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back to Trust the Process, podcast where we talk
about the real estate industry, new home construction,
the housing industry, and everything in between.
Today, our in between is going to take us As
to a term you may or may not have heard, a McMansion.
You have to say it with that twang. A funny term.
Yeah. So this was recently introduced to me,
something I hadn't heard referred in this way.
So although I know what it is, once explained
to me, the term itself maybe didn't ever cross
my path. So a McMansion is just an informal term
that was coined kind of in the late 90s, early
2000s to describe the rise of large suburban
homes. It's now become a pejorative, it has pejorative
connotations because it was, there's been a lot
of bad players that built a lot of bad McMansions.
So I think it always had a negative tilt and
I'm not, there's a certain fast food company
that it's named after and the thought was that
they're mass produced, low quality and. big portions,
right? So that's kind of, I'm not going to say
what company that they're named after. Nobody
could guess that. Nobody could guess what that
is. So it was kind of coined in that way. And
if you look at the average home size in the late
seventies and early eighties started to really
swell. And I think it was around 13 or 1400 in
the sixties and seventies. And then by the eighties,
it was getting over 2000. And I think now it's
kind of, it kind of hit up. stability a stable
point Around the around the 90s and now it's
around 2200 and it's kind of stayed there bounces
between 22 and 2400 still a really large home
if you think about how big a 22 or 2300 Square
-foot home is considering that that's the average
So there's a lot of homes that are a lot bigger
than that and to think about the amount of homes
There's so many homes that are probably you know
smaller your averages are thrown you've got to
have a lot of seven eight thousand square foot
homes six thousand square foot homes there's
so many 1200 square foot homes out there and
then also those are so there's two ways to look
at it what's this average square footage of a
newly built home that number always skews larger
than the average Home in America is X number
of square feet because you're factoring in all
the homes built in the 40s and 50s that are still
standing that are 980 square feet. Yeah and different
areas. Different areas have different home sizes.
I mean definitely as we've gone west and in the
Sun Belt where the areas are newer everything
gets bigger and bigger and bigger and if you
I'm passionate about these because number one
I don't I don't think all McMansions are bad.
I think that McMansions are kind of part of the
American dream. If they weren't, they would have
gone away by now. There's obviously a demand
for them. But I wanted to first kind of define
what the conventional wisdom of a McMansion is.
It's usually bigger than 3 ,000 square feet,
oftentimes has a three car garage. It's almost
always in suburbia. So it's generally built in
the neighborhood of other exact copies or similar
homes. And then the death knell for most. architects
is that they don't have a lot of architectural
integrity. So it's kind of in the 90s, we had
an architectural style that was kind of a word
for a style that was coined, transitional. So
transitional architecture is going to kind of
pull from a lot of components. And in the 90s
and kind of during the rise of the McMansion,
the Palladian style architecture. So think early
Monticello and those kind of homes with the Palladian
windows, which is just an arched window with
with grids in it, a lot of brick, a lot of big
grand entry ways, a lot of double doors. So there
were kind of these mini manners. And that was
the architectural style back then. And as everything
goes, a lot of builders are not versed in architectural
style. So they're doing copycat. Me too. Okay.
I like that arched window. If I do this on a
3000 square foot home and make it have a three
car garage and have a formal living area and
big columns. So it kind of... got stuck in that
style. So when you think of a McMansion, generally
for me, and I think a lot of people that are
familiar with the term, they're probably thinking
of that late 80s or into the 90s, big suburban
house, brick, arched windows, big columns, columns
on the inside, kind of maybe one side is brick,
the rest is vinyl siding. Just not a lot of textual
integrity. But I would argue this really fancy,
but it looks fancy, but it's not okay and Unfortunately
before we had such rigorous codes they had reputations
of being really poorly built thrown up really
quickly Not good with energy efficiency volume
ceilings Maybe not maybe just insulation built
to code whatever the code was at that time cheap
windows So they just had this that this perception
that they're cheap to build they deliver a lot
of value But they're expensive to maintain So,
and a lot of that holds true. And out west, that
style, we have a lot of them here in Las Vegas,
and that's, we got stuck with the Mediterranean
style, became our McMansion. So you see a lot
of turrets, a lot of fake stone, a lot of clay
tile roofs and things like that that are kind
of symbolic of a west of the Mississippi McMansion.
But again, we're seeing modern McMansions now.
So what's popular now, is, at least in a lot
of the West, is a desert contemporary or modern
architectural style, linear, flat roofs. And
it's a bastardization of what modern architecture...
is, which is taking advantage of, especially
desert contemporary, it's taking advantage of
where the sun is. You're hiding from the sun
with desert contemporary architecture because
sun is plentiful, whereas back east maybe you'd
be trying to capture the sun. But it takes these
fundamental elements of architecture and reduces
them down and then spoon feeds it to the masses.
So that's the bad. That is McMansion's behaving
badly. Where I think that McMansions make a lot
of sense does provide a lot of flexibility. Generally
moving out later in life. Maybe family moms are
moving back in dads are moving back in aunts
and uncles It allows the square footage allows
for a lot of doubling up of residences Which
which happens as cities become more developed
to get more expensive and as the country things
get more expensive So I like the functionality
that they have and then selfishly as a builder
generally what you're building and what you're
selling is square footage Unfortunately when
we list one of our spec homes and I see that
Z estimate pop up The algorithms are using your
zip code your bill and square footage because
how come we can have our Brielle model 3 ,800
and our Messina model 4 ,200 Zillow doesn't know
that they're on one has a better lot than the
other but the Messina one has a higher Z Estimate
because it's 4 ,300 versus 3 ,800 for what reason
it shows you that square footage so so as a builder
you can either choose to die on that hill or
Build and get on the McMansion train But again,
I don't think it necessarily always has to be
a bad thing. So they were doing cookie cutter
production type neighborhoods. Yeah. Hey, people
like Palladian architecture. Let's do everything
in Palladian. A lot of LS in Houston have a lot
of Palladian architecture. High roof pitches,
arched windows, and brick facades. It's not always
a bad thing, but ultimately, builders are capitalists,
so they're gonna build what sells if that style
is trendy now. We're seeing it play out with
our modern architecture going all up and down
the suburbs of Las Vegas and Phoenix. A lot of
modern architecture, and it's not. You can't
lop the roof off of a house. Take away any architectural
embellishment. and call it modern architecture.
