General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Your house destroyed our privacy" - this is what McMansionization looks like in LA
Click on the links to see new big houses dwarfing smaller oneshttp://www.trbimg.com/img-5446f25d/turbine/la-1999481-me-adv-mansionization-furor-03-fo-jpg-20141021/950/950x534
Pam Roberts-Malay shows the signs she posted in her windows after the house next door was replaced with one roughly twice the size as the old one, marring her views of Century City. "Your house destroyed our privacy," one sign says. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-mansionization-20140505-story.html#page=1&lightbox=80103727
"None of us are opposed to expansion and development -- when it's respectful of the neighborhood," Traci Considine says, showing a "before" photo of a home under construction in Faircrest Heights that she believes demonstrates "mansionization." (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
http://www.trbimg.com/img-5366e68a/turbine/la-1798545-me-0314-mansionization-5-als-jpg-20140504/750/750x422
Kathleen Clark, left, and Beth Marlis look from their backyard at a two-story house under construction in Faircrest Heights. Clark and Marlis brought in mature trees to try to preserve their privacy. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
Return of 'mansionization' has some L.A. homeowners grumbling
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Builders are snapping up smaller, older homes, razing them and replacing them with bigger dwellings. Increasingly, sleek, square structures are popping up along streets known for quaint bungalows.
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But neighborhood groups have begun mobilizing, asserting that rules meant to control building sizes are still too porous. Critics argue that builders have exploited loopholes bonuses that allow extra square footage to erect homes too large for their lots. The recent surge of complaints prompted Michael LoGrande, director of the Department of City Planning, to tell lawmakers that more stringent controls might be needed.
In Hollywood, for example, members of a neighborhood group objected to a spec home exceeding 3,000 square feet, being built on a Stanley Avenue block lined with older, smaller homes most of them under 2,000 square feet. Aggravated by the "out of place, enormous" residence, Amy Aquino of the Sunset Square Neighborhood Assn. said the group hired a land-use consultant to examine how it was allowed.
"Everything they were doing, hideous as it is, is all completely legal," Aquino said.
The builder behind the home, Amnon Edri, said that as long as his project meets requirements, it shouldn't be a problem.
"If the city code allows it, and you want a bigger house, you have the right to a bigger house," he said. "This is America. It's a free country."
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)this oversized tinderboxes then lose them because they took out a mortgage they could not afford.
AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)There is a visa program in the US that gives a visa to any foreigner who invests 500k in America.
For the first time these visas are sold out this year.
The CCP comes down hard on corruption. They will kill you, especially if politics don't roll your way.
Chinese businessmen are building these assets first as a way to get money out of China and secondly as bolt holes for their family if everything turns to shit.
Times are very good for fung shue (sp?) savvy builders in LA
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)But you should be able to build a home of your choice on your own property. It actually is better for everyone because the home values go up for the entire neighborhood.
JustAnotherGen
(31,681 posts)Ruined our borough with one of those cheap drywalled fugly things. I don't blame these people for being upset.
Price has nothing to do with quality.
Warpy
(110,908 posts)if the places weren't done in hipster architecture, ugly offspring of the merging of Bauhaus with Frank Lloyd Wright, horrible boxy things that belong more in a strip mall or isolated on huge acreage than in a neighborhood. Adjacent neighbors, used to seeing plantings against a house wall at a respectful distance, will now be confronted with blank concrete they can reach out and touch, as long as the place doesn't have huge fishbowl windows that stare directly into their own houses.
If they had expanded the standing structures up and out, it would be very different.
JustAnotherGen
(31,681 posts)If someone added and extension on that two bedroom one bath tiny colonial three houses down built in the 1760's - I'd be fine ith that.
Many of the federalist homes in our town were extended out the back.
The Victorians have pretty sun rooms.
The arts and crafts - they are good - but you have to do what we did inside. Lose a room for closet space. Expand the kitchen door and knock down the L - that's the only way you can get your appliances in.
I just don't understand why someone would tear down some pretty little bungalow built 60/70 years ago.
