Tag Archives: McMansions

“The downside of retirement downsizing in a McMansion world”

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Downsizing has its challenges:

Anne Tergesen at The Wall Street Journal explored the problems of moving from a larger home to a smaller home at retirement: “But downsizing isn’t always simple, painless — or even all that beneficial financially. With the real-estate market still fragile, many baby boomers are getting a lot less than they expected for the old homestead. All too often, they have little cash left over after buying a new place, and their monthly expenses don’t fall as much as they thought — or may even rise instead.”

Tergesen also wrote about the emotional pain downsizing might cause: “They can’t bear to sort through or part with all those boxes in the basement, or argue with the adult children who want to keep the house where they grew up. Sometimes they downsize only to find they miss their old lifestyle and stuff.”…

Of course, downsizing doesn’t necessarily mean a scaling back in comfort. Architect Sarah Susanka, author of the best selling “Not So Big House” series of books, writes about how people can live in smaller homes that seem bigger because the design eliminates the wasted space in homes — such as dining rooms and formal living rooms.

Buying and selling homes, though, has its own challenges. Jacob Goldstein with NPR looked at the question of whether homes are cheap right now: “Houses are much cheaper than they were six years ago. Of course, six years ago was the peak of the biggest housing bubble in the history of America. So does ‘much cheaper than they were six years ago’ mean cheap? Does it mean ‘cheaper, but still overpriced’? Or does it mean ‘about right?’ ”

Moving can be difficult. But, downsizing can be viewed as a good thing: it gets people out of unnecessarily large homes that take up too much space in the first space; it could help people get rid of stuff they accumulated over the years (American consumerism at work) as well as begin a lifestyle where they can’t accumulate as much because they have less room to store it (though there could be problems with passing down heirlooms); and it might reduce housing and utility payments.

So, if downsizing is a good thing, can’t someone figure out how to make it easier? How about some sort of company or program that matches people who want a larger house with people who want to downsize? How about communities or perhaps governments that would guarantee people a certain value for their home if they live there a certain amount of time and then leave for downsizing purposes? What if a company promised to buy a downsizer’s home if they purchase an somewhat equally priced new Not So Big House? These ideas might be out there but if we wanted to promote downsizing, there are things companies or governments could do help the process along rather than just leave the process to the twists and turns of the real estate market.

Uptick in bigger homes but with some twists: more infill, multigenerational, and upsized homes

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Some recent evidence suggests big homes might be making a comeback in America but with a few twists:

The average size of a newly built home increased 3.7 percent in 2011 from 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That was the first annual increase since 2007 and indicates that home builders are seeing demand for larger spaces. The demand, however, is not where it used to be. Home buyers are less willing to head out to the so-called “ex-urbs” to get their larger space,” according to the latest findings from the American Institute of Architects.

“In many areas, we are seeing more interest in urban infill locations than in remote exurbs, which is having a pronounced shift in neighborhood design elements,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker. “And regardless of city or suburban dwellers, people are asking more from their communities in terms of access to public transit, walkable areas and close proximity to job centers, retail options and open space.”

Half of residential architecture firms highlight demand for multi-generational housing, up from 44 percent in 2011. Fifty-nine percent said access to public transportation is key, up from 47 percent a year ago.

More homeowners are also upsizing what they have, with 58 percent of architects reporting improvement in additions and alterations, up from just 35 percent a year ago; kitchen and bath, as usual, top the must-have list.

These factors may make new McMansions more appealing. Infill locations might lead into teardown situations but this could be preferable to sprawl. Multigenerational housing makes better use of the large houses and they appear less wasteful. Upsizing helps people build value in their home and not contribute to sprawl. While these are still big homes, they don’t sound like the exurban cookie-cutter McMansions critics love to attack.

Another note from this article: it suggests in the final paragraph that McMansions are usually thought to have between 3,000 and 5,000 square feet. This seems somewhat right to me though this could be on the conservative end. I’ve seen plenty of instances where a home over 5,000 square feet is called a McMansion and sometimes it seems like the upper end, moving into mansion territory, might be more like 8-10,000 square feet.

Converting a Salt Lake City McMansion into condos

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Check out how one Salt Lake City McMansion was converted into condos:

In 2005, construction started on the monster house at 678 North H Street in the Avenues. Over the next year, and against the wishes of many neighbors, the home grew and grew. In 2006 construction stopped, and the partially-finished home went on the market. For the next four years the exterior shell of the 16,000 sf structure was the blight of H Street.

Eventually, however, Allen Millo did a conversion on the building. This picture shows what the building looked like as fairly bland McMansion during construction.

Looks pretty good now. Of course, McMansions aren’t the first big houses to be converted into multi-unit housing:

In most cases, those units have been carved from historic homes, are rented to students, and are hated by longer-term residents.

But the H Street project offers a more pleasing take on that classic approach, proving that multi-unit conversions can be beautiful and even appealing to upscale buyers. In other words, it shows how this can be awesome rather than awful.

