Credit: Courtesy NTHP/Adrian Scott Fine
There’s no shortage of McMansion haters out there. Some are vociferous, but others are stealthy—such as the Florida couple who recently purchased three-quarters of an acre in a neighborhood many consider to be prime teardown territory.
Fellow home buyers in this posh, lakefront part of Orlando, Fla., didn’t think twice about razing and replacing existing homes with new ones more than double in size. But these passive resisters have something more modest in mind for their family of five.
In lieu of a 7,000-square-foot palace that antes up to the neighbors, they’re planning a house less than half that size with energy-efficient features, panelized construction to reduce waste, and a variety of flexible, multipurpose spaces. One of its four bedrooms will double as a guest room.
In some ways, it’s atonement for an oversized spec home they owned previously, which they describe as a “cavernous” place with rooms that were seldom used.
“Environmental concerns are one reason for downsizing, but we also want to know what’s going on with our kids,” the husband says. “A smaller house helps facilitate that. When they share space, they are forced to resolve their differences. We have the financial ability to have a larger home, but it doesn’t make sense.”
Chalk it up as another point for the opposition in the McMansion wars.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Efforts to stem the proliferation of monster homes have no doubt reached epic proportions in recent years. But the battle lines are sometimes fuzzy because the enemy isn’t always clear.
What exactly is a McMansion?
By some accounts, it’s the gargantuan greenfield tract home with a Hummer parked out front that perpetuates sprawl and makes gas guzzling a way of life. Others use the derisive term to describe ostentatious infill homes that—while walkable to schools, shops, and transit—tower over beloved bungalows in established neighborhoods in a way that is less than neighborly.
But different people live by different standards of propriety, and that’s where codifying the offenders becomes difficult.
WASTE REDUCTION: Taller homes are here to stay, but new models will likely be carved up differently inside. Double-height foyers and similar trophy spaces are falling out of favor, because they are too expensive to heat and cool.
Credit: Courtesy NTHP/Adrian Scott Fine
“One market’s McMansion is another market’s standard issue house,” notes Robert Lang, former co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech who now heads up the newly minted Brookings Mountain West program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “If you’re in Dallas, 5,000 square feet is the house you buy on a two-faculty salary. But if you are in Boston or San Francisco, this is not a normal-sized house. It’s not fair to come up with a blanket definition. However, every area has its over-the-top houses, and people know which ones they are.”
This may explain why some would-be reformers find it easier to define the essence of McMansion-hood by its antithesis.
Dave Wax, co-founder of the online company FreeGreen (which offers free house plans for small, high-performance homes), defines McMansions as houses that are built to minimum code specifications and saddlebagged with spaces that are used less than 30 percent of the time by their owners. “Like all stereotypes, it’s a term that has no definition and so is inherently unfair,” Wax concedes. “That said, having a bad guy is necessary for any social change. And so the McMansion is the bad guy.”
DOWNSIZE ME
Can the vilified McMansion, in its various forms and habitats, survive a post-recession economy? Many signs suggest the odds are stacked against it. Lending standards have tightened, and many buyers no longer have the cash on hand for down payments on fancy homes. Add to that a U.S. unemployment rate that continues to hover around 9.5 percent and resale competition from foreclosures (many of which are McMansions themselves), and the outlook seems bleak for showy homes that many consider emblems of decadence and greed.
Even for those who can afford them, trophy homes constitute an image problem at a time when modesty has become fashionable. One recent CNNMoney.com poll asked more than 33,000 online readers if they thought American homes had gotten too big; 69 percent said yes.
Demand for big houses could also fizzle as population shifts place families with kids in the home buying minority. Some demographers estimate that up to 80 percent of new households formed over the next 15 years will be child-free as Baby Boomers empty their nests and career-driven Millennials postpone marriage and kids.
NO MORE WASTED SPACE: In 1973, 23 percent of new single-family homes were two stories or more. By 2006, that number reached 57 percent.
Credit: Courtesy NTHP/Adrian Scott Fine
Arthur “Chris” Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Utah, predicts that as a result, the nation could see a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes by 2025. Household sizes are trending smaller at the same time that household budgets have become leaner. That makes butler pantries and media rooms a tougher sell.
In fact, the residential landscape is already changing. In a recent poll of 500 residential architects by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), only 4 percent of respondents reported that their clients were requesting more square footage in new projects, compared to 16 percent in 2008. A subsequent AIA Home Design Trends Survey found significant decreases in consumer spending on features such as in-law suites, three-car garages, and home theaters. Builders are singing a similar tune, with 90 percent of respondents in a recent NAHB poll indicating plans to build smaller.
