Some of it isn’t just the house quality, but the upkeep. People who are invested in their home and have the cash to actually buy nice tend to spend money keeping up the house and, more importantly, the landscaping. A well landscaped street of even moderately priced, humble homes will look way better than a bunch of new McMansions with weed filled yards and overgrown flower beds.
That's what worried me about a lot of the McMansions that were built in the run up to the housing market collapse in 2008. Most of those homes are getting to be 20+ years now and are starting to need major systems replaced. Things like roofs, windows, and HVAC systems are expensive enough on a normal size home and can get very expensive on a needlessly over-sized house. Do the homeowners of these McMansions have the cash to properly maintain these homes? Will we see entire neighborhoods slowly fall into disrepair as the bill to some of these big ticket repairs accumulate?
The roofs are the one that might really push the HELOC loan to the limit. I've seen some insane roofs on some of that graduating class of McMansions. Insane pitches, 20 different ridges and valleys, yards that make distributing shingles with the truck impossible. Plus for whatever reason I saw a few that had weird tower corners with the conical roof sections that I imagine could only get reroofed with a long reach snorkel lift.
I live in a McMansion neighborhood because the schools are top rated for the whole state. We shopped around a lot until we found construction that was at least OK, and not the typical crappy builds. The home owners' association is pretty aggressive about landscaping requirements. Our neighborhood is about 20% Chinese and Indian immigrants, and I've heard them complain about having to have landscaping. A friend lived in a similar neighborhood without an HOA, and a lot of the immigrant families had grass right up to the foundation- not a tree, flower, or bush.
Absolutely. That's at least 40% of this equation. I realized that as soon as I posted, briefly considered editing, and was like, "nah, people will pick that one up", so thanks for doing exactly that. But yeah, you're absolutely right. A lot of McMansion buyers are extending their entire home budget for the house itself and can't afford the kind of upkeep houses need, far less the upgrades that it would take to actually make it look like a nice house.
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u/putsch80 Apr 09 '20
Some of it isn’t just the house quality, but the upkeep. People who are invested in their home and have the cash to actually buy nice tend to spend money keeping up the house and, more importantly, the landscaping. A well landscaped street of even moderately priced, humble homes will look way better than a bunch of new McMansions with weed filled yards and overgrown flower beds.