In Florida they’re called yucko stuccos. Other parts of the country refer to them as McMansions, megamansions, lot hogs, starter castles or Taj Mahals. These are the big box houses springing up all over the country courtesy of a phenomenon known as the tear-down.
Just take a drive through the residential sectors of Green Hills. Sneed Road, for example, used to be a street of modest homes, a place whose quiet was broken only by the squeals of children at play and the hum of lawnmowers. Today the asphalt is stained with the muddy tracks of earth movers and cement trucks, any kid sounds drowned out by the whine of electric saws and the staccato of hammers. Sneed Road—like Wallace Lane and Trimble Road and many other similar streets—is undergoing the biggest reconstruction these parts have seen since the Yankees did their occupation bit. These streets are losing their 1940s and ’50s—and even ’60s and ’70s—housing stock in the process of what some in real estate call mansionization.