Development
Montgomery's McMansions will need to find a new purpose
Skeptics of Montgomery County's proposal to allow homeowners to build accessory apartments more easily claim it will change or harm single-family neighborhoods. But recent trends in housing suggest that those neighborhoods will change anyway.
The future of this Sandy Spring McMansion is in question. Photo by the author.
Slightly less than half of Montgomery households live in single-family homes today, and pretty soon they may no longer be the most common type of house in the county. According to the 2010 American Community Survey, just 49.9% of the county's 353,000 households live in single-family homes. Another 31% live in apartments or condominiums, while the remaining 19% live in townhomes or duplexes.
Demand for big suburban houses or "McMansions" has waned in recent years, due to their high cost and shrinking households. Young adults aren't interested in them, either. Even those who prefer single-family homes would take a smaller house or a townhouse to be closer to jobs and amenities.
As a result, newly built homes are more likely to be apartments or townhomes. Data from the MoCo Planning Department shows that of 29,000 homes approved for construction here in the coming years, just 7,900 or 27% of them will be single-family homes. Those houses are likely to be smaller as well.
Nonetheless, there are still plenty of McMansions in Montgomery County: the 2010 ACS says that one-fourth of MoCo homes have nine or more rooms. What will happen to them? These houses will have to adapt to living arrangements they were't built for, and the single-family neighborhood as we know it may have to change as well.
Rainbow Mansion. Photo by dweekly on Flickr.
Some of these big houses might attract single adults, who find they can afford a nicer home if they share it with other people. Group houses aren't new to Montgomery County; in fact, they're legal if there's fewer than 5 unrelated adults in the same house. But they do present an opportunity to create small "intentional communities," where residents seek not only a common roof but a common purpose as well.
Take Rainbow Mansion, a 5,000-square-foot home in Silicon Valley home to a group of twentysomething tech workers. The home's founders describe themselves as "intentional community of driven, international, passionate, and socially conscious people trying to change the world":
It was more than just a luxury home full of brilliant young minds ... The Rainbow Mansion was an experiment in a new type of cohabitation. The house began hosting hackathons and salons in its library, inviting Silicon Valley's best and brightest to participate. "Right away it set itself in motion," [co-founder Jessy Kate] Schingler says. "It had this sort of accidental mystique about it."A house that was probably built for a nuclear family has instead become the nucleus of a larger community. Of course, Montgomery County isn't Silicon Valley. But it's easy for me to imagine something like Rainbow Mansion appearing in a house near the Great Seneca Science Corridor one day. After all, there are over 500,000 jobs in MoCo, and young adults who seek the city life but work in Gaithersburg will probably live nearby rather than commute from the District.
A NextGen home in South Carolina. Image from Lennar's website.
Other large homes may still draw families, but they'll be extended, multi-generational families, with grandparents, adult children, and other relatives and friends. They're living together to share expenses but may want some level of privacy and autonomy.
Today, MoCo's extended families can apply to build a "Registered Living Unit" in their home, basically an accessory apartment for a relative or home employee who lives there rent-free. There are only about 500 of these in the county today, but as multi-generational families become more common, we may see more of them.
Even home builders are picking up on the trend, adding apartments for extended family in new homes. Noting that nearly a third of American families have "doubled up" with relatives or friends, national builder Lennar Homes recently introduced a design called the "NextGen" home.
Floorplan of a NextGen home in South Carolina, with separate apartment highlighted in blue. Image from Lennar's website.
Called a "home within a home," the NextGen home looks like a typical single-family house on the outside, but inside is a separate apartment with its own private entrance, kitchen, and bathroom. Lennar hopes it'll be popular with immigrant families in which multiple generations live together.
While these homes are only being built in a handful of states like South Carolina and California, they have yet to make an appearance in the DC area. But Montgomery County's growing immigrant population suggests there may be a market for homes like this here.
For much of the 20th century, Montgomery County was known for big houses, great schools and affluent families. It's not surprising that civic groups call single-family neighborhoods the "backbone" of the county. While those neighborhoods may not be going away anytime soon, changing trends and changing demographics suggest they may look quite different in the future.
 | A planner and architect by training, Dan Reed is interested in suburban retrofits. Dan works for the Friends of White Flint, writes his own blog, Just Up the Pike, and serves as the Land Use Chair for the Action Committee for Transit. Dan lives in Silver Spring.    |
Comments
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It's unfortunate for many who banked on their sub-dividion being the new Potomac or Chevy Chase, but it's also unfortunate for those building along the Bay when storms keep flooding their houses. Homeowners can't expect the government to bail them out every time they make a dumb choice.
by Thayer-D on Jul 5, 2012 10:35 am • link • report
by Xavier on Jul 5, 2012 10:43 am • link • report
by spookiness on Jul 5, 2012 11:00 am • link • report
by Del. Sam Arora on Jul 5, 2012 11:07 am • link • report
by Jasper on Jul 5, 2012 11:26 am • link • report
I've thought a few times about how inefficient this is, economically. Maybe these homes could be modified to split them in two relatively unequal pieces, with a one bedroom apartment and two bedroom apartment.
