Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Foreclosures Hitting Northern Virginia McMansions

In Loudon County, Virginia, Reuters reports:
  • Million-dollar fixer-upper for sale: five bedrooms, four baths, three-car garage, cavernous living room. Big holes above fireplace where flat-screen TV used to hang. The U.S. housing crisis has come to McMansion country. Just as the foreclosure crisis has hollowed out poorer neighborhoods, "for sale" signs are sprouting in upscale developments so new they don't show up on GPS navigation screens.

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  • The crisis has hit especially hard here in Loudoun County, Virginia, where upscale developments have supplanted horse farms over the past fifteen years. About an hour's drive from Washington, Loudoun is one of the nation's most affluent counties, with a median household income of $98,000, more than double the national figure. [...] These houses are sometimes nicknamed "McMansions," disparaging both their extravagance and their look of mass production -- like hamburgers from a McDonald's restaurant.

For more, see Foreclosures come to McMansion country.