Why McMansions Are Gradually Becoming Abandoned Across the U.S.

The Rise and Crushing Fall of Oversized Dreams

Something shocking is happening in neighborhoods across America. Those massive, imposing houses that once symbolized success and the American Dream are becoming ghostly reminders of unsustainable excess. Grist went so far as to say there are 40 million throughout the country that “no one wants.” The bulk of McMansion properties have been attributed to the housing boom and subsequent crash in the 2000s. Part of the problem on desirability is the high upfront cost and ongoing real estate taxes of such a large residence, coupled with the high energy bills of heating and cooling what’s typically an unnecessarily large house with high ceilings.

The era of “bigger is better” is crumbling under the weight of reality. Recent data from the National Association of Home Builders reveals that the average size of new homes has been shrinking since 2015, hitting a low in 2024 not seen since 2010. According to recent surveys, many homebuyers under 40 prefer smaller, more manageable homes. The shift away from McMansions is clear, with sales of homes over 4,000 square feet declining by 11% in the last year alone.

Maintenance Costs That Drain Bank Accounts

The hidden monster lurking in every McMansion is the relentless appetite for maintenance dollars. Due to the immense size of a 5,000-square-foot McMansion, its upkeep costs are often higher than those of smaller homes. The expenditures are approximately 2% to 3% of the total price of the McMansion, or $9,000 to $20,000 per year on average. This cost might vary based on the home’s age, condition, and location. That’s not a typo – we’re talking about the cost of a decent car every single year just to keep the house from falling apart.

Maintenance and taxes are just some of the few things that homeowners usually overlook when buying a bigger house. The average annual of maintenance is 1% of the home price, which is means bigger maintenance cost for bigger houses. The property taxes are at 1.3% of the home price, which will once against cost more in bigger houses. When you’re dealing with a million-dollar McMansion, that percentage becomes a crushing financial burden that many families simply cannot sustain long-term.

Complex Rooflines Creating Expensive Nightmares

Many McMansions built during the early 2000s are now reaching the end of their lifespan and require complex, expensive repairs for which homeowners are unwilling to pay. The elaborate, multi-angled rooflines that were supposed to make these houses look impressive have become their architectural Achilles’ heel. Professional roofers charge premium rates for working on these complicated designs, and finding the source of leaks becomes an expensive treasure hunt.

The inside of McMansions are designed in order to cram the most “features” inside for the lowest costs. Often this is done inefficiently, resulting in odd rooflines, room shapes, and hastily covered up contractor errors. These lead to major upsets years down the road such as leaky roofs, draft problems, and structural deficiencies leading to mold, mildew, and other problems costing thousands of dollars to repair. What looked like luxury twenty years ago now reveals itself as poor planning that homeowners can’t afford to fix.

Energy Bills That Break Household Budgets

Heating and cooling a McMansion is like trying to air condition a small office building with residential equipment. Part of the problem on desirability is the high upfront cost and ongoing real estate taxes of such a large residence, coupled with the high energy bills of heating and cooling what’s typically an unnecessarily large house with high ceilings – which are particularly bad for heating, as heat rises. Quite simply, it takes more energy to heat or cool a larger property. This means that heating and cooling systems need to work harder regardless of how many people are actually occupying the space, leading to an increase in household pollution.

With energy prices rising and environmental concerns growing, families are discovering that their dream home has become an expensive burden. Those soaring two-story entryways and cathedral ceilings that once impressed guests now represent hundreds of dollars in wasted energy every month. Even with modern HVAC systems, the sheer volume of space makes efficient climate control nearly impossible.

Foreclosure Patterns Show the Strain

The data tells a sobering story about what’s happening to these oversized homes. Those 322,103 properties with foreclosure filings in 2024 represented 0.23 percent of all U.S. housing units, down slightly from 0.25 percent in 2023, and down from 0.36 percent in 2019 and down from a peak of 2.23 percent in 2010. While foreclosure rates have generally declined, the properties that do face foreclosure often include these difficult-to-maintain large homes.

States with the highest foreclosure rates in 2024 were Florida (1 in ever 267 housing units with a foreclosure filing); New Jersey (1 in every 267 housing units); Nevada (1 in every 273 housing units); Illinois (1 in every 278 housing units); and South Carolina (1 in every 304 housing units). Many of these states experienced significant McMansion construction during the boom years, and now face the consequences of that oversized legacy.

