Tag Archives: single-family homes

Would wealthy homeowners rather live in or next to a McMansion or modernist house?

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A short look at a Great Falls, Virginia modernist house got me thinking: would the typical wealthy homeowner rather live next to a McMansion or a modernist home? Here is how this house is described on Curbed (and there are lots of pictures as well):

A wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C., Great Falls, Va. is better known for it’s sprawling McMansions than its modernist masterpieces, but this glassy new construction in the woods is adding to the town’s architectural street cred. Distinguished by stark white walls and huge expanses of glass, the sleek home was designed by architect David Jameson and won the 2011 Washington DC AIA Award of Excellence. Thanks to the broad swaths of glass, the modern house achieves a connection to nature that would evade one of NoVa’s typical Italianate McMansions. Worthy of special note is the courtyard, which utilizes a frameless glass railing.

So what makes this modernist house more attractive than a McMansion? Several reasons are given here:

1. It has “architectural street cred.” Namely, it was designed by a known architect and won an award.

2. It is better connected to nature than McMansions.

3. It is not an Italianate facsimile of which the articles suggests there are too many. This house is unique.

But I would be interested in knowing how many suburban residents would choose to live in or live near this modernist house versus choosing a McMansion. The modernist style is not common in the suburbs; unless this house is in a unique neighborhood or has a really big lot, it may stick out from surrounding houses. For the average suburbanite, do the looks of this structure really invoke feelings of home? Might this be of architectural interest but not somewhere people could imagine living?

The still somewhat large and pricey “Not So Big” house in the Chicago suburbs

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Architect Sarah Susanka has become well-known for her idea of the “Not So Big House.” One of her homes has just been built in the Chicago suburb of Libertyville:

The showcase home, located at the 26-site SchoolStreet Homes development under construction a block east of downtown, is open for weekend tours until May 20. It and the rest of the homes, which are not open to the public, are Susanka’s and developer John McLinden’s take on new urbanism: smaller homes close together, with front porches, a sense of community and walking distance to shops, restaurants and services.

Don’t be fooled, though. When Susanka says not so big, she doesn’t mean small or cheap. The Libertyville home, at 2,450 square feet, won’t be priced until next year when it is put on the market, but other non-Susanka single-family homes on the block start at more than $500,000.

“A lot of builders are building smaller but cheaper,” Susanka said, standing in the furnished home just before it was opened to the public this month. “I believe people are ready for something that is smaller but better.”…

McLinden read Susanka’s books when they were first published and originally invited her to work on one of the houses as a marketing strategy to draw attention to the project. Now they are planning additional collaborations and have been contacted by three other communities about doing similar projects.

In an era where the McMansion is said to be dead and “tiny houses” are growing in popularity, Susanka’s houses stand out for two reasons I’ve noticed before and are also cited in this article. First, these houses are not small. On the spectrum between mansions and tiny houses, Susanka’s houses are very near the national average for the square footage of a new home. As she has said before, the article cites Susanka as saying the homes aren’t small but the space is used well and not wasted. Second, such homes may not be cheap. Perhaps the prices in this story are primarily being driven by being in Libertyville (with a median household income just over $100,000) but then again, Not So Big houses are likely to be built in communities like these.

The emphasis in Susanka’s homes are on two things beyond size and price: quality and fit with the homeowners. Neither of these things are cheap as the homes are not meant to be mass-produced (then they might fall perilously close to tract home or McMansion territory) and the features are customized to the activities and tastes of those who live there. Apparently, there is a market for this.

This could lead to an interesting question: are these primarily homes for educated, wealthy people who appreciate the design features and can afford the prices? Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising as architects do need to make money and wealthier clients (and higher-end builders) could certainly help. Could Susanka help market her homes even further if she could create and market a smaller version that could be affordable (or in terms more palatable for many suburban communities, “workforce”) housing? Would she want to produce a lot of these homes or would these reduce the appeal of status of these architect-designed homes?

An argument for historic districts: repel McMansions!

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A common argument for historic districts is that they limit the destruction of older homes and the construction of McMansions. Here is an example of this argument in Fort Lauderdale:

However, if communities wait around for that history to age, new development might wipe it out before it has a chance to be saved.

