Tag Archives: McMansions

Quick Review: “Square-Footed Monster” episode of King of the Hill

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Few television episodes tackle the topic of McMansions. Thus, here is a review of Season 13 Episode 3 of King of the Hill titled “Square-Footed Monster.”

First, a quick synopsis of the plot and relevant dialogue from the main characters. The issues begin when an older neighbor lady dies and her nephew comes to fix up the ranch home to sell it. The men, led by Hank, help fix up the house. It sells in one day. The next day, the house is torn down by a large excavator and the local developer says he is breaking ground on a “dream home.”

SquareFootedMonster1Amid scenes of constructing a large balloon frame, the builder brings the guys peach chardonnay (clearly indicating his different status) and shows them a rendering of the new home. Hank’s response: “Looks like a bank. No, a church. Wait, A casino? I don’t know what the hell I’m looking at.” The developer says it is a speculation house.

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Hank and the guys decide to fight back. They go to City Hall and show images of the modest homes in their neighborhood compared to the new home with “4,600 square feet of obnoxiousness” (Hank’s description). The leaders say the home is by the books so construction continues. The guys consult the local legal loophole expert as Hank says, “someone is building a jackass McMansion that’s going to destroy our neighborhood.” There are no loopholes to help them.

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The next scenes show a massive McMansion blocking out the sun and going right up to its property lines. Hank notes, “Ted’s using cheap building materials too. It’s all spackle and chicken-wire.” In the subsequent big wind, the house starts falling apart. Wanting to protect their own homes, the neighbors take chainsaws, axes, and other implements to help the home collapse.

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The next day, the developer looks at the damage done by the neighbors and accuses them taking down the home. Hank responds: “We don’t have anything to hide. The only one who did something wrong here was you. Your shoddy McMansion was going to destroy our homes. We only took it down in self-defense.”

The case goes in front of a local judge who with some prompting by the local legal loophole expert rules in favor of the neighbors. The developer tries to get the last laugh by selling the property to the city to use as a power substation.

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After lamenting the new land use, the men construct a fake house around the substation. Hank says, “I’ll take a fake house over a big ugly one any day.”

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This episode contains several themes common to narratives about McMansions:

  1. The developer simply wants to make money without regard for the existing character of the community.
  2. A teardown McMansion can be very invasive: it looks out of place compared to nearby homes, it encroaches on lot lines and the street, it blocks the sun, and its construction is disruptive to neighbors.
  3. The new large home is poorly constructed – it starts falling apart in heavy winds – and has dubious architectural features including turrets, pillars, and balconies.
  4. Neighbors resent the intrusion of the new home but there is little they can do to stop it (hence the need to find obscure legal loopholes and attack the homes themselves). There is one neighbor who appreciates the new home for what it could bring to the neighborhood but he is in the minority.

In the end, the neighbors do win out: instead of a dilapidated ranch home next door, they have a substation that looks like a well-maintained ranch home.

In twenty-two minutes, this is a decent summary of how teardown McMansions could go. The episode does not provide much perspective from the view of the developer of the home or local officials outside of quick references to making money and an interest in large new homes. Some lingering questions remain including why construct such a large new home on a street of ranch homes of working-class residents. The neighborhood may have been saved but the episode also hints at how fragile a set of homes and the associated community might be if just one property falls into the hands of a developer.

(All screenshots of the episode are from Hulu.)

Novel suggests McMansions gentrify small suburbs

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A new novel suggests McMansions can upset small suburbs:

Novels about small houses in small towns can feel cramped. But in Julie Langsdorf’s White Elephant, the locals fight to keep things that way in their property battle with a builder who puts up McMansions. Set in the suburban Maryland town of Willard Park, the story depicts a married couple’s struggle with their defunct sex life, middle school kids and their awkward, back-stabbing drama, a pot-head attorney whose marriage is in trouble, and numerous sketches of other denizens. White Elephant has a long, slow start, but once it gets going, it bolts straight to the end...