The Twenty-Year Abandonment Cycle

A disturbing pattern is emerging across American suburbs – McMansions sitting empty for decades. While posting to a subreddit based on the discussion of McMansions, one Redditor shared photos of a property that they claim has been abandoned for over 20 years. “Bottom line, it is sitting unfinished and empty for 20+ years,” wrote the original poster. This isn’t an isolated incident; it’s becoming a widespread phenomenon.

In a study published in the journal ScienceDirect, research indicated that homeowners who built a McMansion were also more likely to expand on their already enormous homes and incur additional debt – a problem that may have happened here on the initial build, with the owner possibly running out of money to complete the project. “The more plausible explanation was either a buyer that kept changing their mind about things as the home was being constructed, or a builder that went bankrupt and took all the customer’s money before it was completed,” they wrote.

Generational Rejection of Oversized Living

Millennials and Gen Z, who now make up the largest share of buyers, are much more interested in affordability and sustainability. Recent data suggests that a significant portion of new single-family homes are being built smaller than previous decades. This represents a dramatic shift away from the McMansion mentality that dominated the housing market for decades.

Young buyers aren’t just avoiding these homes – they’re actively rejecting them. The values that drove McMansion construction – status, excess, and conspicuous consumption – clash directly with modern priorities like environmental responsibility, financial prudence, and community connection. The remote work revolution sparked by the pandemic has changed what Americans want in a home. No longer bound by commuting distance, buyers value functional layouts over grand foyers or two-story living rooms. Zillow’s 2024 consumer trends report found that 73% of remote workers want a dedicated office, but only 18% desire extra-large living spaces.

Construction Quality Issues Coming Home to Roost

Because we started treating our houses as disposable during the mortgage booms of the 1980s, 90s and 2000s, we ended up with houses built to last not even 25 years. This leads us to our next point: McMansions are a seriously bad investment. The chickens are coming home to roost, and homeowners are discovering that their “forever homes” were built with twenty-year lifespans.

The signs of shoddy construction aren’t always easy to identify. However, when big building corporations such as Toll Brothers and Pulte Homes, consistently push the “More House for Your Money!” angle, it’s a safe bet that corners are being cut somewhere, and you know they ain’t messing with that double-sink in the master bath! The impressive facades hide fundamental structural problems that become expensive disasters as these homes age.

Remote Location Problems in an Urban Age

McMansions are also often built away from prized land and popular zones because of their size. They are often built in the middle of nowhere due to their sheer size when millennials and Gen Xers are looking for amenities nearby like the rise of urban hub centers. Unless you have 8 children and both sets of grandparents, most people with families will not find 100% efficient use for a home that sizes in at over 3,000 square feet.

The isolation that once seemed like privacy now feels like banishment from modern life. With gas prices rising and commutes becoming less tolerable, these distant developments are losing their appeal. Families want walkable neighborhoods, not compounds that require car trips for every errand. The suburban sprawl that enabled McMansion construction now works against their marketability.

The Resale Reality Check

Newsflash, fam: McMansions ain’t selling. To some, it is definitely a newsflash. After decades of rhetoric about what makes a home valuable (spurred in part by HGTV and other media outlets claiming that stainless steel and other trivial pursuits LITERALLY add ten gazillion dollars to the value of your home!!1), it’s come to light that the market has fundamentally shifted away from these oversized properties.

Real estate agents across the country report that McMansions sit on the market for months longer than comparable smaller homes. Even when they do sell, prices often fall short of what homeowners hoped to recover. The math is brutal: high maintenance costs plus declining demand equals negative equity for many owners. They’re trapped in houses they can’t afford to keep but can’t afford to lose.

Zombie Foreclosures and Abandoned Dreams

Among those pre-foreclosure properties, about 7,100 sit vacant as zombie foreclosures (pre-foreclosure properties abandoned by owners) in the fourth quarter of 2024. That figure is slightly above the number in the prior quarter, but down 20.2 percent from a year ago. The latest count of zombie homes extends a long-term pattern of those properties representing only a tiny portion of the nation’s total housing stock, currently at just one of every 14,591 homes around the U.S.

Those properties have gone from a plague in many areas of the U.S. following the Great Recession of the late 2000s, when millions of homes fell into foreclosure, to a distant memory in most communities today,” said Rob Barber, CEO for ATTOM. “That’s unlikely to change much in the near future given that record home prices are keeping home-equity levels at historic highs and foreclosures cases dropping. On top of that, the supply of homes is so tight that even when a property is abandoned, buyers are more likely to swoop in and pick it up.” However, many of these “swooped up” properties are McMansions that become rental properties or are demolished entirely.