Tag Archives: square footage

“The Queen of Versailles” is not about a McMansion

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More reviews are coming out of the new documentary The Queen of Versailles (and critics are liking it according to RottenTomatoes.com) but I would still argue with some of the depictions of the 90,000 square foot house at the center of the film. Here is an example: the Jewish Daily Forward has a headline titled “The Biggest McMansion of Them All.” I’ve argued this before: a 90,000 square foot home is far, far beyond McMansion territory. This is the land of the ultra-rich. Take this information from the same Jewish Daily Forward story:

David Siegel, 76, is the billionaire founder of Westgate Resorts, which he claims is “the largest privately owned time-share company in the world.” Jackie, 31 years his junior, is David’s surgically enhanced wife, and mother to seven of his 13 children. They live in a 26,000-square-foot home in Orlando, Fla., with a household staff of 19. They believe the house is too small…

All went well until the credit crunch of 2008. The Siegels’ problems weren’t caused by the house — though it did become a burden. Rather, David’s company ran into trouble as lending dried up. Typically, Westgate customers borrowed money from the company to pay for their vacation time-shares. The company, in turn, borrowed from the banks at lower interest rates. When the banks stopped lending, the bottom fell out.

Added to that difficulty was the burden of the PH Towers Westgate, a new 52-story high-rise luxury resort in Las Vegas, which drained Siegel’s corporate resources as well as $400 million of his own money. Finally, in November of 2011, Siegel was forced to sell…

Originally, the project was going to be a look at how the wealthy live and, of course, at the Siegel’s house-in-progress. It was very much in line with Greenfield’s previous work as a documentarian and photographer.

I’m looking forward to seeing this film at some point but it is difficult to draw conclusions about McMansions and American excess from one ultra-wealthy couple. Thus far, it sounds like reviewers and others see this film as a metaphor for the American economic crisis of the last five years or so and I’m not sure you can stretch it that far. As a view into the life of the elite, it may be fascinating but it would be difficult to describe this as a “typical” experience that explains the logic behind all McMansions and excessive consumption.

Mayor Bloomberg, NYC want developers to build “micro-units”

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Tiny houses may just be catching on in urban areas: Mayor Bloomberg and NYC are pushing developers to build 300 square foot units.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday invited developers to propose ways to turn a Manhattan lot into an apartment building filled mostly with what officials are calling “micro-units” – dwellings complete with a bathroom, built-in kitchenette and enough space for a careful planner to use a fold-out bed as both sleeping space and living room.

If the pilot program is successful, officials could ultimately overturn a requirement established in 1987 that new apartments here be at least 400 square feet.

City planners envision a future in which the young, the cash-poor and empty nesters flock to such small dwellings – each not much bigger than a dorm room. In a pricey real estate market where about one-third of renter households spend more than half their income on rent, it could make housing more affordable…

Modern-day building codes and improved refrigeration and public health have changed what it means to live small, Bloomberg said. A typical mid-19th century tenement apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side might have been larger than one of the micro-units, measuring 325 square feet, but would have typically housed families with multiple children. The micro-units are to be leased only to one- or two-person households.

This could indeed be an interesting adaptation to demographic change. But I wonder: is New York City offering an incentive for developers to do this? Programs for affordable housing often come with some sort of incentive, something like if a developer builds a certain number of cheaper units, they are allowed to build a certain number of market-rate units. The article makes it sounds like there is significant demand for these smaller units in NYC which might negate the need for incentives. However, I haven’t yet seen any indication that developers believe building micro-units is worth it compared to what else they can build.

When your extra-large McMansion bathroom requires an extra-large vanity

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Several architectural traits of McMansions tend to draw attention: two-story foyers, Palladian windows, multiple extra rooms for hobbies and crafts and whatever else, and gaudy front exteriors. Yet, the bathrooms don’t get as much attention. Here is a blog post that suggests McMansion bathrooms present special challenges:

72″ seems to be the largest standard size for bathroom vanities. But what do you do when that is just not big enough? You know who you are, if you can fit a 5 piece bedroom set into your master bathroom then you are probably living in a McMansion. And if that McMansion was built in the 80’s or 90’s it is probably time to renovate.

