Tag Archives: McMansions

Which drives McMansions: supply or demand?

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Thomas Frank argued last week that America has a system that enables McMansions but another commentator suggests McMansions reflect the desires of Americans:

Still, it fascinates — are not horror films and comedies blockbusters too? — and, lest we snark too much, in this case on McMansions, let us remember these objects reflect consumers’ demand — our collective taste — not the other way around.

And just as soon as I try and boast of some superlative insight or immunity to things and stuff myself, I will have thrown a stone at a glass house — even if it is a two-story Palladian window, even if it’s draped in Pepto-mauve and installed over an entry door — and I bet a crumpled buck you will have too. I say we observe, look for the humor reflected therein (it’s there) and continue to try and learn from our own selves.

Classic question: do Americans buy McMansions because the system supplies them and makes them possible or do they exist because the demand is there from American residents?

This question is not a new one in the field of studying suburbs. On one hand, some argue that suburbs (and McMansions by proxy) exist because this is what Americans want. Joel Kotkin argues that Americans vote with their feet and when given the opportunity, will tend to choose more space and freedom in the suburbs (and the Sunbelt). Jon Teaford says in his book The American Suburb: The Basics that Americans tend to desire more local control and space to be individuals, traits that work well in suburbs. In contrast, some would argue the other side. Suburbs had to be sold to Americans; compare this to European desires to be closer to the central city. Suburbs were constructed by developers who wanted to make money and had to drum up demand. Frank’s argument echoes those of James Howard Kunstler who suggests the suburbs are a subsidized project – often through government action and money – that hollowed out our cities.

As a sociologist, I would argue both sides of the equation are present though we tend to emphasize the demand side in American discourse without realizing how the supply side is shaped. Sure, some Americans may want McMansions but where do these desires come from? Why would they choose to spend their money on a certain kind of large home rather than buying a smaller place in a more urban area or spending more on other luxury goods? Take the example of highways: Americans did take to the automobile quickly but major systems of roads and highways also arose in part because of lobbying efforts from motorist and industry groups, governments decided to spend relatively more money on roads than mass transit, and certain restrictions made it difficult for streetcars and other mass transit to compete (see Kenneth Jackson in Crabgrass Frontiers for more details). Consumer desires don’t simply come out of nowhere; they are shaped by social forces.

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.

When hating McMansions becomes part of a local identity

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A BuzzFeed quiz about Bergen County, New Jersey suggests hating McMansions is a mark of local identity:

A new quiz posted on BuzzFeed tests takers’ Bergen County-ness, using malls, spray tanning, and wealth as some of the metrics. The quiz asks BuzzFeed readers to identify which things they’ve done before to see just how Bergen County they are.

Some of the indicators include whether or not you live within 10 minutes of more than two malls, know someone who got her nails done regularly in high school, hate McMansions, and know people who wear Juicy track suits and Tiffany charm bracelets.

Sure, it is an online quiz but this seems to be a popular means these days for establishing, or at least broadcasting, identity. The choice of McMansions as a critical marker is interesting because presumably it means there must be a decent number of them in Bergen County. After all, this is New Jersey, a place that has a lot of suburbs between Philadelphia and New York City. Are the McMansion residents not really Bergen Countiers? Is it fair to presume they are all outsiders chasing cheaper and bigger homes? This particular question sounds more like a means to differentiate between long-term residents of the county versus newer residents who moved into newer subdivisions. This sort of long-time resident versus newcomer has a long history in suburban areas, particularly in places that settlements long before post-World War II suburbanization.

Piling on to the argument we’ve sacrificed everything for McMansions

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Going through Thomas Frank’s recent argument that we’ve sacrificed quite a bit for some to have McMansions, one Co.Design writer adds a few choice phrases about McMansions:

The soul of the McMansion is as ugly as its faux-classical facade…

The result? Sprawling suburbs made to accommodate larger and larger homes that tend to be a ugly mishmash of architectural sensibilities. McMansions present a unique design challenge that, sadly, is rarely overcome with dignity…

There’s a domino effect that has profoundly affected the way all of America lives to accommodate the desires of those wealthy enough to afford such gargantuan and opulent residences…

Long live our McMansion overlords.

Think there are any redeeming qualities in McMansions? While Frank emphasized the economic sacrifices and conditions necessary for McMansions (financing sprawl, cheap mortgages, wealth funneled to the well-off), this argument relies on a common McMansion critique: they are lacking in architectural quality and design. The subtitle to the article sums this up: “Hideous houses are ruining America.” Is the bigger problem their lack of soul and architectural authenticity or the system that exists to make McMansions possible for the relative few? I side with Frank on this one.

