In the inner suburbs of DC where there is no more land, whole neighborhoods of single-family detached houses are being bought up by (re)developers, all the houses knocked down, and as many townhouses and apartments as possible are squeezed into the space. This seems to be an extremely profitable enterprise. At least it isn’t directly contributing to sprawl.
Unfortunately, the edge of the city is reaching ever outwards. Something seems slightly amiss when huge townhouse complexes are being built on a piece of land that was way out in the country just a year or two ago.
And the McMansions are here too, of course. Big, ungainly things that all look the same, look cheaply built, and are on postage-stamp lots with no trees or character of any sort…all for half a million dollars or more. I’d rather have a 50-100 year old house in an established, leafy, traditional suburb (not subdivision) any day than one of these monstrosities.
I’d rather have one of those older homes myself. The problem, at least here in Little Rock, is that many of those older homes are in bad neighborhoods. People don’t keep those nice old homes in good repair for a variety of reasons. Who wants to live in a run down neighborhood?
My house was built in 1968. It’s one-story, red brick*, and so similar to everyone else’s around that if I come in from the left instead of the right, I often drive past my own house. A friend of ours lives in a tract mansion in a new development. His is nice inside, but having seen the still in development houses around him, I can tell that our house is a higher quality. Real wood, no particle board on the insides. I’m curious how those houses are going to be standing in thirty years, while I suspect mine and the ones around me will still be fine. They do have a much smaller yard than I do. One of the great benefits to buying an older house is the larger back yard.
I couldn’t care less what sort of house anyone else makes or buys. I don’t even care if the people around me were to build tract mansions until my house looked like a two-year-old staring at the knees of the big kids. I’ve never thought they looked ugly. Identical, but not ugly.
*I know that brick is rather rare in some parts of the country, but almost all houses in Texas are made of brick, since wood houses are a greater fire hazard in an area that regularly has droughts.
In Vancouver they’re called Monster Homes, and they started sprouting after Expo '86, when people from Hong Kong started fleeing before the takeover.
As a rule, they take a house that fits on a small lot (say, a 2 bedroom bungalow with a small yard), smash it down, and build a 3 or 4 -story house right to the edges of their lot.
They’re not real houses. They’re the box a house comes in, and the new owners forgot to unwrap it.
My favourite part is that most of these houses are structurally unsound. Any earthquake of a decent size (which is expected, this being a fault zone) and these monster houses with their cathedral ceilings, and lack of internal reinforcements, are likely to collapse in a heap.
After the Seattle/Olympia quake last year, we did a story evaluating the home of one of my co-workers. The engineer said that if anyone inside when any quake larger than 6 on the Richter scale hit would likely die.
There have been a couple of huge ghastly McMansions going up, in my neighborhood, too. My pet peeve when it comes to houses, though, is the habit of enclosing a lovely old front porch to make a roomette on the front of the house. Completely ruins the design of the house, like a nose-job in reverse.
Eve, you slay me! Now I won’t be able to take Spot for a walk without thinking “nose job in reverse” whenever I see that. Incidentally, the room I’m sitting in is a converted porch, but it was a side porch, so it doesn’t look too bad.
The thing I don’t get about the McMansions is that they seem to have tons of space, but not in the right areas. They have huge entryways and several formal living rooms/parlors that no one ever uses. But the bedrooms? Eh. Most of the McMansions I’ve been in have had only 4 bedrooms and they have been of average size. If I was going to have a house that size, I’d like to have extra bedrooms, or large bedrooms, or something. I’d rather have the extra space in places where people usually spend time, not in vestigial living rooms and entryways.
Please, please, please, somebody start building McMansions in my neighborhood! I would like it much better than the current trend, which is for large extended families to move into 1200 sq. ft. homes and have 6 adults and 8 kids spilling out of every structural orifice and more cars than they have space to park so that they have to park their cars in front of my house and do their auto repair work right there and sit on the front lawn in folding chairs with really LOUD music and drink until they are passed out on the sidewalk and I have to call the police before I can clean up the beer cans from my yard on Monday morning.
I have to agree with this one! There are a few features in these modern houses that I like, especially the “great room” concept - I don’t do much formal entertaining, so why do I need a (never-to-be-used) living room and dining room? A kitchen that opens onto a great room would be much more practical for me.
But I ABSOLUTELY do not get the trend towards mega-bathrooms. I swear, some of these homes have master baths with more square footage than my entire two-bedroom apartment! Are their owners reincarnated Ancient Romans? Or do they have the world’s worst case of constipation? How much time do they spend in that bathroom, anyway? If it were me, I’d rather have a much more modest master bathroom, and add the square feet saved to the master bedroom, where I actually spend time.
I’m planning to buy my first house this spring - I suspect it’s going to be an interesting experience. Should I buy a McHouse with a floor plan I like, but which lacks character and might harbor insidious construction defects, or an older home which will definitely be solidly build, but might need more maintainance and updating, and which probably won’t have the design features (such as a great room, and a bedroom on the first floor) which appeal to me? Choices, choices… It’s almost enough to make me want to stay a renter.