What qualifies a home as a McMansion?

A house excessively larger than purpose or common sense requires, built with status as the primary objective and of cheap materials with shoddy workmanship, on land for which the owners have no regard and with neighbors who have more say in what the owners do on their land or to their house than do the actual owners.

It's the fast food mindset imported into the housing industry - fast, cheap, poor quality and super-sized with just a dash of status symbol "keeping up" to season the mix.

A house where one or more of the rooms (except one guest bedroom and one bathroom) are not used every day.

A house were you cannot hear each other hollerin' or you from one side of it to another. (Do you know that some people actually all on cell phones to find each other in a big house?)

More than 500 square feet per person.

Houses that have larger than an attached two car garage.

Any house, which sits on a standard lot (not acreage) whose monthly mortgage payment is more than $1,500 per month for a standard 30 year fixed mortgage.

Any that has more than three different roof lines visibile from the FRONT of the house...

Houses less than 80 - 100 years old that have higher than 10 foot ceilings.

Anything with granite countertops.

Ditto marble bathrooms,

Anyplace where teenage girls talk with that "valley-girl, Paris Hilton" phony accent... "like okay?"

Any place whose covenants and restrictions will not let you park your car on the street, hang your wash on a closeline or grow a garden!

Donsgal

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Life is what happens while you are making other plans. (John Lennon)

Yep. These are my thoughts as well. I owned a McMansion a few years ago in TX. HUGE house but you had to look hard to find the yard...

RedTartan

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Actually if much of that were true than they would have more than a few brain cells between them and know the value of a dollar and never would have bought that place to begin with.

I see it as not so much the size and cost. But the way they are built.

Here they seem to grow from corn or hay fields.
The exterior as stated is just like the others on the block. brick or foe stone in the front and vinyl in the back. They use architectural shingles to give it a look of slate.

There is no plywood on the structure. It's OSB all the way.
The entry way has a well built oak stair case with a pergo floor.
The kitchen and bath are done with what is really cheap tile. Less than 50 cents per square foot when bought in bulk. You know that "muted beige" color. The cabinets look like solid wood but it's plywood.
The rest of the house has cheap trim and carpet. But big thick crown molding.

The house is 2500-4500 sf and if you and your neighbors don't close the curtains you can look from one end of the block to the other from your bathroom. Unless you live in an area where they make all those little culdesacs you know for privacy in the corn field.

The unfortunate reality is it's a term that is used by some people who are jealous because others have a "bigger" or "nicer" home than they do. People who seem to have some sort of inferiority complex going on, and spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about what the other guy is doing.

I did see the term elsewhere in an article a while back and it defined the McMansions as being 5000 sq ft, and fancy looking.

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It's when there is so much square footage that you need a riding vacuum cleaner and intercoms to locate family members.

Hereya go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMansion

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Society has gotten to the point where everybody has a right, but nobody has a responsibility.

"McMansion" is a pejorative term for a particular style of housing that, as its name suggests, is both large like a mansion and while superficially a good value, possessing standards of quality (within a developer) and ubiquitous like McDonald's fast food restaurants, lacks "nutritional" value (in the sense that a house nurtures its occupants). ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMansion

Looked it up and that pretty well fits my feelings

I used to nanny for people who lived in these McMansions. Maryland is covered with them. I have never once been jealous of these people or the house they live in. The houses are generally designed and made with crappy worksmanship, the yards are useless because kids can't play on pesticide-sprayed grass, and the people living inside barely know each other. I would rather live in a cardboard box than live in one of those monstrosities. You rattle around inside it because there are no comfy nooks to settle into, the furniture is all for show and really uncomfortable, and rooms are never used, which is a waste to me. It seems that the parents in these houses are obsessed with the newest, latest, and coolest gadgets/toys/status symbols and that everything they buy is meant to be a "trophy" to their affluence. The kids are nothing more than trophy kids, meant to be trotted out at holidays and patted on the head, then sent back to the rec/media room to play videogames. The parents don't interact with the kids much, leaving that to the hired help. And the kids...spoiled monsters most of the time. One kid I nannied for had his own carosel (with moving horses) in the basement. He had hovercrafts from Sharper Image magazine, everything he could ever wish for...no wonder he had some mental issues (ADD, SID, LD, and even tried to kill himself at age 5) His father never once threw a ball around with him, and he was neverallowed to do anything on his own. He was 12 y/o and had never made a sandwich before! I know I'm making generalizations about people who live in those houses, but I've seen enough to make my blood curdle and I know I'd rather be homeless than live in one of those houses.

Jealous? I think not.