That fear has residents of Fort Lauderdale’s Colee Hammock neighborhood thinking about seeking historic district designation for their community.

“We’re constantly inundated with development issues, people wanting to come in and build too much, too high, too big,” said Jackie Scott, president of Colee Hammock’s neighborhood association. “It gets to a point where you’re sick and tired of always having to come out and fight for your neighborhood. It’s not an enjoyable way to live.”…

“We have some beautiful homes that have been built and are new construction. They fit perfectly with the neighborhood,” Scott said. [A historic district] prevents people that want to come into an area like this to start ripping things down and creating McMansions.”

While McMansions are often tied to sprawl and new subdivisions, teardowns are also a common scene for debates over the merits of McMansions. In this particular example, a McMansion is contrasted with new homes that “fit perfectly with the neighborhood.” Many American communities have created some guidelines so that teardowns can’t be anything a homeowner might desire but there is a spectrum between more permissive and less permissive communities. The advantage of declaring a historic district is that the community has more control over what can be demolished and built within the district. At the same time, some consider historic districts to be quite restrictive.

I would be interested to hear what resources those pushing for the historic district have utilized from outside groups. For example, the National Trust for Historic Preservation even has a page titled “Teardowns and McMansions.” Here is the lead paragraph:

Across the nation a teardown epidemic is wiping out historic neighborhoods one house at a time. As older homes are demolished and replaced with dramatically larger, out-of-scale new structures, the historic character of the existing neighborhood is changed forever. Neighborhood livability is diminished as trees are removed, backyards are eliminated, and sunlight is blocked by towering new structures built up to the property lines. Community economic and social diversity is reduced as new mansions replace affordable homes. House by house, neighborhoods are losing a part of their historic fabric and much of their character.

With such resources available, I wonder if local groups are now more effective in adopting historic districts.

“Big-Box Houses” the successors to McMansions?

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Builder has an article about a new kind of home: “big-box houses.”

Even as average new-home sizes have fallen slightly across the country, builders in some markets are finding a profitable and underserved niche of buyers who need or want a house as big as a mansion with the price tag of a cottage. While some buyers are in true need of the space, others, awed by the per-square-foot value of so much elbow room that cheap land and efficient box-like floor plans make possible, can’t resist the buy…

Lennar, for example, recently rolled out its 4,054-square-foot Himalayan model in the Tampa, Fla., market for $270,990. D.R. Horton has The Surrey, a 4,600-square-foot home in Lakeland, Fla., starting at $223,990. M/I Homes is selling the 5,249-square-foot Gran Vista in Orlando starting at $336,460. And KB Home has a 5,211-square-foot model it is selling in Austin, Texas, for $422,950…

Another housing executive says the big-box home trend was born as a way to compete with resales because it is rare to find large homes among resales and foreclosures, making their plus-size a product differentiator. Also, the larger homes can often pass muster with appraisers more easily, because the bigger the house, the smaller the square-foot price, and the higher-priced portions of the home, kitchens and bathrooms, are amortized over a larger number of square feet. The lower price per square foot helps the homes compete with the lower per-square-foot cost of distressed home sales.

Still, the formula of building such homes at a profit is tricky. It requires that land in the right neighborhoods be bought at fire-sale prices and that the home itself be value-engineered for cost efficiencies as well. The box on top of a box model is a less expensive way to build than a single-level house or one with more complicated shapes and roof pitches.

Quick summary: there is still a part of the housing market for big, cheap homes, particularly among those with larger families.

My question would be how these homes differ from McMansions. It seems to be that the big-box homes are budget big homes with no frills. McMansions came to be known for their luxuriousness, whether this was reflected in the large windows in the front, the stone mailbox or wrought iron fence, the stainless steel appliances and granite countertops, or the voluminous great room. These big-box homes are big because their owners want to use all the space, not because they want to impress people. I wonder what this means for the quality of the construction: McMansions were often regarded as being shoddy and the builders quoted in this story admit that these homes have thin profit margins.

