Tag Archives: McMansions

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.

Calling McMansions “Kleenex box[es]”

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I’ve seen McMansions called many things but haven’t seen the term “Kleenex box” before:

Our young builder, with approval from the City, had to chop down a fifty foot street tree to clear the driveway into the garage.  To me, the tree was as important to the look of our street as the structure of the new house itself.  The house is a modernist design, a McMansion in the style of a Kleenex box with huge areas of glass that many readers of this article have seen popping up all over Los Angeles. 

That is one expensive Kleenex box. I’m not sure exactly how the term relates to McMansions: it is mass produced? It is flimsy? It is a boring box? It is just a container to put stuff in? Regardless, the term is not meant to be positive.

Meme adding more and more gables to your McMansion

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At MemeGenerator, check out the McMansion gables image:

xzibit-yo-dawg - tonight on "pimp my mcmansion" : Yo dawg! We heard you liked gables so we put gables inside your gables alongside your gables!

McMansions are often known for their multiple gables. These add more volume and angles to the roofline. They are typically not necessary so are considered gauche for simply trying to impress.

This is based on the Xzibit Yo Dawg meme which is described thusly:

Yo Dawg, or Sup Dawg, is an image macro series based on portrait shots of American hip hop artist Alvin Nathaniel Joiner, better known by his stage name Xzibit, and humorous captions that are composed around the recursive phrasal template “Yo Dawg, I herd you like (noun X), so I put an (noun X) in your (noun Y) so you can (verb Z) while you (verb Z).” Since rising to popularity in early 2007, the series has been considered one of the most well-known and longest lasting examples of recursive humor on the Internet…

While Xzibit initially began his career in the entertainment industry as a rapper from Los Angeles, his mainstream breakthrough came almost a decade later as the host of the MTV show Pimp My Ride, which ran for six seasons from 2004 to 2007. In the show, Xzibit gained a reputation for adding luxurious amenities and equipments like fish tanks, clothes dryers and fireplaces into the participant’s car, presumably without consent.

So if Xzibit is known for a show featuring consumption, the connection to McMansions makes some sense.

Question: “Are MOST homes built in the 80s or later ‘McMansion’ style?”

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One post at city-data.com asks whether McMansions have dominated housing since the 1980s:

Are MOST homes built in the 80s or later “McMansion” style?

Would you say the majority of homes built in the past 35 years in America have that ugly vinyl siding and are made of cheap materials?
The discussion thread goes in some different directions. Most of the responses have to do with the particular traits of McMansions and whether vinyl siding and cheap materials is enough of a definition. As noted, homes of a variety of sizes could have these features. The stereotypical features of McMansions often include lots of square feet, two story foyers, impressive fronts yet a neglected back and sides, multi-gabled roof, and an imposing garage.
But, the direct answer to the question regarding the number of McMansions is a clear “no.” Even at their peak, McMansions – defined by square feet – were never even a significant percentage of the market. Here is an update on this data from the Washington Post:
In 1973, the median newly-completed single-family house was 1,525 square feet; forty years later, in 2013, it was 2,384 square feet. That is a record high.
That’s just the median, of course. But the share of newly built homes that are at least 4,000 square feet is now at 10 percent, equaling the series’s peak in 2008, after having dipped slightly immediately after the crash. The share of homes that have at least four bedrooms is also at a historical high, at 44 percent. That’s almost twice the share in 1973.
At the same time, McMansions became quite a popular topic, whether viewed as emblematic of poor architectural quality, teardowns, excessive consumption, or suburbia or tied McMansions to the housing bubble of the mid-2000s. From some of the reports, you might think there are a lot of these homes built each year but this is not the case. Just to repeat: most Americans do not live in McMansions, even in the suburbs or more conservative areas.

Wait, they are “practically giving away” “suburban mega-McMansions”?

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Curbed Chicago returns to a listing for a 19,438 square foot suburban home and notes the reduced price:

Demand for suburban McMansions is so low that some owners are practically giving them away. Take for instance this totally redonkulous 19,438 square foot home set on a 10 acre parcel of prime Barrington Hills real estate. It’s gone on and off the market since 2010, when it was originally listed for $10.5 million. Today, it can be had for $4.75 million. Its ask is now less than half of what it was when it first listed four years ago. This McMansion joins many others in the Barrington area to take huge price chops. While the value of most homes in the city have begun to rise again since the 2008 foreclosure crisis, large suburban McMansions continue to feel the hurt. The good news is, if you’ve always wanted to live the 1990s MTV Cribs lifestyle, it can now be had for about half the price.

Large home with lots of features. Yet…

1. The price may have been cut by half but it is still $4.75 million. In fact, this price reduction may not indicate that the owner is ready to give this away but rather that it was overpriced to begin with. I think the piece is trying to imply that the demand for “mega-McMansions” is low so the price was cut but we would need some more evidence before jumping to that conclusion.

2. What exactly is a “mega-McMansion”? The square footage puts this home way out of reach of the normal suburban McMansion owner as does the price. The home may not be pleasing to everyone – I’m thinking the pool room looks most desirable – but it is a scale above McMansions. Again, tying a home like this to the term McMansion is intended to add another layer of criticism that “mansion” just doesn’t add.

