8 ms·

> What was once a mix of modest, low-slung ranch-style houses And when those ranch-style houses were new, architecture snobs were decrying them as as soulless

> What was once a mix of modest, low-slung ranch-style houses And when those ranch-style houses were new, architecture snobs were decrying them as as soulless cookie-cutter crap. Here's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a "McMansion", don't buy one.

User23 3y ago
As always, we must consider the actual alternatives and not just our imaginary ideal scenario. What is the alternative for the relatively large population looking to start families in a neighborhood with a good school district and child care on 1-2 working to middle class salaries while building some equity? Can you point us to someplace where there is quality, affordable, and aesthetically pleasing new home construction happening at scale?
- steveBK123 3y ago
  One consideration is that "new homes" have historically been something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so normalized in the last couple decades, that people argue "middle class salary" should be able to buy one. Growing up, no one in my family lived in a new construction home, nor did any of my friends. New construction needs to happen to increase aggregate supply to deal with incremental increases of demand. That supply though, may be more high end than median. Even this works fine because it means someone will buy a pricey new construction home rather than a cheap home and gut renovate it. The lack of new construction causes high income buyers to move further and further down market to buy-to-reno.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    In many places (where building is still happening) the cost of new vs old construction is surprisingly close; so why not get a brand new 2023 house instead of that older 2003 one?
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      if it is, then great. but the baseline built in assumption that all home buyers should be able to afford new homes when people complain that new homes are too expensive is what misses the point. New homes are built on the expensive side because that's what allows developers to turn a profit in areas where development plots are scarce to come by. That is - where land is the constraint, why would a developer choose to have a lower ROI? Areas that new & old homes don't price too differently & there is still building happening are likely not in land/development/zoning constrained with undersupply. Also laughing/crying internally as you describe 2003 as old (from my 1970s home).. Never lived in a building that wasn't older than me..
      - bombcar 3y ago
        Heh my last few houses have pre-nuclear steel in them, since they were built before the bombs dropped. And yes, the "standard" (hard to call something a standard that only really existed for 50 or so years of the modern USA) of houses going out of style and passing down as starter homes, etc has been sadly disrupted. And many of those starter homes are now held out as rentals, which further distorts it. (We're actually in a "starter home" now and considering what the next step should be, and the vast improvements in energy, etc over the last 20 years alone is making me heavily lean toward building, especially as I can sit on the design and get something more reasonable for the cost.)
    - peteradio 3y ago
      Because new construction is not necessarily built with the same materials and expertise as old construction. Good bones and all. Although I think you'd have to go back further than 2003 to get a meaningful difference in construction practices.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        That may be the case, but you have to take survivorship bias into account, and the vast differences in available equipment and materials. A modern double-paned house with R20 insulation and a well designed heat pump system is going to blow(er test) the doors off an immaculate mansion built in the 1900s with single pane glass and a gravity furnace.
  - User23 3y ago
    With a rapidly growing population[1] new housing isn't a "luxury good," but rather a necessity. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-states-resident-population/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-states-res...
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > One consideration is that "new homes" have historically been something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so normalized in the last couple decades, that people argue "middle class salary" should be able to buy one. Yes, how dare the proles expect to live like the "best people".
- WillPostForFood 3y ago
  McMansions are aesthetically pleasing to the average taste, which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism. If your taste is out of the mainstream, then it is harder to find houses, and they will be more expensive. There are the occasional attempts at the non-standard suburban subdivision style. I liked these: https://starlightvillagehomes.com/ https://starlightvillagehomes.com/
  - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
    > which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism Most coastal areas I've been to typically value their historical architecture and maintain those aesthetics. Really not sure where you're getting that from. If you go to areas in Michigan such as Troy, most of the houses are of a mid-century modern design similar to what you're sharing. The design language of a McMansion inherently lacks cohesion. Its not an elitist take to say "taking various design elements from 6 different eras of building and inflating them all up to 150% scale" is a bad design. If a design lacks any kind of symmetry, has windows that dont line up that are all different sizes, misplaced features, etc; its an ugly design. Not sure what else to say. Midwesterners are not immune to good design practice, and its bizarre to suggest that people outside of the coasts are incapable of making a cohesive design.
    - User23 3y ago
      > Most coastal areas I've been to typically value their historical architecture and maintain those aesthetics Given that virtually all new construction in coastal cities is five over one crapboxes along with the occasional uninspired at best highrise, I don't see it. Certainly nobody is putting up what one might consider well built aesthetically pleasing mansions in downtown San Wherever.
      - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