This isn’t the first appeal I’ve seen for converting McMansions into multi-unit housing. I do wonder about a couple of things that could stall this momentum for this:

1. How likely are neighbors to approve of this kind of conversion? McMansions tend to be built in neighborhoods with other McMansions where wealthier property owners are worried about property values and having a certain kind of neighborhood. This might be more doable if the McMansion was originally constructed in an older neighborhood, possibly as a teardown, but these situations tend to lead to their own problems.

2. Does a conversion like this this make the construction of a McMansion morally good? McMansions are often criticized for not being good examples of architecture or design, taking up too many resources, and contributing to sprawl. This example from Salt Lake City started with a 16,000 square foot home which means that each of the condos are still of a decent size, probably well-appointed, and probably not cheap. The structure is still built on a more suburban-like lot. At the same time, this conversion leads to denser housing and more efficient use of resources.

Toll Brothers experiences strong growth

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Toll Brothers, known for their construction of large homes (McMansions to critics), recently reported strong growth:

The company hasn’t figured out some amazing new way to build houses more efficiently and get more money out of every house built; instead, it is just building more. A lot more. Compared with a year ago, revenues were up 48 percent, and the number of homes built rose 44 percent to 1,088. Toll Brothers’ gross margin—which measures revenue from sales—was 24.6 percent in this quarter compared with 24.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011.

The full year was successful for the company as well. Its net income was $478.1 million compared with $39.8 million last year. Pre-tax net income shows a more stark story of decline and recovery: for this year it came in at $112.9 million versus a pre-tax loss of $29.4 million in 2011.

One figure that most directly shows this significant increase in building activity is the company’s “net contracts per community,” which is comparable to what retailers report as “same-store sales.” This measure shows how much Toll Brothers is building in the areas in which it already operates. As such, it directly reflects the increasing demand for homes, as opposed to the company’s expansion into new markets. Net contracts per community were up 33 percent from the fourth quarter of last year and 60 percent from this fiscal year to last, the highest yearly gain for the company since 2006 and the highest quarterly increase since 2005.

The housing market may still be lagging but this Toll Brothers data suggests the demand for larger homes has increased in the last year. See more of the financial details here.

Increase in McMansion construction in Australia

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The real growth in McMansions may be taking place in Australia:

But research reveals that while the size of Australian families is shrinking, our appetite for McMansions has supersized, with construction of six-or-more-bedroom homes jumping 21 per cent during the past five years.

And the number of five-bedroom McMansions increased 20 per cent over the same period, according to the 2011 Census data.

Demographer Mark McCrindle said despite forecasts of a McMansion glut in Australia – similar to parts of the US – the McDonald’s of housing is a vision of things to come rather than a relic of the past.

“McMansion popularity is being fuelled by the Sandwich generation, multigenerational households where parents have grown-up children and their own parents living at home,” Mr McCrindle said.

“It’s about affordability. The McMansion is efficient for homebuyers looking for big, cheap housing, it’s also about floor space that is flexible and adapts to a family’s changing needs.”…

Mr McCrindle said while new land blocks are getting smaller, Australians are building the largest houses in the world on those blocks. The average size of a new home is 10 per cent larger than the average new American home.

This raises several questions for me. One, will the fate that befall the United States that was partly attributed to McMansions also befall Australia? The argument made by some in the US is that the overconstruction and overconsumption of McMansions inevitably led to a housing and economic crisis. Is this necessarily the case or are there other factors in Australia that would change the outcome? Second, are these McMansions as bad as critics suggest if a good number of them are housing multigenerational families? McMansions are often criticized for being resource-hungry homes but some may be operating as more affordable housing (for some).

 

Question from Real Housewives: is getting evicted from a McMansion worse than living in one?

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From the Real Housewives of Atlanta comes this intriguing question: is getting evicted from a McMansion worse than living one in the first place?

There have been plenty of things said about Kim Zolciak’s sudden move from her “dream home” (which she was actually renting from Kendra and Antonio Davis), but she want’s everyone to get one thing straight: her family was not evicted from the McMansion.

In one of her last BravoTV.com blogs of her career on The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Kim drives that point home yet again. “We were not EVICTED! We ALWAYS paid our rent. Our lease was up; it’s that simple,” she declares.

And in a direct response to what some of the other Housewives have been saying about Kim’s housing situation, she writes, “Yes, Kandi, NeNe, and Cynthia, it was once my ‘dream home’ and my credit has NOTHING to do with me moving. I’m blessed to have never had trouble financially unlike some of the other girls, but they can make whatever comments they’d like.”

McMansions are often thought of as status symbols: their owners want to show they have plenty of money and can afford a large house. Some critics of McMansions have argued that the purchase of such homes is all about new money and displaying status. The architecture of the McMansion tends to feed into this as they have imposing entryways and fronts with less attention paid to other parts of the house.

But, getting evicted from such a house suggests the owners can’t afford this lifestyle. In a country that tends to promote homeownership, getting evicted for financial reasons is usually not a happy topic for people but it could be even worse for people who have lived for years with the appearance that money is no problem. From what I’ve read about the various Real Housewives shows, their participants tend to fall in this group: spending money to keep up appearances matters so not being able to “keep up with the Joneses” in terms of their house would be a big deal. In other words, for some Americans, living in the McMansion in the first place is not a problem but not being able to live there long-term is.

