
McMansion envy spreads as Americans demand more bedrooms and baths - spking
https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mcmansion-envy-spreads-as-americans-demand-more-bedrooms-baths/
======
checkyoursudo
I have a spouse and two kids.

I used to have a 1500 sqft house. Next was a 1600 sqft house. Now, a 3300 sqft
house.

I miss the 1500 sqft house so much.

Our current house has a 3/4 acre yard bordering on 20 acres of preserve/park,
so I love that, but I would still take the small house on the 1/4 acre over
this, since I live near plenty of nature opportunities anyway.

~~~
acconrad
I'm genuinely curious - how did you manage 1500 sq ft with two kids? I've seen
various outlets that state most people need roughly 450 sq ft, and we
currently have 900 sq ft for me and my wife and that feels right, maybe even
slightly big. I wanted an 1750-1800 sq ft home and my wife wants closer to
2200-2250. So I'm shocked you felt comfortable with 1500 sq ft and wonder what
made the house so nice. Was it layout? Efficient use of wall space?

~~~
tathougies
In 1950, the average space per person was 259 sq ft. People in the 1950s
turned out just fine. The larger and larger homes we are seeing today while
witnessing the ever declining family size are the result of unadulterated
greed, pure and simple.

Source: [https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/the-righteous-small-
house...](https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/the-righteous-small-house-
challenging-house-size-and-the-irresponsible-american-dream)

~~~
ryandrake
I just want to know what on earth people are filling these enormous 2000+
sq.ft houses with! 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms? Even if you have 4 people in your
family, do they all need separate rooms, and what is the probability that they
all need to pee at the exact same time?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Even if you have 4 people in your family, do they all need separate rooms

“Need” is a flexible term; it's clearly possible for people to survive without
any rooms. But, yes, there's plenty of reason to believe that there are
benefits to having a private space.

But most likely a four-person family with a 4-bedroom house has two adults
sharing the master bedroom, two children with their own rooms, and a guest
room and/or office.

> and what is the probability that they all need to pee at the exact same
> time?

Hopefully, close to zero, since your hypothetical still has fewer bathrooms
than people. But multiple restrooms.

But, it's actually quite likely that multiple people will be using bathrooms
for either elimination or bathing at the same time, particularly in the
mornings.

(It's also somewhat likely when entertaining, which is one of the reasons
people want large houses.)

------
no_protocol
The author of this page has made critical errors in either interpreting or
creating many of the graphs on the page.

> Another housing trend that popped up in 2014 was the rise in homes with four
> or more bedrooms.

If you actually look at the graph, the rise in 4+ bedrooms had been going
since 1985. In 2014 it just became the most popular.

> Demand for fireplaces has been cooling since the ’90s with 2007 being the
> first year that more homes were built without the feature than with.

Actually, that would be 2010. The "None" point is plotted higher than the "1"
point in 2007 but still definitely below the 50% mark.

> The average square feet of floor area in a newly completed single-family
> home was down 2 percent or 56 square feet in 2017 from the high mark.

The graph above has percentages in the y-axis rather than square feet...no
idea what happened there. Plus, it is somewhat misleading! In the real data
chart [0, page 9], the median square footage actually increased in 2017, while
the average did decrease. Additionally, this difference appears to be within
the relative standard error window.

[0]:
[https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/squarefeet.pdf](https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/squarefeet.pdf)

------
thrower123
One thing that I always think about with these absurd HGTV house shows is who
is going to clean all of these extra bathrooms? When you've got 3-4 bathrooms,
and 2000+ square feet, you will have to spend a nontrivial amount of time
cleaning every week. Or hire it out.

Oh, and I really, really, really, never want to hear the term "bonus room"
used ever again.

~~~
brianwawok
House cleaning makes my life much better and costs less than my cell phone
bill.

~~~
jimmaswell
What is your cell phone bill? The person I know who does house cleaning
charges $25/hr, takes 5 hours on the average house, and goes to most of their
houses at least twice a month.