        5-over-1s are basically universal in the United States. You might see them more in coastal areas but that's because its where the population gravitates to. I don't like 5-over-1s either but they're a product of zoning laws that tried to legislate out more compact housing. I much rather have a couple duplex/quadplexes on each suburban block but a lot of folks really don't like that idea. Bring up the idea of putting a cafe or convenience store inside a suburban culdesac hell and people will lose their mind.
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
I'll regularly go to estate sales in McMansions. It's really amazing to see. Master Bedrooms the size of my apartment that are mostly empty. Huge tall ceilings with poorly assembled trim to break up the monotony. Two extra large AC units needed to cool all that air. Basement bars that have gone unused for years, expansive basements with old kids toys laying about, so roomy that it feels almost commercial. So many extra sitting rooms just there as a place to put things. Its amazing how wasteful they are, how they basically just exist to say "look, big house". Nothing in them is practical, they're difficult to navigate because you need to make room for the massive foyer staircase and inexplicable loft/bridge to overlook your leather couches with USB ports in them, sitting across from a tv mounted 3 feet too high to ever have a comfortable viewing angle. I've seen the ugliest ceiling mural, attempting to emulate an Italian fresco with all the skill of a high school drug PSA mural. These homes just reek of desperation, like they've accrued all this wealth and have found themselves sitting at the back of the bus in "The Graduate", without any purpose and unsure why they fought so hard. Its really interesting seeing a bathroom with enough open space to store an old beetle, with 30 drawers under the acreage of counter top. Mostly empty but dispersed with normal human items, like they're trying so hard to make it seem like any of this was necessary. All of these places are devoid of any kind of design, it all feels like a simulacra of old wealth, like its what they "should" be buying and decorating with, but then you see personal items and realize they're no better than the average person, they have the same interests and hobbies, only now they're buried deep inside this dryrock dungeon, hidden away so they can appear high class and fancy. The worst thing about them? How cheap it all feels, and how much it feels like a normal house scaled up beyond any purpose. Sure the first floor may have some kind of granite tile, but every other floor seems to bow and give under your feet like you're on a rubber running track. Noises reverberate if there's no carpet, but if there is, it most likely came with the home and has not been taken care of. McMansions are an amazing symbol of the hollowness of seeking wealth. You could have a much nicer, bespoke and practical home if you wanted. For the money you could hire a real designer, real craftsmen to build your hardwood features or master plaster craftsman to make real ceiling moldings. Instead of ordering a steak from a fine restaurant, the McMansion is spending the equivalent money at a McDonalds.
- ryandrake 3y ago
bombcar 3y ago
Fun fact: the term "Victorian" for that type of house (IIRC) was intended to disparage them, as they were considered tacky and cheap.
gonehome 3y ago
Yeah, this is my takeaway whenever someone uses “McMansion” in a disparaging way - it’s mostly to sneer at some “lower class”.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - gonehome 3y ago
    Sprawl is a problem, but I don’t buy that this is the main reason people complain about McMansions (I live in a condo in a dense building fwiw due to personal preference so this isn’t sour grapes). The people I know living in these large houses that were cheaply built with weird architectural accents were primarily middle class people in suburban areas with low cost of living and larger families. Often they grew up with less money and were the first of their family to do well. Typically they bought a house in some new development with a good school. The people I’ve heard complain the most about it are the upper-middle class people on the coasts that went to Stanford, I mostly only heard this style of complaint after moving to the bay and meeting people that grew up in these higher classes. It really comes across as a way to look down on the lower classes that “don’t have good taste” dressed up as something more intellectual. Actual rich people (not upper-middle) don’t give a shit, probably because they’re not afraid someone will mistake their status for middle class - they just live in their estate in atherton and don’t read articles like this. I don’t like suburban sprawl either, but I have an allergic reaction to this kind of elitism. It’s true - middle class people often don’t know how to properly signal status because they didn’t grow up in it, but how to properly signal it is also a moving target (intentionally) by those a little above them. I just find it tedious to watch.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > vastly inefficient sprawl that plagues the country. If efficiency were the only important metric, we'd all be living in dormitories with 3-shifts-per-day "hot bunks" and institutional kitchens.
micromacrofoot 3y ago
A huge part of the point here is that McMansions create unattractive, difficult to use, and costly to maintain infrastructure. And the residents who live in the McMansions aren't really the people who are bearing the full brunt of these costs.
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  My favorite thing was a culdesac of McMansions that had a gravel entrance road. You could almost hear the arguments of "who will pay for it?" echoing the halls like a ghost.
dfxm12 3y ago
Here's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a "McMansion", don't buy one. Shopping for houses isn't like shopping on Amazon. You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your choice in two days. If the only housing stock available/being built is houses you don't want to live in, whether they're too big, too poorly built, too ugly, not oriented on the lot right, not exactly where you want it, you're going to have to buy one anyway.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your choice in two days No kidding. And? > If the only housing stock available/being built is houses you don't want to live in These houses are exactly what their owners want to live in. Exactly. If the market demand weren't there, the contractors would be building something else.