New novel “The Megabuilders of Queenston Park” addresses McMansions

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The problems McMansions can pose are addressed in a new novel where builders spread teardowns in suburban Princeton, New Jersey:

Author, translator, Greek poetry scholar and Princeton University Professor Emeritus Edmund Keeley tackles this issue in his newest novel, “The Megabuilders of Queenston Park,” published by the Lambertville-based independent Wild River Books. Joyce Carol Oates has called it a deftly written “contemporary comedy of manners.”

Set in present-day suburban Princeton, with its architecturally distinct buildings, the book’s “megabuilders” roam neighborhoods in search of modest homes to tear down. When a smooth-talking real estate developer tries to convince Cassie Mandeville to sell her beloved home and property, she and her husband Nick decide to take action. Nearing retirement, Cassie and Nick find themselves thrust into a battle with a father-and-son construction company that plans to erect an overgrown, high-end eyesore next door and convince the Mandevilles to sell their home as a teardown. As the couple tries to save their neighborhood, they run headlong into an insensitive and possibly corrupt local government as they navigate the maze of community zoning.

“The Megabuilders of Queenston Park” brings to life unsettling environmental questions that plague many families and communities, large and small. What is the true value of real estate? How do we measure the stability and familial loyalty our homes nurture and shelter? How do we protect our neighborhoods from large-scale development, construction, pollution and sewage run-off?…

Says the developer to the fictional Mandevilles: “I understand how you and a few others around here feel, but I’m afraid you’re all living in dream land. I promise you, if it isn’t Solar Estates working to revitalize the neighborhood, it will be somebody else moving in for their own kind of upgrading. The lots in your neighborhood are just too valuable and — forgive me — the houses are too old and small. Someday soon they will have to come down, and I’m afraid that includes yours.”

Novels have been a common way to express critiques of the suburbs since the early 1900s. Teardowns are common in numerous older suburbs with a higher quality of life as people want to move into homes with all the amenities but still live in quaint neighborhoods with plenty of character. I wonder just how many novels provide positive perspectives on McMansions and teardowns?

I hope the book isn’t as didactic as this summary makes it sound…

McMansions show disconnect between “worker[s] and automated tool[s]”

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A new book suggests McMansions are the result of automated home design:

The author of the new Building a Timeless House in an Instant Age is well-qualified to criticize. He’s a nationally recognized authority on historic design, and architecturally correct moldings and millwork. From 1991-93, he attended North Bennett Street School in Boston, the nation’s oldest trade school – one that’s evolved into jewelry making, bookbinding and museum-quality historic preservation…

“If you look at the Pyramids, you understand the Egyptians by what they were building,” he says. “McMansions are not really what we want to say about ourselves.”

They are the products of a mechanized disconnect between worker and automated tool, even between architect and computer. “Most architects draw by hand and then enter the drawing into AutoCAD, and there’s a separation between the hand and the head,” he says. “It’s the same thing with craftsmen looking at their computer while a router cuts the wood.”

What’s lost is the classical sense of scale and proportion – and a cultural heritage.

“There’s a separation that’s taking place that’s not good for us – we’re falsely assuming that were improving as we go to AutoCAD,” he says. “The beauty is in the human quality of the hand-cut piece, but a machine puts an impersonal imprint on that.”

It sounds like this is less about McMansions and more of a critique of automation and mass production. McMansions may be the symptom of mass produced homes but they weren’t the first. Similar complaints were leveled against the Levittowns and early mass suburbs which were viewed as too uniform. Those early mass homes were partly the result of changing technology: earlier American homes were built with beams, requiring heavier pieces of wood, and constructed mostly by small-scale builders or the homeowners themselves. The balloon-frame home opened things up to mass production since it relies on uniform pieces of wood.

At the same time, balloon-frame homes don’t necessarily have to be built to look like or to be the size of McMansions…

Renovating a McMansion: “Help! I want Country Understated Natural and it screams Mcmansion”

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One McMansion owner is looking for help in redesigning their home:

I did not build the house and I want it to be lodgy, understated country? It is Tony Soprano in its bones…If I changed the siding to the cedar color– would it be too monotone? I would like to use that grey cedar for the door. What can I do about the square panel details which have the red rosettes? I thought a trellis/lattice design there could work there but…not really. The hardware should be copper for the door handles and the light fixtures-any suggestions for the exact kind/type or go with vintage or gas lantern look-but which one and how large? Any suggestions overall, any advice…APPRECIATED!

The subsequent suggestions range from from changing the exterior color to a different kind of siding and roof to changing windows.

But, this brings up an interesting question: how much can and should homeowners remodel McMansions? Critics would argue that the homes shouldn’t have been built or purchased in the first place but plenty exist. The same critics may go on to note that renovation projects might be difficult and expensive with McMansions because of inferior build quality or a lack of design. However, it is likely that many McMansions would undergo significant changes over the decades. This is what happens to single-family homes – just look at some of the original Levittown homes and how they have been altered. There may be a huge potential market for firms to offer McMansion renovation services, to come in and spruce up the dated portions and/or overhaul the more garish features (two-story entryways, large great rooms, many gabled roof, etc.).

Can a former McMansion be converted into a non-McMansion with a reasonable amount of money and time?