I've been lurking this forum for a good 6 months. One thing I noticed was a lot of posters seemed to be doing custom homes. I've sat here and drooled at the plans, the kitchens, baths & finished houses and actually hoped to make my own custom house thread eventually but it was not meant to be. There's not one piece of land to be found where we are. We did find an awesome 12 acres but it was nothing we could customize as the town the land was in was very picky about what could be built. Had we only bought the land, it would take us years to submit plans like the current builder did. While we did not want a home with 2 floors, we could not find a rancher that had the master away from the other rooms. We wanted a basement (hard to find around here) and a 2 car garage. If we couldn't have the garage we wanted enough land to be able to build one. After looking at houses from February until September, there is no way we would get that here. We ended up buying a beautiful 4 bedroom home, large master bath with my jacuzzi tub (yes, I will use it and know what it's like to clean) it has an office / library, gourmet kitchen with a gorgeous staircase in the foyer. While we wanted a porch, rock front and sun room we did not get those things because in order to afford the house we had to buy one someone else spc'd out. Since we live in NJ, the home of the McMansions, hubby & I have seen tons of them get built. We swore we'd never own one, yet, what we ended up with might be considered one by some. To me it is not, it is a 4 bedroom house that makes great use of space. There is not one inch of wasted space as none of the rooms have really high ceilings. Our house will be in a community with what we consider McMansions, fairly large (3,000+ sq ft) estate homes. We'd walk around them wondering why a builder would waste 1/2 of a house by not building rooms over the family room and leaving them open upstairs, so that you look over the railing upstairs, down below. I have no clue how someone would raise small children in those houses. The floor plans minus the wasted space are beautiful, but we just can't see living like that. I do understand why some people do, especially those that have their parents living with them. To me that makes a lot of sense. If our 2,700 sq ft 4 bedroom home is considered a McMansion by some, so be it. I might consider it a mini McMansion :) lol... I will say one thing, I will enjoy every minute of living in it and I'm sure we will be happy to have a newer energy efficient home instead of spending the same amount of money on an older 4 bedroom home that does not make as good of use as space as ours does.

When the word McMansion is hurled as an epithet, it comes from those who seem to genuinely hate the idea of people having the freedom to live as they wish. They are often the same ones who decry middle class flight from urban areas, and wring their hands over the alleged harm of urban sprawl. It is an attack on middle class prosperity, and against families in search of better schools and child-friendly spaces. Those who cry McMansion are every bit as contemptuous toward a subdivision filled with 2,000 sq ft vinyl clad homes with fake shutters and small, newly planted trees on 0.15 acre lots as they are of 4,000 sq ft homes on 0.35 acre lots, and of any size houses built on 2-to-5 acre lots. They don't like when the houses look the same; they don't like when a new house doesn't match the character of the older houses in the neighborhood. They don't like infill lots being developed. They are furious when an outdated 1,200 sq ft home with a leaky basement, decaying plumbing, electrical fire hazards, and cramped rooms is torn down and replaced with a more spacious, energy-efficient home designed to accommodate life in the 21st century. Why, oh why can't the middle class be herded into high-density urban communities, where they can provide a meaningful buffer between the rich and the poor? Why can't they be forced to endure a cost of living so high that they will forsake car ownership, and feel pressured to limit their family size? Why can't they just cry "uncle" already, and confess that the lives of hipsters, bohemians, affluent empty-nesters, and fashionable singles is superior to the middle-class aspirations of suburbanites?

A McMansion is to architecture what Thomas Kincaide was to the art world. Perfect!!! And look at what those TK giclee prints with some unknown artist putting a bit of real paint on are worth now. (Hint: It's not much at all.) And the opposite is true as well. You can spend less for something smaller and simpler, but people would rather spend the money on an overwrought, oversized house and pay it back in a mortgage because they consider that some sort of 'investment'" and then have large complex houses with minimal amounts of cheap furniture, because "furniture is not an investment". Pal good to hear from you again. Missed your words of wisdom. Agree with you 100%. I think it's part of the American dream to keep "moving up" to "better". Unfortunately bigger in so many cases nowadays doesn't equate with better. We would all be so much better figuring out how much square footage we really need and use and then build to that. I know that I could have built a larger house, (although mine is not small by most standards.) but it would have had to have been mostly a plain box and then I couldn't do things like moldings, or a beautiful fireplace, or room dividers. Plus why would we need bigger? Someone came in the other day to our build and made a comment how our master bathroom seemed small for the size of our house. Our master bath has a 68" wide vanity, a 70" space for a free standing tub, a 42" x 5' shower and a toilet room. Plus there's enough space to maneuver around the room. Why would we need more? We don't spend hours a day in the bathroom. Most would consider our master bedroom too small at 13' x 16'. It's big enough for our king sized bed, two nightstands and a 50" long dresser. But again, almost the only time we're in the bedroom is when we're sleeping. Compare that to the 17' 4" x 21' 10" great room and 15' 8" x 21' kitchen/dining area. We made our spaces right sized for how we live. If more people did that, they'd be a heck of a lot happier, and have more funds to create a truly wonderful house.

Not the kind of thing happening around me, but I've seen it quite a few times in the tony areas along our lakes or in beach towns or desirable urban neighborhoods. One family friend lives in a nice one story suburban ranch with a finished basement in a nice suburb of Detroit, and a giant two story house that takes up almost all of the lot went in next to her . . . it's happening all over her neighborhood and the same for my friend who lives in a nice suburban ranch in Chevy Chase MD, a suburb of Washington DC. Modest suburban homes aren't enough for the newer generation I guess . . .