[CAluvdubya]

It offered to buy the home (after 2 years, because I guess there are tax penalties if you sell an Extreme House before then), assist the father in downsizing to a home where he didn’t have to unscrew lightbulbs to make ends meet, and renovated the Extreme Home into a retreat centre.

One of the other major problems with making these homes so big is that the property values go up. That means increased property taxes that the homeowner can't afford as well as the increase in monthly electric (etc.) bills.

[bvw]

The slide show linked to this Wall Street Journal article does mention how LARGE basic monthly costs became for these monster homes, and also suggests that the extravagant homes become white elephants too big, too different, way off scale from the neighborhoods around them. Impossible to sell.

Still, the modality of complaint seems to be that the owners attempt to live off the houses by mortgaging and re-mortgaging.

Wall Street Journal, APRIL 6, 2010
Realty Check: 'Extreme Makeover' Downsizes Its Dream Homes
Producers of Hit TV Show See Bad Loans, Dashed Dreams, Default