McMansions – A 2000’s Fad?

The McMansion.  The poster-child of this decade’s housing bubble.  Huge homes with gaudy, sometimes ostentatious curb appeal.  Tall homes, taking up every inch of the buildable lot next to a 50 year-old one and a half story home a third its value.  A ‘McMansion’ isn’t a well defined type of home is as much as you know one when you see one.  Chicago real estate has plenty of examples in our neighborhoods.

Parallel to the often American motto “Bigger is Better,” the McMansion is now taking a beating similar to the SUV or Hummer did during the oil price spike of 2008.  But what happened when oil prices dropped?  People bought SUV’s again in droves.  What will happen to the future McMansion or large suburban homes when the housing market returns to health?   Will the American consumer go back to their collective motto and again demand a big home with a ton of square footage?

A recent article in Builder Magazine predicts the demise of the McMansion style home.  Not only is a McMansion often anti-’green’ which is the current trend in home building, the demand for larger homes maybe slipping.  Energy costs are a big part of it but future family and generational demographics may play the largest part.  Baby Boomers are down-sizing.  Generation X and Y buyers are tending to look to urban areas to live near work and play.  The first-time buyer and young professionals are waiting longer than ever to start families and don’t need or want a lot of space.

Certainly, there will always be buyers looking for as much house as they can afford.  It’s just that the next generation of new homes may not reach the size and proportion they did during the housing boom because these factors.  Some demographers estimate that up to 80 percent of new households formed over the next 15 years will be child-free as Baby Boomers empty their nests and career-driven Millennials postpone marriage and kids.

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