So many houses are really, really big.
Costing millions of dollars.
Ostentatiousness seems to be coming to the fore.
What it shows me is that there are many people who earn large incomes while there are many more people struggling to keep a roof over their heads or even having a roof over their heads.
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You have to remember that the average Australian house is bigger even that US houses and massive compared to UK houses. Even worse they are no longer building them on quarter acre blocks but on blocks that are only about 450sq m. The house takes up most of the block.
The McMansion really is downunder. Look at the shortage of one and two bedroom dwellings.
It is getting quite ridiculous.
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A really sad indictment on Australiaâs wealthy.
Must be a nightmare to clean
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it is not size but prices here in the south east of england. for example mine has gone up by ÂŁ318,000 since we bought it in 2014. Or in other words no way could we afford to buy it now if we wanted to.Who on earth can afford anything nearing ÂŁ3/4m on workers pay? we couldnât thats for sure! best move we made was going self employed.
Property prices have risen by 1.7% over the last 12 months in my region
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And heat for those of us who live in cooler climes.
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@Bruce ⊠thatâs comes as a surprise. Greece comes 7th on that list of top 10 largest houses by country.
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We spend half of our lives wanting and amassing âstuffâ and the second half getting rid of it.
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Are building becoming bigger hmmm it depends on your age.
I downsides almost 4 years ago so my home got smaller 
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Thatâs not a current trend you can observe here but it was like that during the golden years, 50 to 40 years ago. It never used to be so difficult to buy or build a house as it is today . What really bugs me is the irresponsible behaviour of real estate agents who keep encouraging prospects to go for more space since interest is down rather than advising them to take advantage of of low interest rates by paying the mortgage back more quickly.
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The distribution of wealth is not what it was. In Victorian days, the middle class, and there were lots of them, lived in big houses. They employed staff, which was all good for the community: the âfilter down effectâ, if you like. We all had our place, we knew where we stood. Today, itâs all so sneaky, you donât have to answer to anyone. Take the money and run. BLX to any social structure we once had.
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I am astounded when I visit people.
The amount of âStuffâ they have stupefies me.
I have a house, garage and shed full of very useful âstuffâ, I am bound to find a use for those little bits of angle iron and off cuts of wood very soon.
BTW I am staying in my sonâs (rented) house sitting in the kitchen/dinning room, just realising that it would accommodate at least two and a half of my bedrooms, most of it is empty space. The family dining table could fit in the area another six times and still have room to spare. I have never looked at it critically before, This house has as many bathrooms/toilets as bedrooms.
Quite absurd.
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We never up sized. Our friends moved to bigger & newer houses, with bigger hefty mortgages, we stayed in our little 3 bed semi. Paid off the mortgage & were debt free in 15 years. I have lived here for 62 years now. Neighbours have come & gone, I am the only one left living from brand new. Boy have I got a lot of âstuffâ too. 
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Nor me. I am still living in the first home I bought over 45 years ago. Paid off the mortgage in 8 years, see no reason to move, everything I need is within a few hundred metres, in fact the suburb has more than tripled in size since I bought it.
Gawd even had two wives here!
Ironically I have bought and sold several newer (probably better) houses as investments but this old house suits me down to the ground, it is definitely not a McMansion, made entirely of wood and built in the 1920s
Judging by my daughter in Lawâs house⊠Yes!
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Just stop, and think about the inheritance tax 
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thereâs a term I came across recently - âmaximalismâ. Itâs where people who have luxury houses fill them with as much âstuffâ as possible. Every wall is absolutely covered with pictures, shelves filled with trinkets, china, fossils, feathers, crystals, chairs stuffed with fifteen different types of cushion arranged in rows and plumped into pointy v shapes. Itâs my idea of a house of horrors.
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doesnât it have to be regularly treated against termites?
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I had a friend whose mantra was - He who dies with the most toys is the winner.
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i get it checked fairly regularly but in the good old days the ground was liberally dosed with Dieldrin so so nothing in the soils under the house survives. I think it is banned these days.
Over the years it has had borers and other pests but not termites. My house doesnât even have ant caps as a barrier on top of the piers. I was told it was built by a builder for his daughter and made out of leftovers from other jobs which explains why the frame is made of so many different types of (mostly) hard wood and the weatherboard again different types of timber (including turpentine).
Basically it was done on the cheap, the brick piers are laid straight on the soil with no foundations, In times of drought the clay soil shrinks and the house is like a bouncy castle.
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