~~~
pseudobry
I pay $150/month for a crew of two to clean my 2200sqft house every other
week. It's so worth it, even just so I don't have to clean the shower anymore.
But really, the better benefit is more time to spend with my kids and work on
other things.

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crazcarl
This is only new single-family homes. I would guess the vast majority of these
are in the far-reaching suburbs of large cities. I wonder - how would this
look if you plotted # of bedrooms (or one of the other data points being
discussed) versus how far from the nearest major city the house is being
built?

------
kpwags
I have a 1300 square foot home with 3 bedrooms & 1.5 bathrooms. While my wife
and I don't have kids, I'm happy with the size. Anything bigger and I feel
like it'd be overkill for us. I wish the floorplan was a little more open or
could be easier to open up, but otherwise I feel the size is perfect for our
needs.

Obviously if children enter the picture, things might change, but I feel like
having a house that's too big is more of a pain than it's worth...especially
when you need to clean for company.

~~~
rayiner
That’s enormous for a couple with no kids. That’s the size of the average new
home in 1960, when the average married couple had 3-4 kids.

~~~
kpwags
I guess that kind of makes sense, since my house was built in the 1950s. It
doesn't feel all that large though.

I will admit that I might be a little skewed given that comparing my house to
the others in my neighborhood, it's on the smaller size. Most houses I've seen
go on the market in my neighborhood are generally 3-400+ sqft larger.

~~~
fetus8
I wanna chime and say, it's not that huge...

I just bought my first home, and I live alone. It's a single story home, with
a basement, built in 1959. The upstairs is about 1000 sq/ft, while the
basement is only about 200 sq/ft making it strictly a laundry area.

Having now lived in the house for about 3 months, I can say that it's more
than comfortable for me, and is easily managed in terms of cleaning. It's
definitely not a huge place, and when I have friends over for dinner and
there's more than 5 of us, it can feel quite cramped.

I guess if you live in Brooklyn in one of those 300sqft places, it would feel
huge...

------
squozzer
>People with more money to spend typically want five bedrooms with bathrooms,
porcelain tile and quartz countertops. “Most everything we’re doing at this
price point includes a garage that fits a minimum of four cars,” Jackson says.
“We just finished a home that had a nine-car garage.”

I just contracted McMansion Garage Envy. Maybe with a dash of prepper
amenities such as an RTG
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator)

and a protected well.

------
maxxxxx
I just want to have a small house with a little yard. Do they still get built?

~~~
scrooched_moose
No, and they typically aren't allowed by modern zoning restrictions. I'm in a
house from the mid-1910s and my lot is a third of what is required for new
construction in other parts of the city.

~~~
maxxxxx
That's just nuts. We should go for more density, not less.

~~~
jimmaswell
Would you enjoy picking somewhere nice to live, then it becomes crowded with a
bunch of denser living structures, with all the extra noise, congestion, crime
(simply by virtue of more people being present), etc. completely changing the
character of the location?

~~~
maxxxxx
I prefer that over endless sprawl. From a practical point of view it would
also allow more people to own a house.

~~~
jimmaswell
We can't just turn every single locality into a Manhattan. Nice areas with
sparse, bigger houses should be able to elect to stay that way.

The "sprawl" everyone complains about in SF is (from the last article I saw) a
bunch of super tiny square houses with tiny lawns packed into a giant grid.
Honestly seems like an alright compromise to me between huge apartment
buildings and big lawns for a city-like area, compromised too far in the
direction of density even.

I honestly don't see the big deal about some areas like SF being able to exist
where you can live in a city and actually have a nice-ish single family house
in commute distance of your city-job, even if it prices some people out. It's
one city in a country of 300 million.

~~~
rayiner
> We can't just turn every single locality into a Manhattan. Nice areas with
> sparse, bigger houses should be able to elect to stay that way.

Only if property owners want that. If a property owner wants to built a
4-story condo on their property, they should be allowed to do so. If their
neighbors want the property to remain a single family home, they should buy
out the property owner.

~~~
true_religion
I mean if you try to build a condo on single family house zone, you will
generate too much waste, and water usage for the land if it is not connected
to city water and sewage. You simply wouldnt have enough land to naturally
draw water from a well, or put sewage water back into the ground.