User23 3y ago

As always, we must consider the actual alternatives and not just our imaginary ideal scenario. What is the alternative for the relatively large population looking to start families in a neighborhood with a good school district and child care on 1-2 working to middle class salaries while building some equity? Can you point us to someplace where there is quality, affordable, and aesthetically pleasing new home construction happening at scale?

steveBK123 3y ago
One consideration is that "new homes" have historically been something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so normalized in the last couple decades, that people argue "middle class salary" should be able to buy one. Growing up, no one in my family lived in a new construction home, nor did any of my friends. New construction needs to happen to increase aggregate supply to deal with incremental increases of demand. That supply though, may be more high end than median. Even this works fine because it means someone will buy a pricey new construction home rather than a cheap home and gut renovate it. The lack of new construction causes high income buyers to move further and further down market to buy-to-reno.
- bombcar 3y ago
  In many places (where building is still happening) the cost of new vs old construction is surprisingly close; so why not get a brand new 2023 house instead of that older 2003 one?
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    if it is, then great. but the baseline built in assumption that all home buyers should be able to afford new homes when people complain that new homes are too expensive is what misses the point. New homes are built on the expensive side because that's what allows developers to turn a profit in areas where development plots are scarce to come by. That is - where land is the constraint, why would a developer choose to have a lower ROI? Areas that new & old homes don't price too differently & there is still building happening are likely not in land/development/zoning constrained with undersupply. Also laughing/crying internally as you describe 2003 as old (from my 1970s home).. Never lived in a building that wasn't older than me..
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Heh my last few houses have pre-nuclear steel in them, since they were built before the bombs dropped. And yes, the "standard" (hard to call something a standard that only really existed for 50 or so years of the modern USA) of houses going out of style and passing down as starter homes, etc has been sadly disrupted. And many of those starter homes are now held out as rentals, which further distorts it. (We're actually in a "starter home" now and considering what the next step should be, and the vast improvements in energy, etc over the last 20 years alone is making me heavily lean toward building, especially as I can sit on the design and get something more reasonable for the cost.)
  - peteradio 3y ago
    Because new construction is not necessarily built with the same materials and expertise as old construction. Good bones and all. Although I think you'd have to go back further than 2003 to get a meaningful difference in construction practices.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      That may be the case, but you have to take survivorship bias into account, and the vast differences in available equipment and materials. A modern double-paned house with R20 insulation and a well designed heat pump system is going to blow(er test) the doors off an immaculate mansion built in the 1900s with single pane glass and a gravity furnace.
- User23 3y ago
  With a rapidly growing population[1] new housing isn't a "luxury good," but rather a necessity. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-states-resident-population/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-states-res...
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > One consideration is that "new homes" have historically been something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so normalized in the last couple decades, that people argue "middle class salary" should be able to buy one. Yes, how dare the proles expect to live like the "best people".
WillPostForFood 3y ago
McMansions are aesthetically pleasing to the average taste, which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism. If your taste is out of the mainstream, then it is harder to find houses, and they will be more expensive. There are the occasional attempts at the non-standard suburban subdivision style. I liked these: https://starlightvillagehomes.com/ https://starlightvillagehomes.com/
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  > which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism Most coastal areas I've been to typically value their historical architecture and maintain those aesthetics. Really not sure where you're getting that from. If you go to areas in Michigan such as Troy, most of the houses are of a mid-century modern design similar to what you're sharing. The design language of a McMansion inherently lacks cohesion. Its not an elitist take to say "taking various design elements from 6 different eras of building and inflating them all up to 150% scale" is a bad design. If a design lacks any kind of symmetry, has windows that dont line up that are all different sizes, misplaced features, etc; its an ugly design. Not sure what else to say. Midwesterners are not immune to good design practice, and its bizarre to suggest that people outside of the coasts are incapable of making a cohesive design.
  - User23 3y ago
    > Most coastal areas I've been to typically value their historical architecture and maintain those aesthetics Given that virtually all new construction in coastal cities is five over one crapboxes along with the occasional uninspired at best highrise, I don't see it. Certainly nobody is putting up what one might consider well built aesthetically pleasing mansions in downtown San Wherever.
    - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
      5-over-1s are basically universal in the United States. You might see them more in coastal areas but that's because its where the population gravitates to. I don't like 5-over-1s either but they're a product of zoning laws that tried to legislate out more compact housing. I much rather have a couple duplex/quadplexes on each suburban block but a lot of folks really don't like that idea. Bring up the idea of putting a cafe or convenience store inside a suburban culdesac hell and people will lose their mind.