Also: the name is intriguing. McMansion came to be a generally negative term. “Big box” is usually used derisively to refer to retailers like Walmart or Home Depot who have huge stores and low prices. Additionally, there are a lot of connotations about big parking lots, environmental concerns, and sprawl. If I were a builder, I wouldn’t want my homes to be known by this term. If this term sticks, will these homes become reviled in the same way as McMansions?

The BBC on Levittown 60 years later

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The BBC goes back to Levittown, Pennsylvania and finds that it looks like much of America:

Now, as then, the community is home to a diverse cross-section of middle-class voters. But whereas in 1960 unemployment rates were less than 6% and business in Levittown could not expand fast enough to meet growing demand, the outlook for current residents is grimmer…

Now, the outer roads around Levittown are lined with strip malls, and in them a dozen different grocery and convenience stores, a Super WalMart, McDonalds, and hotel chains.

The houses, once indistinguishable from one another, have developed individual flair: on one street, one house has painted pink brick face, while another has built a covered front porch…

It’s not a greying district by any means – thanks in part to the housing collapse, Levittown is once again an abundant source of inexpensive housing, and as a result more new families are moving here to get their start.

The Levittowns are often held up as exemplars of the massive suburban boom in the United States in the decades following World War Two. The mass production of the homes was unique then though the techniques would look fairly normal today. I like that this article emphasizes the changing nature of this suburb that was once derided for its similar looking homes and relatively homogenous population. We would do well to have such a view of all suburbs: they change over time even if some of the physical pieces, such as single-family homes or strip malls, are the same.

The two best books I can recommend on Levittown(s):

1. The Levittowners by Herbert Gans. Based on ethnographic work conducted during the early years of the development, Gans combats some of the common suburban stereotypes.

2. Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown by Barbara Kelly. Kelly gives more details about how Levittown residents have customized their homes and what this means for the community.

College students rent cheap but luxurious McMansions

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Here is another use for McMansions (and much better than one California option from last week): rent them to college students.

While students at other colleges cram into shoebox-size dorm rooms, Ms. Alarab, a management major, and Ms. Foster, who is studying applied math, come home from midterms to chill out under the stars in a curvaceous swimming pool and an adjoining Jacuzzi behind the rapidly depreciating McMansion that they have rented for a song.

Here in Merced, a city in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley and one of the country’s hardest hit by home foreclosures, the downturn in the real estate market has presented an unusual housing opportunity for thousands of college students. Facing a shortage of dorm space, they are moving into hundreds of luxurious homes in overbuilt planned communities.

Forget the off-to-college checklist of yesteryear (bedside lamp, laundry bag, under-the-bed storage trays). This is “Animal House” 2011.

Double-height Great Room? Check.

Five bedrooms? Check.

Chandeliers? Check.

Then there are the three-car garages, wall-to-wall carpeting, whirlpool baths, granite kitchen countertops, walk-in closets and inviting gas fireplaces.

This article provides an overview of an interesting situation but asking a few more questions would reveal a lot more:

1. If students live in such nice homes during college, what does this do to their expectations when they return home or after they graduate? If you are used to living in a nice McMansion, how do you move up after that?

2. In what condition do these students leave these McMansions?

3. The story paints these students as helping desperate homeowners. At the same time, homeowners in nice suburban subdivisions may not always look favorably at college students who can tend to be loud and unruly. Are all the town and gown relationships here all good as the story suggests?

4. Might some of these students stick around in these neighborhoods after college? If so, how would this change the neighborhoods?

To sum up, is this a long-term solution or a temporary solution to issues in one of the foreclosure capitals of the United States?

How much it costs to live in the cheaper suburbs or expensive New York City

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Opponents of sprawl argue that while many prospective buyers move further away from work in order to buy bigger yet cheaper homes, there is a cost. One website argues that the each mile closer to work is $15,900 that could be spent on a house:

We all know that driving to and from work every day is costly, but exactly howmuch of a toll does each mile of commuting take on your finances? This True Cost of Commuting graphic breaks it down.

Taking stats and calculations previously mentioned by Mr. Money Mustache, the infographic illustrates just how expensive commuting is. Each mile you live from work costs $795 in commuting expenses per year (assuming a driving cost of 34 cents per mile and factoring time lost with a salary of $25 per hour). $795 a year for just one mile! You could buy a house worth $15,900 more with that, as Mr. Money Mustache pointed out in his article, since $795 would cover the interest on a 5% mortgage rate.