And if it is, the infrastructre may still not be developed for allowing 10x
the number of people as live in a typical family house.

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tomatotomato37
Not to be pedantic, but that house pictured isn't a McMansion, on the virtue
that the windows match and there isn't a giant garage turret tumor thing
stapled to one of the sides

Still an interesting article however; with all this talk about people
repopulating cities and cutting back it seems the data still shows people love
living large

------
newnewpdro
Bare non-google non-amp URL: (WTF?)

[https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mcmansion-envy-spreads-
as...](https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mcmansion-envy-spreads-as-americans-
demand-more-bedrooms-baths/)

~~~
sctb
Thanks! Updated.

------
sneak
If you work at home, that’s a bedroom off for office.

I also build synths and electronics and firearms, that’s a bedroom off for
workshop/music.

Weight room. Guest bedroom for when friends visit. Master bedroom for me,
partner bedroom to save relationship sanity.

That’s six for just two adults, and I still haven’t racked the servers and
switches in my lab. I think the mistake is thinking of them as bedrooms and
not general purpose rooms for activities that require equipment/storage.

------
cbhl
I wonder how much of this demand are multi-generational homes (e.g. parents,
spouse, kids all in the same house). Those are very common in, say, Chinese
families.

------
codingdave
I'm not sure that the demand in new home building is the same thing as the
overall demand for homes. People who want to build new suburban (cookie-
cutter) homes are not the entirety of our society. I'd trust data and feedback
from real estate agents more than I would from home builders.

------
nunez
That’s good for us because we don’t want a big home and depressed demand for
them will probably mean a cheaper starter home for us.

I used to be averse to the idea of buying an older, smaller home, but my wife
is insistent on it. The more I think about it, the more I think she has the
right idea.

------
squozzer
Enjoy McMansion Hell - [http://mcmansionhell.com/](http://mcmansionhell.com/)

I call BS on the single-story build rate > 40%. Finding my current home in
2015 - a single-story - took a lot longer because they weren't that many on
the market at a given time. Some were under contract in less than one day on
the market! But I am confusing build rate with market availability.

The blame will fall on HGTV for some of the problem.

Another factor is profitability - a 2000 sqft house costs less than 2x to
build than a 1000 sqft house, but within the same hypothetical neighborhood,
will probably cost 2x or more because of the additional features that
additional floor space makes possible.

~~~
notacoward
"a 2000 sqft house costs less than 2x to build than a 1000 sqft house, but
within the same hypothetical neighborhood, will probably cost 2x or more"

That's certainly not true where I am. The lot is 75% or more of the total
value. Even if the bigger house is 4x the value for 1.5x the build cost,
that's still not 2x the total purchase price, and those are wildly optimistic
numbers. I suspect the same is true in most high-cost neighborhoods. Building
bigger nicer houses does improve the ROI _somewhat_ , but that's like an
optimization after picking the right lots in the right neighborhoods.

------
tonyedgecombe
[https://granolashotgun.com](https://granolashotgun.com) is an interesting
blog about the sustainability of these communities.

------
thatfrenchguy
Bigger houses -> Worse for the environment

~~~
ceejayoz
If it's built with wood, a bigger house is a larger semi-permanent
sequestration of carbon dioxide.

If it's being built in an energy efficient manner, it may actually wind up
better all things considered.

~~~
empthought
Leaving the constituent trees alive would be far more useful, if for some
strange reason you actually use carbon impact as a metric.

~~~
ams6110
Cutting trees, building something more or less permanent with the wood, and
planting new trees seems to be the most useful. Most timber used for
dimensional lumber comes from managed forests that are continually re-planted
as they are cut, not old-growth clear-cutting.

~~~
empthought
Old, large trees are more effective at capturing carbon than young trees.

Source: [http://science.time.com/2014/01/15/study-shows-older-
trees-a...](http://science.time.com/2014/01/15/study-shows-older-trees-absorb-
more-carbon/)

While good timber land management practices avoid the further loss of existing
old trees, they do nothing to foster the growth of more.

