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McMansion envy spreads as Americans demand more bedrooms and baths
- sneak 8y agoIf you work at home, that’s a bedroom off for office. I also build synths and electronics and firearms, that’s a bedroom off for workshop/music. Weight room. Guest bedroom for when friends visit. Master bedroom for me, partner bedroom to save relationship sanity. That’s six for just two adults, and I still haven’t racked the servers and switches in my lab. I think the mistake is thinking of them as bedrooms and not general purpose rooms for activities that require equipment/storage.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- maxxxxx 8y agoI just want to have a small house with a little yard. Do they still get built?
- neap24 8y agoThey do not. In fact, in my city, one-story houses with less than 2000 sq. ft. sometimes sell at a premium.
- kasey_junk 8y agoEssentially no. Luckily tons were built in the last century so they still exist.
- bootsz 8y agoIt seems less and less prevalent. Most of the modest 1-story homes in my hometown have been steadily replaced over the past 10-15 years with obnoxious McMansions with very little space in between them. Square footage is the cheapest thing you can add to a house's up-front cost (key emphasis on "up-front") and fetches large premiums on home value. Just the reality of the market I guess.
- scrooched_moose 8y agoNo, and they typically aren't allowed by modern zoning restrictions. I'm in a house from the mid-1910s and my lot is a third of what is required for new construction in other parts of the city.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThat's just nuts. We should go for more density, not less.
- jimmaswell 8y agoWould you enjoy picking somewhere nice to live, then it becomes crowded with a bunch of denser living structures, with all the extra noise, congestion, crime (simply by virtue of more people being present), etc. completely changing the character of the location?
- maxxxxx 8y agoI prefer that over endless sprawl. From a practical point of view it would also allow more people to own a house.
- jimmaswell 8y agoWe can't just turn every single locality into a Manhattan. Nice areas with sparse, bigger houses should be able to elect to stay that way. The "sprawl" everyone complains about in SF is (from the last article I saw) a bunch of super tiny square houses with tiny lawns packed into a giant grid. Honestly seems like an alright compromise to me between huge apartment buildings and big lawns for a city-like area, compromised too far in the direction of density even. I honestly don't see the big deal about some areas like SF being able to exist where you can live in a city and actually have a nice-ish single family house in commute distance of your city-job, even if it prices some people out. It's one city in a country of 300 million.
- 8y ago
- dx87 8y agoYep, at least around the DC Metro area. With Cyber Command and all the associated cyber stuff bringing in tons of people, most new housing developments I've seen are almost as dense as town homes in Baltimore, there's just a little more space between the sides of the houses, and there is usually a small front yard instead of being right up against the sidewalk.
- amluto 8y agoYeah, they’re all over Palo Alto. One can be yours for the modest sum of ~$2.5M.
- denimnerd 8y agoyes they do. in Dallas i’m next to a 900 home development. many of the homes are 1 story with a yard only big enough for maybe keeping a dog
- feistypharit 8y agoDepends in location. Most builders want bigger jobs: it's better to build 5 big houses than 10 little ones. We were looking at building a smallish house and the builder thought we were crazy for wanting a 1300sqft cottage. Ended up being only slightly cheaper than a 2000sqft place. What builders in the us don't get that some in europe do is some people prefer quality over quantity.
- thatfrenchguy 8y agoBigger houses -> Worse for the environment
- ceejayoz 8y agoIf it's built with wood, a bigger house is a larger semi-permanent sequestration of carbon dioxide. If it's being built in an energy efficient manner, it may actually wind up better all things considered.
- empthought 8y agoLeaving the constituent trees alive would be far more useful, if for some strange reason you actually use carbon impact as a metric.
- ams6110 8y agoCutting trees, building something more or less permanent with the wood, and planting new trees seems to be the most useful. Most timber used for dimensional lumber comes from managed forests that are continually re-planted as they are cut, not old-growth clear-cutting.
- empthought 8y agoOld, large trees are more effective at capturing carbon than young trees. Source: http://science.time.com/2014/01/15/study-shows-older-trees-absorb-more-carbon/ http://science.time.com/2014/01/15/study-shows-older-trees-a... While good timber land management practices avoid the further loss of existing old trees, they do nothing to foster the growth of more.
- c22 8y agoNot necessarily. A mature forest can only hold so much carbon, old trees decompose, releasing their sequestered carbon back into the environment even while new trees are busy locking it up again. By removing this carbon and turning it into building materials then letting new trees grow to replace them you are keeping more carbon from returning to the atmosphere.
