Free Republic

As baby boomers look to downsize out of their suburban McMansions, a generational showdown is looming: Millennials might be coming into their own as the nation's biggest group of first-time home buyers, but they aren't exactly lining up with bids in hand for those large, expensive homes in the sleepier suburbs. Instead, they're looking for a different kind of home—the same ones, in fact, that the empty nesters are looking to buy. It's a battle of the millennials vs. baby boomers playing out in the nation's suburban housing markets.

There was a small ray of hope just after the Lehman collapse that one of the most lamentable characteristics of US society - the relentless urge to build massive McMansions (funding questions aside) - was fading. Alas, as the Census Bureau confirmed this week, that normalization in the innate American desire for bigger, bigger, bigger not only did not go away but is now back with a bang. According to just released data, both the median and average size of a new single-family home built in 2015 hit new all time highs of 2,467 and 2,687 square feet, respectively. And...

Imagine that you are in the business of lending money. At one time, the business model was simple; money was lent to people who had a high probability of repaying it. The rules were then changed by federal government in the interest of "fairness," with laws passed such as the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and federal agencies like Housing & Urban Development (HUD) activated. To stay in business, you must follow the government's dictates. Then the government changes the rules again by changing the percentage of loans that go to certain types of borrowers in the interest of "fairness." Just...

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 --...

As irrefutable evidence mounts that Nobel Laureate Al Gore's climate alarmism is about nothing other than lining his supposedly green pockets with green currency, manmade global warming skeptics around the world wonder when the former vice president's house of cards will collapse. Without question, if Gore were to lose the support of almost universally adoring Hollywoodans, the scam would implode quicker than a Democrat demanding a recount after losing a close election. As such, the following comments by actor and environmentalist Robert Redford, reported by the New Statesman last week, should bring hope to folks not buying the snake oil...

The McMansion phenomenon is likely to survive both the residential property slump and the popularity of green design, but communities are increasingly opting to regulate house size. Even Los Angeles, often blamed for spawning the culture of sprawl, is evaluating a measure that would limit the size of single-family infill housing—some 300,000 properties. Although there is no single set of nationwide data on such ordinances, the National Trust for Historic Preservation tracks the issue through its anti-teardown initiative. In a May 2006 study it found that more than 300 communities in 33 states have taken steps to combat teardowns and...

Are the stars aligning for another Al Gore moment in the presidential campaign? The former-vice-president-turned-climate-change-crusader long has hovered over the campaign despite his professed disinterest in becoming a candidate. Now, with rumors of a possible Nobel Peace Prize swirling, he's once again back in the conversation. The peace prize announcement is due on Friday, so he doesn't have long to wait to learn if he has pulled off a unique grand slam for 2007: an Oscar, an Emmy, a bestseller and a Nobel. It would vault him once again back into the center of speculation about whether he might jump...

The McMansion may be shrinking. With the nation's housing market in a slump and the mortgage market in disarray, many home builders are putting up fewer supersize homes and offering smaller floor plans. That seems to be what buyers suddenly want in an era of high prices and tougher financing. "Financing has tightened down so much that many people aren't able to qualify for the larger houses," said Kathryn Boyce, an account executive in Northern California for Boston-based real-estate research firm Hanley Wood Market Intelligence. "Throughout the U.S. people can't afford what they previously did. Floor plans are going to...

The new house on Allison Street in North Brentwood is two stories higher than the older homes that surround it. It doesn't have a porch, shutters or any of the other distinguishing features found on the century-old bungalows on the block. "It's out of character for the town," said Mayor Petrella A. Robinson, who lives across the street, with a dog on her front porch. "It's humongous," another neighbor said of the house, as yet unoccupied. "It just doesn't fit in." The complaints sound the same as those in Chevy Chase and Arlington County: Builders are constructing large houses on...

Francois de La Rochefoucauld had a point when he said, in his frequently quoted formulation, that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. In the case of John Edwards, however, hypocrisy is simply a way of life. The infamous $400 haircut — actually, some of his hairstyling sessions ran as much as $1,200 all told — wasn’t a freak embarrassment for a candidate so self-righteously devoted to the poor. It was part of a pattern so pervasive that it has become the defining aspect of Edwards’s candidacy. When he lambasted hedge funds for incorporating offshore to avoid or...

