If there’s anything that typifies the boom times before the Great Recession, it is the McMansion, The Washington Post says. Those sprawling houses that proliferated the nation’s landscape in the 2000s, built by banks shelling out easy credit to fuel a housing bacchanalia they thought would never die.
McMansions—a suburban home typically between 3,000 square feet and 5,000 square feet—became the ultimate symbol of living beyond one’s means.
Looming over too-small lots, these cookie-cutter houses are often decked out with ersatz details, like chandeliers and foam-filled columns. While their features mean they can command a decent price, many of these houses are shoddily built.
During the recession, their construction ground to a halt, but with the recent recovery of the U.S. housing market they are coming back anyway.
As Americans have started building and flipping houses again, McMansions are back in style. Since 2009, construction of these homes has steadily trended upward, data from real estate website Zillow shows. The median home value of McMansions is also rising—and at a pace that eclipses the value of the median American home.
And though Skylar Olsen, a senior economist at Zillow, says young people today have far more interest in living in urban environments, those wanting to start a family are still moving to the suburbs for more room. About half of all millennials that purchased a home last year did so in the suburbs, according to Zillow data.
