Joe Cortright criticizes reports linking high median new home sizes to a renewed demand for McMansions. The market for single-family homes, he argues, locks out buyers of modest means. Only the well-off are buying.
A piece for City Observatory takes issue with those who claim "that the 'death of the McMansion' has been highly exaggerated." [...] "A closer reading shows that the apparent surge in McMansions is actually a bit of a statistical mirage. These analysts have overlooked a key limitation of the reported data."
From the article: "It's actually the case that American homes are only getting bigger if one believes that people living in multi-family housing either aren't Americans or don't have homes. [...] The only reason these big houses have increased as a share of total new housing is because the market for affordable, smaller single family homes has done even worse."
After the recession, the single-family market never recovered. Instead, "multi-family housing now makes up 40 percent of new home starts, up from 20 percent a decade ago. If we recalculated the median new home size including both multi- and single-family homes, the increase in the McMansion share would look much smaller." Additional data demonstrates that even among the rich, ownership of large homes is trending downward.
Read the full story: Misleading Medians & the McMansion Mirage
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One Hundred Miles
County of Mendocino
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The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
Montrose County
Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA)
The Pocatello Development Authority