So it’s no surprise that American house sizes, which doubled from 1960 to the height of the boom, are now backpedaling. The average house breaking ground in the first quarter of 2009 was 2,335 square feet, down from 2,629 square feet in the second quarter of 2008, according to NAHB figures. Since 2007, median sizes for new single-family homes have fallen nearly 10 percent.
THE GOOD: Sensitive infill homes respect the scale and character of the neighborhood.
Credit: Courtesy NTHP/Adrian Scott Fine
BEHIND INFILL LINES
McMansions also continue to draw fire from neighborhood groups rallying to protect their streetscapes. The National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) estimates that as many as 500 communities in 40 states have launched anti-teardown campaigns in an attempt to curb the proliferation of super-sized homes. Some groups have ignited city-issued moratoria on new residential construction, while others have helped handcraft ordinances that regulate building height, setbacks, and floor-area ratios.
Among the most infamous is the “McMansion Ordinance” enacted in Austin, Texas, in 2006, which limits most new or remodeled infill single-family homes to 2,300 square feet with a height limit of 32 feet. A similar measure passed last year by the Los Angeles Sunland–Tujunga Neighborhood Council dictates that any floor with ceiling heights greater than 14 feet counts as twice the square footage of that area. Bye-bye, vaulted foyers.
“Teardowns may not always be stellar landmarks on their own, but the issue comes down to streetscape character,” says Adrian Fine, director of the Center for State and Local Policy at the NTHP. “It only takes one McMansion to disrupt that character and cause a domino effect.”
But builders aren’t entirely to blame for this scenario. Antiquated zoning laws (and the planning boards that uphold them) also play a part. When builders find themselves handcuffed to standard lot sizes, minimum square footage requirements, and high land costs, the tradeoff is often building to a lower specification to arrive at a pro forma that pencils. The solution ends up being a lumbering stock plan with a brick front, vinyl siding, and little to no side yard.
How does one stop that cycle? “What needs to happen is buy-in from local municipalities with respect to [alternative] zoning,” says Bill McGuinness, president of Sun Homes in Pawling, N.Y. “Rather than large, planned new towns in the middle of nowhere, the existing towns in our market need to be reclaimed through things like creative density swaps and aggressive planning. Towns hopefully will figure out that the net drain of sprawled out subdivisions on municipal resources is unsustainable, and that well-planned densification of existing core areas can be a net fiscal benefit. This is difficult because so few towns have the knowledge, budget, and understanding of the issues to pull it off.”
THE BAD: A study by researchers at Ohio State University found that large square footage does not a McMansion make; it's the height and proportion of the new house in comparison to others on the block that opponents find most offensive.
Credit: Courtesy NTHP/Adrian Scott Fine
Which makes attempting to change the system a risky and frustrating endeavor for even the most well-meaning builders.
Brian Hickey, founder of Teardowns.com, an online real estate marketplace for teardown properties, recalls one builder who attempted to replace a stretch of tired single-family homes in Chicago’s well-to-do Hinsdale neighborhood with a smaller, but no less historic housing type (brownstones). “He bought a series of old single-family homes with hopes that the zoning board would approve row housing as a replacement, but the neighbors protested and the village did not approve it,” Hickey says. “In the communities where we do business, you generally can’t find zoning that will approve any kind of project like that, even if it means an aesthetic improvement to the area.”
Architect Ed Binkley has witnessed a similar form of inertia in the Orlando market. “There are guys today with 75- to 80-foot lots that could easily be subdivided, but a lot of builders and developers are afraid to start the process because it’s time consuming and time is money,” he says. “It’s hard for builders to resist buying up existing lots from projects gone bad when they are getting them for 50 percent of the original value. Those lots are ready to go, and they have financing.”
SMALL WORLD
With the fate of housing still in economic limbo, some builders are clinging to bubble business models on the belief that big homes will make a comeback when the market rebounds. “My fear is that the industry won’t wake up until it’s too late—that builders will try to dust off old plans and those plans won’t work anymore,” says building consultant Chuck Shinn.
Other builders are preparing for the future by diversifying. Take Richard Perrone, a high-end builder in Sarasota, Fla., who has spent the last 30 years building custom waterfront estates for Fortune 400 executives—some as large as 22,000 square feet. While he isn’t abandoning his top-tier clients or the notion that some people will always want big houses, he is taking a calculated risk on a different kind of venture: an enclave of 14 bayfront homes with the same level of quality and finish, except in markedly smaller envelopes.
