Tag Archives: McMansions

Transforming McMansions might offend architects?

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The creators of The Offset House discuss possible reactions to their plans to renovate McMansions:

It’s easy to imagine NIMBY night-terrors if a neighbor suggested building this, but architects might not appreciate you treating McMansions so reverently, either. Who did you want to offend more?

Neustein: We wanted to offend Australian architects’ sensibilities. We don’t want to offend any actual [inhabitants]. We’re trying to appreciate what’s great about suburban life, because someone needs to if many people live there. A lot of architects are out of touch with ordinary aspirations for living and want to impose things from the top down.

Has this idea of outdoor verandas in housing appeared in Australian architectural history before?

Neustein: It’s important to recognize that we’re not necessarily talking about bringing this type of suburban environment forward; we might be talking about bringing it backward.

It is suggested in the first question that any neutral or positive use of a McMansion might be abhorrent to architects. Is this really the case? McMansions are not typically paragons of architectural design: they can have poor proportions, present a mish-mash of styles, and are often mass produced. Additionally, their setting in the suburbs may represent to many all that is wrong with modern society. Yet, if bad products can be made better, why wouldn’t architects support this? Perhaps this first question is intentionally overstated to present two opposites. At the same time, it is rare to find prominent designers or architects who are willing to work with “ordinary aspirations for living.”

Shadowy McMansion owners

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A letter to the editor in the New York Times suggests McMansions owned by shell companies are a big problem:

Your article on shell companies and real estate highlights a phenomenon not unique to ultra-wealthy areas of Los Angeles. Real estate purchases using the cover of limited liability companies are a significant issue in the San Gabriel Valley in eastern Los Angeles County, where McMansions owned by L.L.C.s sit empty as middle-class home buyers are priced out, unable to compete against those flush with foreign money from unknown and undisclosed sources.

New York, San Francisco, London and Vancouver are also experiencing this influx. In the United States, real estate brokers and agents are not required to comply with customer due diligence and know your customer mandates that banks and many non-bank institutions must follow.

This kind of argument makes McMansions seem even worse then they are typically depicted: they are owned by shadowy wealthy people who don’t care about the normal resident who just needs somewhere to live. The problem with this letter is that it doesn’t provide good data on how many homes actually fall into this category. Wealthy, culturally significant cities like the ones listed above – LA, NYC, San Francisco, London, Vancouver – do attract foreign investors (particularly Chinese investors recently in Vancouver and the LA area) but major cities tend to like this: it keeps new capital flowing into local coffers and it fuels the high-end construction industry (see Miami or London or New York).

In contrast, it is pretty clear that most major American cities don’t really want to talk about affordable housing and/or aren’t willing to do much about it. Affordable housing is needed in many major cities, particularly those along the coasts. Part of the reason McMansions exist in the first place is that Americans were willing to move further out from the city to buy a bigger house (and this has to with state policies and residential preferences to avoid urban life and non-whites). The resources that it takes to construct McMansions in the suburbs could be harnessed to build smaller urban units or at least denser suburban units (see these recent ideas to use the materials from McMansions or to subdivide McMansions into multiple units) but few governments want to mess with the single-family home market and few builders or developers want to limit their profits.

When you spend $2 million to block a nearby McMansion

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The Washington Post profiles several neighbors who saved their neighborhood from a McMansion – but now may be on the hook for a big amount of money.

They had seen home after home in Bethesda, Md., torn down, replaced by behemoths boasting high ceilings, multiple gables and soaring porticoes. So when a small 1940s Cape Colonial on Oldchester Road was about to go on the market last year — and already attracting the attention of a well-known McMansion developer — three neighbors designed a custom-built approach to save it.

They pooled $2 million to buy, modernize and resell the old house. They hope the updated brick Colonial, which they expanded from three to six bedrooms, will preserve the charm of their neighborhood and maybe even make them a modest profit.

