Are McMansions McOver? Opinions vary, even among the experts.
If recent trends are any indication, however, the bigger-is-better approach to residential real estate may already be giving way to a more reasoned level headedness, both in home buying and building. No, don't expect a return to that less-is-more, small-is-beautiful aesthetic from the Age of Aquarius; there is absolutely nothing austere going on here. Rather, call it a redefinition or right-sizing of what we consider luxury living that has more to do with architectural scale, energy efficiency and creating livable space than with gross square footage.
Like some real estate equivalent of the SUV, McMansions have been the object of scorn and ridicule since they started elbowing their way onto the suburban landscape in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Loosely defined as a house between 5,000 and 10,000 square feet with soaring grandiose entryways and multicar garages, often jammed onto an undersized lot, McMansions quickly went from ostentatious status symbol to something even the Joneses didn't want to keep up with.
"I think a lot of people who could well afford a McMansion today would find it embarrassing on aesthetic, environmental and political grounds, rather like movie stars who could afford a Hummer but choose instead to drive a Prius," says architect James Gauer, author of "The New American Dream: Living Well in Small Homes."
Shifting winds As a historic confluence of factors -- boomer inheritances, the post-2000 tech stock collapse, superlow interest rates, the mortgage lending explosion -- drove America on a cattle stampede to invest in real estate, more and larger forces -- including energy costs, higher interest rates, the mortgage lending implosion and demographic shifts -- have now slowed the market to a surly teenager's stroll.
The housing times, they are a' changin' -- again. If during the past couple of years you bought a much larger home than you needed, primarily for investment purposes, you might want to cover your eyes now. "I firmly believe that when the housing market slows, you'll see a short-term drop in the demand for large homes. But in the longer run, it's going to be even more challenging to sell these because the average household size of the boomers is going to go down as the last kids leave," says Thomas Lawler, a housing consultant based in Vienna, Va.
"Builders will respond by reducing the number of those homes they build, but you can't turn that on a dime." Meaning the inventory of McMansions is likely to grow. And grow. And grow. Could we one day see a landscape with large white elephants lingering on the market?
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