My uncle was a foreman for a McMansion developer in the Carolinas. He used to say you could break into them with some tin snips and a putty knife. The standard wall layers from the exterior in were aluminum or vinyl siding, tyvek, styrofoam block insulation, sheet rock. Almost all studs were lightweight aluminum. Coming from a state with stricter building codes, and a higher end sort of home building it shocked him.
Another Uncle bought one of the first McMansion style homes built in the late 70’s, original resident/owner was one of the first developers to establish the style and methods for those sorts of developments. Everything was bizarrely done, corners cut, weird adhoc strategies for everything cheap materials. He’s done nothing but identify and fix incredible strange and jank since he bought the house.
I don’t get the huge house cravings.
Jeez I am in a post war suburban home now which is well built and kinda too big. The plot it is on anyway.
I could seriously be happy with 1/4 the yard I currently have.
I can’t imagine just the simple cleaning upkeep nightmare of one of those huge monsters.
A friend had a mcmansion built where they put sheetrock over the upstairs return vent, hiding it. The owners had to study the plans to figure out where to tear the sheetrock back out. The builders left six inches of pipe sticking up from the basement floor. A flood in the basement while they were working on it caused black mold on the cement blocks, which they just covered with sheetrock. That all had to be taken out.
The developers get low-paid untrained folks to build these POS houses, and then disappear when you try to get things fixed.
They did a series on this problem with newer homes in the Philly area. Lots of homeowners are struggling with major damage and loss of equity, but cannot sue the developers:
More likely that the exurban ones will be subdivided by their current owners (or perhaps a hedge fund that buys them) and become slum housing.
They should grandfather in current mortgages of retirees who are already counting on it. For new mortgages or non-retirees, though, this ridiculous policy based on “The American Dream” (cue George Carlin) needs to go.
If I were oriented toward owning a single-family home, I would go for a small Craftsman house (or maybe build a one new from a kit plan).
I also have a fondness for the NYC Classic 6, although that would be a little large for my purposes (not to mention insanely expensive).
I like well-built homes in vibrant neighbourhoods designed for actual humans to live in and use, not Potemkin Village showplaces built entirely of ticky-tack in the middle of nowhere meant to impress the neighbours.
My house has a huge empty space in it, about 3x4x6 feet, because of the design of the stairwells. It’s just a big empty well you can look into when you’re in the attic. I can’t even figure out how to make it a cool secret storage area.
The roof on the house–in very wet Alabama–funnels rain terribly. About 25% of the roof has to drain thru a 40" gap on the front of the house. The first owners installed a gutter there, so you could walk out without passing thru a waterfall (theoretically) but the gutter is overwhelmed. It’s so bad that it had eroded the concrete slab for the front sidewalk. The back of the house has almost 50% of the roof draining into two five-foot gaps between two odd roof peaks and a chimney, which before I bought the place had no I-forget-what-you-call-the-little-rooflet-that-channels-water-around-the-chimney, so there were constant leaks there.
I drive my wife crazy with my constant frustrated cursing and grumbling. But it’s what we could afford, and honestly, it was better than a lot of the other houses we looked at.
A lot of boomers have been horrified by the invention and spread of McMansions, too. We remember reasonable houses that weren’t filled with specialized rooms for every task, and were much easier to clean and maintain.
McMansions have been pushed by developers more than buyers in a lot of places. And a lot of people bought them because that’s all that was available - if that’s all that’s being built, and you don’t have the time or resources to have what you actually want built for you, you’re stuck.
Some friends who moved to another city ended up in one - and yes, they like the huge spaces in it. But complimenting them on their (expensive) new house required quite a bit of acting ability, because it’s all show and no substance - the fixtures, walls and floors are shoddy and cheap, and they already have plumbing and roof problems. It’s not even close to the quality of the 1950s house they moved from.
And to elaborate on my post above.
Maybe it is cause I grew up in an urban residential area that had lots of 2 family flats and actually used as such though more than a few were converted to single family use.
Once the teen boy is off to living on his own I can see selling the 3 bedroom we are in for a townhome or just a smaller house with way way way less yard.
ETA and definitely in an urban area where I can walk to the coffee shop, library, grocery store, etc.
Wow, so now old people are blaming millennials because they bought/built a terrible house?
“I cannot believe kids these days will not bail me out of my stupid wasteful expenditure on a crappy house by buying it from me for well above market price!”
We are in an 1890ish (shortly antebellum anyway) farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley. Wouldn’t trade it for anything. This was when things were built with the idea of generations in mind. Just had to put a new roof on it. To replace the original, >100 year old roof. Our grandkids should not have to worry about this again. Gotta love it!
That seems to be the trend for empty-nesters: ditching the single-family home and moving to a smaller condo or co-op or SFH in the city centre. With a critical mass of Boomers retiring, this is a less discussed driver of higher housing prices in desirable cities.
Honesty the 3 bedroom we are in is nice as far as house size. The kids room was my home office before I moved it to the basement.
It is mostly the much larger yard than we need and never really use that frustrates me with fuck I gotta go take care of it work.
My parents who were were empty nesters then not after my grandma moved in with them then my brothers kids for a few years and they finally got to where they were gone too. They had a 3 bedroom ranch with a full basement but it was the stairs and yardwork more than anything that got them to move to a 2 bedroom apartment/condo.