So how do you find bath vanities larger than 72″ with a classic, high end feel to complement you expansive space? Here are some of my top picks.

I haven’t personally searched for vanities of this size but, if shows on HGTV are any indication, there does seem to be an upsizing of the bathrooms, particularly for the master suite. I’ve been intrigued by this: why expand the size of the bathroom instead of using the square footage elsewhere? Of course, if your house is already large (say over 3,000 square feet), perhaps you wouldn’t really need square footage elsewhere…

Thinking more broadly, it would be interesting to examine the features of homes, such as furniture, decorations, and appliances, to see how much their size has grown with the expansion of American homes in the last five decades.

 

Gallery of the “10 Ugliest McMansions in New Jersey”

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New Jersey is well-known for its McMansions and was this was mentioned frequently in my study of all of the uses of the term McMansion in the New York Times between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2009. So I was intrigued to see a gallery of some of the ugliest New Jersey McMansions with this description at the beginning:

McMansions are one of America’s most notorious products. They have made it possible for people to live in large, cookie-cutter homes, which can be “customized” from a list of builder options. They have developed a reputation, however, as opportunities for perfect architectural disasters.

We have selected 10 of the most disproportionate, inharmonious, ostentatious, and just plain ugly McMansions to entertain you with (and show you what not to do if you are thinking of building a home). As an added bonus, we’ve also pointed out which famous architect would roll over in his grave if he saw it.

My favorite here is #7. Some common elements to these houses: their fronts are meant to impress; the designs often mimic notable architectural styles; there are a lot of big windows and pillars; and there are many gables. There is some consistency in this disparate architecture.

One quibble with this gallery: most of these homes are over 10,000 square feet and the homes are all very expensive. This is far beyond McMansion territory as homes this large are rarely mass produced. Imagine some of these mansions watered down a bit to save on costs and then mass produced in the New Jersey suburbs.

Claim: having too many big homes contribute to the housing market downturn

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Several experts suggest that one contributor to the downturn in the housing market is a lack of demand for large houses:

America has too many big houses — 40 million, to be exact — because consumers are shifting preferences to condos, apartments and small homes, experts told the New Partners for Smart Growth Thursday, holding its 11th annual conference in San Diego through Sunday.

Relying on developers’ surveys, Chris Nelson, who heads the Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Utah, said 43 percent of Americans prefer traditional big, suburban homes but the rest don’t.

“That means we are out of balance in terms of where the market is right now, let alone trending toward the future,” he said.

He estimated that this demand suggests a need for 10 million more attached homes and 30 million more small homes on 4,000-square-foot lots or less. By contrast, demand for large-lot homes is 40 million less than currently available.

These experts suggest that older adults and the younger generations are looking for smaller, more urban homes. But how does this line up with recent figures that suggest big homes are being built and sold?

While this sounds like an interesting conference, I wonder how this group might be spinning the recent data and trends. What do you do if 43% of Americans do want “big, suburban homes” but you personally are committed to building and pushing for smaller and denser housing? Presumably you leave the building of those larger structures to others but 43% is still a large number. It would be interesting to see how this group and its experts speak as they see some light at the end of the tunnel (several demographic groups who want smaller homes) versus time periods when it may have seemed more Americans prefer big houses and sprawl (1980s through roughly 2006).

Time magazine: “The Return of the McMansion”?

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Time echoes some other commentators: new data suggests we may be headed back toward bigger houses and McMansions.

When the real estate market imploded and ushered in the Great Recession, one of the biggest casualties was the size of our homes. For years, we’d been building increasingly large homes because, well, we could — and because we assumed all those two-story foyers and master suites could only go up in value. The recession put a screeching halt to this trend: After peaking at 2,521 square feet in 2007, the average size of a new home has dropped, a trend many industry observers thought would continue…

Census data shows that the average size of a new home built last year was 2,480 square feet, the first increase after three years of successive declines. Nearly 40% of new homes built last year had four or more bedrooms, a return to the all-time high reached in 2005 and 2006. And nearly 20% have three-car garages, an increase following two years of declines…

This reversal is unexpected. In a 2010 report, the National Association of Home Builders speculated that the trend of smaller homes might be due to a secular shift and that our preference for small houses would continue after the recession ended. “Part can also be attributed to trends in factors like the desire to keep energy costs down, amounts of equity in existing homes available to roll into a new one, tightening credit standards, less emphasis on the pure investment motive for buying a home, and an increased share of homes sold to first-time buyers,” the report says. “Not all of these trends are likely to reverse themselves immediately at the end of a recession.”

