Tag Archives: McMansions

Building chicken McMansions in the Atlanta area

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McMansions may not just be for people: they can also be for chickens.

Leonard and the twenty residents of his Chicken McMansion will be a featured stop on a tour of Atlanta urban chicken coops that will take place in early October.

Anne-Marie Anderson is a tour organizer, a woman whose Decatur back yard chicken coop is a step down from Leonard’s — despite its plant-growing green roof, rain barrels and way more space than her chickens need.

“On a scale of one to ten, this one is about a seven,” Anderson says, gesturing toward the upscale coop in her sloping back yard. “You can tell when a chicken is happy. They strut and they look happy and they cluck.”…

Anderson says her coop cost about a thousand dollars to build. Leonard says his chicken coop probably cost twice that. Not that he’s competitive.

Here is what I don’t understand: the term McMansion is typically used as a negative term. That does not appear to be the purpose here. The term is used to imply a large and expensive home, similar to the common usage for McMansion, but this is seen as good things for chickens. Indeed, can’t the builder/owner of a McMansion chicken coop charge more for chicken eggs and meat having had more space? Therefore, in the world of chickens, it appears that a McMansion is a good kind of house.

Baby Boomers can’t retire because they all bought McMansions?

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The economic crisis has changed the retirement plans of many. How might have McMansions played a role?

Financial planners on the South Shore and a new national study all point to the same troubled financial picture for people in their late 40s to their early 60s: Many are carrying so much debt from mortgages and student loans they co-signed for their children that retirement is a distant dream.

“They traded in their houses for a McMansion and bought at the higher part of market. They hocked it over 30 years, and they have little equity, if any,” said John Napolitano, CEO of U.S. Wealth Management in Braintree and 2012 president of the Financial Planning Association of Massachusetts…

The study found that the mortgage burden for baby boomers is 25 percent higher than it was for the same age group in 1990.

“In the refinance boom, mortgage brokers convinced (baby boomers) don’t stress out and sold them on a 30-year mortgages,” said Harris. “It was all about cash flow.

The article suggests Baby Boomers are also helping their struggling children. Yet, I wonder about these figures about mortgages and McMansions. This leads to two questions: (1) How many Baby Boomers really bought homes that might be considered McMansions? (2) And how many of them went into excessive debt to purchase this McMansion? For example, I would guess there are a decent number of people underwater on their regular-sized (less than McMansion size) home, particularly in certain housing markets.

This could be a classic case of McMansions serving as a whipping boy or shorthand explanation for the complicated housing market of recent years. When the term McMansion is used here, a certain image comes to mind: a house that is extremely unnecessary for the homeowners. Without seeing the actual numbers, it is hard to know this is exactly what happened but using McMansion certainly helps drive home a particular idea.

Claim: McMansions are part of what defines Austin, Texas

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This was interesting to see: a columnist argues Austin, Texas is partly defined by its McMansions.

Various quirks are used as examples of what makes Austin special: all those waiters who have Ph.D.s, the amazing number of restaurants on wheels, the traffic jams on Interstate 35 that can run for miles, the nose rings, the iPhone people texting each other from across the room, the McMansions, the California transplants, the allergies, the sneezing … name your favorite.

The doesn’t seem to fit the common story about Austin which has a reputation as a cool and up and coming city. It is home to SXSW, the creative class, the flagship campus of the University of Texas system, and a number of tech companies. So who let in the poorly designed, possibly Republican, neighborhood-destroying McMansions? (These are just some of the critiques leveled

Interestingly, Austin has had some public discussions about McMansions. For example, Austin passed a “McMansion ordinance” which I blogged about last year. Perhaps this has been driven by the influx of new (and wealthier?) residents who want to partake of Austin’s older neighborhoods but also want modern homes.

Modernist homes doomed by being too small?

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Here is an interesting suggestion regarding modernist homes like those found in New Canaan, Connecticut: the homes were just too small to compete with McMansions.