White Elephant is a gentrification story which focuses on suburbs and small towns. This tale will feel familiar to anyone who has lived in an inner suburb and woken up one morning to the shock of McMansions going up nearby. Suddenly all the talk is of assessments, property values, equity, and second mortgages. The new houses tower over neighbors. Or, if a block of expensive townhouses has been installed, suddenly the local school is too small. It’s not as pernicious as urban gentrification, booting out locals to make way for wealthy hipsters and their $10 latte watering holes, but it’s a menacing cousin. Costly houses and townhouses open the door for luxury apartments, and once those appear, all the old affordable ones raise their rents. A person working full-time on minimum wage can hardly afford a one-bedroom apartment in any American city, and this is the next step, as the blight of gentrification seeps out into formerly cheap suburbs.

I believe that McMansions can upset residents’ conceptions of their neighborhood or community. There are plenty of cases in the last 10-20 years that suggest some believe McMansions, whether in new subdivisions or as teardowns, ruin locations they like.

On the other hand, the description above of how all this works seems a bit odd to me. A few questions:

  1. How many inner suburbs become home to many teardown McMansions? Inner suburbs can be wealthy, working-class to poor, or somewhere in-between.
  2. My guess is that McMansions and more expensive housing do not just pop up in a community: there are precipitating qualities of the community that lead developers and local officials to think that the more expensive housing would take off. In other words, wealthier communities beget more housing for wealthier residents.
  3. Cheap suburbs, if just going by cost of housing, can be located throughout a metropolitan region. If gentrification is simply more expensive redevelopment, it could happen in many places throughout a region.
  4. Why is this gentrifiation not as pernicious if new development makes it harder for locals to stay? It may be happening in a suburban area but not all suburbs are that well-off.
  5. Is there a small-town suburban life worth defending? Decades of suburban critiques suggested suburbanites and their communities have all sorts of deficiencies. Are suburbs now to be saved from McMansions?

The McMansion is a monster to invoke in today’s fictional tales as its size and lack of good taste relegate it to at least shady, if not menacing, status.

Win the lottery and build a home – but just not a McMansion

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From the court of public opinion: imagine winning a big lottery payout, wanting to construct a new home, and then facing backlash for choosing a McMansion:

I’d rather buy an existing home, but some people want to put their own fingerprints on the place they call home.

I respect that, as long as they don’t build one of those gaudy McMansions that are a blight on our urban landscapes. The last thing we need is another generic McMansion with giant white columns erected in front of the entrance and marble lions at the front of the driveway.

This above is, of course, all just opinion but imagine some wacky scenarios where this could be a problem:

  1. Lottery winners are often publicly named so the smiling face and the floor plans of the new McMansion are splashed across local news websites and print media accompanied by negative headlines and insinuations.
  2. The proposal to build the new home is immediately met with angry neighbors and/or public officials who will drag their feet as long as possible before approving the home that is within local guidelines. (Going further, a community could immediately enact new building regulations.)
  3. A protestor shows up to silently mark the construction and presence of the McMansion lottery home.
  4. The home becomes ostracized in the community, known by some derogatory label, the target of egging, TPing, and random junk mailings, and held up as an example of what the community does not want in the future.

Any of these might be enough for a lottery winner to go construct a McMansion in a more McMansion-friendly community (and they do exist even if they likely do not advertise themselves as such).

The (illustrated) story of one man’s quiet protest in front of a 12 home McMansion subdivision

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The New York Times recently featured one man opposed to McMansions on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Here is the start:

McMansionProtestStoryStart

Protesting does not have to be complicated and persistence goes a long ways.

Limiting teardown McMansions with ordinances requiring demolitions reuse and recycle materials?

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Palo Alto, California will soon require the reuse or recycling of the majority of materials for demolished buildings:

[W]orkers will now be required to systematically disassemble structures, with the goal of reusing or recycling the bulk of the material on the site. Based on experiences in Portland, Oregon, which has a similar law in place, staff believes that up to 95% of the construction debris can be salvaged — either reused or recycled — through “deconstruction.”…

Construction and demolition materials represent more than 40% of Palo Alto debris that gets disposed in landfills, according to an estimate from the city’s Public Works Department. As such, it represents a prime opportunity for diversion and recovery, staff told the City Council at the June 10 meeting, shortly before the council voted unanimously to adopt the new ordinance…

The new model calls for buildings to be systematically disassembled, typically in the reverse order in which they were constructed. Based on two recent pilot projects, deconstruction work using this method would take about 10 to 15 days to complete and require a crew of four to eight people, with the cost ranging from $22 to $34 per square foot….

