One of my friends has a mansion with a 25 foot ceiling in the main entrance. To change the bulbs in the chandelier(sp?) you turn a key and the whole thing will lower down on a cable and when finished will be winched back up.
And how is this device powered? Through the sweat and strain of the aching backs of the proletariat, no doubt.
Listen luc, I know what you mean, I certainly understand the desire to keep a neighborhood to a certain standard, but it is very difficult to get consensus as to what constitutes “certain look and feel”. McMansion is one eyesore, but there are many others we can do nothing about. For instance, there are houses in my neighborhood with the most god-awful color scheme you’ve ever seen, but I can’t change them, not do I want to - it’s up to their owners. (McMansion would be nice on a good chunk of land, if painted properly).
You are in the right place to bitch about it though, so more power to ya’.
Oh, please.
In my section of town, the houses were built from the 1860’s through the 1920’s. Some small 1950’s style Capes were added in later, but they fairly traiditonally styled. It is a real mishmosh of all styles of Victorians and Tudors and Colonials–most with interesting architectural details. (We almost bought an 1880s house with a turret!) Many of the homes have had additions and expansions, and in most cases, they were well-done and look good.
There are no more lots available to build, but a tear-down is going on around the corner. Based on the size of the new foundation, it’s gonna be huge. The house hasn’t gone up yet, so it might fit in style-wise, and it might not. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
A house doesn’t have to be “exactly the same” to fit in. In my neighborhood, any traditional house style with a reasonable set-back from the street would do. A 1960s style split-level with pea-green aluminum siding would not fit in. A McMansion in that overblown style would not fit in. A highly modern cedar house with huge expanses of plate glass would not fit in. And I would resent it if anyone tried to put one of those up.
And speaking of paint-jobs, a formerly white Victorian just got done in a wonderful green and green and blue and green scheme. It looks really cool.
Actually an electric motor.
And who do you think built that motor??
:d&r:
Industrial Robots!
: d & r the other way :
Shut up, you petit bourgeios! You scum-sucking, bottom-feeding, ambulance chaser! They may be “industrial robots” to you, but they are PEOPLE! You may see the downtrodden worker as a cog in the industrial machine, but those so-called robots are moms, dads, sons, daughters. Who do you think did all that cheap labor so that you could afford your 8,000 square foot McMansion and the white Range Rover that you drive with such careless abandon?
P.S.The only tool you probably know how to use is the Snorezall[sup]TM[/sup]
OK, Green Bean, I’ll be sure to check in with you before I start construction on my next property, just to make sure it fits your image of what’s acceptable.
Look, as I said before, I understand the sentiment, but who are we to tell our neighbors how to build or what to build? Sorry, if you want to express your displeasure here that’s great, but if you mean we should actually control this, no sireeee! Then we’ll end up with something like those regulations in Townehome complexes.
Ah, the slippery slope argument.
Really.
There’s nothing wrong with saying that a house has to be set back some amount from the property line on all sides.
Very simple regulation. Doesn’t say a thing about how the house looks or how much square footage you can have or anything else. But it does protect the privacy of your neighbors on all sides.
There’s a word for places where the houses butt up against each other, where the trees are gone and lawns are tiny or nonexistent: it’s called a city. Somebody wants to build up to the edge of the property line, they can do it there, to their heart’s content. If you don’t like mowing a lawn, taking care of a garden, having to prune back trees, or dealing with squirrels and raccoons and deer, that’s the place for you.
Bleah. I hate McMansions, even though my parents used to live in one so I know they are very nice inside & have many convenient amenities & the people who live in them aren’t necessarily evil or tasteless. Still, this discussion makes me glad that I live in an authnetic Baltimore rowhouse, circa 1955…& we DO have a hypervigilant community association, so my area is likely to remain McMansion-free for the foreseeable future. 
Here we see the difficult part about being a libertarian. On the one hand, telling people what their house should look like is not something I like. On the other hand, it sucks for a neighborhood to have some jackass move in and make it look like ass.
Neighborhood associations have their benefits, but they seem like they easily get controlled by a vocal few who are more interested in power or keeping outsiders away than in helping the neighborhood. Here in Boston, the Back Bay neighborhood association banned newspaper boxes (you know, the things on the sidewalk that you put money in and get a newspaper from) from the entire neighborhood. The Beacon Hill one will not allow any modifications that can be seen from a public place. On the other hand, their mere existence used to piss off nitwit Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle, which was kinda nice.