Among the houses that Philip Johnson designed in New Canaan, Conn., the suburban enclave that became a laboratory for postwar Modernist design, the Robert C. Wiley house, completed in 1953, remains one of his most elegant. It is a strikingly simple composition of two rectangular boxes: one, a glass and wood pavilion with a single, 15-foot-tall living, dining and kitchen space, is cantilevered over the other, a stone and concrete base that contains, among other things, four small bedrooms, bathrooms and a sitting room. The 3,000-square-foot house typifies Modernism’s insistence on efficient use of space, but by the advent of the McMansion era, despite its architectural pedigree, it merely seemed quaintly, and unsalably, tiny.

The house had been on the market for some time when an enlightened buyer — Frank Gallipoli, the president of Freepoint Commodities, an energy trading firm — bought it in 1994. “I wasn’t looking for a Philip Johnson house,” he recalled, but given the price of land in New Canaan, the building, along with the six acres on which it sits, offered good value. “It had the utility of a house,” Gallipoli said, “but I was getting an art object.” And art is a subject close to Gallipoli’s heart: he owns an extensive collection that includes works by contemporary British artists like Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Gary Hume, Jenny Saville and Marc Quinn. Many of these pieces are too big to show in a domestic setting, so Gallipoli began to think about converting a barn on the property (it also served as a garage) into a private gallery. About 10 years ago, he asked Johnson himself to come up with a design, but the architect’s idea for a series of domed structures was never built. Ultimately, Gallipoli commissioned Roger Ferris, of the Connecticut firm Roger Ferris + Partners, to design the barn, along with a pool house, a new garage and a substantial restoration of the existing house. (Ferris also did some work on Gallipoli’s Manhattan house and designed a “surf shack” for him in the Hamptons, which includes a pink Corian aboveground lap pool.)

I know the point of piece is to discuss the intriguing rebuild of this home but I find the suggestion at the end of the first paragraph fascinating. The tone of the piece is that people should recognize the beauty of the home and it took an “enlightened” buyer with a true interest in art to see it for what it could be. But, alas, Americans got bogged down with buying humongous homes like McMansions and lost interest in homes with “architectural pedigree.”

I’ve suggested this before: if given a choice, I don’t think most Americans would select a modernist home. I’m not sure square footage is the only reason for this. Critics and architects may not like these choices but it also doesn’t necessarily mean Americans only go for the largest space, the best bang for the buck, the kitschiest house, or the most impressive space. Perhaps many Americans imply aren’t trained to know what critically praised architecture looks like or to appreciate it. Indeed, where is this training supposed to take place and when should it occur? (I don’t think it happens much in the curriculum from kindergarten through college.) Or perhaps it has to do with how Americans view social class and the suspicion Americans tend to have toward educated opinions and movements. Additionally, hiring an architect to design a home requires money that is likely out the reach of many Americans.

What would you bring to a “McMansion Condo Dinner Party”?

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On the website The Daily Meal, I ran across an interesting location in Denver, Colorado: McMansion Condo Dinner Party.

The address given for this event, 209 Cook Street, might indeed be considered a McMansion by some. According to Zillow, the condo has these features: it was built in 1993, has 2,908 square feet, an attached garage, 2 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, and the price Zestimate is around $843,000.

So what does one bring to dinner at a McMansion condo? If McMansions are often considered to be locations that are all about impressing others and showing off wealth, what food would fit this party compared to the food one might bring to a “regular” new house or a larger mansion? Perhaps if the food is prepared using stainless steel appliances and on granite countertops, this overrides the food itself…

I wish people would list the “Best Dishes” they brought to the McMansion Condo Dinner Party!

McMansions being built in the wildland urban interface

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Here is an argument that more McMansions are being built in the wildland urban interface and this is leading to problems with forest fires:

But in go-go America, these scientific truisms were no match for McMansion fantasies. As coastal folk headed to the Rocky Mountain frontier with visions of big-but-inexpensive castles far away from the inner city, the term “zoning” became an even more despised epithet than it already had been in cowboy country.

Rangeland and foothill frontiers subsequently became expansive low-density subdivisions, and carbon-belching SUVs chugged onto new roads being built farther and farther away from the urban core. That is, farther and farther into what the federal government calls the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and what fire experts call the dangerous “red zone.”