If you don’t want to calculate in the time-is-money factor, each mile (one way) of commuting will cost you $170 a year. It’s a compelling reason to move as close to work if you can (or bike to work or telecommute).

See the large infographic here. I don’t know about Mr. Money Mustache’s calculations but this is a sizable number.

At the same time, there were reports this week that the Occupy Wall Street protestors tend to live in pricier homes. As Megan McArdle notes, this is a consumption choice where people decide to spend more of their income on a home in a great city:

My initial reaction was the same as many people I’ve seen in comments sections: the protest is in New York, which is expensive.  This is hardly surprising.

But on second thought, I don’t think that’s quite right.  At least some of the houses identified by the Daily Caller are in places like Texas and Wisconsin.  But more importantly, I’m not sure we should “discount” these home values for location.  The fact is that living in an expensive city is a consumption choice.
You hear this argument all the time from people in New York.  “Rich?  Hah!  We’ve got four people in 1600 square feet, and our school bills are going to put us into bankruptcy.”  Many New Yorkers believe that they should be given some sort of income tax abatement because of the expense of living there (with the lost revenue being made up from “really rich” people, natch).  Slightly less affluent New Yorkers frequently believe that landlords should be forced to offer them “reasonably sized” apartments at a modest fraction of their income, because after all, otherwise they couldn’t afford to live in New York…
Living in a blue state is a choice.  If coming to New York meant that you had to put four people in a three bedroom apartment that’s uncomfortably far from a subway line, instead of buying a nice little condo in Omaha, this does not mean that you are not “really” better off than your counterpart in Omaha; it means that you have chosen to consume your extra wealth in the form of “living in New York” rather than in the form of spacious real estate, cheap groceries, and an easy commute.

So what people in the Midwestern suburbs might spend on a daily 20 mile each way commute in a SUV translates into a more expensive apartment in New York City.

Both stories cited above suggest consumption is a choice. But is it truly an unfettered choice? What would lead some people to aim for the bigger yet cheaper house in the suburbs and others to spend more money on a smaller place in a cosmopolitan paradise? Perhaps this information would help both sides engage in conversation rather than talk past each other and try to force the other side to follow their logic…

Of course, we could look at the broader trend of American political and cultural discourse on this subject. On the whole, government policies have promoted suburban living while a few big cities, such as New York City, have successful dense, mass-transit oriented living. Cultural discourse, even if it is shifting toward the younger generation’s increased interest in denser living, still privileges the suburban American Dream.

Even Gawker says “The McMansion is dead”

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Since Gawker is reporting it, does this really mean that the McMansion is dead?

This heartless recession has stolen from America our most treasured national totems. Huge SUVs? Too gas-guzzling. Sprawling suburbs far removed from the “diverse” cities? Reduced to slums. And now, the recession is coming for our very homes.

By “our,” I mean “people with too much money and too little taste.” The WSJ says that the humble McMansion—the rightful reward of all hardworking Americans willing to take on a $450,000 mortgage and a 75-minute commute in order to have a huge, useless foyer lined with the thinnest sheet of marble veneer—is no longer the popular thing to build, for builders who want to build homes that will actually sell. Shrines to conspicuous consumption are out! By necessity.

Goodbye, grand foyers! Adios, spiral staircases! Hello, newly poor American rationalizing their now meager living spaces like a bunch of formerly wealthy people wiped out by financial calamity—which they are!

Totem could be taken as referring to a religious object of devotion, a la Durkheim. If so, do Americans worship SUVs, McMansions, and suburbs? That would be interesting to discuss.

Granted, Gawker is quoting an interesting Wall Street Journal story that suggests the wealthy/big homes of the future that will include “drop zones,” space for an elevator, a “lifestyle center” (not to be confused with gussied-up outdoor malls masquerading as community centers known by the same name), steam showers (goodbye soaker tubs!), and outdoor living space.

A reminder: this is the same website that has this description leading off its stories about Jersey Shore (this is from earlier this year).

