I find I have completely misunderstood what this is all about. I was neither being contrarian nor indulging in advocati diaboli; I just hadn’t appreciated that the US had an industry knocking up fake large houses. I had paid insufficient attention and thought that what we had here was people building what they wanted.
Please stop verbally hitting me, I didn’t mean to upset you.
Thanks for actually explaining my misunderstanding rather than going for me. It’s appreciated.
Actually the reason I don’t care for architectural snobbery is that I remember the old City of London which is now all steel frame and glass buildings. We know those buildings are ruthlessly designed by structural engineers as the way to get the maximum floor space onto a site given the ground strength, planning limitations etc., but we’re asked to admire them as if they were actual aesthetic architecture.
If someone is a terrible painter at least nobody other than perhaps close relatives has to look at the things, but the products of concrete brutalism and steel and glass brutalism are unavoidable.
But I find myself utterly out of my depth so I should shut up.
(goes away and hides in corner with security blanket.)
I heard it put well on Prairie Home Companion years ago now… “Property is the enemy of leisure”
While I didn’t like the lack of space for 2 people in the one bedroom apartment we had before getting the cleaning done was oh yep vacuum, clean the kitchen floor and bathroom floor, scrub up a the counters oh look done in 2 hours tops on with fun for the rest of the week. With 3 bedrooms, much bigger kitchen, and a unfinished basement that has my office area and a 3/4 bathroom and it never ends. Then there is the lawn and other yard items that need taking care of.
The secret for the 7 bathrooms is I bet 5 of them are rarely if ever used the same would go for the rest of the house. I only have to do real cleaning to the 3/4 bath in the basement once or twice a year as it isn’t that well used. Historically houses that size had live in staff so that is who cleans all of that.
That’s one thing people don’t seem to think about when buying really large houses is things like the monthly power bill, maintenance costs, etc. All those air conditioners, pools, sprinklers, and fancy appliances aren’t cheap to operate and maintain.
One of the schadenfreude-y scenes in The Queen of Versailles was after the millionaire family dismissed much of their staff (aside from an overworked, under-appreciated nanny) and they suddenly had to learn how to deal with dog shit on those tacky carpets.
I’m sure, and then you have to dust every so often which is not fun. I hate cleaning but as the designated non-allergy sufferer that isn’t hyper sensitive to cleaning chemicals it ends up being my job more often than not. These thoughts are often than not the first thing I tend to think of when seeing big houses.
Isn’t the conspicuous consumption part of the point? In the past the rich would put their servants into uniform to help people appreciate just how many they had. Stephen Potter, in one of his humorous books from the 1950s, gave a series of useful examples of what is now called humblebragging for people who wished to let it be known how big their houses were without seeming to boast, e.g. “the trouble with Palladian colonnades is you get an awful lot of wind whistle”.
You’re definitely paying a lot for the design (which is being split, at this point, between a relatively small number of units) and, to a much lesser degree, materials - whereas the (Mc)mansion is using the same (non-) design and materials as tract housing.
If not cheaper - the kind of construction companies that build these things are famous for not even building to code, as much as they can get away with. I remember visiting a friend’s house, where one room had a giant mirror covering one wall of the kitchen. That seemed kind of odd, but it was explained by visiting the garage that was on the other side of that mirror - there was no wall there. One “wall” of the garage was the back of the mirror, which was plainly visible - there was framing around it, but no sheetrock, insulation, etc. between kitchen and garage. I suspect the company used that trick a lot to save on materials.
Exists, for multiple issues, and I was involved with it off and on for years. Its largely unsuccessful. Though there are occasional shifts. The “downtown” attempt comes out of that. Its just screwed by the other people on the council, in town government, and living here who don’t understand how the world works or have questionable interests in keeping things going the way they are. We’re a heavy tourist/part time resident town. The population about doubles between April 30th and September 1st. Few if any of those people actually send their kids to our schools, pay taxes (aside from property) here, or spend much money in the local economy outside of the service business. The biggest portion of them are either retirees or close to being so. Yet a SHOCKING number of them register to vote here. Combined with the (smaller) numbers of locals that legitimately disagree with these sorts of things, they tend to skew the results on votes out here. Another example is our school budget votes. We had some of the best schools in the country. But part time residents who don’t utilize the schools want their property taxes to go down, and don’t have an interest in funding the schools. So they almost never vote to approve the school budget the first time out. It needs to go through a whole cycle of rejection, reduction, and re-voting before something gets passed. So even though we can afford it (good/wealthy tax base), the school funding gets pushed down year to year. The fed, state, and county governments don’t make up the difference the way they might/should/used to. Thanks to that whole trickle down/undemocratic Republican lock on sub-federal offices thing.
One of the many negative effects of service/tourism replacing more stable business at the center of an economy. And one of the may reasons I never intended to stay here. I’m here at the moment because I have to be, not because its a sensible place for me to live.
That’s a thing, right there. A lot of the houses this guy is writing about certainly seem to be McMansions. But his definition seems both a lot narrower, and a lot less specific than I’ve typically heard used. As I understand it. A McMansion is a house built and designed by a developer in a coldesac bearing, often gated, development. They are basically mass manufactured. Either by the stock design “model home” approach, or with pre-fab sections. They are much larger than the lot size or need would dictate, though the typical McMansion is not large enough to be considered an actual mansion.