The numbers are stark: According to The Denver Post, between 1990 and 2000, 40 percent of all homes built in the nation were built in the WUI — and “a Colorado State University analysis expects a 300 percent increase in WUI acreage in the next couple decades.”

In the last two decades in fire-scorched Colorado alone, I-News Network reports that “a quarter million people have moved into red zones,” meaning that today “one of every four Colorado homes is in a red zone.”

I had never heard of the wildland urban interface before. To put it in other terms, it sounds like many new homes are being built in exurban areas, the leading edges of metropolitan areas. There are advantages and disadvantages to this: the land is likely quite cheaper and people can have bigger pieces of property and newer homes. But, there are negative consequences such as having to drive further to get places and the environmental impact.

Here is more information on the wildland urban interface in Colorado from Colorado State University. And here is an interesting opinion piece in the Denver Post about how to improve the narratives about WUI fires.

Americans may have big houses but they don’t search for the biggest houses online

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Americans are known for having big new houses but data from Trulia suggests residents of several other countries search for bigger houses online:

But is it possible that Europeans have even more of an appetite for mega-mansions than the average American?

Trulia, an online real-estate firm based in San Francisco that recently filed for an initial public offering, has taken a look at its search traffic from abroad to see what kinds of homes foreigners typically look for on the site. The table shows that the median size of a home viewed by searchers from Holland in the second quarter of this year was 2,400 square feet. Brits and Germans looked at homes with a median size of 2,342 and 2,200 square feet respectively.

The firm then looked at the median size of home that Americans were searching for in their own backyard and discovered this was 1,854 square feet. The least space-hungry searchers of the lot in its ranking were from Argentina and Israel, which probably reflects the fact that folk in these countries tend to buy apartments rather than houses in cities such as Miami and New York.

So is it time to ditch the McMansion moniker? No so fast. Foreigners using Trulia may well be looking for holiday homes in the United States, which implies they are relatively wealthy and can thus afford much bigger abodes than more typical buyers. And Trulia can only identify the location of a searcher, not someone’s nationality. So it’s likely that, say, American military personnel based abroad and looking to come home are a part of its “foreign” traffic. It will take much more data than this to undermine the foundations of the McMansion story.

It is too bad that Trulia doesn’t have or isn’t releasing other data that might help us figure out more about these foreign searchers.

I am intrigued by the idea of a “McMansion story” this post suggests is present around the world. Americans do have big houses compared to other Western nations – however, Australia has even larger new houses. Are these larger new homes in America looked at all negatively, seen as wastes of resources and signs of excessive consumption (like McMansions), or are there some who would want similar houses in their own countries?

Argument: McMansions are turning Queens into Brooklyn

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A writer argues Queens, New York is being ruined by McMansions:

Then one day, the McMansions came roaring in. Progress! People cut down trees, bricked up laws and built their houses right up to the property line. Children started “playing” on their computers indoors. They started getting heavier as the utility companies grew richer because oversized homes use a lot more energy than smaller homes with trees close by to shade them. I sure hope the utility companies are sending those McMansion owners holiday greeting cards to thank them for their extra business. I’d say they owe them at least that much.

More and more, green lawns in Queens are transforming into the cement sidewalks of Brooklyn. One of the reasons that Queens homeowners are paving their lawns is because the multiple families dwelling in those roomy McMansions are creating a shortage of parking spaces. What’s the solution? Pave your lawn so you can transform it into a front driveway. Or, maybe they don’t like grass. Why move to Queens then? There’s always Brooklyn. Brooklyn already has lots of cement sidewalks. They even have cafes! Wouldn’t it be easier to find a setting that suits your needs than dwelling in a setting you have to transform?

This is not my neck of the woods but I have a few thoughts about this:

1. It sounds like there are a lot of teardown McMansions in Queens.

2. Blaming McMansions for the rising weight of children seems silly. Only kids who live in McMansions are sitting inside more?

3. I wonder if it is really McMansions that are the issue here or that change is coming to Queens. The main point of the argument is that this writer doesn’t want Queens to be like Brooklyn. Presumably, it should remain distinct which includes having different kinds of housing. McMansions could be just a symptom of larger concerns about neighborhood change.

