new country. So locals viewed the tweak as little more than a curious result of advancing technology…

The lost territory, which only shows up on the most precise technical maps, might have singed national pride or prompted a call to arms in some places. Not in Liechtenstein, a country of roughly 37,000 people who relish their homeland’s diminutive stature the way Texans prize enormousness.

This could lead to some discussions of how more precise mapping leads to boundaries changes like this. But, the comparison to a McMansion is more interesting here. If you had to make a size comparison, why choose a McMansion? The article notes that land lost was about a quarter of an acre. This is about 11,000 square feet. Is the suggestion that this is a typical lot size for a McMansion? One definition of a McMansion is a big house squeezed into a small lot such that the house dominates the lot. Is a McMansion too big for this space? Or, is a quarter-acre lot enough space for some lawn and a McMansion? McMansions themselves aren’t typically 11,000 square feet.

Statistics for new homes in 2012, averaging 2,505 square feet, suggest the average new home was built on a 15,634 square foot lot. Perhaps the better comparison in this article might have been this: the amount of area lost by Liechtenstein was less roughly 66% of the size of an average new house lot in the United States.