Tag Archives: McMansions

Iconic image of American McMansions from Plano, Texas

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I’ve seen this picture of a Plano, Texas McMansion numerous times around the Internet:

DeanTerryPlanoTXMcMansionI’ve wondered at the origin of this photo and now I see: see this image and others from the same area as part of Dean Terry’s Flickr stream with the photos originating from his 2007 documentary Subdivided.

What makes this particular McMansion photo stand out? Some reasons:

1. The home has a “typical” McMansion design: brick exterior, multi-gabled roof, clearly a big home, lots of big windows in the front at various levels, a two-story foyer.

2. The surrounding area: the looming water tower, the big power lines out nearby, a neighborhood of similar sized houses with little evidence of anyone being around. (Some of the later photos in the Flickr set illustrate this further: the home backs up to a wide right-of-way for power lines and that water tower really is huge.) Setting the picture beneath a stop sign and lamppost seems to add to the ominousness of the photo.

3. This is Texas, a place where everything is big, including the homes, water towers, and sky. And not just any part of Texas: Plano is a booming suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area that went from just 17,872 people in 1970 to 259,841 people in 2010. That is explosive, sprawling suburban growth.

Now, I may just have to get my hands on this documentary to see more of the home and its context…

Advice for how to stop your neighbor from building a McMansion next door

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McMansions can be opposed in a variety of ways but one poster suggests the way to go is to be an undesirable neighbor:

Paint your house bright pink. Put several cars on cinderblocks in the front yard. Have 20 people move in with you. Stop cutting the grass. Park junk cars on the street in front of the vacant house. Blast loud music 24/7. Tie up a pit bull in your front yard. Get someone with a huge gut to hang out in your front yard without a shirt while drinking beer. All of these together may work, but you’ll probably make yourself miserable in the process.

These actions may or may not be possible given local laws and neighborhood regulations but they all have a similar goal: drive down property values so that possible McMansion no longer looks financially appealing. As numerous people will tell you, who wants to have the nicest house on the street, particularly compared to your immediate neighbors? If McMansions are about wealthier people upgrading their property regardless of their surroundings, then such actions could undercut their financial basis.

Claim: end of urban friends TV shows, revival of happy suburban McMansion shows

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With the end of “How I Met Your Mother,” one critic argues TV shows have moved on to happy suburban McMansions and darker shows about urban singles:

The series is among the last of a vanishing breed, the romantic comedy about well-educated, pop culturally attuned young white people trying to find love and sex in the city as they embark on their careers and independent lives. Such sitcoms proliferated after “Friends” became a huge hit for NBC in the 1990s.

But since ABC struck gold with “Modern Family,” networks have traded the urban coffee shops and bars for the suburban McMansion. TV comedies that explore the dating lives of young people now tend to be a lot darker than “How I Met Your Mother.” Take, for instance, HBO’s “Girls,” where the sex is graphic — and often soul-crushing for the characters.

Such a claim might sound true – but where is the data to back this up? Later in the article:

But that distinctive [storytelling] approach may have come at a price. “It’s that kind of innovation that never makes it to huge ratings heights of the good, old-fashioned sitcom,” Thompson said. “They’re very post-modern characters, so steeped in the irony and cynicism of the ’90s they grew up in, that sometimes it’s kind of hard to like them.”

Indeed, “HIMYM” never cracked even the Top 40 in total viewers, consistently averaging around 9 million or so over the course of its run, according to Nielsen. Yet it still occupied an important role for CBS, which is the most-watched network in the U.S. but often has trouble attracting young adults.

So no data on the number of shows with each genre or kind of storyline (young, happy singles vs. suburban McMansion dwelling families vs. unhappy urban singles) and then another knock against HIMYM and “Girls” and similar shows: they often don’t draw big ratings. So, while critics might like these shows (and critics might live in an alternate universe , how many of them are popular? Check out the Nielsen Top 25 for the week ending March 23, 2014: I don’t know all of these shows that well but I don’t see too many suburban McMansions. The suburbs are a common theme on television shows with a long history, dating back to the happy family shows of the 1950s. Yet, they don’t necessarily draw big ratings or the positive attention of critics even if they seem to be fodder for cancellations when the new crop of shows are rolled out each fall.

Tiny houses may be missing TVs, other modern technologies

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Tiny houses differ from McMansions in their size but perhaps also in another feature: a lack of TVs and other modern media technologies.

As I browsed the pages of both company’s full color, Robb Report-quality catalogs, one thing really stood out: In no picture of a fully furnished room did I see a single television. That can’t be a coincidence.

These are not the “Jewel Box” new homes filled with automation and electronics Gordon Gekko and his minions are supposedly building as all Baby Boomers are forced to downsize. Jewel Boxes? More like thumb drives if we are making an accurate size comparison.