Other than the traffic/parking argument, I haven't heard any good arguments why someone should not be allowed to modify their property in this way.
by Michael Perkins on Jul 5, 2012 11:30 am • link • report
The traffic/parking argument isn't a particularly good argument, either.
by Alex B. on Jul 5, 2012 11:38 am • link • report
by selxic on Jul 5, 2012 11:40 am • link • report
You're right, the term "McMansion" does get thrown around a lot. For the purposes of this article, I used houses with nine or more rooms (the highest category available in the Census), though the ideas I mentioned could be applied to smaller houses as well.
by dan reed! on Jul 5, 2012 11:44 am • link • report
Fire code? Safety? Living Space? These are all things that affect the person who owns the building or who lives in it.
With accessory dwellings, a house that used to have one or two occupants and one car could be modified to have four occupants and two or three cars. That does affect the neighbors, potentially. Parking more than traffic, most likely.
Once again, it comes down to cars taking up way too much space to store. In fact, for the floorplan in Dan's article, a parking space is about 70% of the same floor area of the accessory dwelling for that house.
by Michael Perkins on Jul 5, 2012 11:46 am • link • report
by Michael Perkins on Jul 5, 2012 11:47 am • link • report
by Socket on Jul 5, 2012 11:49 am • link • report
by Thayer-D on Jul 5, 2012 11:51 am • link • report
by zac on Jul 5, 2012 11:57 am • link • report
How is that first pic not a McMansion? It looks like one to me.
by MLD on Jul 5, 2012 12:10 pm • link • report
by dan reed! on Jul 5, 2012 12:12 pm • link • report
Face it, the term, McMansion is the same as NIMBY or HATING...it means whatever the person writing it meamns.
Reminds me of the stories talking about Vincent Gray's Hillcrest "Mansion."
by HogWash on Jul 5, 2012 12:56 pm • link • report
by selxic on Jul 5, 2012 12:56 pm • link • report
For the purposes of this blog, whats relevant is the sheer size, I think, not the architectural details.
by AWalkerInTheCity on Jul 5, 2012 1:07 pm • link • report
by David on Jul 5, 2012 1:18 pm • link • report
by selxic on Jul 5, 2012 1:32 pm • link • report
In Atlanta, "roommate" floor plans turn up as infill in gentrified areas. These essentially create 2 bedroom houses with good sized master bedrooms with bath. Sometimes these have been built as townhouses or in small groups of 2 or 3 that are attached to each other.
the point is--one can come up with any number of departures from the usual vernacular house in the DC area.
by Rich on Jul 5, 2012 1:55 pm • link • report
Open floor plans do not work well with this definition, I think.
by Miriam on Jul 5, 2012 1:56 pm • link • report
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/the-next-slum/6653/ is an especially non-rosy counterpoint to this optimistic article.
by sb on Jul 5, 2012 3:14 pm • link • report
For these reasons I find this article incredibly short-sighted. One cannot forget the tails of history, no matter how "new" today's economic fad may seem. Even the !Kung, whose radically different values compared to the Western experience teach communal property ownership, have definite huts to help define the boundaries between family and society. As participants in the human experience, we must understand the constancy of these values.
by funInSun25 on Jul 5, 2012 9:23 pm • link • report
by stevek_fairfax on Jul 5, 2012 11:35 pm • link • report
What I didn't realize, but I now see from the comments, is that apparently McMansion also implies poor build quality. So if a house is large but built well, then it's not a McMansion? The teardowns in Bethesda (infill) are usually large, but the build quality seems to be good and they use high-end materials, like Hardiplank instead of vinyl siding on the outside.
by Justin on Jul 6, 2012 7:50 am • link • report
by selxic on Jul 6, 2012 9:09 am • link • report
Maybe you where kidding, my snark radar is notoriously bad, but people haven't changed, just the technology. There where McMansions in the Victorian period as well, just better materials. As for good construction, I saw brownstones falling apart in Brooklyn that had newspaper stuffed in the walls for insulation, and stone layed so it splayed out to nothing. Greed and sloth have always been with us, what we've abandoned is any common sense of what is beautiful. One reason today's McMansions are much uglyer than a typical 1920's homes, regardless of size is that we've abandoned the study of scale and proportion, tools that would improve a building in any style. Instead we rely too much on novelty and extravagance. Not that these where absent in the good ol'days, but there dosen't seem to be the tempering hand of composition, something that was actually studied in the past.
by Thayer-D on Jul 6, 2012 9:27 am • link • report
Brutalist architecture is presently going through this culling; it is generally not appreciated. We may be lamenting some of the finer examples of this, that currently is being torn down -- like Christian Scientist Church on 16th.
by goldfish on Jul 6, 2012 9:36 am • link • report
Surviving through weathering the elements and time is completely different than being torn down becasue a style is out of fashion. Selxic was talking about good construction, not being out of style.