The new deconstruction ordinance is expected to help the city divert 7,930 tons of waste annually (by contrast, the disposable-foodware ordinance that the council adopted at the same meeting would divert 290 tons). The deconstruction ordinance is also expected to reduce the city’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 22,300 metric tons annually (for the foodware ordinance, the number is 470 tons).

This would be an interesting way for communities to limit teardown McMansions without having to explicitly mention big houses. When there are public discussions about ordinances regarding residential teardowns, it often comes down to a discussion of property rights versus neighborhood or community character. These can get ugly. But, an ordinance like this does not have to explicitly mention residential properties or single-family homes in order to affect them. Going through the reuse/recycle mode would require more time and labor and this might either constrict what is built on the site or stop the teardown process before it begins. Of course, those pursuing teardowns might simply pay more to deal with the new requirements. People who have the money to buy a lot and house (sometimes a perfectly functioning or not very old house) and just tear it down and build a new one might just be able to easily pay these new costs.

With this ordinance in mind, I imagine there are other ways local governments could restrict residential teardowns without necessarily targeting them. Why set up a battle about property rights, aesthetics, and community if it can be avoided by regulations that nudge people certain directions?

Seattle enacts “McMansion ban”

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Earlier this week Seattle moved to approve accessory dwelling units and also limit the size of McMansions:

While loosening restrictions on accessory units, the new rules will tighten restrictions on the construction of single-family houses by outlawing certain large homes, based on their floor area and lot size.

The aboveground living space for a single family in a new house will be limited to half the square footage of the home’s lot. For example, a new house on a 6,000-square-foot lot will be limited to 3,000 square feet of aboveground living space, not counting space devoted to an accessory unit.

O’Brien has said the “McMansion” ban will discourage people from replacing modest older houses with more expensive new houses and will encourage them to add accessory units….

The city’s most recent environmental analysis estimated the new rules would result in 4,430 accessory units built and 1,580 houses torn down over 10 years, versus 1,970 accessory units built and 2,030 houses razed under the status quo.

Three quick thoughts:

  1. The restriction on floor size based on lot size is a common one. This not only keeps the overall size down but also can help keep the new home from crowding up against the edge of the lot. Fitting a large home on a small lot is a common issue with those opposed to teardown McMansions.
  2. The story above says there is a restriction on aboveground square footage based on the lot. Does this mean some new homes will go underground instead (a la London)?
  3. The numbers cited at the end of the article are interesting in a city of over 700,000 people. The “McMansion ban” would not appear to have much effect: over the course of ten years, roughly 25% fewer teardowns would occur according to projections. Even with the restrictions, it will still be an option for those with wealth who want a single-family home (as opposed to the new option of an accessory dwelling unit on the lot of someone else). If the city really wanted to go after McMansions, could they have done more?

Scenarios in which McMansions are passed along to younger adults

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Older Americans own plenty of large homes and commentators suggest younger adults have multiple reasons for not going after such homes:

Younger people have loads of reasons not to be charmed by the vaulted ceilings and chef-ready kitchens of homes perched on mountaintops or hugging beaches that promised solitude once but now cry of isolation…

A report from Business Insider highlights numerous reasons that younger people might not want to saddle themselves with such beautiful albatrosses. Down payments, student debt and preferences for rentals in cities coupled with vacation home getaways have all contributed to what the report characterizes as “millennials wiping out starter homes.”…

And that is those among them who can actually manage to save up a down payment. Too many others are so burdened by student debt that buying a house is a foggy image off in the distant future. And lots of young homebuyers underestimate what it will cost them to keep a house, making it less likely they’ll bite off more than they can chew the next time they go home-shopping.