- newnewpdro 8y agoBare non-google non-amp URL: (WTF?) https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mcmansion-envy-spreads-as-americans-demand-more-bedrooms-baths/ https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mcmansion-envy-spreads-as...
- sctb 8y agoThanks! Updated.
- kpwags 8y agoI have a 1300 square foot home with 3 bedrooms & 1.5 bathrooms. While my wife and I don't have kids, I'm happy with the size. Anything bigger and I feel like it'd be overkill for us. I wish the floorplan was a little more open or could be easier to open up, but otherwise I feel the size is perfect for our needs. Obviously if children enter the picture, things might change, but I feel like having a house that's too big is more of a pain than it's worth...especially when you need to clean for company.
- senorjazz 8y agoIsn't this exactly what the article is talking about? 3 bedrooms for a no-children family being "perfect" size.
- zdragnar 8y agoMaster bedroom, guest bedroom, office. It's not an unreasonable way to live at all.
- icebraining 8y agoHow many nights per year is your guest bedroom actually used?
- zdragnar 8y agoAs a guest bedroom? A few times a year, when distant friends and relatives top by. As spare storage for seasonal clothes, decorations and so forth? Probably 1 out of every 4 days. As a hobby room for things that don't work out well in the office? Quite a few more days. As a sleeping room for pets (ferrets)? Every day. Edit: To be used as a guest bedroom, we tend to reorganize a bit (such as moving the pets to the master bedroom) but primarily we consider it the "guest bedroom". It sounds a bit nicer than "arbitrary spare room".
- hrktb 8y agoI’m curious what people use the office for. I’ve seen people run actual companies and they needed a ton of space to keep legal documents, spec books, and a professional grade printer to copy binders of docs. They were fully utilizing the room. But I doubt most people run companies, and personal docs usualy fit in a single box. Most people also use laptops, consumer printer/scanners are pretty unobtrusive, if people even keep one. All of that would fit in half of a cabinet, so what I am missing that goes into an office room ?
- crazcarl 8y agoThis is only new single-family homes. I would guess the vast majority of these are in the far-reaching suburbs of large cities. I wonder - how would this look if you plotted # of bedrooms (or one of the other data points being discussed) versus how far from the nearest major city the house is being built?
- squozzer 8y agoEnjoy McMansion Hell - http://mcmansionhell.com/ http://mcmansionhell.com/ I call BS on the single-story build rate > 40%. Finding my current home in 2015 - a single-story - took a lot longer because they weren't that many on the market at a given time. Some were under contract in less than one day on the market! But I am confusing build rate with market availability. The blame will fall on HGTV for some of the problem. Another factor is profitability - a 2000 sqft house costs less than 2x to build than a 1000 sqft house, but within the same hypothetical neighborhood, will probably cost 2x or more because of the additional features that additional floor space makes possible.
- michaelbuckbee 8y agoAverages are always misleading - in this case I wonder if single story builds are weighted towards 50+ elder communities (they are in our area) which throws off the distribution.
- notacoward 8y ago"a 2000 sqft house costs less than 2x to build than a 1000 sqft house, but within the same hypothetical neighborhood, will probably cost 2x or more" That's certainly not true where I am. The lot is 75% or more of the total value. Even if the bigger house is 4x the value for 1.5x the build cost, that's still not 2x the total purchase price, and those are wildly optimistic numbers. I suspect the same is true in most high-cost neighborhoods. Building bigger nicer houses does improve the ROI somewhat, but that's like an optimization after picking the right lots in the right neighborhoods.
- shiftoutbox 8y agoI have a 2 Million square foot home with 200 bathrooms and 3 bedrooms. Its a total open floor plan that sings of a proto post modernist view of a home. I got my ideas for my home on a cable home show that poorly ripped off this old house.
- squozzer 8y ago>People with more money to spend typically want five bedrooms with bathrooms, porcelain tile and quartz countertops. “Most everything we’re doing at this price point includes a garage that fits a minimum of four cars,” Jackson says. “We just finished a home that had a nine-car garage.” I just contracted McMansion Garage Envy. Maybe with a dash of prepper amenities such as an RTG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge... and a protected well.
- checkyoursudo 8y agoI have a spouse and two kids. I used to have a 1500 sqft house. Next was a 1600 sqft house. Now, a 3300 sqft house. I miss the 1500 sqft house so much. Our current house has a 3/4 acre yard bordering on 20 acres of preserve/park, so I love that, but I would still take the small house on the 1/4 acre over this, since I live near plenty of nature opportunities anyway.