Would most Americans choose the glass house or the McMansion?

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The Wall Street Journal has a photo gallery of a glass house in Napa that was built by a homeowner who didn’t want to replicate nearby McMansions:

Robert Lieff, 75, an attorney and founder of the law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, purchased this 21.5 acre property in California’s Napa Valley for $805,000 in 1998, according to the Napa County recorder’s office. Mr. Lieff, who purchased the land with his then-wife, Carole, was looking to build something with more character than the usual stock. ‘I just saw so many houses around there that were like ‘McMansions’ — I had no interest in that,’ he said. He opted instead for this corrugated steel and glass home, which over the years has won plaudits for its design.

The house does indeed have a lot of character and has a kind of modern beauty to it. The pictures are quite interesting as the home features a lot of straight lines, open spaces, and beautiful views of wine country.

Yet, as I’ve wondered before, how many Americans would choose this house over a McMansion? Granted, there might be some price differences; even most McMansions are not built on 22-acres of land. But even if the prices, square footage, and land were equal, would this modern house appeal to most Americans? Critics and architects tend to like such homes, and they want to preserve modern homes built in recent decades (such as these homes in New Canaan, Connecticut) and promote new ones. But mass-market homes tend not to look like these modern homes and suburban tract homes have been roundly bashed since Levittown.

Perhaps we could trace this back to Bourdieu’s ideas about social class. Here is how this might be argued: modernist homes appeal to those with the education and class training to like them. In contrast, those of the middle- and lower-classes like other features of houses such as their functionality, space, or the middle-class nature of the neighborhood (safe, good schools, etc.). Perhaps it is tied to what the home at the base of the American Dream is supposed to look like: a cozy place for kids with a comfortable yard but not too unusual. (However, some of the McMansions are quite unusual, though not perhaps in the good sense.) We might see these boundaries pushed in coming years: there are more people interested in providing affordable housing with a modernist twist such as semi trailers remodeled into housing units.

Are McMansions about maximizing exchange value?

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A commentator takes a look at a new, oversized condominium building and discusses use value versus exchange value:

The house on this lot was rebuilt into two large condominiums.  Each is about 3,000 s.f. and priced at $849,000.  It’s a way to maximize the return for the property owner.  I can’t say the building is very attractive, but it is one block from the forthcoming Monroe and Market Street development adjacent to the Brookland Metro Station, and is two blocks from the Metro.

It’s too bad buildings such as this are oversized for the lot in a manner that degrades the visual qualities of the rest of the block.  Use values, including aesthetics, are subsidiary to the exchange value of place (maximizing financial return) in this instance.

To complete the circle about use value, one could also look at the experience of the homebuyers. Are these large housing units worth the money? Even if these big homes don’t quite fit in the neighborhood, they could be nice places to live. As noted above, they are spacious, located near desirable mass transit stops, and are probably have some nice interior features (surely granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and hardwood floors!). Even the New Urbanists that wrote Suburban Nation admit that Americans have superior private realms in our homes. (Of course, there are others, like Sarah Susanka and Winifred Gallagher who suggest these spacious, comfortable homes may not be good fits after all.)

Lurking behind this analysis is Marx’s discussion of use value, exchange value, and capitalism. In a capitalistic system, much can be commodified: Twitter followers, positive online reviews, and houses. Particularly during the 20th century, American homes became more than just shelters: they were expected to increase in value and become investment vehicles. (One could look at some data to see if these oversized housing units are flipped more quickly than other kinds of housing as owners look to make money.) Builders and developers can make even bigger money on houses. One very influential idea in urban sociology in the last few decades is the growth machine model, the idea that boosters, business leaders, politicians, and developers work together to make profits by transforming open land into valuable land. From the early days of the American suburbs when streetcar operators built their lines into the countryside and then offered free rides to the end of the line to show people lots and potential to McMansions today, much development, aesthetically pleasing or not (actually, aesthetics may indeed just help increase the value!), is about making money. Commodifying the home can move the discussion away from other important aspects f purchasing and owning a home like community life, environmental responsibility, and providing affordable housing.