Texas and Charlotte had built McMansions—now they’re copying California designs

[sopas ej]

I usually don't post often from Fortune, but...

From Fortune:

Texas and Charlotte used to build huge McMansions—now they’re copying the California design tricks they once mocked


New homes are getting smaller—but it's not all bad news.
Getty Images

By Sydney Lake
Associate Editor
June 22, 2026, 11:29 AM ET

Just as Gen Z is resurfacing the Tuscan Mom and McMansion aesthetics of the aughts, the harsh reality is that new homes are actually getting smaller and more expensive.

The average new home in America is now 2,175 square feet, a 5.6% decline from the peak reached in February 2019, according to a new report from NewHomeSource shared with Fortune. That’s roughly 125 square feet gone from the typical new home over six years, which amounts to the size of a home office or a spare bedroom. More than 80% of the top 50 housing markets saw average home sizes shrink between 2019 and 2025. Even as homes shrank, prices kept climbing—median single-family home prices rose nearly 48% between 2019 and 2024, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

“I still hear people talk about the housing market and say, oh, the only thing that’s getting built are McMansions,” Ali Wolf, chief economist at Zonda and NewHomeSource, told Fortune. “The data that you [see] is actually quite the opposite.”

It’s the latest sign of housing shrinkflation—getting less for more—a phenomenon that has hit the majority of U.S. housing markets as new-home prices remain elevated. New homes are smaller, yet they’re far more expensive than they were before the pandemic.

[...]

[xzmattzx]

I'd probably actually rather have McMansions on the East Coast over what's in that picture. Where can you plant trees? How useful is a yard that small?

What's the difference between what's in the picture and a regular old townhouse neighborhood like this?

McMansions actually have room for trees that can mature and make the place look better in about 30 years. Say what you want about the tacky architecture, but there is a chance for reforestation and nature. McMansion neighborhoods, when on hilly ground, aren't really that much different than a place like the Hollywood Hills as far as density and little sections of nature between houses.

I also have an issue with the Canadian-style extra-dense townhouses, like these. There's little room for trees or anything else. And since the architecture is tackier and obviously newer, there isn't much character in the houses to improve the aesthetics.

For what it's worth, extra-dense urban places like South Philly and the rowhouse neighborhoods with seemingly no tree for a half-mile in any direction
also aren't the greatest looking places. They were criticized in their times. At least rowhouses normally are made of brick, which shows character over time.

[KVNBKLYN]

That photo is from Cork, Ireland showing typical semi detached housing, not some new, smaller housing trend in Charlotte or wherever. Not the best illustration for the article and makes me doubt the whole premise.

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/newly-...s-in-cork-ireland-gm2204861657-622289216

[sopas ej]

I don't like what's in that picture too; but I'm not a fan of McMansions either.

What the article does talk about, though, is this:

To be sure, smaller homes don’t mean they’re necessarily worse. Builders have gotten smarter and more resourceful about making do with fewer materials and less space to work. Where builders once pulled a floor plan from their vaults and rebuilt it like a machine, Wolf said, many are now working with architecture firms to cut wasted space and rethink how a home flows.

It’s a continuation of what John Burns Research & Consulting in 2024 called the “death of the hallway,” which amounts to eliminating circulation space rather than shrinking the rooms people actually use. They’ll do this by designing homes with fewer hallways and more flex space. “All that Tetris we played in the ‘90s has finally paid off. Instead of shrinking rooms to reduce overall home size, a common tactic among our architectural designers was to eliminate unnecessary circulation space,” JBREC wrote in its 2024 US Residential Architecture and Design Survey report. “Essentially, we’re Tetris-ing the functional rooms together, avoiding wasted square footage on non-functional areas like hallways.”

“California [became] kind of a running joke in the industry for construction, where they say ‘oh, California, there’s so much regulation, there’s so many limits to new home building,’” Wolf said. “But then builders in Florida and builders in Texas are now saying, ‘okay, we know we’ve laughed at them in the past, but what are people doing in California? Because California is basically the cutting edge of new design.’”