As for the "culling" of modernism, I'm not sure you can equate the protests against the demolition of the Post Office, Penn Station, or Grand Central to the demolition of the Christian Scientist Church on 16th. Not saying you're wrong to like that church, but an honest appraisal of peoples reaction to the demolition of various buildings of the past doesn't support your assertion that one style is as loves as another. Disharmhoy in music and abstraction in art will always have their place, but again, I don't think most people will miss a poured in place concrete box, but I could be wrong!
by Thayer-D on Jul 6, 2012 9:58 am • link • report
"In the Rockville community of Aspen Hill, which I represent..."
You have a horrible way of representing your community (which is not part of Rockvilleb btw). Thankfully, not everyone in the State House is a sellout who says one thing to appease the constituents and then does the exact opposite, jeopardizing an extremely important piece of legislation.
It's one thing to be against something, but it's another to lie about it (especially to your constituents). I hope you enjoyed your short career in politics since you can't possibly hope to hold any representative position again.
by The Marylander on Jul 6, 2012 11:03 am • link • report
by zac on Jul 6, 2012 11:07 am • link • report
by Thayer-D on Jul 6, 2012 12:00 pm • link • report
Also, while the following is an interesting factoid, it means nothing without some historical context:
"According to the 2010 American Community Survey, just 49.9% of the county's 353,000 households live in single-family homes. Another 31% live in apartments or condominiums, while the remaining 19% live in townhomes or duplexes."
Could the author tell us what the percentages were at earlier periods of time?
Finally, I think that as long as there are families with children, there will be a desire for single family detached homes.
by Andrew Pigeon on Jul 6, 2012 3:21 pm • link • report
I like the casa colonica model, where families of farmers divide up the building and grow food on the former lawn for sale in the city.
Or banks could make them into halfway houses, or homes for Alzheimer’s patients.
No matter what, they’re going to be low-value, and only appreciated by folks with short-term interest in living there and getting out. Just like right now.
by Sydney on Jul 6, 2012 6:06 pm • link • report
People put forth the extra effort necessary to preserve things they like when faced with "the weather". Consider Mt. Vernon, which would have fallen down due to decay if not for the devotions of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. The difference between what is saved and what is not comes down to the weather and the cost to restore -- where the line falls depends very much on how well regarded a building is. And this distinction is presently playing out on buildings at the end of their design life, 30-40-50 years old.
by goldfish on Jul 7, 2012 4:53 pm • link • report
It pretty much comes down to money, like everything else, not the weather, since the weather affects all buildings. If you put in the money to maintain a building, you will always mitigate the weather's effects, but again, it comes down to money, or 'capital' as republicans prefer.
"where the line falls depends very much on how well regarded a building is."
If only... How many "well regarded" buildings where lost only for profit or some ideoligical reason like the modernists and their idea that traditional cities where obsolete.
"Design life" is another term that ought to be retired. While it's true for some of the worst suburban commercial building types, proper maintenance can stretch 40 years into 140, if there's money. Maybe financial incentives ought to be provided to maintain or repurpose existing structures for the sake of sustainability, but if someone want's to make more money from the property, no amount of free money will convince most landlords to maintain an underbuilt lot, unless we all agree its worth preserving.
by Thayer-D on Jul 7, 2012 7:26 pm • link • report
Nothing lasts forever. Even the pyramids have deteriorated. The life of a contemporary building is a few decades, because at a certain point it is cheaper to replace than rebuild. Stick buildings are the shortest-lived; masonry is the longest.
People maintain and restore things they love. If not for that, nothing would survive past its useful life.
by goldfish on Jul 8, 2012 7:00 am • link • report
I think we're saying the same thing, just coming at it from different angles. You say love, I say money, but while I agree these seemingly contradictory statements can co-exist... "Nothing lasts forever" and "People maintain and restore things they love", you need money to show a building love.
I guess my issue with the term "design life" is that it seems reponsible for the idea of built-in obsolesence, especially in an time of diminishing recources when we should be promoting sustainable construction. In our time of constantly evolving technologies and movement of people, the psychological benefits of a sense of permanence should not be dicounted.
by Thayer-D on Jul 8, 2012 4:08 pm • link • report
However, about "design life": this is dictated by the economic conditions that make it desirable to build something in a given location in the first place. These change with time, so it does no good to build something that will outlive its usefulness, when it will need to be torn down. Examples: RFK stadium; Hine middle school; the Benning Road Pepco plant; the 900 NJ Ave trash transfer station. These are well-constructed buildings that have to be torn down at great cost, because their original use is no longer supported -- so why build it to last longer?
by goldfish on Jul 9, 2012 12:17 pm • link • report
1 - You might run out of recourses to tear down and re-build constantly, as has happened throughout history, so re-purposing a building is the most sensible thing to do.
2 - Temporary buildings don't do anything beyond sheltering to create a sense of place and well being.
Take a walmart in the suburbs, it will never contribute to something greater, so maybe there's a justification for cheap construction. Build a department store in town and it might become an office building or apartment building. RFK doesn't "need' to be torn down except that one can make more money from a larger arena. Like I said earlier, the idea of "design life" has it's place, but look at the new article on the "obsolescence" of many inner city DC neighborhoods, and one can see how subjective that term can be.
by Thayer-D on Jul 9, 2012 3:54 pm • link • report
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