But the group’s attempt to flip the house — on a street where a 1999 Harrison Ford movie was filmed — has yet to pay off. The now-renovated home at 7812 Oldchester Road in the Bradley Woods neighborhood of Bethesda has been on the market since late August, its price having dropped from nearly $2.4 million to $2.175 million…

But the Bradley Woods triumvirate — a senior Justice Department official, a real estate lawyer and a high-end home designer — remain confident they made the right decision, despite the property lingering on the market for 3 1/2  months, longer than the two-month average for a Bethesda home.

What is missing in this story is the amount of money and wealth that is needed to even make this move: most Americans opposed to McMansions or other changes to their neighborhood or community could not simply buy the property and then try to make some money off of it. Instead, they have to either convince their neighbors that this isn’t in their best interest (and this is a tough case to make when so much money is on the line on what typically is most people’s biggest single investment in life) or go through the regulatory and legal process to attempt to block the teardown. All of this might lead to negative interactions as it pits property rights versus what the neighbors or community feel might be in their own best interests (and it often is about collective property values). But, if you have resources, you can just take care of the problem yourself.

One wish: “Tiny House Trend Booming — McMansions Now Storage Units”

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One Oregon newspaper asked readers to submit headlines they would like to see come true in 2016. One involved McMansions:

“Tiny House Trend Booming — McMansions Now Storage Units”

The headline tries to juxtapose two very different sized houses and two unique visions. The first suggests people need less space and such homes can be more sustainable. The second suggests outrageous consumerism and living beyond your means. Yet, this headline/far-fetched prediction may just hint at how these two trends are linked: what would Americans do with all their stuff if a large number wanted to move to tiny houses? Americans may have bigger houses than they need – whether measured by the people in each household (which is declining) or the amount of space and energy they should take up (this would really help lower energy use) – but they do like their stuff. Here is a quote from an HGTV participant:

We have a very American problem. We have too much stuff. And we’re going to do the very American solution. Instead of getting rid of some of our stuff, we’re going to just get a bigger house.

And Americans are already using seven square feet per person of storage space. Perhaps all of those McMansions could simply become storage facilities? Think how much that 20 foot tall great room or that oversized three car garage might hold. Imagine a future where Americans live in 400 square feet or less units most of the time but have a 3,000 square foot storage facility several miles away.

A McMansion has been part of the American Dream for a while

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Teen Vogue suggests the historic American Dream involves a McMansion:

The mythic American Dream, defined by the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster, is an “American social ideal that stresses egalitarianism and especially material prosperity.” We all know what that social ideal has looked like historically: a 9-5 job, two cars, two kids, and one McMansion complete with a white picket fence. It’s what your parents, grandparents, and probably even great-great-grandparents aspired to (though they probably didn’t use the term McMansion in the’50s — McDonalds was still at novelty back then).

But according a new poll conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics, 48% of millennials believe the American idyll is dead. More than 2,000 young Americans between 18 and 29 years old were interviewed about the government, the military, the future of the country, and the collective outlook on the future is…not great!

The caveat in the first paragraph may be important: people in the 1950s didn’t use the term McMansion as it didn’t really become widely used until the late 1990s (and yes, the Mc- prefix also wouldn’t have made much sense). But, did those post-war suburbanites really aspire to a McMansion, often defined as an overly large, poorly built home sitting on a small lot within the sprawling suburbs? Not really. Many of those early suburban single-family homes were quite modest in size. The Levittown homes were around 1,000 square feet and could even be purchased with unfinished second levels. In comparison, today’s new homes are roughly 2.5 times the size of the average new homes of the early 1950s. Many post-war suburban homes were mass produced but they weren’t considered garish or ostentatious. Were these new suburban homes better than many of the other housing options after World War II? Yes and there was indeed a real housing shortage. But, it is a real stretch to claim the American Dream always included a Mediterranean inspired 3,000 square foot home tightly packed into a small lot in a gated neighborhood.

Install an artificial plant to hide nearby McMansion

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Have an unsightly McMansion next door? Install artificial plantings:

A San Marcos, California based company, Geranium Street Floral, has installed their artificial plants at many hip remodeled homes throughout Southern California. The company recently installed an artificial hedge at a remodeled property in North Hollywood that no doubt greatly improved the view in the backyard of the custom remodeled home. Geranium Street specializes in creating backyard privacy with their artificial plants.