Basically, an efficient use of space.

Families used to live in Craftsman bungalows a hundred+ years ago after all, before they started building sprawling ranch-style homes. Unless you accumulate a lot of junk, you really don't need all that space a McMansion has.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by KVNBKLYN

That photo is from Cork, Ireland showing typical semi detached housing, not some new, smaller housing trend in Charlotte or wherever. Not the best illustration for the article and makes me doubt the whole premise.

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/newly-...s-in-cork-ireland-gm2204861657-622289216

Ah, OK. I was wondering about the cars and the license plates. I knew it wasn't in the US. I included the photo because it was in the article.

[iheartthed]

Charlotte has been building a lot of dense housing near its downtown for well over a decade. But Charlotte is just a giant suburb outside of the downtown area and car oriented density sucks, so it's not clear to me how they can make that housing style appealing outside of the downtown area.

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I'd probably actually rather have McMansions on the East Coast over what's in that picture. Where can you plant trees? How useful is a yard that small?

What's the difference between what's in the picture and a regular old townhouse neighborhood like this?

McMansions actually have room for trees that can mature and make the place look better in about 30 years. Say what you want about the tacky architecture, but there is a chance for reforestation and nature. McMansion neighborhoods, when on hilly ground, aren't really that much different than a place like the Hollywood Hills as far as density and little sections of nature between houses.

I also have an issue with the Canadian-style extra-dense townhouses, like these. There's little room for trees or anything else. And since the architecture is tackier and obviously newer, there isn't much character in the houses to improve the aesthetics.

For what it's worth, extra-dense urban places like South Philly and the rowhouse neighborhoods with seemingly no tree for a half-mile in any direction
also aren't the greatest looking places. They were criticized in their times. At least rowhouses normally are made of brick, which shows character over time.

Those McMansion neighborhoods in Texas might look better in 30 years? So its gonna suck and be ugly most of your /our life? Whats the point? By the time it might look nice, those homeowners could be 70 years old.

Honestly, suburbia in 30 years is likely facing a massive decline for QOL. By the time it looks "nice" it might be completely undesirable.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I'd probably actually rather have McMansions on the East Coast over what's in that picture. Where can you plant trees? How useful is a yard that small?.

Are you slow?

Because those unrenovated McMansions from the 90s and 00s are selling for over a million dollars now in the big east coast markets...and require another $200k-$300K to update them if you are gonna get rid of the Tuscan kitchen.

New homes, even single family homes, aren't being built on lots those sizes anymore. Anywhere. Unless they're true luxury custom homes (i.e. not McMansions).

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by LA21st

Those McMansion neighborhoods in Texas might look better in 30 years? So its gonna suck and be ugly most of your /our life? Whats the point? By the time it might look nice, those homeowners could be 70 years old.

Honestly, suburbia in 30 years is likely facing a massive decline for QOL. By the time it looks "nice" it might be completely undesirable.

This pretty much holds true for many new suburban neighborhoods throughout history though.

First-wave "streetcar" suburbs which are often highly desirable locations now were once treeless tracts consisting of the same/similar homes constructed by the same builder.

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by pj3000

This pretty much holds true for many new suburban neighborhoods throughout history though.

First-wave "streetcar" suburbs which are often highly desirable locations now were once treeless tracts consisting of the same/similar homes constructed by the same builder.

Those were built on grids though. Not the cul de sacs. Fairfax County VA has some of these cul de sac streets, but they aren't McMansion type developments. They're older, modest ranch homes mostly.
Is it nice with trees? I guess, but it's still crazy unwalkable and far from basic amenties. The only people walking around are those with dogs.

Loundon County is newer than Fairfax, and their older suburbs I can't say are charming or anything.

[mhays]

McMansions are often very fragile. Think of how they're sold -- often it's "more house for your dollar." They won't age well on average, and a lot of that's literally foundational-type aspects rather than things you can reasonably maintain.