I inherited a Farm and a McMansion. Both were free and clear. Guess where I moved?

I grew up in a McMansion but my real home was back on my Grandparents Farm.

Gee, then, my little 1176 sq ft doublewide must be a Mcmansion! I never realized! I live there alone (over 500 sq ft per person), it has a little gable in the front (3 rooflines), and cathedral ceilings (the peak is about 11 feet).

But I have a homemade chicken coop and a salvaged old shed instead of a garage, or even a carport, and my lawn is totally dandelions and crabgrass, so I guess I lose Mcmansion points on those, huh?

-Barb in Montana

"You're just jealous" can be applied to nearly anything by anyone. Unless one can verify jealousy as someone else's motive it is nothing but a convenient catch-all escape route.

In fact, the reverse may be true -- the McMansion dweller may envy the "simple" lifestyle and removal from the "rat race" required to sustain the mansion. I have personally heard and have read that expressed many times.

Often people living some version of the McMansion lifestyle have commented to us something to the effect of, "I would love to live a freer lifestyle as you do if I could just afford it." We are so accustomed to that statement that we no longer bother pointing out that they have many times as much money as we have. Now we just chuckle and let it pass -- they were only daydreaming anyway.

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By George, I think we have a winner! That would fit my interpretation of a mcmansion. When I first started seeing these monstrosities, I kept thinking who would want to live in a barn sized house unless they had 16 kids. These will become the white elephants of the future, just like the monster houses built in early 1900s by the neuvou-riche of that time. Unfortunately todays mcmansions are much more numerous and no where as nicely built. Also probably harder to chop up into apartments and other uses when lean times come again.

Really you think about it and these mcmansions resemble nothing so much as super giant mobile homes in a vast mobile home court.

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"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

To be honest, I was really disppointed with the Not So Big House book - I actually found it a bit ridiculous and not so not so big.

Frog - you are right (and I'm as guilty of it as the next poster). We have friends who recently moved to town and the only place they could find that fit their price, able to walk to work etc. was a McMansion in a new subdivision here. I just about fell over when the guy told me where they'd bought because they are so not what I assume when I think McMansion.

Why make that exception?

I'm not sure where you live but we just moved from an area that has mortgages like that - and the houses are older, smaller and in not the best shape.

See above - a lot of those houses have been added on to and added onto.

So - do the granite counter tops our neighbour just got count? She's upgraded after about 20 years of plywood - in her renovated miner's cabin The whole house is maybe 1000 sq ft - lol.
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I know this thread was supposed ot be in fun - so sorry for being a party pooper. I guess I just don't see how this, rather than being neighbourly actually helps anything.

According to some of your descriptions I guess I live in a McMansion, although I never thought of it as such. We have a three car attached garage (which is usually full of tools, my tablesaw, feed, firewood, etc.).

There are only two of us, but there are three bedrooms and three full baths (there were four bedrooms, but we turned one into my sewing room).

The house is 3000 sq. ft. which obviously is "McMansion portioned" for two people. However, there are also eight dogs living in it plus several cats and the occasional baby chicks, baby possums, etc. Plus we have a multi-angled roof line.

I have had professional cleaning people come in to clean the house (once for my daughter's wedding and just recently after my neck surgery).

Eventually we plan to turn the attic space above the garage into a media room (right now it's used as storage for all sorts of things, including sweet potatoes we harvest in the Fall, etc).

We had sod put down around the house because my daughter's wedding was scheduled just two months after we moved into the house (which we had built). The rest of the "manicured lawn" is hay field that we keep mowed...including weeds (we mow around wild flowers) that are allowed to creep into the sod. We believe that natural grasses and weeds do better during the summer.

My house sits in a former hay field (but we own the hay field and there will never be another house sitting on it). I grow an organic garden, we eat venison and have chickens, we rarely eat fast food and a lot of people think we're nuts for living out in the boonies, but we can't imagine living any other way.

What do you think? Is my house a McMansion?




Oh, I guess my sister's house fits the criteria since she has a pool and pool house behind her log house. Her house is over 2500 sq. ft. and she's done most of the work herself - painting, putting up trims, etc. Our uncle built her kitchen cabinets and staircase and our Daddy wired the house for phone and electric.

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Oh my gosh!!! You just set off the McMansion Alarm!! For shame, for shame. I mean really, how can you live with yourself knowing you live in a "McMansion"?!? And to add insult to injury, it apprears you have an evil SUV in the driveway! The horror!!

Seriously, live your life the way you see fit, and don't worry about what other people think. That is a very nice house, and you should be very proud of it. Good living on YOUR terms is the best revenge.

Wayne