Posted on 02/14/2009 10:38:05 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Freaking idiots. They still aren't learning.
I have four kids and live in an 1800 sq. foot house. Sometimes it feels small, but overall, the floor plan is pretty good, and I think if we HAD to, we would survive on smaller. I had a policy when homebuying that I never wanted my mortgage higher than I could afford if I had to go on unemployment. I was laid-off twice in '01 and became extra- cautious.
It should have ended a long time ago. Never could understand why people with one or two kids wanted to buy one of these huge monstrosities. Most of them are ugly and built like crap anyway.
But not at $500K, or even half that.
Bush had a small ranch house, while Obama had a mansion.
Well, isn’t this just peachy.
The “McMansion” era is over.
Who defines excess and have they themselves been cleared by our komrades at the the US Dept. of Kepitelist Excess Reduction?
I’ll tell you what’s over: life as a free human in America.
You all belong to the government now—you can split hairs about just how much of you belongs to the government if it makes you feel better.
Not that today’s Americans would do anything to resist it anyway.
Just go back to your cable TV, your social internet sites, your porn or your MP3 collection and try to ignore it.
Freedom is overrated anyway, right?
Coming soon from your President. The push to tell you how many feet you will be allowed to live in. It’s for the children’s future you know. How dare you deny them , just because you didn’t abort them and had them. Just seems hypocritical to me. But what do I know.
I think the new push will be "living in as many feet as you can afford" which is the real reason why the "McMansion" era is ending.
Why is it that so many conservatives think that any actions taken towards common sense and fiscal responsibility are somehow threatening and smacking of downright communism?
Te pioneers were a helluva lot more conservative than those guys and they didn’t go off into the prairies and build McMansions. they built what they could afford to build, afford to heat and afford to defend. How much house does a small family or just 2 folks need, really? Enough room to hide the guns and store the extra supplies, not so large and flashy as to attract the wrong kind of attention. Like the biilboard said, they’ll eat the fat ones first.
Most of the McMansions I've seen have been on tiny lots for the size of the house. What good is it to buy a half-million dollar house if you can reach out your bedroom window and touch your neighbor's half-million dollar house.
Some of them really are thrown together cheaply. I was in one recently where the tile in the bathrooms was laid directly on the plywood subfloor with no backer board. Naturally the tiles were shifting around and coming loose. This was gross corner cutting by the tiling contractor but even the McMansions that are built correctly tend to be kind of cheap. I would much rather have a smaller home that is well made.
I like room to roam.
Oh well, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
The McMansion gets a bad rap. It’s a way to maximize profits and perceived value from limited capital. Land prices have inflated in relation to building materials and labor. That’s the reverse of the way things were in the 50’s.
The more value you can build into a house while minimizing the use of the scarce resource (land), the more profitable to the builder and the more valuable to the purchaser.
Most of them are built poorly. That’s another issue altogether. Mostly related to the use of poorly-trained, underpaid laborers being pushed by builders for quantity rather than quality.
“I think the new push will be “living in as many feet as you can afford” which is the real reason why the “McMansion” era is ending.”
That is true. As we are seeing from the financial meltdown, in no way could this country afford the McMansion lifestyle (yes, I know, a few people always could...but I’m talking about millions). We are simply getting back to where we should be based on our depleted industrial base, which may be a right around the 1100 sq-ft size (i.e. we don’t produce much anymore...thanks to liberals).
Welcome to Scottsdale, AZ.
Many of the high-end developments on Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd, and near the Mayo Clinic on Shea Blvd, were like this. Yuck.
Cheers!
Or first house was 1,800 square feet. And after 6 years, 1 kid, 2 dogs, and another kid on the way, we determined we needed more space.
So we stepped up to a 3,100 square foot home that suits us just fine. Sure, bigger would be better and some additional features would be liked, but it gets the job done. The only real complaint is that the master bedroom is 400 square feet. Kinda a waste of space. Would have prefered it distributed in the loft or other bedrooms. But it does allow for some additions to a master suite that most can't do. Such as a couch, several chairs, huge TV and audio system, etc... Its almost like having the ability to build a 2nd living room in your bedroom.
“I’d rather have the land than the house. I don’t need a McMansion. I don’t need the headaches to heat them. If I had five kids, I may have a different opinion about that, but that 1600 ft place would be great for me.”
well I’m raising 7 kids and we have no desire for McMansion.
We have 6 bedrooms that fit nicely in a smaller home - an affordable home.
The bigger the house, the more you have to clean, and the more you have to heat.
Exactly. We pushed home ownership as a civil right for everyone and it never should've been. Ideally, we should only have about 50% of the country living in homes they own. In order to be competitive, we need a mobile workforce able to pack up and move without being tethered to homes they can barely afford and can't sell.
I never understood the attraction of these things. I would prefer to splurge on a better lot than on a huge amount of wasted space.
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