Fight Global Warming by Taxing 'McMansions,' Dingell Says By Randy Hall CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor August 10, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee this week announced a plan to fight global warming by reducing carbon emissions up to 80 percent by the year 2050. This would be done by raising gasoline taxes 50 cents per gallon and ending mortgage tax deductions on large houses, which the Michigan Democrat called "McMansions." During town hall meetings in Ann Arbor and in Dearborn, Rep. John Dingell said he will make these proposals as part of a multi-tiered bill...

Former US Vice President Al Gore appeared on BBC television today, and thanked Apple CEO Steve Jobs for proposing him as the next President of the United States. In May Jobs stated that Gore - also an Apple board member - would win the presidency if he ran for election. "If he ran, there's no question in my mind that he would be elected," Jobs told Time magazine. "But I think there's a question in his mind, perhaps because the pain of the last election runs a lot deeper than he lets most of us see." Today, appearing on the...

The number of millionaires in the world increased by 8.3 percent in 2006, with about 9.5 million individuals now estimated to have more than a million dollars in financial assets, a report said Wednesday. The survey by financial services group Capgemini and US investment bank Merrill Lynch said strong global economic growth and gains on the stock market explained the expansion of the exclusive club of "High Net Worth Individuals" (HNWIs). The financial assets owned by the group totalled 37.2 trillion dollars (27.7 trillion euros), an increase of 11.4 percent from 2005, with Singapore, India, Indonesia and Russia producing the...

A New Hampshire presidential poll by WHDH-TV and Suffolk University shows that local Democrats prefer Al Gore to any of the current contenders. Hillary Clinton has a solid lead over the rest of the current Democratic field. The poll, released this afternoon, shows 37 percent of likely Democratic voters backing Clinton or leaning towards her. Barack Obama was at 19 percent, with both John Edwards and Bill Richardson at 9 percent. Al Gore, however, could enter the race as the leader. When his name is added, Clinton loses more than a quarter of her support, while Gore is backed by...

Recently, The Sun — hardly the most erudite or sophisticated of Britain's newspapers, I grant you — published a feature article entitled "Why is TV more keen on Paris Hilton than on saving the planet?" Actually, it's not so much an article as a write-up of an interview with none other than Al Gore. "Al Gore is a man on a mission to save the planet — and is enraged that everyone else seems more interested in saving Paris Hilton," writes reporter Victoria Newton, who had a talk with the former Vice President. Now, I'm a little tired of Gore's...

McMansions are sprouting in the suburbs of Washington and Atlanta, in southern Connecticut and out West in Utah as an appetite for bigger homes just keeps on growing. One in five American houses had at least four bedrooms in 2005. That's up from one in six in 1990, despite shrinking families and increasing costs for construction and energy. Houses with five or more bedrooms were the fastest-growing type in that time, adding to the nation's consumption of resources and reputation for excess. "In this country, bigger is better," said Gopal Ahluwalia, vice president of economic research at the National Association...

Leave it to “60 Minutes” to find a negative development in a tide of American prosperity lifting all boats. “The Joneses, that mythic family America vainly tries to keep up with, are setting an impossible standard,” correspondent Morley Safer complained on the August 6 program. “It’s the house, dammit. The size of the average new house in this country has grown almost 50 percent in the last 30 years while the average family has shrunk.” “Like some alien weed, houses are growing from sea to shining sea,” the Canadian-born journalist said before opening a story with footage of a house...

The American home is getting bigger. And fatter. And, to some, uglier. Now, towns are fighting back. Chevy Chase, Md., an upscale suburb of Washington, recently announced a six-month moratorium on home construction to make time to examine how to deal with the proliferation of oversized single-family houses. Call them what you will -- starter castles, McMansions, monster homes -- these houses have become increasingly visible in metropolitan landscapes. Many residents hate them. Todd Hoffman, town manager, said that more than 500 Chevy Chasers, a significant number in a community of just over 1,000 homes, signed a petition expressing their...