Do these people understand they are tearing down plaster walls?
We actually looked at a Wright home in disrepair - funny you mention that. But it wasn't in a Walkable front porch community so we ended up here!
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)a design board would set limits on appropriate scale and respectful distance. What this buyer/developer has done is ruin the homeowner next door's resale value. no one is going to want to buy that house now. that developer should not have the right to do that. regulate it already.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-mansionization-20140505-story.html#page=1&lightbox=80103727
meaculpa2011
(918 posts)why should a bunch of busy-body neighbors tell me what I can and cannot build.
That's why I would never live in a gated community or incorporated village.
Before I bought my current home (with a very pleasant water view) I checked all the setback restrictions first. If the rules had allowed a future neighbor to block my view, I would have passed on the house.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)FUIGM is usually a red neon sign.
meaculpa2011
(918 posts)at my property line.
If I buy in a community that allows my neighbor to build a four-story home within six inches of my property line, so be it.
If I buy in a community where my neighbors can choose the color of my bedroom, so be it.
If the zoning allows my neighbor to tear down his house and build a gas station/convenience store... so be it.
In any case, I have no right to claim foul after the fact.
Before I signed the sales contract on my home, I checked the zoning and building codes. If that's a contradiction in your universe, I don't want to live there either.
Marr
(20,317 posts)That's what zoning laws are for.
This is expensive real estate that's highlighted in the article. It's not surprising that people want to install just the right items to maximize its sale price. It's done all over my own neighborhood here in LA.
Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)Those are some ugly looking homes coming in. They should have to wait till their neighbor is ready to sell before they can expand on their concrete castle. Let these wanna be millionaires move into Beverly Hills.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)could do to us
now the endless ring of ramblers and Googie malls around many metropolises looks like f-----g Solvang compared to block after block of undesigned Italianate hunchbacks without any stores nearby; Canada has this problem too
kiva
(4,373 posts)is made up of 1960s homes, all well under 2000 square feet; though there are similar designs, over the years people have altered the houses, planted different landscape, put up decorative fences...all in all a pretty neighborhood. A year ago some idiot tore down one of the houses and put up a much larger, ugly box. If I were a neighbor, I'd be pissed...actually, as someone who just drives by it irritates me.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)trying to combat mega mansions going up in 'regular' Beverly Hills neighborhoods.
"Neighborhood disputes hardly get any more basic than this: Rich guy buys a property and makes plans to build a house that would dwarf all the others on the block. The folks in the smaller houses raise a fuss and try to stop him.
But the lush northwest corner of Beverly Hills is no ordinary neighborhood. The smaller houses are certainly not small, and by no stretch are the people who live there little folks. The ones doing most of the fussing are actor Jack Lemmon, MCA President Sidney Sheinberg, Ticketmaster chief Fred Rosen and developer Stuart Ketchum.
The rich guy they are taking on is a low-profile London financier named Robert Manoukian, who wishes to build an 18-bedroom, 21-bathroom estate complex, with about 46,000 square feet of floor space--more than a football field--on a four-acre parcel on narrow, winding Tower Road."
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-08-01/local/me-19221_1_beverly-hills
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)approaching a cul-de-sac home in a mountain view neighborhood and being shocked by what looked like a massive hotel perched on the hillside just above. This was an upper middle class neighborhood, but the finely maintained, good-quality 1950s-60s California ranches looked in comparison like little shacks in the (literal) shadow of this monstrosity. Its visual weight alone squashed the 1700-2400 square foot homes below it.
Not only did an entire neighborhood of people lose much of their pleasure in their homes, and in this end all their outdoor privacy, but I immediately realized that I would have to come up with a number for the severe depreciation in value caused by this "neighbor." This depreciation hit the entire neighborhood, not just the homes at this end, which had plummeted to the bottom of this market.
