Apr 11, 2008

Subprime housing crisis hits McMansion country

It appears that the U.S. housing crisis has come to McMansion country.

Million-dollar fixer-upper for sale: five bedrooms, four baths, three-car garage, cavernous living room. Big holes above fireplace where flat-screen TV used to hang.

Just as the foreclosure crisis has hollowed out poorer neighborhoods, "for sale" signs are sprouting in upscale developments so new they don't show up on GPS navigation screens.

The crisis has hit especially hard here in Loudoun County, Virginia, where upscale developments have supplanted horse farms over the past fifteen years.

The county has also ranked as one of the nation's fastest growing in recent years as developers built thousands of super-sized, amenity-laden houses to keep pace with the booming high-tech economy.

Without lenders willing to deal in over assertive mortgages, large numbers of foreclosures would not be a problem -- especially McMansion foreclosures.

These houses are sometimes nicknamed "McMansions," disparaging both their extravagance and their look of mass production -- like hamburgers from a McDonald's restaurant.

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