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Originally Posted by Susie Cougar
winterh is right about the quality and workmanship etc. This is one component of your home which causes it to be labeled a McMansion.
You are also right that a large house does not automatically become a McMansion. What makes it a McMansion is that it is too big for the lot that it is put on. It doesn’t fit in with the other homes around it. It just takes up too much of the available space.
Also, many people feel that it’s too big of a home for too few people. That’s where the negative connotation comes from.
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I disagree. The McMansion term is not unique to the lakes region, and is generally used to describe a large house that is relatively non-unique and built according to predesigned plans, usually in close proximity to similar houses that lack unique characteristics. It became widely used, to my knowledge, when builder like Toll Brothers started booming, turning out large numbers of houses with a big footprint (eg: 5,000 sqft and up), but where the construction techniques and finish materials were inferior to "actual" mansions. Think commodity granite countertops and stainless steel appliances from big box stores vs. marble counters and kitchen equipment from Sub Zero and Viking (though including the latter does not make it not a McMansion).
House size relative to property size is not as much of an indicator, IMO, as the general high volume production aspect of the house itself.