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My thought is if you HAVE the money to live in a huge house why not go to the trouble of thoughtfully restoring an older one in a lovely established neighborhood. I am so sickened by the obsession with NEW= the best and old equals the rest in the US and its just absolutely not the case when it comes to housing of McMansion quality (or I should say lack of quality). I really do see the trend either coming to an end or slowing tremendously but unfortunately it won't bring back all those MCM's and lovely bungalows that were bulldozed only to have an unsold McMansion built there. I really couldn't care much about the McMansion madness out on undeveloped land...its not the most efficient USE of land but to each their own. Its just painful to see them pop up where something with historic value previously stood and this can be found all over Houston and I would imagine many other cities.
Toll Brother's homes may not meet the true definition of a McMansion but they are pretty darn close. The good thing about Connecticut is that we do not have vast amounts of vacant land to build these tracts of homes. We also tend to have larger lot zoning so the homes don't over-power the lot. The Toll Brothers homes here are on a minimum of 2/3 acre.
What I don't like about them is that the front may be brick with some nice detail, but the side is aluminum with cheap looking c-channel trim around the windows. It really looks cheap. The driveways on these homes have no relation to the front door, so you basicaly park on the side of the house and have to walk around the giant three car garage to get to the front door. Most people just use the garage for an entrance because it can be such a long walk around the garage.
Inside however, the floor plan is usually a pretty good layout and the look can be very nice if the buyer chose an upgraded trim package. I know people like them because they are so well known. There is a feeling of safety when buying because there are so many. Jay
Really? Brick fronts and aluminum siding, not hardiplank?
I don't mind McMansions in neighborhoods of same. My problem is when someone comes into an older, established, beautiful neighborhood and tears down a house that fits in that neighborhood or builds new on a vacant lot with no consideration for the neighborhood at all (or, for that matter, remodels a house in such a neighborhood with a house that does same - remodels that keep the "tone" of the neighborhood in mind are no problem and I've seen some really beautiful ones). For one thing, personal aesthetics aside, it really can damage the property values of a very desirable neighborhood of older homes when someone does this, sort of like throwing paint on the Mona Lisa because you think she'd look better in a more "modern" style.
I acknowledge I'm struggling with this, because I'm all for neighborhoods where the houses and landscaping are allowed to change and grow and "build" the neighborhood on their own, so it would seem I wouldn't object to this kind of thing, as an example of what I support. Building out to the lot line or as close to it as possible, and pushing up against and over towering your neighbors, though, in a neighborhood where that is clearly not the norm, is just rude and not being a good neighbor.
First of all a 5,000 square foot house is not standard issue in Dallas, that is utterly ridiculous!
Second, many areas of north Dallas have already been destroyed by McMansions including the neighborhood I was raised in. My childhood home is gone. My parents sold that house, moved further north to an area with no teardowns, and the teardowns followed them. There are four or five empty lots in their new neighborhood due to the recession. Builders cannot sell the spec McMansions they already built. It should be a crime.
I agree with your post TexasHorseLady. The problem with our old neighborhood is that it was built in the late 40's - 1950 for the work force of McDonald Douglas in Long Beach. Original floor plans were between 800 and 1200 sf - mostly single garages and a few "oversized" single garages....usually one bathroom and very little storage. Lots are generally small - once in a while you find a larger lot but those are rare and desirable.
It is difficult for familes to live in an 800 sf house with one garage and little storage...some have thoughtfully added on to the existing footprint of the house while maintaining the integrity of a typical California.
Others, like our friends, love the neighborhood and don't want to move but are truly constrained by the smallness of their homes. So, they decide to build what equates to either an Orange County tract home (boring), or as quite a few in our old neighborhood have done, hire an architect, mount in front of the lot a huge colored renditions of the finished product and proceed to build truly lovely and charming large homes with little yard that overpower the homes next to them, are too large for the lot and stick out like a sore, but beautiful thumb.
I agree with your statement - that doing what I have just described is "just rude and not being a good neighbor." I believe there are ways to enlarge your home without alienating your neighbors or ruining the original feel and architecture of older neighborhoods.
Some neighboods were able to get the city to designate their area as "historic" and that put building restrictions and the need for step-by-step city approval of remodels.
