A Redditor on r/McMansionHell found quite the listing on Zillow and shared it with the community.
“I just threw up in my mouth a little,” wrote the original poster.
Photo Credit: Reddit
Photo Credit: Reddit
They shared photos of a 17,918 square-foot mansion in Cedar Hill, Texas. It has 13 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, and a seven-car garage.
Amenities include three living rooms, three kitchens, a game room, and a movie theatre. The entire interior is stark white with concrete flooring everywhere. The current asking price is $3,995,000.
Texas is home to a lot of excessively large residences. Luxury homes in Texas have been owned by pastors, built with poor fashion sense, and even abandoned before completion.
There’s no accounting for taste, but there are loads of practical implications of houses this size.
The home’s massive footprint includes equally massive heating and cooling demands. That means big ongoing utility bills and a large environmental impact. Building energy use accounts for about 31% of emissions in America, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, most of which comes from burning gas.
Mansions like these generate a larger proportion of that pollution, which in turn exacerbates destructive weather patterns like floods and droughts.
The increasing strength and length of these disasters have created a crisis in home insurance. In fact, the Texan appetite for excessively large homes has made it one of the states most impacted by extreme climate trends.
Luckily, alternatives are available. A well-designed, right-sized home can produce more energy than it needs. Tools like solar panels, heat pumps, and good insulation can go a long way toward reducing energy use and monthly utility bills.
If you’re interested in making your home more energy-efficient than any McMansion, EnergySage has a free online tool that can connect you to vetted local solar panel installers. The company knows its way around rebates and credits, which can save up to $10,000 on installation costs.
Reddit commenters were amply unimpressed by this Zillow listing.
“The words soulless and empty come to mind,” said one community member.
“That interior is giving me snow blindness,” said another.
Join our free newsletter for easy tips to save more and waste less, and don’t miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.