okay, BIG houses on the hill side. there is a company in my area that has about 8 types of mcmansions for you to choose from. usually in a planned area only 2 of the house types are used in the clump. there really isn’t much difference between “the bainbridge” and "the bainbridge grand’. it does look just the same.
Sam Stone has it closest to the truth.
Even the name “McMansion” conveys a sense of derision. Mass produced mansions with the implication that their owners are undeserving of large homes, over-reaching their societal niche, undereducated about what real quality is, inappropriate in their ability to budget and unworthy of living among real people.
A number of the posts upthread have a tone of petulence and sour grapes.
I’d bet the domiciles of many of the posters in this thread are McMansions to many in developing countries.
Mi casa is not su casa. And no, I do not live in anyone’s definition of a McMansion.
“Petulance and sour grapes”.
Statistically I’m sure there is a degree of truth to your observation upholding Sam Stone’s post.
Several of my friends own McMansions. It is my wont to take a “house tour” whenever I have the opportunity to inspect a home shortly after purchase.All the mechanicals,the workmanship,materials etc. but also the sum of the parts.
I’m sorry to say they ARE poorly built in most cases,but it’s worse in the sense that they lack integration towards being a home though they fulfill concepts and trends in an abstracted design sense.And just because someone can afford the thing doesn’t mean I appreciate seeing dozens sitting adjacent.
Knowing median incomes for my area,and adding 2+2 through direct knowledge of friend’s mortgages and incomes,I’d say the typical buyer is deeply in debt and in a precarious position facing any change in health or employment.
I’m gonna call that one a crock. The house I live in* contains the following:
[ul]
[li]4 desktop PCs[/li][li]1 laptop PC[/li][li]5 televisions[/li][li]3 DVD players (not counting those in computers)[/li][li]3 VCRs[/li][li]1 laserdisc player[/li][li]dishwasher[/li][li]reasonably fancy cofee maker[/li][li]plenty of stuff that qualifies as “electric devices for all sorts of things”[/li][/ul]
and is under 1700 square feet.
- for now. But most of the stuff listed is leaving with me and I’m looking at condos in the 1000-1400 sq. ft. range.
Forgive me for not interpreting your “The Minneapolis City Council” as “people in the neighborhoods”.
I don’t see how you could call that anything other than a real mansion. It’s probably 10,000+ sq.ft. and has no other homes around it.
I agree with this, and I live in SoCal, which has seen lots of zero lot line building recently.
Do I personally prefer a house that “blends in” with the “traditional” architecture of the neighborhood? Sure- I think that moderns look silly next to classic beach cottages.
Is it any of my business what other people’s taste is? Nope.
I find it very mean-spirited, but then again I think a lot of things are lately, and fewer and fewer people are bothered by it.
It may be, but I think that it can also be an apt descriptor. Also, if the rich can sniff their homes at trailer parks and “ghettos”, turnabout is fair play.
Well, I do think people generally disdain obstentatious displays of “wealth”, especially when it’s aesthetically displeasing (and not all McMansions are ugly, IMHO). I think McMansions get rolly eyes for the same reason monster SUVs with gold-pated spinning rims do. Sure, some of the people who buy these things are geniunely financial secure enough to afford such luxuries and they aren’t just showing off, but these things also attract people who are only into presenting an image–damned whether or not that image looks good or is good.
I imagine that most people who scoff at the idea of a McMansion springing up in their neighborhood aren’t just sucking on sour grapes. People buy a house for the neighborhood, and when the character of that neighborhood changes, it always ruffles feathers. I know when I drive down a residential street, my eyes gravitate towards the houses that stick out, both the “better” homes and the “worse” homes. People don’t want their homes to suddenly become the “worse” home on the block, just because everyone around them decides to 'roid up their Cape Cods.
It’s the same reason why you’d care if Billy Bob and Urlene moved in next door to you and decided to convert their lot into a trailer park. Or, the city council decided to re-zone the block across the street from you so that a developer could construct cheap, low-income housing.
What happens around you affects you. A community doesn’t stop at one’s front yard.
If this is true, I don’t know if it’s a positive sign. If people are devoting more of their income to a monstrous home who’s value hinges on the capricious forces of the free market (next year, these may be all the rage), and on cars who’s values only depreciate, then are they putting enough away for savings?
If people can afford more, it’s only because they aren’t saving as much and they can use credit cards to carry them through the hard times. There are a lot of “comfortable” people amongst us who are one paycheck away from bankruptcy.
That’s the thing, though–they do blend in with each other, if we’re talking about those new luxury neighborhoods, which is what I think of when I hear the term “mcmansion”. There is no existing architecture for them to blend in with.
I agree with Sam Stone that the term is petty and mean-spirited, though.
Here, we have the problem of people buying an old, small home on a big (for this area, anyway!) lot, tearing down the 2bd, 2 ba and building a 5 bd, 5 ba with barely enough room in the side yard for their trash cans.
It looks a bit odd. But at least it takes a really long time for the whole neighborhood to get that way! 
Another reason they look weird, EJsGirl, is that they are often situated amazingly close to the road.
My parents live in a subdivision full of McMansions. I wouldn’t like living there (I don’t dig subdivisions in general), but as Renee said, they’re pretty uniform so they blend in well. But on my way to my parents’ place, I always pass by a house that sits on a corner of an intersection. It’s so close to the street that a car could easily go crashing into the living room if the driver weren’t careful. While I wait for the light to turn green, I can’t help but gaze into the huge windows, looking at all the things inside. Even when my family lived in the “hood” we enjoyed more privacy–and this is suburbia we’re talking about.
The house itself doesn’t look bad. But it just screams BIG AND SHOWY when you look at it.
Like I said, I live in SoCal (and grew up here), so imagine my surprise when I saw that not everyone lives RIGHT ON THE DAMN ROAD!
A set-back? Almost unheard of in our more crowded cities.
Around where I live, large open spaces to build houses are getting increasingly hard to find. So Mcmansions here tend to be built in oddly shaped slivers of land that make it a challenge to construct. There’s a pocket of Mcmansions built close to each other where the orientation of front door is different on each one and the styles (Federal, Colonial, Mediterranean) are all different. The effect is very strange.
I always thought of McMansions as the houses in subdivisions that are new construcation, look huge because the lot is relatively small, and they ALL look alike.
I don’t think the small lots are necessary. My town has a 2 acre minimum lot size for most new construction and 1 acre as the absolute minimum. There is a McMansion subdivision right down the street from me with 4000+ square foot houses, large terraced yards with hills, and sweeping features. The thing that makes them McMansions to me is that they were all built within a year on a giant swath of previously forested land, they all look fairly similar, and the way that they are set makes it obvious that they were built as one group no matter how majestic they look individually.