Your Neighbor's Building a 'McMansion': What McNow?

It's a supersize worry: The McMansion down the street from your home will ruin the value of your property.

If you live in an upscale neighborhood and there's an empty lot nearby, trouble could be coming your way. With real-estate prices sliding, how long before a developer with cash to spend picks up that space for a bargain and builds a three-story McMansion, dwarfing neighboring homes and shading the rest of the street?

The McMansion invasion has overtaken cities around the U.S. What exactly is a McMansion, you might ask? There's no hard definition, but most people know them when they see them. They often start with the tear-down of a smaller, older home situated on a good-size lot in a nice neighborhood.

The developer then draws up plans to build out the new house so that its footprint extends to virtually each property line and it rises as high as the local building code will allow. ...