MSFT_Edging 3y ago

I'll regularly go to estate sales in McMansions. It's really amazing to see. Master Bedrooms the size of my apartment that are mostly empty. Huge tall ceilings with poorly assembled trim to break up the monotony. Two extra large AC units needed to cool all that air. Basement bars that have gone unused for years, expansive basements with old kids toys laying about, so roomy that it feels almost commercial. So many extra sitting rooms just there as a place to put things. Its amazing how wasteful they are, how they basically just exist to say "look, big house". Nothing in them is practical, they're difficult to navigate because you need to make room for the massive foyer staircase and inexplicable loft/bridge to overlook your leather couches with USB ports in them, sitting across from a tv mounted 3 feet too high to ever have a comfortable viewing angle. I've seen the ugliest ceiling mural, attempting to emulate an Italian fresco with all the skill of a high school drug PSA mural. These homes just reek of desperation, like they've accrued all this wealth and have found themselves sitting at the back of the bus in "The Graduate", without any purpose and unsure why they fought so hard. Its really interesting seeing a bathroom with enough open space to store an old beetle, with 30 drawers under the acreage of counter top. Mostly empty but dispersed with normal human items, like they're trying so hard to make it seem like any of this was necessary. All of these places are devoid of any kind of design, it all feels like a simulacra of old wealth, like its what they "should" be buying and decorating with, but then you see personal items and realize they're no better than the average person, they have the same interests and hobbies, only now they're buried deep inside this dryrock dungeon, hidden away so they can appear high class and fancy. The worst thing about them? How cheap it all feels, and how much it feels like a normal house scaled up beyond any purpose. Sure the first floor may have some kind of granite tile, but every other floor seems to bow and give under your feet like you're on a rubber running track. Noises reverberate if there's no carpet, but if there is, it most likely came with the home and has not been taken care of. McMansions are an amazing symbol of the hollowness of seeking wealth. You could have a much nicer, bespoke and practical home if you wanted. For the money you could hire a real designer, real craftsmen to build your hardwood features or master plaster craftsman to make real ceiling moldings. Instead of ordering a steak from a fine restaurant, the McMansion is spending the equivalent money at a McDonalds.

ryandrake 3y ago

bombcar 3y ago

Fun fact: the term "Victorian" for that type of house (IIRC) was intended to disparage them, as they were considered tacky and cheap.

gonehome 3y ago

Yeah, this is my takeaway whenever someone uses “McMansion” in a disparaging way - it’s mostly to sneer at some “lower class”.

micromacrofoot 3y ago
[flagged]
- gonehome 3y ago
  Sprawl is a problem, but I don’t buy that this is the main reason people complain about McMansions (I live in a condo in a dense building fwiw due to personal preference so this isn’t sour grapes). The people I know living in these large houses that were cheaply built with weird architectural accents were primarily middle class people in suburban areas with low cost of living and larger families. Often they grew up with less money and were the first of their family to do well. Typically they bought a house in some new development with a good school. The people I’ve heard complain the most about it are the upper-middle class people on the coasts that went to Stanford, I mostly only heard this style of complaint after moving to the bay and meeting people that grew up in these higher classes. It really comes across as a way to look down on the lower classes that “don’t have good taste” dressed up as something more intellectual. Actual rich people (not upper-middle) don’t give a shit, probably because they’re not afraid someone will mistake their status for middle class - they just live in their estate in atherton and don’t read articles like this. I don’t like suburban sprawl either, but I have an allergic reaction to this kind of elitism. It’s true - middle class people often don’t know how to properly signal status because they didn’t grow up in it, but how to properly signal it is also a moving target (intentionally) by those a little above them. I just find it tedious to watch.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > vastly inefficient sprawl that plagues the country. If efficiency were the only important metric, we'd all be living in dormitories with 3-shifts-per-day "hot bunks" and institutional kitchens.

micromacrofoot 3y ago

A huge part of the point here is that McMansions create unattractive, difficult to use, and costly to maintain infrastructure. And the residents who live in the McMansions aren't really the people who are bearing the full brunt of these costs.

MSFT_Edging 3y ago
My favorite thing was a culdesac of McMansions that had a gravel entrance road. You could almost hear the arguments of "who will pay for it?" echoing the halls like a ghost.

dfxm12 3y ago

Here's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a "McMansion", don't buy one. Shopping for houses isn't like shopping on Amazon. You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your choice in two days. If the only housing stock available/being built is houses you don't want to live in, whether they're too big, too poorly built, too ugly, not oriented on the lot right, not exactly where you want it, you're going to have to buy one anyway.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
> You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your choice in two days No kidding. And? > If the only housing stock available/being built is houses you don't want to live in These houses are exactly what their owners want to live in. Exactly. If the market demand weren't there, the contractors would be building something else.