Anti-Mansion Law for L.A.?
Responding to a growing trend of building bigger and bigger homes, city officials in Los Angeles could impose as early as next month a controversial proposed new law that would severely limit the size of new-construction homes in established single-family neighborhoods.
A number of homeowners who might wish to sell soon are worried that the municipal ordinance could reduce their property values, since even a home in good condition may be considered a teardown if it is too small and dated. Thus, if the law prevents new buyers from replacing an existing home with a supersize version, its fair-market price could be considerably reduced, according to the Los Angeles Times.
However, homeowners who plan to stay where they are for a while often favor the proposed law–or even want it to be stricter. “Residents of older neighborhoods complain that the proposed Los Angeles law doesn’t go far enough to preserve privacy, views and the architectural character of existing houses on their streets,” the article reports.
The size difference between an old house and a new house in such circumstances can be extreme–one West Los Angeles purchaser replaced a 1,886-square-foot home on a 13,000-square-foot lot last year with a two-story 13,874-square-foot abode. But objections to the bigger-is-better homebuilding approach can also be less about size than about aesthetics, putting current owners in one-story homes at odds with newbies building two-story residences that aren’t that much larger, for instance.
As with Los Angeles residents in general, this issue has divided municipal lawmakers.
“The city of Los Angeles is a city of great neighborhoods,” says Councilman Tom LaBonge, who is seeking the new ordinance. “Mansionization has destroyed our neighborhoods.”
But Councilman Jack Weiss is dubious. “When I drive though a neighborhood such as Beverly Grove, do I personally wish for architectural consistency and integrity? Yes,” he says. “But should government take a very long pause before impacting the nest egg of hundreds of thousands of residents? Absolutely.”