- acconrad 8y agoI'm genuinely curious - how did you manage 1500 sq ft with two kids? I've seen various outlets that state most people need roughly 450 sq ft, and we currently have 900 sq ft for me and my wife and that feels right, maybe even slightly big. I wanted an 1750-1800 sq ft home and my wife wants closer to 2200-2250. So I'm shocked you felt comfortable with 1500 sq ft and wonder what made the house so nice. Was it layout? Efficient use of wall space?
- tathougies 8y agoIn 1950, the average space per person was 259 sq ft. People in the 1950s turned out just fine. The larger and larger homes we are seeing today while witnessing the ever declining family size are the result of unadulterated greed, pure and simple. Source: https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/the-righteous-small-house-challenging-house-size-and-the-irresponsible-american-dream https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/the-righteous-small-house...
- jimmaswell 8y agoThe rich of back then had big houses too. It's not some increase in greed, just an increase in accessibility. I don't see the need to ascribe negative traits like greed to wanting more space in any case.
- tathougies 8y agoThe rich back then were greedy, just as the rich are today. Greed in 1950 is as bad as greed today. Arguing that there are more greedy people does not exonerate anyone. It's not like there being more greedy people somehow lessens the amount of greed experienced by each one. In other words, greed is not a zero-sum game. And yes, greed is a negative trait when your greed means wasting things that you objectively do not need.
- thrower123 8y agoOne thing that I always think about with these absurd HGTV house shows is who is going to clean all of these extra bathrooms? When you've got 3-4 bathrooms, and 2000+ square feet, you will have to spend a nontrivial amount of time cleaning every week. Or hire it out. Oh, and I really, really, really, never want to hear the term "bonus room" used ever again.
- brianwawok 8y agoHouse cleaning makes my life much better and costs less than my cell phone bill.
- jimmaswell 8y agoWhat is your cell phone bill? The person I know who does house cleaning charges $25/hr, takes 5 hours on the average house, and goes to most of their houses at least twice a month.
- pseudobry 8y agoI pay $150/month for a crew of two to clean my 2200sqft house every other week. It's so worth it, even just so I don't have to clean the shower anymore. But really, the better benefit is more time to spend with my kids and work on other things.
- brianwawok 8y agoMy cleaning is $25 per hour, two times per month for a total of $100 per month. My cell phone is for two lines through tmo, with device payments end up a bit more.
- arielweisberg 8y agoBigger houses tend to not get dirty as quickly. But it is more nooks and crannies that need attention on an infrequent basis. So many houses I step into have parts that have never been cleaned since they took ownership. Wow it gets nasty!
- 8y ago
- tonyedgecombe 8y agohttps://granolashotgun.com https://granolashotgun.com is an interesting blog about the sustainability of these communities.
- cbhl 8y agoI wonder how much of this demand are multi-generational homes (e.g. parents, spouse, kids all in the same house). Those are very common in, say, Chinese families.
- codingdave 8y agoI'm not sure that the demand in new home building is the same thing as the overall demand for homes. People who want to build new suburban (cookie-cutter) homes are not the entirety of our society. I'd trust data and feedback from real estate agents more than I would from home builders.
- no_protocol 8y agoThe author of this page has made critical errors in either interpreting or creating many of the graphs on the page. > Another housing trend that popped up in 2014 was the rise in homes with four or more bedrooms. If you actually look at the graph, the rise in 4+ bedrooms had been going since 1985. In 2014 it just became the most popular. > Demand for fireplaces has been cooling since the ’90s with 2007 being the first year that more homes were built without the feature than with. Actually, that would be 2010. The "None" point is plotted higher than the "1" point in 2007 but still definitely below the 50% mark. > The average square feet of floor area in a newly completed single-family home was down 2 percent or 56 square feet in 2017 from the high mark. The graph above has percentages in the y-axis rather than square feet...no idea what happened there. Plus, it is somewhat misleading! In the real data chart [0, page 9], the median square footage actually increased in 2017, while the average did decrease. Additionally, this difference appears to be within the relative standard error window. [0]: https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/squarefeet.pdf https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/squarefeet.pdf
- tomatotomato37 8y agoNot to be pedantic, but that house pictured isn't a McMansion, on the virtue that the windows match and there isn't a giant garage turret tumor thing stapled to one of the sides Still an interesting article however; with all this talk about people repopulating cities and cutting back it seems the data still shows people love living large
- nunez 8y agoThat’s good for us because we don’t want a big home and depressed demand for them will probably mean a cheaper starter home for us. I used to be averse to the idea of buying an older, smaller home, but my wife is insistent on it. The more I think about it, the more I think she has the right idea.