American homes are monuments to conspicuous consumption
This week’s Surreal Estate column on SF Gate tackles the phenomenon of the monster house. “The rise of the supersized house is akin to the rise of the SUV. There are plenty of people who profess to loathe them, yet still they keep selling, at many tiers of the market. In fact, gargantuan homes are simply the full expression of a trend dating back 50 years. Like our waistlines and our lattes, our houses are growing ever fatter.”
Of course, this article doesn’t have much of a place in San Francisco, where there are only a few dozen ‘monster-sized’ homes. Our land is just too valuable and scarce to allow for buildings of that size. Instead, we get to pay monster prices for smaller homes…
But elsewhere, “developers have discovered that people want “more house,” even if it means having virtually no backyard, no chance of retirement and commuting a couple of hours to work. In the pursuit of the really big house with family rooms, catering kitchens, children’s playrooms, guest bathrooms, walk-in closets, master suites, media rooms, multiple offices and four-car garages, families seemed to have embraced the notion of “Haus über alles.”"