Its basically overly large pre-fab development housing targeted at people who can’t afford large expensive real-estate. So Cory’s quip about housing for the 1%. The 1% are buying $10+ million homes. Not $2 million homes. And the $2m houses are the top tier of this kind of construction. Most of the ones I’ve run into are in the $500k - $1m range depending on the local market. These houses are targeted at the upper middle class, or anyone who would like to appear richer than they are. They’re intended to look like what the Trump Supporters of the world assume a millionaires home is like, but targeted at those who couldn’t afford such a thing. And often marketed to those who can’t afford the asking price. These sorts of houses were a big part of the housing and sub-prime mortgage crash. Credit was cheap. why get the used house at a fair market rate. You can just take out a mortgage double the size and get a BEHEMOTH on the golf course. It has home theater! DIG THOSE COLUMNS.
I personally find it very interesting that the US, which escaped the control of a Hanoverian monarch and established a democratic republic, treats its CEOs like feudal kinglets and has a vast output of science fiction based on empires and kingdoms. It’s almost as if people with money start to feel that democracy is all very well for the little people, but aristocracy suits them much better.
We in the UK have a sensible system; we have an aristocracy but periodically we appoint thoroughly obnoxious and corrupt people to the peerage to remind us that it’s a bad idea.
Those are the tumorous growths that infest our neighborhood… The standard inclusion of a small porch with giant columns really adds a touch of class, though. I think that the city changed the lot percentage rules, since I haven’t seen a new one in many years.
Exists, for multiple issues, and I was involved with it off and on for years. Its largely unsuccessful. Though there are occasional shifts. The “downtown” attempt comes out of that. Its just screwed by the other people on the council, in town government, and living here who don’t understand how the world works or have questionable interests in keeping things going the way they are. We’re a heavy tourist/part time resident town. The population about doubles between April 30th and September 1st. Few if any of those people actually send their kids to our schools, pay taxes (aside from property) here, or spend much money in the local economy outside of the service business. The biggest portion of them are either retirees or close to being so. Yet a SHOCKING number of them register to vote here. Combined with the (smaller) numbers of locals that legitimately disagree with these sorts of things, they tend to skew the results on votes out here. Another example is our school budget votes. We had some of the best schools in the country. But part time residents who don’t utilize the schools want their property taxes to go down, and don’t have an interest in funding the schools. So they almost never vote to approve the school budget the first time out. It needs to go through a whole cycle of rejection, reduction, and re-voting before something gets passed. So even though we can afford it (good/wealthy tax base), the school funding gets pushed down year to year. The fed, state, and county governments don’t make up the difference the way they might. Thanks to that whole trickle down/undemocratic Republican lock on sub-federal offices thing.
One of the many negative effects of service/tourism replacing more stable business at the center of an economy. And one of the may reasons I never intended to stay here. I’m here at the moment because I have to be, not because its a sensible place for me to live.
That’s a thing, right there. A lot of the houses this guy is writing about certainly seem to be McMansions. But his definition seems both a lot narrower, and a lot less specific than I’ve typically heard used. As I understand it. A McMansion is a house built and designed by a developer in a coldesac bearing, often gated, development. They are basically mass manufactured. Either by the stock design “model home” approach, or with pre-fab sections. They are much larger than the lot size or need would dictate, though the typical McMansion is not large enough to be considered an actual mansion.
Its basically overly large pre-fab development housing targeted at people who can’t afford large expensive real-estate. So Cory’s quip about housing for the 1%. The 1% are buying $10+ million homes. Not $2 million homes. And the $2m houses are the top tier of this kind of construction. Most of the ones I’ve run into are in the $500k - $1m range depending on the local market. These houses are targeted at the upper middle class, or anyone who would like to appear richer than they are. They’re intended to look like what the Trump Supporters of the world assume a millionaires home is like, but targeted at those who couldn’t afford such a thing. And often marketed to those who can’t afford the asking price. These sorts of houses were a big part of the housing and sub-prime mortgage crash. Credit was cheap. why get the used house at a fair market rate. You can just take out a mortgage double the size and get a BEHEMOTH on the golf course. It has a home theater! DIG THOSE COLUMNS.
The one thing I will call bullshit on is the critique on interior design. I agree two kitchens is stupid generally speaking indoors; however if its a warm climate an indoor and outdoor kitchen can be quite useful and practical. Also, while the average person may be a mundane enough cook that a gourmet kitchen with 2 ovens and one stove (just a slight correct that it is a double wall oven and a free standing range, not 3 ovens - I actually think it may even be a wall oven and microwave and free standing range…and the wall oven is probably convection - I digress) for a home gourmet that may not be over the top at all.
As for the other decor comments, fine maybe it is a misplaced ceiling fan, or lame brass fixtures…but the pillows, paint color, art decor, etc? Have you ever sold a house?! One of the FIRST THINGS an agent will tell you is switch to paint colors that will sell. Change home decor to look like a catalog on purpose. You may not personally like it, but this is what the industry experts will tell you to do in order to make your home sale more effective. You are grabbing listings from Zillow and such…these are homes not targeted at your personal style and taste.
I personally prefer a simple one level ranch or give me a plain old cape or bungalow…but it doesn’t mean some McMansions while gaudy or ostentatious are not still nice homes.
If only there were some sort of happy medium, some sort of dwelling that was both practical yet elegant, worthy of praise as a Wonderful Th–aha, found it!
So these things are designed by a very large construction company
And these large construction companies work with architecture firms. They don’t make up them up as they go along.
When you buy a new home from a developer, it’s typically minimally finished because the buyer will want to choose the finishing details. People that buy a $2.5 million home are going to spend $300k - $400k or more on landscaping and interior details.
Sure, it doesn’t always happen, but the McMansions that I’ve been in have been very nicely finished with details that reflect the interests of the owners. The house I mentioned earlier had custom woodwork everywhere (the office/library was especially beautiful and functional). One of the other houses had aviation memorabilia throughout and the third one I was in was very rock and roll. I think the owner was a promoter.