Own a houseboat or RV rather than a McMansion

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Instead of building a waterfront McMansion with a boat slip, buy a boat or a RV instead:

But once in the channel, you see a new vista: On the north side there are at least a half-dozen, arrow-straight canals lined with houses. Most of the houses are large, but few are McMansions. Most have docks for their boat, or boats. And most are worth at least $1 million, not counting their nautical toys. If you’ve got the money, owning one of these places would be the start of a great retirement…

So let’s ask a question: Is there a reasonable substitute? Is there a way we can have the same kind of experiences of water, nature and easy living without the very large financial footprint of an expensive house with its monthly operating costs and taxes?…

Take the boat I chartered. At 33 feet, a couple could live on the San Souci. The cost: Maybe $25,000 for the used boat and about $600 a month for the rental slip. A larger powerboat would have more room and wider appeal. The slip for a 36-foot Grand Banks trawler is about $700 a month. You can buy them used for under $100,000. Keep the diesel engine in good shape and you can relocate at will…

Is living on a boat too eccentric for you? Not to worry. Walk up the street and try an RV. The Seabreeze RV and Mobile Home Park is less than a half-mile from Treasure Harbor Marina. Its 7.5 acres are right on the ocean — something you can’t get in a canal home that costs a mere million. Some of the RVs and park models are on the water. (Park models are RVs built to travel just once. They look like beach cabins.) And you can dock your fishing boat on site.

The RV or boat certainly offers less space and lower financial commitment compared to a McMansion. At the same time, McMansions tend to offer some land, a lot more space, and usually a facade intended to impress visitors.

Perhaps one of the biggest issues here is less about the size or financial commitment but about mobility. McMansions can’t really be moved, regardless of their price. In contrast, RVs, boats, and many tiny houses can be moved rather quickly. Mobility allows the owner to move to chase jobs. Mobility allows for a change of scenery – perhaps someone doesn’t want to live along the water forever. Of course, all three options require somewhere to park the habitat and this can cost a decent sum of money. But, if you don’t like the deal or financial circumstances change, the move is relatively easy compared to selling and buying a house.

“25 Lessons You’ll Learn From a McMansion”

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One contributer to MyOldHouseOnline.com finds humor in things you can learn from a McMansion:

1) The builders did not have all the answers.  Sometimes, they didn’t understand any of the questions.  Feel free to display bewilderment and dismay at their cluelessness.

2)  When you find a light or window in an inexplicable location or missing where one should decidedly be, refer to lesson #1.

3) Four words: What Were They Thinking?

4) McMansion owners can be the best-dressed people at the party.  But when the party is at their house, try not to stare, point, or snicker…

The main joke here appears to be that McMansions are not built that well. Hence, be prepared to find lots of things to fix or to have to make major changes to poor decisions by builders.

Argument: we’ve sacrificed everything for McMansions

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Critics of McMansions are not hard to find but Thomas Frank takes the argument further: McMansions are behind a whole host of issues including sprawl and inequality.

Of course there was something different this time around. In the 2008 collapse, the real-estate bust wasn’t the result of some larger economic trend but the cause of it. Although we are accustomed to blaming it all on subprime loans, about half of the disaster was attributable to the less-well-known fiasco in Alt-A instruments which fed the McMansion market, the “liar’s loans” which were securitized and sold off stamped with a big Triple-A. The worst recession of our lifetimes, in other words, was in large part the result of our superiors’ longing to get themselves a piece of the grandiose.

That astounding reversal of the usual chain of cause and effect changed the way I thought about the McMansion. I once believed it would be amusing to track stylistic change in the tract-mansion form—how, say, the fake French simplicity of Newt Gingrich’s 1987 McMansion gave way to the complex multigabled fakery of Michele Bachmann’s 2007 McMansion, with maybe a stop in between to contemplate Ricky Bobby’s McMansion in “Talladega Nights.”

But what I discovered is that the form doesn’t really change. Yes, the houses get bigger every year, gables and gazebos come and go, but what is really striking about the McMansion is its vapid consistency as the decades pass…

This is not some absurdity at the fringe of our way of life. This is civilization’s very center, the only thing that really makes sense in “clusterfuck nation,” the tawdry telos at which all our economic policies aim. Everything we do seems designed to make this thing possible. Cities must sprawl to accommodate its bulk, eight-lane roads must be constructed, gasoline must be kept cheap, coal must be hauled in from Wyoming on mile-long trains. Middle-class taxes must be higher to make up for the deductions given to McMansion owners, lending standards must be diluted so more suckers can purchase them, banks must be propped up, bonuses must go out, stock prices must ascend. Every one of us must work ever longer hours so that this millionaire’s folly can remain viable, can be sold successfully to the next one on the list. This stupendous, staring banality is the final outcome for which we have sacrificed everything else.

This is a strong statement: we created and generally buy into a system whose goal is to grant a privileged few the ability to live in private McMansions in nice neighborhoods. The fulfillment of the American Dream at the turn of the 21st century involves living in a McMansion. It is not just about suburbs, 0wning a car, buying cheap goods at Walmart, and sending your kids to nice schools; it is about having the glitzy, architecturally-dubious but spacious home.

