New Houses Are Bigger Than Ever
After the American real estate boom came crashing down five years ago, we were momentarily chastened. We moved out of the new condo, and into a cardboard box. When we finally built new homes, they were reasonably small. Well. Fuck that.
Home prices are rising, America's investments are fat and happy, the Hamptons are restocked with their rightful McMansions, and houses are bigger than ever, god damn it, because this is America, the land of unlimited oil, air conditioning, and wealth. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Data released by the Census Bureau this month confirmed the trend and showed that the average size of a new home was a record 2,642 square feet in the second quarter, eclipsing the record of 2,561 square feet set in the first quarter of 2009. The average size has bounced between small gains and declines for more than a year, but the 5.2% jump in the second quarter was the largest quarter-to-quarter gain since the Commerce Department began tracking the data on a quarterly basis in 1987.
Two thousand six hundred forty two square feet. Plenty of room for you to trade in that Prius for a new Range Rover. All this and a looming new war in the Middle East? I almost expect George W. Bush and Alan Greenspan to come stumbling out from behind a curtain arm-in-arm, drunk as hell on Johnnie Walker Blue! You know what happens when you mix swaggering American hubris with a booming economy and a public grasping at ever-greater levels of conspicuous consumption? That's right: decades of calm and steady growth and untrammeled prosperity for all.