When watching Jersey Shore, the most important sociological experiment of our time, we’re looking for new and exciting behavior.

Me thinks there may be some hyperbole and/or mocking there. At least that is what I hope.

What builders say the homes of 2015 will look like

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If you are looking for big changes in the homes of 2015, you probably won’t find them. But here is what builders say they do expect to change for the new homes of 2015:

According to the results of the study, surveyed home builders expect new single-family homes to check in at an average of 2,150 square feet. Current single family homes measure around 2,400 square feet, which is already a decrease from the peak home size in 2007 of 2,521…

Other things that make up the home of 2015? No more living room. According to the survey, 52 percent of builders expect the living room to merge with other spaces and 30 percent believe that it will vanish completely to save on square footage. Instead, expect to see great rooms — a space that combines the family and living room and flows into the kitchen.

Expect to see more:

  • spacious laundry rooms
  • master suite walk-in closets
  • porches
  • eat-in kitchens
  • two-car garages
  • ceiling fans

Expect to see less:

  • mudrooms
  • formal dining rooms
  • four bedrooms or more
  • media or hobby rooms
  • skylights

Many of these changes reflect a desire for builders and consumers going green. Smaller space means more efficient heating and cooling. Ceiling fans distribute heat evenly while skylights, on the other hand, release heat.

The two big changes proposed here aren’t revolutionary. Particularly if the economy remains in the doldrums, homes will decrease in size. The real question is what would happen if the economy really picked up again – would builders go back to larger homes? Also, 2,150 square feet is still pretty large and perhaps is more of a reflection of the smaller number of people per home these days. The formal living room hasn’t been too popular for a while and this could also be behind the drop in home sizes. Of course, compared to the sweep of American homes over the last sixty years, these are changes.

The rest seem like pretty small adjustments. I suppose I was hoping for something a little more revolutionary but I’ll have to settle for bigger laundry rooms and a few other things. The picture attached to the story of a more slanted Hawaii home that can take advantage of “Photovoltaics” looks  a lot more interesting than the rest of the story. Would Americans buy a home that looked like that just to save on energy?

Also: where do builders get their ideas about these things? From surveys and marketing they conduct or industry-wide figures and trends? What if we could ask what builders themselves would like to see change? Perhaps they simply want to go with what the public wants.

And what about those granite countertops and stainless steel appliances?

Drop in US homeownership rate the greatest since the Great Depression

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The title of this post is what the headline for this AP story should say – instead, the AP headline is “Census: Housing bust worst since Great Depression.” The problem with the headline is this: do people know what a “housing bust” is? Does this mean that the American housing market is in the worst shape that it has been since the Great Depression? Is the homeownership rate or are housing values at the same level as the Great Depression? Not necessarily. Here is what the story really is:

The American dream of homeownership has felt its biggest drop since the Great Depression, according to new 2010 census figures released Thursday.

The analysis by the Census Bureau found the homeownership rate fell to 65.1 percent last year. While that level remains the second highest decennial rate, analysts say the U.S. may never return to its mid-decade housing boom peak in which nearly 70 percent of occupied households were owned by their residents…

Nationwide, the homeownership rate fell to 65.1 percent – or 76 million occupied housing units that were owned by their residents – from 66.2 percent in 2000. That drop-off of 1.1 percentage points is the largest since 1940, when homeownership plummeted 4.2 percentage points during the Great Depression to a low of 43.6 percent.

So the percentage drop is what is important here: it fell from nearly 70 percent in the mid-2000s to 65.1 percent today. This is similar to the 4.2% drop during the Great Depression. But notice: the homeownership rate in 1940 was 43.6 percent while it is still above 65% today. Overall, we are ahead of the 1940 figures even though the homeownership drop suggests that this recent period has had a similar effect on homeownership as the Great Depression.

Another interesting piece of news from this Census data on homeownership:

Measured by race, the homeownership gap between whites and blacks is now at its widest since 1960, wiping out more than 40 years of gains.

This is not good. The homeownership rate for blacks and Latinos increased small amounts from 2000 to 2010 but the gap has widened. Perhaps the American Dream, at least the homeownership part, has never truly really been available to everyone.