Here in the less developed South, the developers' attitude is extremely typical of many private property-rights conservatives, and of course libertarians -- until it happens to them. Then the light goes on and they become devout single-issue liberals.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)I see it all the time here in California. It is gross and why this city looks like Frankenstein. But it would seem that neighbors could sue based on the depreciation of their property based on real estate history. Enough of those law suits would shut down the practice. Not only do these mcmansions completely destroy the privacy and view of their neighbors, they destroy the look of the neighborhood. And they also remove old trees that give the streets character and much-needed shade.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)famously conservative community compared to others, and the fines for cutting down a tree over a small number of inches diameter (don't remember the number) without permission were horrendous even back then and were enforced. At least enough to keep people scared of being caught. Like when the new neighbor of a friend in our neighborhood cut down a large California oak in his new yard, moving fast so no one could stop him in time. It had shaded the properties of 3 very angry neighbors, and I believe I was told his fine was something on the order of $50K.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)I don't think that overly nosey or controlling neighborhoods are good, but at the same time, I've seen so much selfishness and plain old destruction, that there needs to be safeguards. Cutting down a beautiful old tree that adds value and shade is one of them. That kind of fine is a deterrent I hope. I always get angry and sad when a new building goes up and the first thing they do is cut down all the trees. They have done it to two city blocks in my area--hundred year old trees chopped down and eventually replaced with tiny saplings that will take years to provide the shade the old ones did and making walks (difficult in LA anway) hotter and hotter. When I go to Europe and see all the trees and parks, it really shows the difference that civic planning and valuing green spaces can make. California is one of the most beautiful places in the world, but LA has done its best to be incredibly ugly.
dilby
(2,273 posts)hedgehog
(36,286 posts)and it can be a terrible loss to see the value of that home drop just when they want to retire and cash out.
mountain grammy
(26,569 posts)on any given day, we could look into the trees and see moose, elk, and abundant birds and wildlife. Now we have two large homes looming over us with the last lot for sale.
Progress, ain't it wonderful?
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)Up next - expect complaints about something you've done for years; it could be anything from keeping an old tractor out back to how long your grass gets, etc. Don't worry - those folks will be bitching when someone builds a house and spoils their view!
mountain grammy
(26,569 posts)and gave us all kinds of shit when we built a garage last year. In a town of 400, it took us over 3 months to get a building permit cause they had to make sure it was ok with the new neighbors, all second homeowners.
Johonny
(20,683 posts)They looks great, they're not the 70s blah construction and the have nice size yards. You look at the house they took down and you scream "Why?" Oh, well I'll never be able to afford one so there goes the neighborhood.
frazzled
(18,402 posts)Awwwwww.
Look, I don't like McMansions any more than the next person (though the picture doesn't look like a mansion, just a two-story house). But this is a topic for your local zoning board.
I've had better views than that of Century City ruined, by 20-story apartment buildings that went up around us: but I live in the city, where other people need to live, too, so I have to deal with it. It's part of the risk of living in a city.
We live together in communities, and if you don't want people building over a certain height, you need to get involved with your local zoning commission or city council, or alderman, or whatever to set laws. Otherwise, people can build whatever they damned want on their property. You don't own the views.
Throd
(7,208 posts)I don't understand why some people want to have a house out of proportion and character with that of the surrounding neighborhood.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)street on a corner; the side of my backyard faces that house. I now see it looming as I pull up the driveway.
However, I have it better than the guy on the opposite corner, the next-door neighbor. The new house, a model that does not fit the neighborhood, is right up against his pool, with second-story windows now overlooking it.
hollysmom
(5,946 posts)your house cannot cast a shadow on your neighbor's house if you are doing a tear down and rebuild. You can not expand a house if it increases the shadow on your neighbor's house. What would be common courtesy is now a law. They also had to change the law as this generation of house buyers came to town and started cutting down the centuries old oaks. now if it is over 12 inches in diameter, you have to get a variance before you are allowed to cut down a tree, but they have to raise the fine over $200.
I live in an older house that does get shadows from my neighbors but they increased the property width and houses like mine can not be built so close to neighbors and it is only a partial shadow since our streets face east west.
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)put up mirrors that reflect their images back at them...