Grow Room over Money Laundering Room.....

Just what we DON'T need...I hope they end up like the Chinese Ghost Cities with 64 million brand-new upscale dwelling units UNoccupied:

They flaunt their wealth by taking over precious land where the
'possibility" of more moderate homes can be built. Once the "starter castles" get started they will be on an endless quest to push out the older homes with the battle cry "Not in my neighborhood!" You may have only four people in that huge space while homes a fifth of that house many more. It's just another way to create more homeless once they own most of the town or neighborhood.
Ever notice how new road construction always tears up land of cheaper houses? Ever notice how new strip malls start chipping away at older homes?
The mansions are always immune or they "own the city council votes".

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and I think it is outrageous. You make a good point how perfectly liveable and affordable (and not so overblown in scale) houses are wasted just to throw up these fugly pompous Mcmansions for the status-conscious. I can't believe they're stupid enough to want to build more.

I think a lot of these people don't have the wealth to flaunt. They think they do. They've been convinced they do, but these things are really expensive to build, really expensive to maintain and operate, and we still have people looking at their primary residence as an "investment opportunity" instead of a home.

The number of homes at shortsell and/or in foreclosure is still at record highs. This is a clear indicator that something is amiss in the financial position in the tens of thousands (or more) of people who build these things.
GAC

No foliage to soften the blow. At least here in the Northwest the every-encroaching greenery provides a bit of cover for the monstrosities.

about the ghost cities...but before we castigate the Chinese, we should look around...

How could anyone think, "Yeah, I want to live there."

Thomas Frank, known for his why-do-poor-people-vote-Republican book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?,” has a grand theory of How McMansions Ruin Everything that’s worth quoting:

“This [McMansion] is [American] civilization’s very center, the only thing that really makes sense in ‘[expletive] nation,’ the tawdry telos at which all our economic policies aim. Everything we do seems designed to make this thing possible. Cities must sprawl to accommodate its bulk, eight-lane roads must be constructed, gasoline must be kept cheap, coal must be hauled in from Wyoming on mile-long trains. Middle-class taxes must be higher to make up for the deductions given to McMansion owners, lending standards must be diluted so more suckers can purchase them, banks must be propped up, bonuses must go out, stock prices must ascend. Every one of us must work ever longer hours so that this millionaire’s folly can remain viable, can be sold successfully to the next one on the list. This stupendous, staring banality is the final outcome for which we have sacrificed everything else.”

Last edited Tue May 13, 2014, 12:19 AM - Edit history (1)

costs what it does.

choking in traffic.

The suburbs don't look so attractive anymore especially not with the way everything the developers build is still so dependent on cars....and we have no walking, biking or mass transit alternatives.

It's a mess out here in the burbs. Not the way to go.

$300,000 during the bubble burst…well, some will again in the future.

It really doesn't matter how big you build, it is where you build. You can
find big houses in Southwestern states that will sell for under $200,000.

But any size home in certain areas along the Pacific Coast will grow in value
or at least hold their value, forever.

I am sure that this is true in certain places all over the US.

Tikki

LA suburb because there is simply no more room to build anything after the last wave of McMansions was completed 15 years ago. However, there is one little plot of land near the 101 Freeway - where, just recently, a new cluster of single family behemoths is taking root.

There is no more housing here for middle class families. That train has left, and I hear more and more stories about people moving out of state searching for jobs and housing that doesn't cost $600K (low end around here) and up.

(IE, it has things like trees and different paint schemes, though not quite as far as Edward Scissorhands)

the miserable "human hutches"/"machines for living" without character or yards across the valley are going for the same amt (and the area's STILL one-third foreclosures)

Many beautiful old neighborhoods in Dallas have been totally destroyed by the McMansions. Drive down some streets and there is a hodge-podge of cute little 1950 brick bungalows with big yards, tall trees and long driveways. Next to one of these older houses will be a huge two story stucco house that is built all the way out to the property line with all the yard and trees gone. It may have a short horseshoe driveway so the owner can drive to the front door, but nothing else. So Ugly! Just because you have a lot of money, doesn't mean you have good taste.

Same thing in Houston.

Angel in Texas

the faux chateau took over for a while in ugly browns with 17 roofs and gables and at least three materials (brick, stucco, stone, cedar) and always ALWAYS a metal roof on some part of the house.

Now they seem to be headed to more neutral colors but always clear cut every tree and build on every possible inch they can build on. There's hardly any character left to the 'hood.

Liike a mud-splattering hippo fart at a wedding ceremony.

Idiotic pro-crap development Dems are leading the charge for teardowns to build bigger houses to promote density. Wait wut?

They've got it ass-backwards.

They look ridiculous with all the fussy architectural details evoking colonial or Georgian times: Peaked roofs bristling with dormers, cornices, all that gaudy masonry above the windows, porticos. It all looks so fake and tacky, and they're built like shit. Another thing I'm really taken by over the years, is how many otherwise rational people go cuckoo for cocopuffs regarding size: A total fixation on big Big BIG; maximum number of square feet they can afford ( or not afford more often than not ) rather than sensible size ( and with more liquidity ).

I don't get the appeal at all. As I've said most of these people end up kind of house-poor and the sheer size of the place makes chores like just cleaning the outside windows, cleaning out the rain gutters etc downright treacherous, or expensive to have a contractor perform the task. Hell, even buying window blinds for places like that will put you in debt.

As I said: I don't get it.

--her kids are out of the house and hub is away a lot. She rocks around that enormous place alone half the time. WHY?

It's weird to me too.

That we are complete idiots.

I thought that was codified into U.S. statute or something.

I started noticing the incredible housing waste back in the 70s, sometime after the OPEC crisis during the "conservation decade." Lots of big old houses that had been built when forests and land were plentiful and energy was cheap. How are they going to heat those drafty old things when energy is no longer cheap, I wondered. Untold square footage never used after the kids leave home but much of it still heated and cooled anyway, which tends to drive up energy and building materials prices for everybody. To continue with that kind of overbuilding today is appalling.

of course, the vast majority of those McMansions are mortgaged up to the hilt by their owners. It's a very fake presentation of wealth. I'd rather have something much smaller and easily affordable and *gasp* actually pay it off in perhaps 15 years.

of the advantages) have like one-thirds of their lots underwater: our 'hood (bungalows with space for kids and trees) is still "car-dependent" like any Cul-de-Sackia but there's a few stores nearby (no candy store, tho)

if your going to have no yard and live cheek to jowl with your neighbor's identical mansion. if I had the money to buy one of those homes I would spend it on one about half that size on about ten times the land.

You might have a tough time finding a few acres of land close to LA, if thats where you want to live.

only now they are big and brick