In a metro that limits sprawl, neighborhoods tend to retain value even as their houses diminish with age, because leapfrogging to newer sprawl isn't so easy. But areas that don't do that will often see downward cycles in these neighborhoods. Maybe houses go for 2x the regional median when built, but a generation later they're 1.5x and so on.

[muppet]

whoa -that looks VERY British. Had no idea you built similar Stateside.







^We nickname them Legolands, and have been building in the same format for about 40 years. More popular up north, and notorious for being sterile.

They're symbolically the nadir of culture and history in the Harry Potter franchise, antithesis to Hogwarts. Privet Drive was chosen as such because the film studios were genuinely planted in such a housing estate and it was convenient to film nearby (since bought up and turned into part of the MGM studio tour).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mhays

In a metro that limits sprawl, neighborhoods tend to retain value even as their houses diminish with age, because leapfrogging to newer sprawl isn't so easy. But areas that don't do that will often see downward cycles in these neighborhoods. Maybe houses go for 2x the regional median when built, but a generation later they're 1.5x and so on.

Yeah, this. The cause of the decline gets disguised behind language like declining schools, high taxes, etc., but this is exactly what drives it.

[muppet]

Looking closer -Im pretty sure that pic is actually from the UK. The rolling countryside with hedgerows, the green and brown wheelie bins.

Edit ** ignore me, just reading the comment it's in Cork, Ireland.

Btw this is what they turn out like after a few decades (pics from Milton Keynes and Telford, notorious New Towns pioneering the style since the 70s).

The sterile landscaping will leaf out over time:








Before:





Still a cultureless, car-reliant desert, but not as bad as the start.

[sopas ej]

In southern California, they look more like this. This is an adjacent development to a friend's house, out in Chino (in the Inland Empire):
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9891115,..._ep=EgoyMDI2MDYyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

This is plan view:
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9887846,..._ep=EgoyMDI2MDYyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by muppet

Looking closer -Im pretty sure that pic is actually from the UK. The rolling countryside with hedgerwos, the green and brown wheelie bins.

We do have those bins in some U.S. cities but the photo is from Ireland:

Originally Posted by KVNBKLYN

That photo is from Cork, Ireland showing typical semi detached housing, not some new, smaller housing trend in Charlotte or wherever. Not the best illustration for the article and makes me doubt the whole premise.

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/newly-...s-in-cork-ireland-gm2204861657-622289216

[38 Geary]

This is what they look like in the Bay Area. These 3-4 story townhomes are all the rage these days. Not too many new SFHs being built anymore.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/cktEnRNHqcx1wPTb9
https://maps.app.goo.gl/D146PkpGeCa5TqYV9
https://maps.app.goo.gl/LfmRTxV1bLJbJbZn9
https://maps.app.goo.gl/3tYYHVNvyN98tGQF9

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

In southern California, they look more like this. This is an adjacent development to a friend's house, out in Chino (in the Inland Empire):
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9891115,..._ep=EgoyMDI2MDYyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

This is plan view:
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9887846,..._ep=EgoyMDI2MDYyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Do these houses not have yards?

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Do these houses not have yards?

Typically no, they're more considered side yards, with not much more space than an area for a grill or a couple of lounge chairs. Most of these types of developments come with a community center with pool, gym, communal space instead, as part of their HOA of course.

Here's what they typically look like:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/TZUHAYdzhbLS7x1i8

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Do these houses not have yards?

What 38 Geary said, although some do have small yards. My friend uses her small back yard as a vegetable garden, and she also has patio furniture and a pergola.

This is closer to where she lives; you can see the small yards.
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.991956,-..._ep=EgoyMDI2MDYyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

The houses at the end of the block have a slightly larger yard, as you can see here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9919584,..._ep=EgoyMDI2MDYyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Don't get me wrong, I honestly don't like these particular setups either. These are basically single-family homes that might as well be townhouses.