Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Americans awaken to realize McMansions are a waste

McMansions are history. What had been conceived as status symbols for emerging wealth are now regarded as crass, wasteful mistakes in the wake of the housing bubble. Oversized, overpriced dwellings built a scant few feet apart from each other have fallen out of fashion, some new research has shown. People building new homes are opting for much smaller floor plans. Real estate and design professionals seem confident that the demise of the McMansion is permanent.

Day of McMansions ends in crisis

The housing bubble appears to are the peak of the McMansion, which has been lampooned simply by such terms as beginner castle and Hummer house. A return of demand for McMansions might be unlikely. As reported by TIME, a report on real estate trends by Trulia shows that the average square feet of floor plans in United States homes has gone down for the very first time in six decades. Homes within the U.S. had reached an average size of about 983 square feet by 1950. Trulia’s American Dream Survey shows a dramatic increase since then. By simply 2004, the average square footage of an American home was 2,349 square feet. Another study, the Truila-Harris interactive survey, found that only 9 percent of people polled were looking for homes of at least 3,000 square feet that are considered McMansions. A majority of the housing market, 64 percent of buyers, sought homes from 800-2,000 square feet.

Housing market reaches its brains

People within the housing industry think the downsizing trend within the housing market is here to stay. CNBC quoted Pete Flint of Trulia as saying that shrinking square footage could have a long-lasting impression . Numbers collected in a 2009 survey of builders are being borne out now. Nine out of 10 builders said they had smaller, cheaper homes on their construction schedule. When interviewed by simply CNBC, Kermit Baker, the chief economist at the American Institute of Architects, said design professionals are leaving the McMansion concept behind as demand moves to more practical layouts.Amid the wreckage of the economic downturn, Paul Bishop, vice president of research for the National Association of Realtors told CNBC that McMansions have become inappropriate.

Further reading

TIME

newsfeed.time.com

Trulia

info.trulia.com

CNBC

cnbc.com



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