What I don’t see in Frank’s piece is how exactly the dots connect. The number of McMansions are still relatively limited due to their cost. Not all gated communities have McMansions. Not all suburbs are edge cities or vacuous tract neighborhoods like the ones highlighted in Suburban Nation. I’d like to see the data where half of the housing bubble of the late 2000s was due to loans for McMansions. In other words, this may be a populist argument today given the status of McMansions but the true story is likely more complicated.

Crossword puzzle answer for “McMansion’s storage”?

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I ran across this interesting crossword puzzle clue: McMansion’s storage.

The supposed answer: ThreeCarGarage.

That is a rather long answer for a crossword clue. There also could also be other possible answers. WalkinClosets? ExtraRooms? SecondGreatRoom? For those McMansions with oversized garages, just how many people use that for their main source of storage? Since one of the key features of a McMansion is its large square footage, I imagine there is plenty of storage space available elsewhere.

Just a note on how many American homes have three-car garages. This is from the Census Bureau regarding new homes in 2012:

Of the 368,000 single-family homes sold in 2012…259,000 had 2-car garages, whereas 76,000 had garages for three cars or more.

This is a slight uptick from 2009 new homes:

17% of new single-family homes sold in the U.S. had a 3-or-more-car garage. In the Midwest 34% of the new homes sold had a 3-or-more car garage.

This is probably due to more of the new housing market catering to wealthier buyers.

Fighting the “King of McMansions”

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Some well-known residents of Southampton Village, New York are opposed to plans for a new big house proposed by the “King of McMansions:”

What do commodities trader John Paulson, real estate tycoon Harrison LeFrak, CNN morning news show co-anchor Christopher Cuomo, and  President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s granddaughter Anne Eisenhower have in common?

They share an opposition to the “Farrelization” of their neighborhood in historic Southampton Village, where Joe Farrell has proposed building a 5,531 square foot house on a 1.2 acre parcel on Hill Street according to an article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal.

Dubbed “King of McMansions,” Farrell, who was profiled last summer in The New York Times is described as being “a local version of Donald Trump, without the history of debt, the lush hair or the insults.”

Mr. Paulson, Mr. LeFrak, Mr. Cuomo,  and Ms. Eisenhower are just a few of the 85 names who penned letters to a local village review board. The letter writers variously objected to “the size, scale, scope and ‘visual incompatibility’ of a speculative home” proposed for the vacant lot at 483 Hill Street—a neighborhood where ” nearly a dozen nearby residences are more than a century old and roughly half or a third the size.”

And who is this King of McMansions? A developer of big homes in the Hamptons:

But there is no surer sign that the big-spending ways that characterized the pre-financial crisis era have returned to the Hamptons than the blue “Farrell Building” signs multiplying across the pristine landscape here, along with the multimillion-dollar houses they advertise. It is a process some are calling “Farrellization,” and not necessarily happily.

“We’re as busy as we’ve ever been,” said Joe Farrell, the president of Farrell Building, during a recent interview and tour of his $43 million, 17,000-square-foot home here. The estate, called the Sandcastle, features two bowling lanes, a skate ramp, onyx window frames and, just for fun, an A.T.M. regularly restocked with $20,000 in $10 bills…

With a customer base composed largely of Wall Street financiers, Mr. Farrell has more than 20 new homes under construction, or slated for construction, at a time, making him the biggest builder here by far. He has plans for more, many of them speculative homes built before they have buyers.

Some of the biggest controversies about McMansions seem to take place in areas where residents have plenty of money. It is one thing when a teardown McMansion is constructed in an older neighborhood and less wealthy residents are pushed out as the housing stock becomes newer and more expensive. (At the same time, an influx of new big homes could also raise property values and give some options to cash out.) But, this is an example where everyone is pretty well off and it is more about the character of the neighborhood. Perhaps it is about old money versus new money, that an outsider is coming in with new plans and disturbing an area that others paid big money to buy into.

The “King of McMansions” is going to be a negative term for many people yet it also implies a level of success. I haven’t seen too many individuals tagged with such terms and even companies like Toll Brothers who were well-known for building McMansions didn’t necessarily acquire such monikers.

What do McMansions look like on Shutterstock?

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After earlier this week looking at an iconic McMansion photo, I decided to see how Shutterstock, a stock photo site, portrays McMansions. See the results here.

Some patterns:

1. Most of the homes are in suburban settings. While the term McMansion can also apply to teardowns or large homes on small lots in more crowded neighborhoods, these stock photos are primarily about big houses in neighborhoods with larger lots.

2. Most of the homes are “normal” looking McMansions. They share features like a two-story foyer, at least a two-car garage, and multi-terraced roof line. There are few photos of homes with more castle-like features or modern architecture.

3. There appear to be some particular audiences for these photos: real estate agents who need pictures of nice homes with sold signs in the front yard and people who like flagpoles in the front yard (it appears a number of these are the same photoshopped flag).

4. The photos are mostly of lighter-colored houses, either either white or grey siding with some light brick mixed in. Few homes had darker brick or stucco.

All together, there could be a lot more variety of McMansions on this site.