A note: the various Real Housewives shows have generated a number of mentions of McMansions over recent years.

Comparing the architecture of a Phoenix Frank Lloyd Wright house to area McMansions

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A letter to the editor in The Arizona Republic contrasts the worthiness of a Frank Lloyd Wright home and McMansions that are typically found in the area:

The horror of this melee about a Frank Lloyd Wright house is that the men who bought it claim they didn’t know Frank Lloyd Wright from the Wright brothers (New York Times, Oct. 25) and yet they, if left unhindered, decide the fate of a master work of architecture.

In this Mcmansion craze, people employ the horror of the unaesthetic, the death of art. Unlike Wright-designed and constructed homes that seem composed of what nature predicates, “living buildings” that fit the surroundings, these faux Tuscany tract homes on steroids rise up out of the ashes of demolitions in Arcadia, changing the entire landscape of what was once a unique Phoenix neighborhood with their attendant assault on beauty and proportion.

Phoenix does not need to buy the property for the inflated asking price. What the city and its officials need to do is vote for the historic landmark overlay on Dec. 5.

While McMansions can be defined by several characteristics, this letter’s argument relies exclusively on the architecture and design argument. The Frank Lloyd Wright home is a “living building” meant to fit into its surrounding landscape. In contrast, McMansions poorly mimic other housing styles (in this case, importing Tuscany to the Arizona desert), contrast with the landscape, and lack beauty because of their poor proportions.

Frank Lloyd Wright homes are of limited number and according to this Wikipedia list, there are not too many Wright designed buildings in Arizona. See more of the story about the house here and a gallery of images here. According to one of the captions, “The [spiral] house was designed to twist around a central courtyard and also offer views of Camelback Mountain to the north.” And the house may have been a testing ground for another famous work that came later: “Wright chose a spiral design akin to the Guggenheim Museum’s. He had drawn plans for the Guggenheim by then, but it was still some years away from construction.”

Unexpected feature of owning a Texas McMansion: the directTV install takes longer

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I stumbled across an online discussion about how long it takes to wire a Texas McMansion for directTV. Here is an outline of the discussion:

directv install happening NOW

Posted by djtexillinion November 24, 2012, 2:26 pm

im scared

going from 2 cable boxes to 5.

whole home dvr (genie)
3 clients
1 hd dvr

4 hour update

Posted by djtexillinion November 24, 2012, 6:41 pm, in reply to “directv install happening NOW”

almost done

Takes a while to wire a Texas McMansion like yours*

Posted by chadinlaon November 24, 2012, 9:41 pm, in reply to “4 hour update“

Apparently, it is not quick to supply one’s McMansion with plenty of DVRs. This is not something I would have thought about when purchasing a McMansion. However, providing wiring for a large home that has already been built must be more difficult. This reminds me of several articles I have read suggesting it is much better to set up whole house speaker and electronic systems (remember the 1990s articles suggesting all or most new homes would be smart wired by now?) during construction because doing it later can be quite time consuming.

I imagine there are other “normal” tasks that take more time with McMansions. I have seen plenty of online comments over the years about how much time it must take to maintain the yard and clean such homes, particularly those with a large number of bathrooms. However, if you can afford a large McMansion, you are more likely to be able to hire people to landscape and clean it for you.

 

“McMansions Gone Rogue”: critiquing McMansions on Pinterest

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For a gallery of photos that critique McMansion rooms, check out this Pinterest page. These rooms have some interesting design elements and beyond these style choices, they don’t look very liveable.

I presume the solutions for these rooms is to consult the interior designer who put together this page. Is her solution primarily about better interior design in these spaces or would she advocate for different homes, like the Not So Big House, all together?

 

Report says green housing market expected to grow rapidly

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A recent report says the green housing market in the United States is expected to rapidly grow in the coming years:

Regardless, a new report says the value of green residential and non-residential buildings in the United States is rapidly accelerating from only $10 billion in 2005.

McGraw-Hill Construction’s 2013 Dodge Construction Green Outlook says the value could reach $106 billion next year and go as high as $248 billion by 2016.

Based on the forecast for construction of single-family homes, the residential portion of U.S. green building could reach $116 billion by 2016, the report says.

Green building is a bright spot in a still-shaky economy, added the report, which was released Nov. 15.

A green structure is defined as one built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, standards, or one that is energy- and water-efficient while improving indoor environmental quality.

So there is at least one bright spot in the housing market. The demand for green homes could grow and I suspect builders might be able to charge a premium for these homes. There could be several areas in which builders could up the price: more expensive materials, the energy efficiency and savings of the home over the years, the special design a green home might require, and the status that comes with owning a green home. The example home in the story illustrates this: it is a 3,100 square foot home that will cost around a million dollars.

And note, the opening sentence of the story notes the difference between this green home and McMansions. There seem to be both similarities and differences between this green home and McMansions: it is still expensive and in the midst of sprawl even as it is a greener home, has a modern design, and is located on a one-acre lot.