A slightly different take on an Uber-McMansion

[Daddymem]

Perhaps it is the lack of context of the McMansions...

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/07/03/the_house_that_ate_cape_cod/

Too many people around here have no problem plopping a 2,500 sf 2-1/2 story colonial on a postage stamp lot in the middle of a swarm of bungalows and cottages.  Just take a look around you before you choose your architecture...a Victoria's Cottage wouldn't fit in on one of those colonial and uber-cape cul-de-sac subdivisions (mini weeping willow 100-foot on center please!) any more than an adobe would in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  The things I could show you on Nantucket...enough to make your heart sink...they don't build houses, they build compounds.  Everyone knows the guesthouse has as much a right to a private swimming pool as the main house does, right?

[Amanda_931]

Well, yes.  But some things will probably never fit into the environment.

a couple of years ago, on another list, some gal was really happy that they had bought the last lot in a vacation subdivision on one of the Outer Banks.  The developers gave the couple a choice of three looks/floor plans--none, IIRC under 2000 sf.  So here they were preparing to not build but have built a second home that might get used for a month a year, for something well over 180,000 bucks, in a subdivision where everything was cheek by jowl.  On a barrier island.

Bearing in mind that the island just south of Okracoke had a thriving freight transfer business in the 19th century (from deepwater ocean vessels to shallow draft ones suitable for the sound), complete with something on the order of 24 saloons and bars, and all of this was destroyed by a hurricane overnight--both the saloons and the shipping infrastructure-- (not to mention the moving of the Cape Hatteras light some years back) a couple of us thought that this wasn't the world's smartest idea.  and she kept saying things like, "but it's such a good investment, how can we lose?

So, what will that subdivision look like when a handful are destroyed, more have sand built up into them, one or two remain more-or-less habitable?

Will what's left have achieved quaint old Cape Cod  (Outer Banks) status?

[DavidLeBlanc]

Just saw this on the news a few days ago:

Developers are so frantic for land in the Seattle metro area that they're buying perfectly sound 50's and 60's ramblers at full market price and then razing them to put up a McMansion with another 2-300,000 tacked onto the price, which was 2-300,000 to start with!