City and town zoning laws are also often more of a hinderance than a help. My uncle recently built a million-plus dollar home in Santa Barbara. From what I’ve heard, the zoning laws required constant meetings and approvals, and numerous stupid things like decorative iron grates on the windows, which the house would look better without. The laws seem to be written more to discourage development by outsiders than for any useful purpose. Also, as near as I can tell, New York City’s zoning resolution is somewhat over a thousand pages long, and filled with such minutia as the design of the device used to measure the brightness of Times Square neon lighting.
I think virtually all cities contain sections where this is not true. Personally, though, this is how I would prefer to live. My goal is to never have a home with a lawn, or at least a really small one, that doesn’t require actual mowing (i.e. something I could cut with scissors).
pantom, I was not arguing about anything slippery. Please, let’s not upset the children! What I am saying is that having anyone tell me what my house should look like ain’t my idea of easy living.
If you want to set your house back a ways I have no arguement with you, but if you want to tell your neighbor he has to do the same I have a problem. That’s why I’m not in a Townhome or Condo complex. Anyway, I’m done with this non-arguement. I’m off to prune the hedges around my city house, whose walls touch the neighbors’ on both sides.
An update: Well, they reassessed the entire town, and it looks like our taxes will drop significantly. I believe this is in large part due to all the Mcmansions that have been going up. So keep 'em coming, baby!! 
Well, I will neither buy nor build a McMansion. You might need a big house, but holy smokes, build it on a decent sized lot! The last couple of new subdivisions we added are filled with these huuuuuge homes on littlebitty lots, so you can stand with one hand on your house and one hand on your neighbours house.
Eeeeeeewwwww!
This is the Yukon, it’s not like there’s a lack of available land or anything!
I’d rather buy a big lot and build a big rambling old Victorian type house with all the turrets and corners and railings. A painted lady.
I DO think tearing down beautiful old homes-like that-is a shame. We live in a little house built in the 20s. I say it has 2 1/2 bedrooms because my sister’s room is a tiny room that used to be the original bathroom. Now it’s downstairs.
Yes, it’s small, but I love our little house. So nice and cozy.
My husband and I call them “tract mansions”. Perfectly lovely older homes (or sometimes even only a couple years old) get ripped down and huge, all-begin-to-look-the-same houses made by the same few builders go up in the area’s suburbs. Teardowns are practically a way of life around here, even builders have begun to buy homes that families sell, then put up a tract mansion after ripping the old one down, and put it on the market. Meanwhile the construction equipment tears the hell out of the streets, and blocks traffic. Runoff from the dirt lots makes nasty mud slicks in the roads. There’s constant noise if you live near one of these. At least the housing market has peaked here, and is even starting to slide down - the big tract mansions are staying on the market and empty for months, as fewer people in the area see the value of a big house pushed up to the borders of a not-so-big lot.
Ok, I live in the original land of “tear down the old and cute and build a beast”- Newport Beach, CA. My parents still live in the 100 year old beach house that my grandfather bought for $4500 right after the war. But you know what? That house was NEVER meant to last this long! It costs a fortune in upkeep. The space for the oven in the kitchen is so small, you can barely roast a 12 lb turkey. The list of funky little problems could go on and on.
Most of the houses in the area, it seems, are teardowns and rebuilds. Some people try to keep the “beach house” look on a larger scale, others build moderns or whatever. Sure, everybody has an opinion on what looks good or not. But you only get to dictate how YOUR house looks.
What about the other end of the spectrum? What about the “hell house” in every neighborhood? Looks like hell, never kept up. Unless they are breaking a city ordinance or violating a CC&R, tough luck.
My view- it’s my house. It’s my business. Rant if you want, it’ll just raise your blood pressure and make me laugh harder. (not me actually, but you know what I mean)
PS- In Newport, it is standard procedure to purchase a home for OVER ONE MILLION DOLLARS and consider it a tear down! Yeah, we have million-dollar dirt (or sand, as the case may be). This place is kinda pathetic in that way.
"My view- it’s my house. It’s my business. "
Not when it can adversely affect others.
“What I am saying is that having anyone tell me what my house should look like ain’t my idea of easy living.”
Just because an area may have a few regulations doesn’t mean that it will become like a townhome complex. I wish people would quit thinking that it’s okay for people to run amok. Freedom should not lead to liscence and regulation should not lead to restriction. It’s pretty much that simple.