Something’s going on in our neighborhood here that few people beyond those who grew up on the northern edge of Phoenix in the 1960s and 1970s will understand: Huge, expensive houses are popping up, every one utterly bereft of curves and roof peaks. They seemed odd when there was only one or two in our vicinity. Now that there are seven or eight—with several more under construction–what was odd became a trend, and ultimately an architectural style. I don’t know what architects call this new style. But boy, it’s popping up all over.
This past Wednesday Carol and I attended an open house at a newly completed home less than a block away. It was a broker open house, but we were invited because we live just down the street and around the corner. It’s right next to another similar house that was finished a few months ago, as the photo below shows. (The new house is the one on the left.)
We’ve watched it go up for most of a year. The landscaping has just been completed. They did something a little odd: Using a crane, they lowered a 20 foot palm tree down through a hole in the portico, its root ball going into a hole just to the left of the front door. Here’s a better view:
The house encloses 6,142 square feet, including six bedrooms and six and a half baths. There’s a fancy rectangular pool adjoining a sunken patio with a bar. Embedded in the pool are five plaster pillarettes just high enough to be bar stools. Oh—and the line of sunken bar stools is behind a linear waterfall coming down from the top of the patio roof. So you can sit on one of the stools, waist-deep in water, and sip a marguerita while the waterfall’s splashes keep your back cool when it’s 115 degrees out:
Adjoining the pool area the property includes what down here we call a casita: a separate small but complete living space including a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and living area with an electric fireplace:
I didn’t take photos of the interior because the place was a madhouse when we were there, but the right-angle convention was held throughout. Oh—and there was a 6’ tall server rack in its own closet, with a bundle of fifteen or twenty cables going into the wall. It probably already holds a NAS. If not, there’s certainly room for one.
So why this and why here? Our subdivision and a few others were platted and built in the midlate 1960s. (Old enough not to have an HOA, phew.) Our house was built in 1966, but it was very heavily remodeled in 2002. The key is the lot size. These subdivisions were intended as modest-sized homes for people who wanted to keep a horse or two in their backyards. A tack shed (storing saddles etc) was a popular option. We have one of those. The lots run from half an acre in size to a full acre. Ours is 5/8 of an acre. Only a couple of people hereabouts still have horses. So, absent horses, what can you do with half- to full-acre lots?
You build mansions, that’s what. The house Carol and I toured will be listed soon for $5,375,000. It takes up almost all of its half-acre corner lot.
The house was startling, inside and out. It has amenities, but lacks coziness. We’d pass on it even if we could afford it. In a few years the neighborhood will be an interesting mix of small-ish and huge-ish homes. I honestly wonder who all of our new neighbors will turn out to be.
> palm tree
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Based on personal experience, it won’t be too many years before someone pays through the nose to have that removed, along with the roots that are invading sewer and water pipes, cracking the cement foundations and floors, etc.
Is this new construction going to affect your property taxes? Something similar happened to a friend in Maryland, resulting in his taxes going from $1,500 per year to $7,500, with commensurate increases in his homeowners’ insurance. After butting heads with the county assessor for a while, he finally sold out and moved to another county that wasn’t (yet) as rabid.
Agree about the palm tree. There were two trees quite close to our current house when we bought it, but we removed one to enlarge our patio, and the other much larger tree simply died–and we found that it was severely hollow. A bad wind–we get them here sometimes–could have knocked that tree onto our entryway and destroyed the portico and perhaps the front door.
And yes, we expect our property taxes to go up this year. Not much to be done about that. I don’t think the numbers will be as bad as the ones from Maryland that you cited, but there’s no way around it.
My gawd. It’s a palace, rather than mansion. The price is astounding, and there’s no way that architecture could ever work here in Minnesota. I hate to think of what it will do to your property taxes.
You know, it’s not so much the flat panels as the tiny windows and lack of adornment. It’s not even Brutalist; it’s just a series of box shapes.
All it needs is a sign saying “Arizona Department of Corrections” and some tastefully-arranged fencing with concertina wire to get that “big house” look.
Any thoughts regarding the seeming lack of security – cameras or outside lights – at the Tucson home in the news?
or is that typical?
Tucson home? Did you mean the one we went through here in Phoenix? Or one in the news? I hadn’t heard about that.
The home of the kidnapped mother of Savannah Guthrie. Apparently she lived alone and had mobility issues secondary to her age (84)
Surprised that they didn’t have a more elaborate security system, especially given their resources.
I had to hunt for a photo of the house, but it’s not a new home; looks late ’70s or early 80s to me, granted that I have no hard evidence. Homes that old sometimes don’t have security setups because of a lack of wires in the walls going out to window and door sensors. They’re also out in the middle of nowhere, which carries some additional risk. Our first Arizona house was built in 1990 (we bought it new) and it had a complete security setup, as did our Colorado house and the one we live in now, back in Phoenix.
I’m probably going crazy, but something in the back of my mind says you wrote about monochromatic cars a few years back, and happened to mention that no orange (such a random colour!) cars exist any more. So some good news, orange cars are apparently back, if your photo is anything to go by!
You’re not going crazy; you’ve got a superb memory, though that can have its hazards. I wrote a contra on that back in 2021:
https://www.contrapositivediary.com/?p=4612
Now, the orange car in the house photo was some kind of imported sports car, but you’re right, in that we’ve seen more orange cars recently than I ever remember seeing in the past. Electric blue, too, and some other oddities like pale gold and gold-ish green. Still, the four colors remain dominant: black, silver, red, and white. Now, why people buy black cars in Phoenix is puzzling; if we leave our red Durango out in the summer sun while shopping etc. you could fry an egg on the hood.
I must confess there was a reason I remembered the orange car mention from 2021. A few days after reading it, I came across two adjacent orange cars on the streets in downtown Wellington, New Zealand my home for all my 65 years. I took a photo, fully intending to send it to you, but never got around to it. Now I am a very casual Android phone user, and photo taker. I was vaguely aware Google backs up my photos to “the cloud” but I’ve never looked into the whys and hows or even cared really. BUT … I just thought I’d at least to try to find the photo, and it was amazingly easy, Google knows the picture was of orange cars even though I never told it. People complain about the tech giants but they really do deliver magic in your pocket for little or sometimes nothing; I put the photo on one of my websites so I can link to it here; https://wellingtonchess.club/assets/two-orange-cars.jpg
This doesn’t mean the streets of New Zealand are crawling with multicoloured cars. Like other first world markets the vast majority are black, white and especially “silver” (i.e. grey!). My wife and I rock a bright red Suzuki Swift, much better!
I suppose if one were inclined to meanness thay they could inform the owner that their Lamborghini Hurricain had the same paint color scheme as an economy SUV…
Orange is probably the most common color for Dodge Chargers and Challengers in my area.
Before those showed up, I don’t think I had noticed an orange car since the 1990s.