Geranium Street president, Bob Smith explains that with the advent of “McMansions” throughout Southern California, the need for privacy is at an all time high. “Before, you had houses in a neighborhood that were all basically the same height, so privacy wasn’t much of an issue, but now they are tearing the old houses down and building houses that tower over those of their neighbors – suddenly everyone feels like they are living in a fish bowl. We have ways to solve that problem quickly with our artificial plants,” said Smith…

Bob Smith explained that many real estate developers have found the quick solution to their privacy and decorative needs by installing artificial plants. “Whereas it may take months to grow real vines and plant real trees, we can come in and install our artificial plants in a day or two. The new artificial trees and plants look more realistic than they ever did before, and they are very durable,” said Smith.

Four quick thoughts:

  1. Given the water issues in California, I’m surprised this press release doesn’t include the rationale of saving money on plantings. Have a hedge and no water is required.
  2. It would be interesting to think about how these installations play with the idea of “nature.” Some would say the real plantings in the suburban sprawl like that found in southern California are already poor imitations of nature. But, what if those same plantings aren’t even real? Is this a more honest admission of the lack of nature? These options are billed as durable but they likely provide a different aesthetic and physical experience.
  3. Theoretically, such hedges could be built to any size of shape. McMansions can come in all sorts of sizes and shapes and a company could get pretty creative in how an artificial hedge hides the ugly house next door.
  4. What do artificial plants do to property values? They may be durable but I imagine they could be viewed as tacky or lower class.

Are the Kardashian/Wests selling a mansion or a McMansion?

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Save up all your Black Friday funds to purchase this large home – which may be a mansion or McMansion.

By now, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have surely settled in at their tasteful Hidden Hills mansion, not far from Kris Jenner’s place, so it makes sense that they’re moving toward unloading the tacky Bel Air Crest estate that they’ve been renovating since they purchased it in 2013 (hopefully to make it less tacky). TMZ hears that the couple are readying to put the Tuscan-inspired McMansion on the market within the next few days, and that the house will be asking “more than $20 million.” Kim and Kanye paid $9 million, and reportedly dropped $2 million on renovations.

Shortly after buying the house, the British press reported that the couple’s deep renovations included things like a fridge covered in Swarovski crystals, a million-dollar security system, and four gold-plated toilets. We’ll have to wait for the listing photos to see whether those items ever made it into the house. Last September, perhaps fed up with trying to turn the estate into their dream home, Kim and Kanye reportedly whisper-listed the half-finished house for $11 million.

Lots of pictures follow.

I’ve discussed a number of these mansion/McMansion claims over the years. This particular house provides another strong example. On the mansion side, you have a large home, a wealthy location, numerous luxury goods inside, and famous owners (average people might live in McMansions but not famous people). On the McMansion side, it features the Mediterranean style common in many McMansions, it was a fixer-upper (if an expensive one), and using this term provides permission to criticize the home (it is tacky compared to their real mansion).

Although I presented two sides above, this isn’t much of an argument: given the size and expense of this house, it is clearly a mansion.

For Thanksgiving, carve up McMansions

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The Financial Review serves up this headline: “Architects sharpen knives to carve up McMansions.”

He says there are different ways to redeem McMansions. One could be divided into two side-by-side dwellings or even three separate townhouses. Alternatively, the division could be horizontal, with a ground-floor apartment and separate first-floor one. Fences could be knocked down to create common garden areas between dwellings.

Neustein calculates that to turn a typical seven-bedroom, three-bathroom McMansion into a split-level two-unit dwelling would cost about $350,000, or a $770 per square metre.

The procedure would involve removing the brick veneer walls and plasterboard lining, weatherproofing the newly exposed timber frame, demolishing internal walls and putting in new external walls with double-glazed windows and doors, rerouting plumbing and electricity, waterproofing decking for the new verandah space and installing a rainwater tank and sprinklers to fire-proof the timber structure.

