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Mansions may face resale obstacles
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| By Jay MacDonald
• Bankrate.com |
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Are McMansions
McOver?
Opinions vary, even among the experts.
If recent trends are any indication, however, the bigger-is-better approach to residential real estate may already be giving way to a more reasoned levelheadedness, both in home buying and building.
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| White elephant sale | |
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No, don't expect a return to that less-is-more, small-is-beautiful
aesthetic from the Age of Aquarius; there is absolutely nothing
austere going on here. Rather, call it a redefinition or right-sizing
of what we consider luxury living that has more to do with architectural
scale, energy efficiency and creating livable space than with gross
square footage.
Like some real estate equivalent of the SUV, McMansions
have been the object of scorn and ridicule since they started elbowing
their way onto the suburban landscape in the late 1980s and early
1990s. Loosely defined as a house between 5,000 and 10,000 square
feet with soaring grandiose entryways and multicar garages, often
jammed onto an undersized lot, McMansions quickly went from ostentatious
status symbol to something even the Joneses didn't want to keep
up with.
"I think a lot of people who could well afford
a McMansion today would find it embarrassing on aesthetic, environmental
and political grounds, rather like movie stars who could afford
a Hummer but choose instead to drive a Prius," says architect
James Gauer, author of "The
New American Dream: Living Well in Small Homes."
Shifting
winds
As a historic confluence of factors -- boomer inheritances, the
post-2000 tech stock collapse, superlow interest rates, the mortgage
lending explosion -- drove America on a cattle stampede to invest
in real estate, more and larger forces -- including energy costs,
higher interest rates, the mortgage lending implosion and demographic
shifts -- have now slowed the market to a surly teenager's stroll.
The housing times, they are a' changin' -- again.
If during the past couple of years you bought a much larger home
than you needed, primarily for investment purposes, you might want
to cover your eyes now.
"I firmly believe that when the housing market
slows, you'll see a short-term drop in the demand for large homes.
But in the longer run, it's going to be even more challenging to
sell these because the average household size of the boomers is
going to go down as the last kids leave," says Thomas Lawler,
a housing consultant based in Vienna, Va. "Builders will respond
by reducing the number of those homes they build, but you can't
turn that on a dime."
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