Reviving The McMansion: What Was On Its Way Out Three Years Ago is Making a Comeback Today

Perhaps the new sign of fully recovered economy should be a McMansion? Or maybe our economy would be better judged by the size of the middle class?

In 2010, while we were still trying to figure out what went wrong with the federal stimulus and which bank was to blame for it all (answer: none of them, or all of them, or just Bear Stearns, depending on your perspective), Time wrote a piece on Aug. 20 entitled “The End of a Housing Era: McMansions Losing Their Luster.” The brief article starts with this interesting bit:

“New research delves into a harsh reality — with tough economic times in the background, large residences are no longer a given.”

I am pretty sure that large residences were never really a “given.” Still, let’s move on:

“Trulia.com’s 2010 American Dream survey notes that from 1950 to 2004, the average size of an American home jumped from from 983 square feet to 2,349 square feet.

But according a July 2010 Trulia-Harris interactive survey, that figure is poised to drop for the first time in six decades. Among individuals polled, only nine percent were looking in the McMansion range: a house covering at least 3,000 square feet, built in proximity to other palaces. In contrast, 64 percent of those polled were looking for dream homes of 800-2,600 square feet.”

Now, 800 to 2,600 square feet is by no means a small range, and even at the low end, 800 square feet is a far cry from a trendy “tiny home.” But, houses were getting smaller, Time said, and the economy wasn’t nearly as forgiving as it was in 2004.

But in a piece in the New York Times this weekend entitled “McMansions Are Making a Comeback,” we see the sprawling suburban home holding fast to the ropes, giving it the old college try, and truly pulling off a Rocky-esque revival.

“When the housing bubble burst in 2007, there was a glut of unsold inventory on the market, and the size of newly built homes began to shrink. In both 2008 and 2009, Census Bureau figures show, the median size of a new home was smaller than it had been the previous year. It seemed that after more than a decade of swelling domiciles, the McMansion era was over. But that conclusion may have been premature.

But how are people buying these homes, if the economy is, as the article in the NYT claims, “weak”? NAHB’s Rose Quint says that people who can get a loan, an altogether evaporating pool of Americans, are fueling the numbers behind home sales.

“People who are less affluent and have less robust employment histories have been shut out of the new home market. As a result, the characteristics of new homes are being skewed to people who can obtain credit and put down large down payments, typically wealthier buyers.”

So, what do you glean from all this? Is it that the economy is recovering and housing is reaching a natural equilibrium? Or is it that the size of homes skews toward the wealthy, which means fewer people are able to buy homes due to a shrinking middle class?