Measuring 3,729 square feet, Perrone’s first spec home at Spice Bay is listed at $1.975 million. It’s got most of the same goodies you’d find in his larger houses—digital lighting control systems, industrial grade kitchen appliances, inlaid floors—minus the extra library, media room, billiards den, secondary prep kitchen, underground parking for 23 cars, and so on.
THE UGLY: Even same-size houses can draw fire when they appear incompatible with the neighborhood fabric.
Credit: Courtesy NTHP/Adrian Scott Fine
“We believe there are buyers out there who want a very high-quality home; they just want a smaller home,” says Perrone. “So we’re taking everything we know about good design and putting it in a smaller package. For a while people were led to believe that more is better. I think for some that mindset is changing.”
Some production builders think so too, and are similarly adjusting their product lines for a different clientele. In a much heralded move, KB Home in Houston recently introduced a series of plans measuring just 880 square feet as a way of going head to head with low-cost bank-owned properties. “Any time there’s been an age of exuberance and the economy turns, people get back to ‘What do I need?’ rather than ‘What could I buy?’” KB CEO Jeffrey Mezger said in an interview with BusinessWeek.
But whether a protracted economic recovery will catapult the small-house movement into the mainstream and snuff out the “more is better” mentality is a subject of nuanced debate.
“I think you will continue to see McMansions built on smaller infill lots because wealthy people want homes that are custom designed for them,” says Philadelphia architect James Wentling. “The large production houses built in the suburbs are another situation. Those are large homes built on large lots due to anti-growth zoning restrictions, which motivate builders to construct larger houses to amortize the lot costs. Demand for this product type is decreasing and the value of these homes will not appreciate as well (or may decline) as demographics change.”
Robert Lang believes exurban McMansions will live on, although he anticipates a more organic concentration and redistribution of them as suburbs mature. Going forward, affluent “wedges” or suburban corridors may continue to prove fertile ground for large-lot homes, he says. “Distance from the urban core is not universally a disadvantage. Much depends on the path and the employment opportunities. You can even have discrepancies in the same county. If you have rail, high-end employment, and an international airport in a suburban corridor, that completes the circle of what’s necessary for luxury housing.” And not all of it will be designed tastefully.
FEAST AND FAMINE
Nancy and Scott Cornelius are the kinds of buyers critics love to cite as evidence that McMansions are on the outs. At 65, the couple recently sold their big house in Oak Hill Reserve, a Fairfax County, Va., development where homes run as large as 8,000 square feet, and downsized to a new, smaller home in a nearby 55+ community. Reduced home maintenance and lower utility bills were part of the rationale for moving.
Not surprisingly, they had trouble selling the big house, which was originally built in 2002. But not for the reasons the anti-mansion brigade would assume.
“It had about 3,000 square feet on its main level and a little over 2,000 square feet on the lower level, meaning it was one of the smaller homes in that area. Plus this was a rambler in a neighborhood of mostly three-story colonials with three-car garages,” says Nancy Grasman, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker. “Most buyers who were looking in that neighborhood wanted a bigger house with all the bedrooms upstairs.”
After a year on the market, the house finally sold at the end of July for just over $1 million—to a single woman with no kids. “It was a move-up that was manageable for her, ” says Grasman.
Proof, perhaps, that ability—not need—is still what drives most purchasing decisions by home buyers who are concerned about resale value. And in the resale market, value is still measured largely by the square foot, not the quality of the built-ins or the efficiency of the kitchen layout.
Lang, for one, isn’t too surprised. And he doesn’t necessarily view such anecdotes as anomalies. “I think there will eventually be another boom, and home sizes will go up again,” he says. “Maybe not as dramatically ... but they will go up. You can’t gauge the extent of the population’s taste when its buying power is constrained.”
History has shown this to be true. Before the housing bust of 2007, the largest annual decline in median square footage occurred between 1979 and 1982, when new-home sizes dipped 8.2 percent, observes NAHB chief economist David Crowe (see page 45). Four years later, house sizes were back up above their previous peak.
Atlanta builder Brendan Murphy sees this as evidence that old habits die hard. “We Americans have always associated bigger with better,” he says. “Look at how many crises the automobile industry has gone through with gas prices. And yet it always returns to large vehicles because that is what sells.”
Is America’s appetite for big houses trending toward more moderate portion sizes? Or is it a cyclical craving that will ramp back up once money is flowing freely again?
Wait and see.
The number of homes with garage space for three or more cars peaked in 2005 and is now on the decline.