I agree with your post TexasHorseLady. The problem with our old neighborhood is that it was built in the late 40's - 1950 for the work force of McDonald Douglas in Long Beach. Original floor plans were between 800 and 1200 sf - mostly single garages and a few "oversized" single garages....usually one bathroom and very little storage. Lots are generally small - once in a while you find a larger lot but those are rare and desirable.
It is difficult for familes to live in an 800 sf house with one garage and little storage...some have thoughtfully added on to the existing footprint of the house while maintaining the integrity of a typical California.
Others, like our friends, love the neighborhood and don't want to move but are truly constrained by the smallness of their homes. So, they decide to build what equates to either an Orange County tract home (boring), or as quite a few in our old neighborhood have done, hire an architect, mount in front of the lot a huge colored renditions of the finished product and proceed to build truly lovely and charming large homes with little yard that overpower the homes next to them, are too large for the lot and stick out like a sore, but beautiful thumb.
I agree with your statement - that doing what I have just described is "just rude and not being a good neighbor." I believe there are ways to enlarge your home without alienating your neighbors or ruining the original feel and architecture of older neighborhoods.
Some neighboods were able to get the city to designate their area as "historic" and that put building restrictions and the need for step-by-step city approval of remodels.
My neighborhood is split down the middle by a main road going through it; on one side the houses are 900 to 1400 square feet, on the other side they are about 1600 to 2200 square feet with one street having houses up to 3000 square feet (on the original floorplans).
Several of the homes have been extended and built up to be bigger, but most of the remodels have been done thoughtfully with an eye towards preserving the original frontage and keeping the extensions in the same style as the original homes. As of yet this neighborhood has zero teardowns. The lots are all about .25 acres so it is not a prime teardown zone, but you could build much larger houses on these lots than the houses that are currently here.
An adjacent neighborhood has had some teardowns but you would struggle to find the new houses because they were built in the same style as the existing homes. One sticks out because it is on a slab while its neighbors are all pier and beam, but the teardowns are maybe 10-15% larger than the original homes and the styles are pure mid-century traditional ranches with a few MCMs here and there. Those teardowns occurred because the original homes were either in such poor condition that it was cheaper to tear down than to repair them, or in one instance, because the original structure burned down. I have no problem at all with these teardowns!
My house is 1820 sq ft, 3 bed/2 bath, and the original owners raised 3 children here. If I was going to extend this house, my options would be limited because of the orientation of the garage and driveway; the only place you could extend it without altering the frontage or footprint is to build over the garage. That is by far the most common extension in this neighborhood and most are so well-done that it is hard to tell where the original house ends and the extension begins. You can reconfigure many old homes to suit modern needs. People nowadays just want new new new with that precious media room and the Vegas-style master "suite" but that is not sustainable.
Teardowns have become less of a problem thanks to the dwindling economy, but in 2003, I saw *three* Sears Homes being leveled in a Chicago suburb to make way for one plasticine McMansion. Now for those of you prone to think that a Sears Home is a crummy little house, let me tell you, it is NOT.
The framing members of Sears Homes were made from #1 southern yellow pine harvested from first growth forests in Louisiana and Mississippi. Virgin forests - where the trees grow slowly and compete for nutrients, sunlight and space - produce the most dense, high quality lumber. The exteriors of Sears Homes were all cypress. Yes, *all* cypress.
My point is, these are building materials that we will never see again in this country. NEVER. And yet these houses are not being salvaged but destroyed and all that irrecplaceable wood goes off to the landfill.
I'm glad McMansions are DOA. They're made with inferior materials and they suck down more than their share of energy resources. C'mon, how much space do you really need? And don't get me started on the evils of vinyl siding...
When people tear down so called "historic" houses and build McMansions....well that's part of history too.
I think much of the dislike of these things is motivated by a cultural snobbery and a dislike of the less "refined" doing well enough to gratify their own notions without consulting those who consider themselves tastemakers. How dare they.
Nah. It has more to do with the devaluation of established neighborhoods by putting something out of place in them just because it's New! And Big! And Shiny!
And, of course, as mentioned above, poor construction. Which is a bane wherever it might be and whatever the house might look like.
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