Home ownership is a good thing. As Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson observes, people who own homes take better care of them than people who rent. Homeowners invest in their property and stabilize neighborhoods. Perhaps most important, home ownership gives people an opportunity to accumulate wealth. It gives them something to protect. It gives them a stake in society.
But it’s possible to have too much of a good thing, Samuelson argues. Fueled by $89 billion a year (in 2008) in mortgage deductions, home ownership has become a driving force of Mass Overconsumption. In Sweden, England and Italy, new homes average less than 1,000 square feet. By 2005 in the United States, the average newly built U.S. home measured more than 2,400 square feet. Samuelson quotes the president of Toll Brothers, a builder of 5,000-square-foot McMansions:
“We not selling shelter. We’re selling extreme-ego, look-at-me types of homes.”
Stoking egos with bigger homes requires more furniture to fill the extra space and the consumption of more energy to heat, cool and light it. All of that consumption costs a lot of money, which goes a long way to explaining why Americans save so little, rack up so much personal debt, run such huge trade deficits with thriftier nations, and consume so much energy. (If you believe the global warming hype, it also explains how McMansions are an indirect contributor to greenhouse gases as well.)
Now, I personally believe that people should be free to live how they want, as long as they’re not hurting anyone else. If people want to indulge their egos by buying a 5,000-square-foot house, then that’s their business. (I live in a 3,900-square-foot house, and my wife wants to add on to it, so it would be hypocritical for me to suggest otherwise.) But I don’t see a compelling social benefit that justifies $89 billion in mortgage subsidies, most of which goes to affluent households like mine. The mortgage deduction should be capped at $5,000 or so in annual interest payments — if not eliminated entirely.
While we’re on the subject of “house lust,” as author Dan McGinn calls it, let us not forget: The federal government is not the only level of governance that encourages Mass Oversconumption in housing. Here in Virginia, municipal governments favor homes that yield more in property taxes. Through all manner of strategems, from large-lot zoning to restrictions on the building of multi-family housing, municipal governments promote the construction of large homes and discourage the construction of smaller units.
(Photo credit: About.com.)