The 1980s launched a style of homes that came to be known as “McMansions.” These types of homes have often been criticized for their size, craftsmanship and architectural design. They also developed a reputation for being a bad investment.
This is because despite their often luxurious appearance, they are typically built using cheap or mass-produced materials like stucco, fake stone veneer and vinyl siding, said Kate Wagner, The Nation’s architecture critic and founder of blog McMansion Hell. She said many of the homes are built this way to accommodate a large number of amenities or an excess of rooms.
“You have the movie theater, you have the great room and all of these, you know, entertainment spaces. And that was really considered what the dream home was,” Wagner said.
Yet, Americans have continued looking for larger homes. And they’re still buying McMansions.
“Buying a home is seldom a bad investment, and even when it is kind of a tacky suburban McMansion,” said Joel Berner, a senior economist for Realtor.com. “What they are is a good place for a family to grow up and have space.”
Home sizes in the U.S. have been increasing for decades, while household sizes have decreased, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1993, for example, the median square footage of a new single-family home was 1,900 square feet, and in 2023 it was 2,286 square feet. The average family size shrunk from 2.61 to 2.51 in that same time span, according to the bureau.
While Americans want larger homes, the U.S. has been underbuilding since the 2007 housing crisis and Great Recession. This supply gap, or the difference between homes built and households forming, reached 3.8 million in 2024, according to Realtor.com.
Data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s database shows that construction of both single-family and multifamily homes has not yet recovered to pre-Great Recession levels.
Construction costs have inflated, too, and potential tariffs on steel and aluminum would only exacerbate the issue, the National Association of Home Builders has said.
That’s made McMansions an appealing option for first-time homebuyers looking for a more affordable home with lots of space, Berner said.
Low housing inventory can also drive up desire for McMansions in suburbs near large metros, like in Bergen County, New Jersey, outside of New York City.
“These are the houses that I sell most often. I was just in a bidding war of this exact type of house,” said Melissa Rubenstein, a real estate sales associate with Corcoran Infinity Properties in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
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