There are clearly challenges to designing relevant A/V, home theater, whole house entertainment/convenience and security for a tiny home. Multi-purpose structures and thoughtful use of hydraulics just begin the scratch the surface. An exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York has a full size working model of a mini apartment that shows all sorts of folding and sliding stuff including a television. It almost looks like two different apartments, literally day and night.

This could suggest tiny houses are not just about having smaller houses: it is part of a larger lifestyle package away from consumerism that includes restricting television consumption. However, these two things don’t necessarily have to go together: tiny house or micro-apartment dwellers may have strong interests in different media including streaming TV and video games. I would suspect many tiny house owners have a laptop, tablet, and/or smartphone but I would also guess they don’t want their small homes to be dominated by things like large TVs that are often the focal points of social spaces in McMansions.

Catholic bishop in Germany removed after building new McMansion

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Catholic priests living in McMansions are controversial and one German bishop was just removed from his post due to the uproar about his new large house:

Pope Francis on Wednesday permanently removed a German bishop from his Limburg diocese after his 31 million-euro ($43-million) new residence complex caused an uproar among the faithful.

Francis had temporarily expelled Monsignor Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst from Limburg in October pending a church inquiry.

At the center of the controversy was the price tag for the construction of a new bishop’s residence complex and related renovations. Tebartz-van Elst defended the expenditures, saying the bill was actually for 10 projects and there were additional costs because the buildings were under historical protection…

Francis has called on his priests and bishops to be models of sobriety in a church that “is poor and is for the poor.”

McMansions don’t get many favorable reviews for the average homebuyer so it is not too surprising they may be even more disliked for religious figures. But, this sounds like it could be more than just a personal McMansion in a suburban neighborhood and more about luxurious finishes and a larger complex. At the least, this is a good example of the term McMansion being used more in a moral judgment sense rather than strictly matching a home that has all of the typical American McMansion characteristics.

A suburban McMansion that looks like a castle

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This is the sort of McMansion that can give the whole category of large suburban homes a bad name:

Words. There are none to describe this suburban mansion. This thing is literally a castle with a three car garage. We imagine you may be just as confused as we are, but there’s just something about being the king of this 10 acre domain that could be appealing to the right buyer. Built in 1990, this three story castle is no Neuschwanstein, but with four bedrooms and five and a half bathrooms spread over 8,500 square feet, you could lord over all of the other McMansions in the suburbs. Some of the more exciting features of the home include a swimming pool fit for royalty, a separate 10,000 square foot heated barn with eight horse stalls, and a spiral staircase in the master bedroom that leads to a freakin’ private turret overlooking the estate. This mansion-castle was initially listed in June 2011 for $1.8 million, and after taking three price cuts the home was removed from the market last December. It made its return to the market last Friday with an ask of $1.099 million and an option to purchase a total of 39 acres.

Quite the home. At least the castle motif is pretty consistent all the way around the house – not too much of an architectural mish-mash, just unusual to start.

Given the size of the home and property, it seems relatively cheap. However, it is only 59.5 miles to the middle of Chicago’s Loop…

You don’t have to loathe McMansions to support tiny houses

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An interview with New Zealand actor/musician Bryce Langston about his interest in tiny houses includes his response to growing up in a McMansion:

8. Describe your childhood home.

I grew up in a McMansion, really. My parents have a large house on the Shore, four bedrooms, two lounges, an office. It was a great family home. I actually don’t loathe McMansions at all. I have seen wonderful large homes that have been constructed with great thought and care for the environment around them. They are just not a practical solution for all the people on the planet in a world with limited space and resources. The main problem is the debt associated with owning them. And the lack of freedom that comes with that debt…

10. Are you an evangelist for minimalism?

What I want to do is let people know there’s a choice. If you’re happy with how things are in your life and the work you do to pay for that then that’s fine. But lots of people aren’t. They’re really hurting and unhappy in their jobs and they don’t see a way out of being in debt for 30 years or whatever. People say you have to live in the real world, but the real tangible world is one where food does grow on trees and water falls from the sky and everything is provided for you to survive…

12. Will tiny houses take over the world one day?

That really depends on the path of human consciousness. If we grow into a culture that focuses on fair distribution of resources, care of the planet and pursuit of non-material happiness, then I think downsized homes will become normal. If our society continues down the path of uncontrolled material and economic growth, then it’s unlikely.

Langston offers some of the common critiques of McMansions – they are about materialism, they use too many resources, they put people in debt – while also noting that he enjoyed the large home he grew up in. If you read some of the criticisms of McMansions, it may be hard to imagine anyone could enjoy living in a McMansion.

