Posted on 04/06/2008 6:50:49 PM PDT by Santa Fe_Conservative
LEESBURG, Virginia (Reuters) - Million-dollar fixer-upper for sale: five bedrooms, four baths, three-car garage, cavernous living room. Big holes above fireplace where flat-screen TV used to hang.
The U.S. housing crisis has come to McMansion country.
Just as the foreclosure crisis has hollowed out poorer neighborhoods, "for sale" signs are sprouting in upscale developments so new they don't show up on GPS navigation screens.
Poor people weren't the only ones who took out risky, high-interest loans during the housing boom. The sharp increase in housing costs -- and the desire to live in brand-new, spacious houses with modern features -- led many affluent buyers to take out loans they couldn't afford.
"People had in their head, 'I need a mud room, I need giant columns, I need a media room, and I'm going to do anything to get it,"' said Robert Lang, co-director of Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute, a research organization that focuses on real estate and development.
The crisis has hit especially hard here in Loudoun County, Virginia, where upscale
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I’m sure some people said the same thing about the Victorians at the beginning of the 20th century. Now you better not modify or stray from the original color schemes or you will be hung by your thumbs from the courthouse roof...
The old stone farmhouses around here are BEAUTIFUL! The 100 acres, of course, is driving that 1.4 mil price tag. I, too, cry when I see them and cannot afford them.
....my wife and I fled the Baltimore-Washington area in 2005...we had a farm and the McMansion explosion made our place worth a good bit of money...I used to look down on that whole culture of BMWs, Gold Cards, McMansions and snicker...now I see them as very, very dangerous....the kind of reckless fools that could bring down the financial system....and take my wealth with it!....and don’t think banks can’t fail....it happened to me back in the 70s.....big bank too...but once the run started it busted in just 5 days.
The McMansions won’t last 100 years. They’re more like stage sets. The trick to building them is to use the least expensive materials, then pour money into countertops, fixtures and appliances, etc.
Not to mention that Loudoun County is on the end of redneck-ville. McMansion here, crappy ranch there, trailer over there. If people truely have money, are successful, or tasteful they usally live closer to or within DC.
> Most of them are very custom and lived in, though there’s a good amount that look unoccupied, and these places are VAST.<
More likely you will have six Mexican families living in each home and your kids will be paying their utility bills.
One big difference between a McMansion and a Victorian is that Victorians were built to last.
McMansions are expensive piles of cheap plywood and vinyl. Victorians were built of high quality wood and plenty of it.
My solid Victorian (& nobody had to coerce me to paint it period colors) will easily last another century; what will happen to Hummer Houses? Maybe McMansionvilles will become Illegal-Immigrantvilles.
Someone needs to ask those in favor of "government help" in this "housing crises" if they would include these people in their government mortgage bailout.
I mean, these people are losing their homes Hillary! They'll have to live out of their car(s). Do you know what it is like trying to get dressed in the back seat of a Mercedes? (Yeah I know, Bill does)
This topic of government mortgage bailouts could turn out to be a "damned if I do, damned if I don't" issue if this is brought in to the debate. The Liberal poor will assume that these are all "Rich White Conservative Types" and say "Ha! Good for you. Your corporate greed finally caught up with you." And all the liberal elites will crying that "it is not fair! We are losing our homes too, just like you poor folk."
Time for more Operation Chaos to open another front to drive that wedge deeper into the heart of the "Liberalism Quagmire of Philosophy Contradiction."
Or as I like to call it: L.Q.O.P.C. (pronounced - Lick - O - Pic.)
I agree with you. It reminds me of what the MSM did with the AIDS “epidemic.” They refused to focus on the lifestyle pursued by the majority of those who got the virus, instead trumping up the relatively few cases where the individual was infected some other way.
On a personal level I agree. I always thought it would be funny if I won the lottery to buy a 3 to 4 acre plot in an upscale neighborhood, surround the property with an imposing fence and build smack in the middle a 600 sq. ft. cabin. Park a couple 15 to 20 year old cars in front.
Getting to your point, as a person that believes that people can essentially buy what they want I don't begrudge conservatives that buy the BMW's, Mercedes etc.. But I do loathe hypocritical liberals (bumperstickers) that surely are on the environmental kick politically but personally see no need to practice what they preach.
In short, I loathe hypocrites of any age, means, race, gender, at variance with one's professed liberal OR conservative views/beliefs.
Within the industry, we class McMansions by what they don't have: Terrazzo floors, oak wainscoting etc - etc. They are like big motel rooms with fancy windows.
Most the foreclosures on these type of houses are stemming from Divorce.
You're right - and what's "odd" here is that it's liberals who hate the middle class - and a lot of the middle class lives in McMansions...
People still know how to create terrazzo floors?
That’s sad.
I used to live in Loudon: Waterford, then Leesburg respectively (once in a 200 year old house). Honestly, even though I’m a free market lover, I hate what the building boom has done to one of the prettiest (or formerly) counties in Virginia.
The McMansion subdivisions just west of Leesburg on Rt. 7 (especially looking south) were put up on some of the most gorgeous pieces of farmland in the Old Dominion. And they are awful. The stuff outside and on the way to Waterford too are dreadful. Big houses cheaply built—like practically all residential housing now built in America.
I’ll be surprised if they last 50 years. I’d hope to live to see it go back to farmland, but, that may have to wait for the 2nd Coming!
My boss has a large new house, not quite a mcmansion but large nevertheless and expensive, The tubs and sinks were fiberglass all the woodwork was plastic the brick on the front of the house was just veneer, all kinds of cost-control quality was evident.How long do you suppose they will last? Even providing they can find a second hand buyer. My house when I bought it was 40 years old, just about the time construction material quality was to start it’s descent. All my neighbors tell me it’s built like the proverbial brick S((!-house.
Watched that special on “100 years after man inhabits the earth” a few weeks back. Showed how manmade structures will fall apart as nature retakes the land when man leaves earth. I imagine mcmansions will be among the first structures to go.
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