You could argue that's minimalist architecture,
but that's not modern architecture, and they're
selling it in such a way and taking advantage
of maybe less informed or just less sophisticated
buyers. I don't mean that in a negative way.
They're just not house nerds like I am, which
is fine, but I hate to see that happening. So
if you look at a lot of what we build, I try
to either, if I can't be true to an architectural
style, we'll at least be minimal with our style.
I don't mean minimalist, but just say, Avoid
the hallmarks of today's trends because these
homes are not going to age well With all those
hallmarks to say you look at a lot of Southern
California and Phoenix and Las Vegas What style
do you see in the late 80s and early 90s a lot
of that salt box? white shades of white stucco
with window embellishment and you can spot a
1989 built home in the West With very little
architectural knowledge. Yep. You can kind of
tell where it went and where it was built. So
think there's a blend and I think that McMansions
are just the nature of when you suburbanize and
when you're Trying to spread out all that infrastructure
and all those costs over a hundred homes The
bigger and the more expensive the homes are the
the more those costs are minimized So I think
it's just the economics of home building. So
I'm passionate about the topic. I I look at McMansions
with scrutiny, you know, I definitely very critical
a lot of McMansions in my own neighborhood, right?
And it's it's okay though They're still homes
and this connotation that because they were built
fast or because they're built in a certain era
It wasn't always it doesn't always mean they're
built poorly so those factors, you know in the
80s when builders corporatized and You had a
lot of production builders kind of coming into
into the marketplace and going public and there
was really no a corporate builder before the
80s. It was kind of an 80s and 90s invention
that we still live with to this day. And I think
that kind of allowed those, that shareholder
driven mentality has made McMansion. Then there's
some other innovations in engineering that has
allowed the McMansion, the truss, which we've
talked about in the past, the truss plate, just
allowed for greater spans, it allowed. us to
build bigger homes and actually at a cost per
square when adjusted for inflation and a backup
certain things that are affected in new home
legislation and things like that. But overall
we were able to build a lot larger spaces a lot
more effectively and efficiently which has brought
the cost down. And so categorically it's a home
that is larger square footage with very little
substance beyond that. Kind of it's all sizzle
no stake. Okay. But generally it's funny. It's
funny that you that when we try to put a pin
on it because it evades you because One of the
hallmarks are a lot of cheap embellishments a
lot of cornice details that I made of styrofoam
instead of wood They are meant to look hand -carved.
It's kind of imitation so it's not necessarily
always that they lack the embellishments and
they lack the substance because many times they
do it's just the materials that are in them that
are making them try to appear to be a matter
you know a lord and a lady live there when really
it's a CPA and a that's those materials are cheap
knockoffs of what it's emulating but I argue
that why does Why does chrome molding that you'll
never touch or even be able to reach, why does
that need to be solid wood? Why can't that be
MDF? A lightweight material, easy to work with,
doesn't require all the logging and all the other
issues that came along with those heavy molding
and built out of hardwood. Why is that just not
the progression of home building? Those materials
are most likely, now some of them are more moisture
-sensitive than others. MDF will literally swallow
up like a sponge, but does it get the job done?
Does it give you that look and feel? Does it
make you feel warm when you come home? Does it
really matter if your crown molding is solid
oak painted white or stained versus MDF, which
was spit out of sawdust? I'm not too cynical
on McMansions, but I, you know, like I said,
I always look at them with scrutiny. Is there
another term for them? I mean, it's a subcategory
of something. Did it just not exist? How else
do people call it? Boxes and then it began No,
I don't think it had I think it was no it was
it was it was started with a natural progression
right this builders in the 40s and 50s went from
building row houses townhouses and cities to
the invention of the suburb and the first suburbs
Levittown all those places in the northeastern
seaboard were small basically apartments that
weren't attached if you look at those homes I
think it was like a ranger model. They had to
get three different models and he built hundreds
of thousands of them in the East Coast. And they
were, I think the biggest they got was 1 ,200
square feet. So they were taking these apartments
and saying, well, obviously we've been used to
living in an 800, 900 square feet anyway, but
now you have a yard. Now you can grill, now you
can do these things. So like anything, it just
had to become a status symbol. Oh, we all live
in a suburb. Well, how do we... How do we design
status? Well, we want a bigger home in the suburbs.
So they just started to grow and there's more
margin in building larger homes and builders
favor those things. And I think it just slowly
progressed and McMansion is a way to retrospectively
look back at a style. And we still do it today,
but it's a way to look back and say, oh, those
are McMansions. So yeah, I don't think it grew
out of anything except just what are we going
to call these things? And like we mentioned it.
Little bit ago and yet you had never heard the
term and you've been in this industry for a long
time and you're an architectural enthusiast and
your design enthusiast and you never come across
it so yeah, I think it's just kind of a It's
vernacular. Yeah. Yeah. Well now I appreciate
it and thank you for joining us on this episode
of trust the process podcast We look forward
to seeing you next time. Thanks Thanks for tuning
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