'McCondos' A 'Warning Shot' To The Bubble

The New York Times looks at a trend that may indicate the beginning of the end to the housing bubble. "For more than a decade, McMansions have been a fixture on the American landscape. Now apartments are being supersized, too. Make way for the McCondo." "On Fisher Island, near Miami, a condo developer is offering penthouses of 20,000 square feet, more than eight times the size of the average single-family house. In a Las Vegas suburb, a custom-home builder is developing high-rise condos topped by 16,000-square-foot apartments. And in New York, some luxury pads now on the market measure over 10,000 square feet, gargantuan by Manhattan standards." "This week Deborah Grubman and Sharon Baum gave a guided tour of a floor plan for one of the jumbo apartments. In addition to a master suite that could comfortably house a family of four, the apartment will feature seven other bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, a drawing room, a dining room, a family room, a media room, a library and two wet bars, one attached to the master suite. 'So if, God forbid, you should get thirsty at night, you don't have to go all the way back to the kitchen,' Ms. Grubman said. At nearly $4,200 a square foot, that yields an asking price of $35 million, not to mention the $26,000-a-month maintenance fees." "With every real estate agent, developer, homeowner and mortgage banker in the country trying to figure out what direction the market will move next, supersize condos may represent a warning shot. 'One word that came to mind is elephantiasis,' said Robert Fishman, a professor at the University of Michigan. 'It's the disease or syndrome of an individual or species that just before the crash there's this huge expansion in size.'" "'It's like raising your voice at a crowded cocktail party,' said Robert H. Frank, who is a professor of economics at Cornell University. 'If everyone is speaking loudly, you have to raise your voice a little louder to be heard. They just want something that feels spacious to them, but when the houses and apartments all around have gotten bigger, for a place to confer a feeling of spaciousness, it's got to be bigger than before.'" "In Manhattan, the emergence of these jumbo apartments uncannily evokes the grand co-op buildings of the late 1920's and early 1930's, built just in time for the start of the Great Depression." "'Home is an expression of self,' said Setha M. Low, a professor of environmental psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. 'And the more of it, the bigger you are.'"