Factoring in their concerns over the environment—the energy footprint of a big house and a long commute—and their disinclination to own cars, as well as the need to hold down multiple jobs or have one or more side hustles—and it looks as if those mega-residences are liable to stay on the market for quite a while longer.

While one angle to this is that Baby Boomers will have a hard time selling their homes, the other side is whether the younger generations want and can get to such homes. I have seen little suggestion that young adults truly desire McMansions.

But, I would not write off this possibility just yet. I could imagine several possible scenarios where McMansions happen to end up in the hands of future generations:

  1. Younger adults do well enough economically – or enough of them do since not all Baby Boomers own big homes either – to keep McMansions going.
  2. Baby Boomers cannot sell their large homes, the prices drop, and the homes are more in the reach of younger adults.
  3. Enough McMansions are converted to other uses – think multi-family housing – to keep the prices up enough to keep everyone happy. (Or, in a more dystopian model, McMansions are simply bulldozed or replaced to limit the supply.

I have a sneaking suspicion McMansions will be passed along in decent numbers to the next generation…despite the wishes of some.

Many Americans can’t afford a McMansion (even if they might aspire to one)

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A recent study suggested Americans aspire to own the larger homes in their neighborhood. By using the term “McMansion,” the study might be read as some as suggesting that this belief is widespread among many Americans. Americans like big houses and they like to look to external reference groups to help guide their own behavior. Isn’t everyone after a McMansion?

Just three little problems:

  1. Many Americans do not live in neighborhoods with McMansions.
  2. Many Americans cannot afford a McMansion.
  3. Not all larger houses are McMansions.

McMansions are particular kinds of houses that require a certain social class and set of resources to acquire. Even in cheaper housing markets, McMansions are not within reach of many residents. Academic articles and media articles journals can use the term broadly but how many Americans truly live in McMansions – 10%? 20%?

At the same time, it is worth looking at the aspirations of Americans. Homeownership, particularly in a suburban setting, is an ingrained goal in American society. And Americans do seem to like bigger homes. But, do they really want a McMansion, a home that can be made fun of by others and with a descriptor rarely used in real estate listings? There is clearly a market for such homes but the buffoonish McMansion may not exactly be the goal of homebuyers.

 

Looking at “The McMansion Effect:” home satisfaction and size of the homeowners’ home

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A new study under review looks at how satisfied owners are with owning some of the largest homes in their area:

This finding, Bellet reasons, has to do with how people compare their houses with others in their neighborhood—particularly the biggest ones. In his paper, which is currently under peer review, he looks closely at the construction of homes that are larger than at least 90 percent of the other houses in the neighborhood. By his calculation, if homes in the 90th percentile were 10 percent bigger, the neighbors would be less pleased with their own homes unless those homes grew 10 percent as well. Moreover, the homeowners most sensitive to such shifts are the ones whose houses are in the second-biggest tier, not the ones whose houses are median-sized.

To be clear, having more space does generally lead to people saying they’re more pleased with their home. The problem is that the satisfaction often doesn’t last if even bigger homes pop up nearby. “If I bought a house to feel like I’m ‘the king of my neighborhood,’ but a new king arises, it makes me feel very bad about my house,” Bellet wrote to me in an email.

The largest houses seem to be the ones that all the other homeowners base their expectations on. In neighborhoods where the biggest houses are more modest, Bellet told me, expanding the size of one’s house can be 10 times as satisfying as undertaking such an expansion in a neighborhood where the biggest homes are palatial.

Bellet sketches out an unfulfilling cycle of one-upmanship, in which the owners of the biggest homes are most satisfied if their home remains among the biggest, and those who rank right below them grow less satisfied as their dwelling looks ever more measly by comparison. He estimates that from 1980 to 2009, the size of the largest 10 percent of houses increased 1.4 times as fast as did the size of the median house. This means that the reference point many people have for what constitutes a big home has shifted further out of reach, just as many other lifestyle reference points have shifted in an age of pronounced wealth inequality.

