Last year, 32,000 homes were torn down and reconstructed, totalling 5 percent of all single-family housing starts, Bloomberg Business reports.
Many of the homes torn down are older, smaller houses near employment centers. In their place, builders construct larger homes that sell for more.
Proponents say that tearing down these older homes can make way for more energy-efficient designs, and meet the needs of today’s buyers. But many residents of neighborhoods where these knockdowns occur say that the McMansions ruin their neighborhood’s character, and that they have to deal with the noise and mess of construction.
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