McMansions Define Ugly in a New Way: They’re a Bad Investment
INVERNESS, IL - MARCH 24: A home stands in the later stages of construction March 24, 2006 in Inverness, Illinois. Nationwide new home sales plummeted more than 10 percent in February to their lowest levels in nine years.
Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty ImagesIn the late 1990s, Americans started referring to tract-built luxury homes popping up in the suburbs as McMansions, a biting portmanteau implying that the structures were mass-produced and ugly. There was also the implied snark that their denizens, however wealthy, lacked the sophistication to tell filet mignon from a Big Mac.
Lately, these homes have been the subject of fresh scorn, thanks to an anonymously authored blog that breaks down the genre’s design flaws in excruciating detail. Posts lambasted builders for erecting garages bigger than the homes they’re attached to, dropping giant houses on tiny lots, plus shoddy construction and a mishmash of contrasting styles. (Gothic Tudor, anyone?)