"Canberra News, Views and Opinion"
Imagine an island 2 miles from the centre of Copenhagen, imagine a 200 room building on that island made out of two and a half million tons of solid granite. Imagine a harbour, and a helipad.
How many suburban Canberra houses would be worth that?
Well Private Islands has Kings Island going for a bit under $10 million.
Compare and contrast to what $1.6 million will get you in Campbell.
Nothing inflated in our market?
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you don’t even need to go that far. you can buy 10+ bedroom 1800′s mansion (plus guest house) estates in the French countryside for only 2-3 million Euro, compared with a 5 bedroom Country McMansion surrounded by scrub grass in Sutton for example.
Pretty sure that house is ‘Shopped.
I could have bought an island and mansion in Nicaragua for $250k.
The people there couldn’t believe my house in Australia was cost more than that on less land with no island
OK so Nicaragua isn’t on the top of everyones list, but its a nice place and many Americans are flocking to that part of the world to retire.
*points knowingly at the screen*
It definitely looks ‘shopped. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few ‘shops in my time.
Can you please explain what exactly is a McMansion? I see that phrase mentioned sometimes but never an explanation of what it means.
If it’s a house in the country on a big block, then WTF is wrong with wanting to live in one? What is wrong with wanting some space, a good standard of living and an asset that will actually increase in value as time goes by? Is it PC and trendy now to live in inner-city ‘sustainable’ concrete substandard apartments well on their way to becoming ghettos? Do people who live in houses now all get labelled as Bogans?
A mcmansion is a large house on a standard suburban block.
johnboy said :
Would you like to upsize your number of rooms for an extra 50¢?
johnboy said :
My favourite is the term ‘garage-mahal’
” A mcmansion is a large house on a standard suburban block.”
Built by McDonalds no doubt? Where on Earth did that rediculous name come from?
Further to Johnboy’s comment, they tend to be mass produced with little quality. Like fast food.
“5 bedroom Country McMansion surrounded by scrub grass in Sutton for example.”
Apparently this new name also applies to houses outside the suburbs. Sorry to harp on, but how anyone can possibly think owning a house (as opposed to an apartment) is a bad thing amazes me. Presumably it’s people who live in one.
The McMansion bubble is going to burst – the only question is when.
johnboy said :
Make that half a suburban block. Add “cheaply built to maximise block coverage and interior space at the expense of quality and with no no consideration for climatic suitability.”
SigmaOctantis said :
Haha, best you get over it. And given the term has been in use for probably 10 years or more I’m not so sure why your knickers are in such a twist.
McMansion also refers to our growing consumer-based society where the children of parents who grew up in modest sized houses with little in the way of luxuries cannot imagine their first home be anything less than a 4 bedroom new build with a plasma in each room and probably two in the obligatory home theatre room.
Also refer to post #10.
IIRC Australia has the largest average house size (new builds) of any western country. My retired in-laws are building a new home that has 4 bedrooms and 3 living rooms, in addition to an open kitchen/dining room.
Why? It is madness. They don’t need a house anywhere near that big. But they’ve been sucked into this belief that unless they build a house of that size nobody will want to buy it when they come to sell.
Deref said :
And with a 4WD or two out front.
There’s a pretty thorough examination of the McManson phenomenon on Wikipedia, might be easier to just look it up rather than asking us bewidered questions.
” Further to Johnboy’s comment, they tend to be mass produced with little quality. “
Fair enough, and there’s certainly a large number of those out there, IE Crace, Casey, Forde. Seeing as we’re inventing new words, here’s another one.
“McPostageStamp”.
johnboy said :
More specifically, a McMansion is a house built using the fast food mantra: Produce it fast, cheap and always upsize. Package it up and sell to those with a big apetite and little regard for taste.
http://thingsboganslike.com/2010/02/02/mcmansions/
Everything’s inflated in our market. In 1992, you could get a 3 bedroom standard house in Kambah for $140,000. Look at what that house costs now, yet wages have not increased to the same extent.
look at the lines of cars commuting back and forth from Cooma, Goulburn and Yass. Canberra people, forced to live outside Canberra by the unaffordable prices.
Unlike Sydney, which has little fibros and things in outer suburbs, our basic housing starts at brick 3 bedroom homes. And if you can find almost half a million dollars, you can have one.
for examples of McMansions (or poor taste/excess money more broadly) see here:
http://www.allhomes.com.au/ah/act/sale-residential/omalley/121476610
or here:
http://www.allhomes.com.au/ah/act/sale-residential/harcourt-hill/121899910
Holden Caulfield said :
Which is the other thing… people don’t build homes any more, to live in. They’re “investments”. And they look like bland hotel rooms as a result. People don’t live in them, they occupy them for a time.
yellowsnow said :
+1
EvanJames said :
There are two bedroom monocretes and weatherboards in O’Connor and fibro places in Narrabundah. But these are ‘inner’ suburbs so they are still expensive. For O’Connor I would think about $650,000. Not many first home buyers could afford that.
The island looks very James Bond.
poetix said :
Sorry EvanJames, I managed to put some of my comment about James Bond into your sensible comment. I don’t know how I did that.
Keijidosha said :
Awesome! That’s exactly what I understood McMansions to be too: big houses on little blocks, built to a price budget, and where possible make sure to flaunt the fact that you have intentionally done exactly the opposite of sustainable & passive solar design.
poetix said :
I hadn’t even noticed until you mentioned it!
I’ve been watching that Renovators show, and there’s a fibro in Blacktown (or is it the weatherboard?) that cost like $300k+. We just don’t have that here. Even Quangers’ fibros are nudging around $400k, generally.
So we don’t have that breadth of market. If a person’s willing to start humble and work and save, their options in the $200-300k range are a flat in Queanbeyan, rather than a fibro in Blacktown.
yellowsnow said :
Most of those houses in Harcourt hill appear to ooze quality on quite reasonable blocks.
Wish I could afford some of them but good luck to those who can. I think the term McMansion refers more to mortgage stressed couples who bought beyond their means than any problem with the houses themselves that tend to be filled with the finest eurpean appliances, furnishings and swimming pools.
johnboy said :
Usually designed in exceedingly poor taste, and totally without sympathy to or consideration of neighbouring existing building design.
http://maps.google.com.au/maps?hl=en&ll=-35.33728,149.092573&spn=0.000018,0.020556&t=h&z=17&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=-35.337365,149.092508&panoid=gQlxMmOtHM2JIjstxpq2bQ&cbp=12,103.16,,0,0
Ben_Dover said :
OMG, That’s my house you…
Nah, just kidding, but in all seriosness, i really do pitty the neighbors of the owner of this cashed-up-bogan-box, it really looks like: “cherryl thought it was real classy and she won, like, lotto, so she made it”
“Compare and contrast to what $1.6 million will get you in Campbell.”
A 3d picture of a house???