Many U.S. Neighborhoods Beginning to Fight, Question Rampant "McMansion" Growth

The McMansion backlash has officially begun.

Reeling from the gigantically unnecessary homes that have been appearing in neighborhoods across the nation, communities aren’t standing by and letting them flourish unimpeded any longer, reports MSN Real Estate. Some local governments have imposed stricter building limits and temporarily halted new construction while they try to get a handle on the explosion of these 4,000- to-10,000-square-foot homes.

“It’s happening in lots of places,” John Nolon, counsel to the Land Use Law Center at Pace Law School in New York.

TODAY’S HOMES ARE BIG!
Huge, even. You have probably noticed this. From Florida real estate to the Pacific Northwest, and everywhere in between, the average U.S. home swelled from 983 square feet in 1950 to 2,349 square feet in 2004, a tidy 140 percent increase in size. Industrial-grade stoves. Four-car garages. Nine-foot ceilings. Everything about them is monstrous.

Outsized houses, and criticism of them, isn’t new. But it’s more overt in modern times, said Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute, a research institute tied to Virginia Tech University. Arguing over the size of homes and their impact was once confined to ritzy areas, but now that mega-mansions have started to appear in established city neighborhoods and suburbs nationwide, the backlash is in effect.

So what’s behind the less is more mentality? People with a lot of money are looking back to close-in communities or near big cities. They have more character. And shorter commutes.

THE WHITE HOUSE NEXT DOOR
Communities that have been dealing with an influx of large homes include Lakewood, Colo., Arlington, Va., Cresskill, N.J., Austin, Tx., and Atlanta, Ga. With more than 40,000 local governments in the United States, you will see some take stringent precautions to prevent McMansions, while others won’t bat an eye. In DeKalb County, Ga., which includes part of Atlanta, a real estate developer built a replica of the White House.

After awhile, people just won’t stand for it.

Austin, Texas, exemplifies both the McMansion craze and the backlash that has followed it. Several neighborhoods like Tarrytown and Travis Heights have seen incredible growth in terms of home size, according to Kathie Tovo, president of the Bouldin Creek Neighborhood Association, who lives south of downtown in an area that also changed. Tovo and her husband bought a home down the street from their own as an investment.

After remodeling it, the home next door got knocked down and replaced by a 4,000 square foot condominium complex.

“What had been not a modest-sized cottage has been replaced by something hugely bigger than what’s the scale along that street. The entire yard is now lined by this massive house,” Tovo said.

Tovo and many elected officials worry that this Texas real estate trend will put stress on older infrastructure and too quickly raise property values (and thus, property tax rates).

“Some people have made the argument that this is infill,” Tovo said. “But it really isn’t; you don’t end up with more people, you just end up with the same number of people in bigger houses.”

TIME TO CALL TIMEOUT
With residents in a state of upheaval, communities are trying different things to get a handle on the rapid changes and maintain character.

• In January, Atlanta’s mayor imposed a moratorium on housing permits in five upscale northeast communities in the northeast part of the city. That has since expired, but the city is looking at rewriting zoning codes to limit what gets built and where.
• In Marin County, Calif., a 1997 “big-and-tall ordinance” requires a design review for any home that’s more than 4,000 square feet or over 30 feet high, according to Brian Crawford, deputy director of the Marin County Community Development Agency.
• In February, Austin instituted interim rules to limit the maximum size of a new single-family home on any lot that previously had a house. For now, a builder can build up to 2,500 square feet, or 20 percent larger than the home that was removed, or a 0.4-to-1 floor-to-area ratio for the lot. A task force will further study the issue.

Not everyone is looking to kick the McHouses while they’re down, however. In Austin, some residents are torn about the regulations, calling them a threat to their ability to sell existing homes and land for top dollar. It is a concern that speaks to what some call the “upside” of large houses — within reason:

1. Bigger homes can bring a lot more tax revenue to a small town that doesn’t have much of a commercial tax base.
2. People who have lived in an area a long time and bought their house cheap stand to make a lot of money as property values appreciate.

GOING FOR THE GREEN
As in the environment. One strategy some governments have pursued in trying to discourage larger houses, or at least reduce negative impact on the environment, is to make them pay their way, energy style. In Marin County, Ca., planners are now making sustainability a priority by requiring that any home 3,500 square feet or bigger must meet the energy budget of a 3,500 square-foot home. In short, the bigger the house, the more efficient it has to be.

In Pitkin County, Colo., which contains Aspen, if a new home is more than 5,000 square feet, builders must provide onsite renewable energy (such as solar panels) or else they are subject to a $5,000 fee to the Colorado Office of Resource Efficiency, which uses the money for renewable energy projects elsewhere. If the house is 10,000 square feet or more, the fee goes up to $10,000 if no onsite renewable energy is provided.

THE END OF THE LINE?
Studies suggest that for increasing numbers of home buyers, bigger is no longer better. Many baby boomers now need less space. The average American home size, which zoomed starting in the 1980s, gained just 25 square feet from 2001-2004, according to the National Association of Home Builders. While there are still plenty of people who want houses of 4,000 square feet and larger, the backlash is just getting started, say observers.

In places like the South Florida housing market, where land is at such a high premium, do not be surprised if this becomes a huge issue in the next decade.