Arrol Gellner, an architect and syndicated columnist, wrote an article that appeared in the LA Times entitled: What Was Supersized May One Day Be Downsized. He writes, "The size of the average American house more than doubled between 1950 and 1999, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. From 1982 to 2004, the typical new single-family house grew about 40% from 1,690 square feet to 2,366 square feet."
He worries about what will happen when the McMansion fad subsides and writes, "If a huge house simply could be tossed out like an outmoded necktie, or even junked like an obsolete SUV, this wouldn't be much cause for concern. But buildings are a lot more permanent."
He first asks, "What's so awful about these big, bad houses?" And then rattles off the usual list:
1. It wastes natural resources by using more building materials.
2. It requires more energy to heat and cool than a small home.
3. It cost more to buy so typically people can only buy a big house in less expensive locations. This means far from work resulting in a longer commute, using gas and creating more pollution.
4. And finally,"The simple fact that people spend most of their time at home in just a couple of rooms. In a big house, that leaves an awful lot of space that needs to be paid for, heated, cleaned and maintained but has little real function. Hence, the big house will go when exasperation trumps ego."
Gellner concludes, "After 1900, with efficiency-minded magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal leading the charge, overworked homemakers rebelled against the large, ornate and hard-to-maintain homes of the Victorian era. Housing trends swung sharply back toward more modest houses, ushering in the phenomenally popular little houses we still call bungalows."
"As for those big old Victorians, they quickly came to be seen as the apex of vulgarity, and many were eventually carved up into rooming houses - a common strategy to make use of all that burdensome space."
McMansions are languishing on the market longer than smaller homes all across the nation. In our market, where home sales continue to be good, the larger homes are on the market much longer and the only drop in prices is for those properties, not in the 2300' and smaller homes.
