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pinkytoe
12-19-13, 11:38am
I walk a lot in the hood and yesterday I went around the corner two blocks away and yet another of our little 50s bungalows was being demolished. I looked up the permit when I got back and some yo-yo is building a single family 4500 sf faux Craftsman style house with 4 bedrooms and 4.5 baths. The ones I have seen pop up have massive kitchens with endless quartz or wood counters, marble bathrooms, home theaters, blah blah. Just who are these folks making enough money to afford $20K property taxes every year? Who needs that many bathrooms? I would be embarrassed to ever say I needed that many. Does this excess ever stop? There are those who would say "aren't you lucky" to live in such a desirable area. Sure, I get to sell my home of 14 years because rich people are making the dirt it sits on unaffordable. I just loathe pretentiousness...

catherine
12-19-13, 12:03pm
I hate that, too!! Here in the Princeton area, the little bungalows and cape cods that were built in the 50s and which line the main street into town are also being pushed down so that Big Fancy Houses can go up.

Well, people can do what they want with their money, and there's plenty of it in Princeton. But that town has so much character and I hate it being turned into a cartoon of McMansionville.

Float On
12-19-13, 12:31pm
Sad.

ToomuchStuff
12-19-13, 2:04pm
I walk a lot in the hood and yesterday I went around the corner two blocks away and yet another of our little 50s bungalows was being demolished. I looked up the permit when I got back and some yo-yo is building a single family 4500 sf faux Craftsman style house with 4 bedrooms and 4.5 baths. The ones I have seen pop up have massive kitchens with endless quartz or wood counters, marble bathrooms, home theaters, blah blah. Just who are these folks making enough money to afford $20K property taxes every year? Who needs that many bathrooms? I would be embarrassed to ever say I needed that many. Does this excess ever stop? There are those who would say "aren't you lucky" to live in such a desirable area. Sure, I get to sell my home of 14 years because rich people are making the dirt it sits on unaffordable. I just loathe pretentiousness...

After you looked up the permit, what did you do? Look up and visit the person(s)? You ask who these folks are and make assumptions about them, when instead, maybe you should go talk to them and learn about them.
How would you feel, if you found out the house was being built for a family with multiple kids and a disabled member? Different from how you feel assuming some rich yahoo is screwing with your life? Instead, your making a choice that your opinions are the only right ones, and the rest of the world sucks with no facts.

Teacher Terry
12-19-13, 2:45pm
I also think it is sad to tear down older homes. If someone wants/needs a big home I say buy or build one where a house does not exist. It does ruin the character of an area to have an enormous house built in a neighborhood of modest homes.

pinkytoe
12-19-13, 2:48pm
You ask who these folks are and make assumptions about them
So far, my assumptions have been on target. I can only base them on what has happened with all the other huge houses that have gone in. This particular house is owned by a custom home builder who has built others around here and will be marketed to a particular kind of buyer. That much I do know.

ApatheticNoMore
12-19-13, 2:57pm
How would you feel, if you found out the house was being built for a family with multiple kids and a disabled member? Different from how you feel assuming some rich yahoo is screwing with your life? Instead, your making a choice that your opinions are the only right ones, and the rest of the world sucks with no facts.

Are there that many more people doing the multiple generation thing now or with disabled family members now or doing communal living now than in the past to justify all the McMansions? Facts would consist of statistical evidence of this, if not then one can most definitely deplore the trend! But what is going on with any given individual I've long said noone can possibly say without knowing it in detail.

On the plus side though: the neighborhood could be going in the other direction (instead of becoming mcmansionville it could be becoming a run down ever more dangerous ghetto) and one probably wouldn't like that either - that's also a risk one takes with home ownership, reverse gentrification :).

They don't tear down houses much around here, it's old old housing stock that you'll pay an ever increasing fortune for. It's the exact same house your grandparents or great grandparents owned only now the middle class can't afford it. They do however make them bigger sometimes by adding on to them! The adds-ons are mostly only in the most expensive neighborhoods though.

