What do we prove with huge houses we can’t afford to pay for or even fill?

By David McElroy · April 17, 2012

About 10 years ago, I was at the home of a new political client for a photo shoot involving his family. He lived with a wife and two teen-age kids in a large, sprawling house that looked really impressive. When I got there, the candidate wasn’t home yet, but his daughter was expecting me and let me in.

I told her I wanted to look around at the different rooms to find the best place to shoot pictures. She started showing me the downstairs and then mentioned a large den upstairs with a fireplace that she thought might be nice, so we went to look. We walked up a massive staircase that led to two upper floors, one of which partially looked over the foyer and living room.

We walked down a couple of halls and I started feeling as though I was in a motel. There were doors everywhere. We looked at the den, but I finally asked her about all the other rooms.

“What’s in all of those rooms?” I asked. “It’s just the four of you who live here, isn’t it?”

It turns out that most of the rooms in the house where empty. She showed me. They were large and bare. The daughter couldn’t explain why they had all that empty space and she didn’t seem to understand why I found it odd to have all that much space for so few people.

That candidate didn’t run a serious race and he lost. I never dealt with him again. The only news I ever heard from him after that was when he had declared bankruptcy and lost his impressive home. So what was he trying to prove with that big, empty house? Why have so many people ended up with big houses they can’t afford and certainly don’t need?

I think some of it is cultural. We developed an attitude that bigger is better. And if you live in a neighborhood with houses that are big and expensive, that made you a better person. Or something like that.

The average home size in the United States has almost doubled since 1970, according to the National Association of Homebuilders. This trade group says the average house was 2,700 square feet in 2009, up from 1,400 square feet in 1970. We also have far bigger houses than the rest of the world, on average. According to these figures reported by the BBC (and attributed to the U.S. Census Bureau), the average home in the United States was 2,303 square feet, compared to 1,475 square feet for Denmark, 1,216 square feed for France and just 818 square feet in Great Britain. (The figures from the Census Bureau and the homebuilders are slightly different because the homebuilders would have used the size of new construction and the Census Bureau would use the average of all homes.)

I’ve been thinking about this in my own life for years, partly because I live in a place that’s too big for me. I have a townhouse that’s about 1,450 square feet. How much space do I really need? Probably about a fourth of that. But I pay for this much space and I heat it and cool it. Why? I’m not sure. It’s just the way we do things, I guess.

I’ve been thinking that maybe many of us would do better if we returned to smaller houses. For those in bigger cities with expensive real estate, prices are so high that home sizes aren’t huge for anyone other than the very wealthy. But for many of us, we’ve ended up in places far too big. Is this a problem? Yes, I think it is.

As long as real estate values are headed higher, it seems easy to keep moving to bigger and better houses, because the higher value will make it worth selling for a profit. But what about when values are flat or decline? What about when we face an inevitable economic downturn and it’s suddenly a struggle for people to make those monthly payments? All of a sudden, we’re faced with a crashing housing market, a financial sector teetering on the verge of collapse and angry people looking for others to blame that they’re in foreclosure.

Even if we can “afford” to have mortgages — in the sense of being able to easily make the payments — is it a smart thing to do? More and more, I’m thinking that it makes sense to build or buy something tiny for whatever cash you can come up with, then saving money until you can actually pay for something a bit bigger. I know there are tradeoffs — and I know that different size tradeoffs will be appropriate for different families — but I see far too many people who live in huge houses that they absolutely don’t need, yet they’re struggling to afford their lifestyles.

Take a look at the video below. It’s about a family of four — husband, wife and two kids — who live in a 168-square-foot house that they built for $12,000. It’s certainly not ideal (and it’s smaller than what I’d want with kids), but it’s what they needed to do after the economic downturn destroyed their business and led to their losing their home in 2008. Because they live in a tiny house that’s paid for, they’re able to save for another house — and when they buy it, they’ll own it outright.

So how did we ever get into this situation? As I said, I think culture has a lot to do with it, but I think lobbying pressure from the homebuilding industry, the financial industry and Realtors had a lot to do with it. Those groups have powerful lobbies in Washington. Do you think it’s just a coincidence that federal tax policies have subsidized the building and financing of bigger and bigger houses?

Realtors, builders and bankers want us to buy bigger and better houses. Builders want to build the houses. Realtors want to sell them. Banks want to make interest from the loans. (Speaking of loans, even if you’re not one of those with 30-year mortgages that might never be paid off, have you ever looked at an amortization schedule for your mortgage? Do you realize how much of your monthly payments are pure interest for the banks? Plug your own numbers in here. You might be surprised to see half of your monthly payment going to the bank, not toward your principal.)

If you want to take a chance by having a big, expensive house that could become a dead weight around your neck in times of financial trouble, that’s your business. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me to reduce costs and save money. Our culture has turned away from saving and from being prepared for the future. The recent downturn should have us reconsidering the wisdom of many of the decisions we’ve made.

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When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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