This illustrates the problems of making sweeping predictions on recent data: it is really difficult to predict long trends. Does the 2011 data now suggest we are going back the other direction toward bigger houses? What if the figures go down slightly again in 2012?

A second issue: moving back to bigger houses doesn’t necessarily mean that they are McMansions. The backlash against McMansions has been stiff in the last decade so these new big homes might be quite different. Perhaps they have emphases on customization (a concern of Sarah Susanka and the “Not So Big House”), more traditional looking neighborhoods (a concern of New Urbanists), and are greener and more sustainable homes.

“McMansions making a comeback”!

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Several sources picked up on the latest data from Trulia that suggested more Americans are interested in bigger homes. With a headline of “McMansions Are Making a Comeback,” here is what US News & World Report said:

After greed and excess torpedoed the housing market a few years ago, Americans understandably began favoring more modest homes instead of pricey palatial abodes.

But it seems old habits die hard.

Reverting back to a “bigger is better” mentality, interest in mega-mansions 3,200 square feet and larger has almost doubled from a year ago, according to new data from real estate website Trulia. About 11 percent of today’s house hunters say they want their own McMansions, up from just 6 percent last year…

About 16 percent of those surveyed said their ideal home was in the 2,600 to 3,200 square feet range, but according to listing data from Trulia, homes currently on the market skew much smaller, with only 10 percent of homes listed falling within that range. Nearly 60 percent of homes listed are 2,000 square feet or smaller, which means many house hunters’ hopes will be disappointed.

More from the Wall Street Journal as architects are also noting the trend:

Big homes are back in style.

That’s the headline from the American Institute of Architects’ first-quarter Home Design Trends Survey set to be released Thursday. Eight percent of the 500 architecture firms responding say square footage of homes increased in the first quarter, up from 5% a year ago. This change, the biggest year-over-year jump since the survey started in 2005, ends a multiyear march toward smaller homes driven by the housing implosion…

But today’s buyers are different from those seen during the buy-as-big-as-you-can boom. “People don’t want bigger homes just to have bigger homes,” says Steve Ruffner, present of the Southern California division for KB Home, one of the nation’s largest home builders. “Buyers show up with calculators. They actually calculate cost per square foot. They really understand what they’re getting for the money.”

Interestingly, 45% of architects reported more interest in single-story homes, up from 35% a year ago. The result is the largest percentage since 2005, according to the AIA. During the easy credit housing boom, builders quickly inflated home sizes to generate more profit. An easy way to do that was to tack on a second – or third – floor, making single-stories hard to come by in some communities. While more of today’s buyers seek more space, they don’t necessarily want to deal with stairs. Aging boomers are also more likely to seek a one-story address.

We will see how this plays out. Of course, the story is more complex than “Americans want bigger homes again” or “the housing recovery has begun.” And it will be fascinating to watch how these new, larger homes are marketed and perceived: if buying a McMansion is really a moral choice, can there really be a good defense for such a purchase?

“The [NYC 420 square foot] Studio Apartment with 6 Hidden Rooms”

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I’ve highlighted innovative small spaces before (see arecent post on a two-level 130 square foot apartment in Paris) and here is another one: a 420 square foot New York City studio has six hidden rooms.

In the Soho neighborhood of New York City, where living space is both expensive and limited, Graham Hill and his team at LifeEdited have turned a 420 square foot studio apartment into the Petri dish of future urban living.

The single room studio apartment has been gutted and remodeled with convertible walls and furniture that transform into six different living spaces. “I wanted it all,” says Mr. Hill in his TED talk from a year ago, “home office, sit down dinner for 10, room for guests, and all my kite surfing gear.”

You have to watch the video to get the full idea.