Gregg
12-19-13, 3:16pm
Our neighborhood of little 50's bungalows is safe and sound. All the McMansions are being built on the outskirts of the city in places that were corn fields last year. Lots of sameness out there. Big sameness, but nonetheless all the same. And not a tree bigger than my thumb, a non-chain or non-fast food restaurant, a hardware store, a library or any other sign of a neighborhood in sight. Plus they all bitch that it takes so long to get into the parts of town where everything happens (like by us). Its a very strange trend.

Gardenarian
12-19-13, 4:06pm
These things are so maddening. DH and I have accrued a sizable amount of $ and are thinking of buying one of the small cottages in our town as a rental property - part of the impetus to do so is to keep all these nice little homes from being destroyed.
Such a waste. All over the place, tearing down the pretty and building the ugly.

rodeosweetheart
12-20-13, 2:32pm
" DH and I have accrued a sizable amount of $ and are thinking of buying one of the small cottages in our town as a rental property - part of the impetus to do so is to keep all these nice little homes from being destroyed."
Such a cool idea. I was looking at something similar this mornign and thinking, I would like to preserve this house, and have a rental, and have something small to retire to when the time comes.

iris lilies
12-21-13, 12:19pm
here's what's going on right across the street from me! Brand new houses! There was a 1949 commercial building there for years, then it was torn down for development. We've been waiting 25 years for single family houses to go up. These are pretty nice. I don't like 2 things about them: proportions are off (they are too wide) and their cornices are chintzy. Oh, and all of those steps to the front door--that's not right. But otherwise they are nice and they have certainly increased our property values. The $4,000 lot that I purchased from the city and that adjoins my property is now worth $95,000. If I were 15 years older, I'd sell it.

I don't like seeing little old authentic houses torn down. But in our case, nothing nice was bulldozed and this is appropriate development.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb111/kprp/Dec2013010_zpsd3a20c1a.jpg

catherine
12-21-13, 12:45pm
Yeah, they don't look bad, IL.. But I see what you mean about the cornices--makes the building look like a facade from the side. But sounds like you've chosen your property wisely--

iris lilies
12-21-13, 12:57pm
Yeah, they don't look bad, IL.. But I see what you mean about the cornices--makes the building look like a facade from the side. But sounds like you've chosen your property wisely--

We got lucky. When we moved here houses on this street were boarded up, druggies, cats, and opossums inhabited them. Across the street the commercial building housed a women's shelter and we regularly found IV needles in our yard. Only 2 houses on the entire block were "done" while the others that were inhabited were works in progress. But our neighborhood is cool and full of people who work to make it better and we've been working toward appropriate development like this for years.

There are still two houses on this block not "done." Fortunately after 25 years I'm able to put ours in the "done" column. Now a lot of stuff needs re-done. :)

CathyA
12-21-13, 1:23pm
They probably put all those steps there, so they could have basement apartments with some windows.

rodeosweetheart
12-21-13, 2:33pm
They probably put all those steps there, so they could have basement apartments with some windows.

Yeah, they look like my friend's old house in Park Slope, so no doubt that is the historic era model. I think they are pretty.

iris lilies
12-21-13, 4:31pm
Yeah, they look like my friend's old house in Park Slope, so no doubt that is the historic era model. I think they are pretty. I agree, 11 steps in a straight shot are very New York Brownstone. Here a typical exterior flight is 5 steps, or 5 and a landing and 4 -5 more. It is ungracious looking to have so many steps all in one uninterrupted flight. Cathy, no apartments here, these are all single family houses.

dmc
12-22-13, 11:01am
We got lucky. When we moved here houses on this street were boarded up, druggies, cats, and opossums inhabited them. Across the street the commercial building housed a women's shelter and we regularly found IV needles in our yard. Only 2 houses on the entire block were "done" while the others that were inhabited were works in progress. But our neighborhood is cool and full of people who work to make it better and we've been working toward appropriate development like this for years.

There are still two houses on this block not "done." Fortunately after 25 years I'm able to put ours in the "done" column. Now a lot of stuff needs re-done. :)

i looked at a house in your hood back around 1990. It was 4500 sq ft and needed a lot of work. At that time there were some houses that looked great, and some just about to fall down. We weren't sure the direction the neighborhood was going, and we had kids, so we passed.

Im glad to hear it's getting better there.