McMansion overhang on the earth....

Treehugger has an article from Alternet analyzing the impact of McMansions on the earth. In addition to tracking the environment, I'm a big real estate bubble tracker, and the flow of cheap money really led to some enormous houses being built. I've blogged on the waste of all the stuff we buy, and if you do a survey of what you own, you find out that you don't use a lot of it. One of my friends is bartering his unused bread maker and other goods for some services, and he went I have a lot of stuff.

The same applies to homes, think about the number of rooms that are left unused during the year. I recently held a shinding fearing that my apartment would burst at the seams, and I will admit my rarely used patio was invaluable. In the meantime, we have to heat and maintain all these extra rooms.

Not only are these homes bankrupting the earth, the focus of this blog, but it's also bankrupting our bank accounts. I remember visiting Versailles outside of Paris and the comment that the French royalty bankrupted themselves trying to upkeep their palacial accommodations, forcing more wars and taxes. Just heating the places were killing us.

One thing that might help people, is that when you buy a home is that in the MLS listings, you have how much it costs to maintain the house. We have this for appliances, why not houses where the utility is shelter, not cleaning.