It’s a cheaper outlay than buying a new apartment, the median price of which in Sydney was $675,000 last month, would let the existing owner stay in their home and area, and would create an asset they could rent.

This article provides a lot more details about these plans that were featured at the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Two quick thoughts:

  1. If apartments really are so expensive in the Sydney area, it seems like there is a lot of financial incentive to try something like this. Imagine a local business or institutional investor buying up some of these large McMansions and converting them into rentals with the aim of long-term profits (as opposed to the big profits made by building and selling such a big home in the first place).
  2. As the article goes on to note, it is hard to know whether people would want to rent so far out from job centers. Yet, I imagine another issue: what would the neighbors say? These large homes are probably built in neighborhoods with a number of similar homes. Renovations like these would be frowned upon as it would introduce renters (who are different kinds of people than those who own expensive large homes) and change the character of a quiet neighborhood. In the United States, such changes would have to go through municipal approval and to put it mildly, I think the neighbors would be opposed.

Bigger American houses limit energy efficiency

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A new Pew report looks at how the growing size of American homes affects energy efficiency:

U.S. homes have become considerably more energy-efficient over the past four decades, according to government data. But homes also are a lot bigger than they used to be, and their growing girth wipes out nearly all the efficiency gains.

According to preliminary figures from the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the average U.S. home used 101,800 British thermal units (Btu) of energy per square foot in 2012, the most recent year with available data. That’s 31% less than in 1970, after adjusting for weather effects and efficiency improvements in electricity generation…

While some homeowners do add onto their existing structures, the trend is driven largely by new construction. According to the Census Bureau, the average new single-family house completed last year was 2,657 square feet – 57% larger than four decades earlier. While the biggest new homes are being built in the South (an average of 2,711 square feet last year), home sizes have grown the most in the Northeast: a 64% increase in average new-home size over the past four decades…

What all of this means is that, after dropping sharply during the 1970s, the overall energy intensity of U.S. homes has changed little over the past three decades. Energy intensity is a metric that compares the amount of energy used against some unit of economic activity – households, in the case of the residential sector.

A logical question at the end of this is to ask what should be done in response. One line of argument would suggest Americans should cut their home size. When they build and purchase larger homes, they use more energy than they probably need to consume. (This is in addition to other arguments against building larger houses.) On the other hand, I imagine some would argue that we will continue to see gains in energy efficiency through technology and this will soon reduce energy use even in spite of larger homes. This second argument may be more appealing to many as then Americans could get even bigger homes and we get to utilize the benefits of technological progress.

Neighbors: keep gangster’s house or support replacement McMansion?

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Tampa residents are facing a quandary: do they support two possible McMansions to replace the home of a notorious gangster?

The community is rallying around the five-bedroom, 2.5-bath house built in 1952 by Santo Trafficante Jr., a supposed gangster who ran casinos in pre-Castro Cuba as the head of one of the most powerful organized crime syndicates in Florida.

Parkland Estates residents are upset about an application asking the city to split the lot in two at the request of Trafficante’s surviving daughters, Mary Jo Paniello and Sarah Ann Valdez…

“They’ve always been good neighbors and this is kind of a slap in the face,’’ said Anneliese Meier, vice president of the Parkland Estates Civic Club, which vigorously opposes the plan. “No matter what the history is, it’s a gorgeous house and should be preserved.”…

She said splitting the lot might mean the 63-year-old house will be torn down to make way for two larger homes.

“That doesn’t fit the character of this neighborhood,’’ Meier said. “McMansions tear up the community. They are big houses on small lots. Nobody’s happy about it. We’re tired of seeing this happen in our community.”

Both situations could leave the neighbors with some notoriety that they might think could threaten their property values. But, it is interesting that the neighbors quoted in this article think the McMansion is worse than the gangster: the family were good neighbors but a McMansion would pose a more important threat. Perhaps this suggests that neighbors think people are replaceable but the physical structure has a stronger impact. A broader question to ask many Americans would be: would you rather have a bad neighbor in a nice house that enhances the neighborhood or a bad house nearby with lovely neighbors?