There are also some religious and moral overtones here. Langston ties living in a home to larger issues in human life including defining success and what it means to achieve something. This isn’t unusual in discussing McMansions (see another example here or this recent case of a Catholic archibishop): homes could be considered necessary structures but they can also be places of meaning as well as important symbols for others to see.

Can an old church be converted into a boring McMansion?

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Curbed presents an example of an old church building with a so-called boring McMansion interior:

In a harrowing example of conversions gone wrong—or if not wrong at least boring—this stunning landmark church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio seems to have fallen victim to one very unholy makeover. Currently on the market for $439K, the three-bedroom, 2,635-square-foot home looks the same as always from the outside, but offers the dullest, boxiest new interiors imaginable—with a veritable sea of beige walls and oatmeal colored carpeting. Even the massive windows—the crowning glory of most church-to-home conversions—seem to be sporting some sort of weird framing over the lovely original glass. Sure, some of the blame can probably be shifted to the staging, but there’s just no getting around the general awkwardness of the layout.

Here is the problem with claiming that this is a McMansion: typically, the term McMansion is applied to exteriors. In that sense, this home has done everything right. They took an old church, presumably one that was no longer being used as a home for a religious congregation, kept the historic exterior, and only renovated the interior. The home is not ridiculously large; the listing says it is just over 2,600 square feet and the size is masked a bit by the building’s exterior. The church is in an older neighborhood so this renovation avoided either a teardown situation or building another McMansion on the exurban fringe. The home can’t immediately impress the average passer-by, supposedly a key feature for status-hungry McMansion owners, as they would probably think it is a church rather than a home.

Is an interior enough to make this renovated church a McMansion? I think one could complain about the interior design, particularly if it misses an opportunity to take advantage of a unique building, without placing it the category of McMansion which carries with it all sorts of other connotations.

Critiquing a high-security bunker McMansion in New York City

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McMansions may be designed to impress but what happens if they are built in such a way to push away the outside world? See this example from New York City:

The massive, ground up 7,000-plus-square-foot West Village McMansion belonging to oil heiress Hyatt Bass and her screenwriter husband is being quietly shopped around, the Post has learned. There’s no official listing yet, but Bass hopes to fetch $35 million or more for the fortress home, which was built to be impenetrable following a 2007 incident in which Bass’s mother was held hostage in her own Connecticut abode. Since it was unveiled to the public last year, the bunker home, at Greenwich and West 12th Streets, has made headlines for its incongruous brutalist architecture and ultra-high security features.

Bass purchased the property for $7.5 million in 2001 and has reportedly never occupied the 802 Greenwich Street citadel. Earlier in the year, the compound was brought to our attention by a tipster for failing to shovel out front (Guess no one was there to turn on the heated sidewalks that were installed over the summer.) Someone who recently toured the property told the Post that the it feels “locked-in” and “weird” despite its well-appointed terrace and garden. We have a feeling that this home, built “specifically for this family around their security needs,” is likely to have a hard time selling. When it does, we hope the new owners throw a cornice or any other kind of architectural detail on the misplaced stronghold in the heart of the historic district.

This large home seems to share the odd architectural stylings that tend to mark McMansions. Yet, that odd architecture is often intended to show something positive about the owner, to represent some marker of success or wealth. But, this particular combination of architecture is intended to clearly set the house apart from the public even though it is in a very public setting. Is this even a more in-your-face McMansion because it intentionally pushes people away? Could a home be built that combines the security features found here, the size of this home, and a more welcoming exterior or does privileging security necessarily lead to an outcome like this?

McMansions can derail your retirement plans

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Amidst concerns baby boomers will have difficulty selling their homes, here is a suggestion that buying a McMansion can derail retirement plans:

We occasionally hear about a friend who somehow saved up enough money, or just decided to chuck it, and walks off to retire at age 60, 55 or even 50. It can be done.

Also, some people live in a McMansion, drive a Tesla, and vacation in the south of France. But we know it’s a very expensive lifestyle. And we know we all can’t afford it, as the real estate bust of the 2000s so cruelly reminded us. We need to appreciate that, like buying a McMansion, taking early retirement is a very expensive proposition. Yes, a fortunate few can afford it. But most of us just have to get real.

Two things are interesting here. The first is that purchasing a McMansion seriously hampers retirement plans. Purchasing one uses up a lot of money and saddles the owner with a large mortgage (plus the home might be underwater and it can cost a lot to fill such a large home). A more prudent investor would purchase a more modest home rather than splurging on a McMansion.

The second interesting part of this is the comparison to owning a Tesla or vacationing in France, both relatively rare things. For example, Teslas start around $70,000 and only about 22,500 were sold in 2013. In the 2000s, it was common to see McMansion purchases compared to SUVs, a mass production item that cost much less than a Tesla. The implication then is that McMansions are even rarer today, making it even more of a folly to own one.