Read the working paper here.
Three quick thoughts:
  1. The term McMansion in the paper seems to refer simply to the largest homes. At least a few of the homes are not likely McMansions since the term is much more complex than just referring to homes with a large amount of square feet. Is the big home architecturally sound? Is it a teardown replacing a smaller home? Is it less of an issue of the single home and more an issue of sprawl and excessive consumption? Calling all big homes McMansions does not add much to helping understand what exactly is going on with large homes. Not all large homes are made alike or may be as satisfying. It may, however, add sizzle to the title: “The McMansion Effect” sounds good.
  2. I would like to see more research that addresses the issue of homeowners comparing their homes to others around them. This paper suggests satisfaction is linked to nearby comparisons. How far does this geography extend – walking distance? Half a mile? 2 miles? Within the same municipality? Compared to what is seen on TV?
  3. This sounds similar to a recent argument about the “Dream Hoarders,” the group just below the wealthiest people who have status anxiety about keeping up. Here, those just below the biggest homes in the neighborhood can feel worse. Is it the largest houses that are the problem or the people in the next to largest houses who then long to have the biggest house. If only we could control the pesky human tendency to compare ourselves to people who have just a little more than us…

The rise of beach McMansions in New Jersey, Florida

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Large homes are not just for suburban locations. Two recent pieces highlighted their role in changing beach communities. First, from New Jersey:

Decades ago, when I was a teenager, I rented a surf shack in the then-humble town of Beach Haven on the New Jersey shore. Four of us crammed into a squat cinder-block hut tucked behind a bungalow. We worked as lifeguards for $2.50 an hour. Still, our rent was only $187.50 each for the summer. We had a place to sleep, shower, and create memories. We didn’t need more…

But there is another less visible cost that rarely gets mentioned when Americans talk about coastal development and risks. Since the modern coast emerged after the Second World War, a series of land bubbles have wildly inflated land values, to the point that many ordinary families can no longer afford to live at the coast, or even afford a weekly summer rental. On Long Beach Island, a popular resort in Ocean County, where I worked as a lifeguard, $15 billion worth of property now crowds a narrow, 18-mile-long shoreline. The average price of a new home is about $1.1 million, with many costing millions more. Rentals run as high as $5,000 a week. Yet, paradoxically, the island was conceived by Morris Shapiro and other developers as an enclave for middle-class and blue-collar families – teachers, plumbers, electricians, and so forth…

I suppose it is unsurprising there are few, if any, surf shacks left. Most beach towns have been supersized. But unanticipated costs have come with that growth. High school and college students have few places to live and the labor pool for lifeguards, waitresses, hotel workers, amusement-ride operators, and so on has shrunk dramatically. Many shore towns now rely on a special federal visa program to supply summer help. Workers come from Eastern Europe, Ireland, even Australia. Even so, some businesses have been forced to cut hours or even close.

The change over multiple decades is drastic.

And from the Gulf Coast of Florida:

Anna Maria Island may be largely built-out, but that hasn’t stopped developers from buying older existing homes, tearing them down and replacing them with new high-end homes…

Officials in the cities of Anna Maria, Holmes Beach and Bradenton Beach say it is a worrisome long-term trend and that they are doing their best to maintain the island’s unique character and sense of place…

Stephen Gilbert, building official for the city of Bradenton Beach, said the land is often much more valuable than the existing older home that sits on the lot.

Of the new homes built in the last decade in Bradenton Beach, only a couple were intended as homes for the owners. The others were intended as investments to be quickly turned over for more cash, he said.

While the change here has come more recently, it sounds like a similar process: people with money and/or an interest in investments come in, tear down older homes, and construct beach McMansions. This has happens over a sustained period of time and the feel of neighborhoods and communities changes.

These changes certainly have local effects on hundreds of beach communities across the United States but there are larger processes at work. Are the big homes the cause or the symptom of bigger issues? The nature of real estate capital today plus the rapid rise in real estate values puts even small communities at the mercy of global markets. Communities can respond but turning down big amounts of new money is not easy and often requires significant opposition from local residents and leaders.