A few quick thoughts about this:

1. What makes this space work are the movable walls. I wonder if this could catch on in larger homes.

2. There is no mention here of how much a place like this would cost. The suggestion is that they could be made cheaper if mass produced but might the price still be out of the range of many people? Is this primarily for young professionals? If these are seen as fashionable or trendy, it could drive the price up.

3. Graham Hill and Bill Weir suggest this may be the wave of the future in urban living. I’m not so sure. How many Americans actually want this as opposed to would take this only because something larger/cheaper isn’t available?

4. There is mention toward the end of the video that “stripping away the excess found in the McMansion has countless benefits.” Hill gets his facts right: we now have bigger new homes (about 2,500 square feet today compared to about 1,000 in the 1950s) and smaller families. Yet, it is a lot to ask to have people downshift from a single-family home (and the average new size of 2,500 square feet is probably not a McMansion) to a New York City studio apartment.

Trulia survey: an increased number of Americans are looking for bigger homes

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Perhaps the McMansion is indeed making a comeback: a Trulia survey suggests more Americans are looking at bigger homes.

In Trulia’s latest American Dream survey, 17 percent more homebuyers said they envisioned buying 2,600 sq. foot homes this year than in 2011. What’s more, the number of people who set their sights on super-sized digs (3,200 sq. foot-plus) has nearly doubled from 6 percent to 11 percent.

“It turns out that new-home builders spotted this growing appetite for size,” Trulia notes. “The Census recently reported the average home constructed increased from 2,392 square feet in 2010 to 2,480 square feet in 2011.”

The only problem is our eyes might be bigger than our budgets…

There’s also the housing market itself to consider, as Trulia points out:

“Although newly constructed homes are getting bigger, most inventory is existing homes, including foreclosures, and the current inventory of for-sale homes skews smaller than most people’s idea…Meanwhile, the super-sized category –3,200-plus–is pretty much on the money, but the majority of available homes fall in the smaller size categories–800 to 2,000 square feet. That means many Americans may have to downsize their dreams to fit a smaller reality.”

Granted, this is still a small segment of the market (under 20% of homebuyers) but there does appear to be more interest in larger houses. I wonder if this suggests the housing market will continue to be bifurcated: wealthier homebuyers will look for larger new homes with amenities while the lower end buyers will scour smaller homes, short sales, and foreclosures.

Say it upfront: a $10.95 million home with 109 acres is not a McMansion

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This real estate story starts in an unusual way: readers are first told what the large home is not.

Don’t call it a McMansion. This classic, $10.95 million Connecticut estate is tucked away on 109 acres of countryside in Sharon. Known as “The Colgate Estate”, the house was designed by award winning architect J. William Cromwell Jr. for Romulus Riggs Colgate (not that Colgate) and his wife, Susan, in 1903. To add to the homes illustrious history, the late singer, songwriter and producer Paul Leka and his family purchased the property in 1978.

On the 109 acres, you can find the 12,000 square-foot-main house, a large front courtyard with privet and fountain, and an English barn with six stalls. There’s also a carriage house, a swimming pool, a 2000-square-foot reflecting pool, and staff quarters.

The 19-room main house was made with granite mined from the property, and features an entrance graced with four immense Corinthian columns.

The interior of the main house is described as being both spacious and intimate. Besides the living room and Great Reception Hall (which also doubles as a ballroom), no other room exceeds 23 feet in length. The majority of the original furniture and fixtures are still intact. There are marble fireplaces, oak and walnut wall paneling and woodwork, Fontaine hardware and Mott and Fish ironwork. The five full and three half-bathrooms also add to the overall grandeur of the home: They feature toilets with pull chains, tubs with feet, and porcelain handles on marble sinks.

This is a strange way to start this overview of “The Colgate Estate” as I’m not sure what the author is getting at. Is the point that this is a real mansion? Is the point that this is an older home? Does this home have more style and grace that more modern big houses? Does the price tag indicate that this is really a luxury home?

At the same time, I applaud this: too many extra large houses are called McMansions when they are clearly in the mansion category. If there is a 12,000 square foot house on 109 acres built in 1903 by an award winning architect, this is not your suburban subdivision McMansion. This home isn’t for the nouveau riche or white collar managers: this is for the truly wealthy.