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I was recently struck by this house, offered by Sears in 1921: https://oklahomahousesbymail.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/sears-saratoga-1921.jpg https://oklahom

I was recently struck by this house, offered by Sears in 1921: https://oklahomahousesbymail.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/sears-saratoga-1921.jpg https://oklahomahousesbymail.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/sea... What's crazy is the price: $47,085.20 in todays dollars. This is with all finishing materials (including stained glass) & delivered (no cement or bricks). It's an amazing house, and any old schlub could order it from good ol' Sears. Something very bad happened in architecture around world war 2.

Turing_Machine 10y ago
The "something bad" that happened was that VA home loans became available, and many returning servicemen took advantage of them. However, the maximum amount was small ($2,000 at first). Whether this was actually "bad" or not depends on whether you think it was better to keep returning veterans in crowded, archaic housing, or whether it was better to let them have a modern house (with modern wiring, plumbing, etc.) that doesn't conform to your personal taste in the year 2016. Note also that your 1921 Sears house doesn't include electrical wiring, plumbing, or heating.
- carsongross 10y ago
  Well, given the post WW2 built environment... Yeah, I'm gonna call it something bad. But this is the problem, I suppose. It's obvious that the fractal complexity, materials, beauty and craftsmanship of older buildings is vastly superior to what even rich folks can afford today, but we have to sit around and argue about taste and air conditioning, rather than figure out what the hell happened.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Off-the-rack clothing doesn't match the materials, beauty, and craftsmanship of a bespoke Savile Row English cut suit, either, but neither does it cost $3-5,000 a pop. I personally like having more than one set of clothes to wear. I also like air conditioning when I'm in a hot climate and central heat in a cold one. Electricity and running water are also nice.
    - carsongross 10y ago
      Completely agree. I live in Sacramento, air conditioning is a must. But this house was sold to average humans, in contrast to Savile Row suits. I think we need to embrace the healing power of "and" here: the modern amenities and size are great, but we've lost something very significant in the materials and aesthetic quality (regardless of taste, I have seen well done houses in nearly every style save brutalism) far out of proportion to what we pay for housing.
      - Turing_Machine 10y ago
        > But this house was sold to average humans, in contrast to Savile Row suits. I don't think so. From some not-too-reliable numbers I found in Google (if you have better ones, feel free), the median house price in 1925 was $6,000. This Sears house cost almost 60% of that just for materials. No land, labor, mechanical... If we apply your 4x adjustment, the Sears house cost about $14,000 as built. That's more than twice the median house price of the day. This was a house for wealthy people.
        Someone 10y ago
        "just for materials" And not even all of them: "Price does not include cement, brick, or plaster"
TylerE 10y ago
Keep in mind that price is less lot, labor, piping, wiring, and things like permitting and surveying costs.
- carsongross 10y ago
  To be sure. But let us double cost to make the house bigger and double it again for the lot, labor and electric. You are still at $188,340.8. Let us double it again for Nest thermostats and turret mounted gatling guns and you are still under 400k. Something happened.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    I already told you what happened. The maximum loan guarantee under the GI Bill was $2,000 (in their dollars) 4x the cost of your Sears house is $13,964 (also in their dollars). The buyers preferred a house that they could afford to one they couldn't. Simple as that.
  - TylerE 10y ago
    $200k buys a lot of house in the vast majority of American cities in 2016.
    - carsongross 10y ago
      That's a reasonable point, California is crazy and perhaps coloring my views.
      - nommm-nommm 10y ago
        The median price paid for a new home in Aug 2016 the US is $284,000 and the average is $353,600. https://www.census.gov/construction/nrs/pdf/uspricemon.pdf https://www.census.gov/construction/nrs/pdf/uspricemon.pdf
    - flubert 10y ago
      Let's see what we can do for one tenth that amount: 1,400 sqft -- http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/263-W-Ramsey-St-Pembina-ND-58271/2104033409_zpid/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/263-W-Ramsey-St-Pembina-ND... 750 sqft -- http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/705-W-Douglas-St-New-Douglas-IL-62074/4922890_zpid/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/705-W-Douglas-St-New-Dougl... 1,718 sqft -- http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5-Allen-Ct-Stewartstown-NH-03576/99274646_zpid/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5-Allen-Ct-Stewartstown-NH...
jordanb 10y ago
Well that price didn't include labor which was a very substantial part of the cost of a house even then. Also those houses didn't have any mechanicals, which also drives up the cost of modern housing. And of course the price doesn't include transportation away from the rail lines (which is why so many kit houses are built near the tracks), nor, for that matter, does it include the cost of the land or improvements. I think the biggest problem with postwar housing is the attached garage. That throws absolutely everything off aesthetically. PS: This appears to be a well-preserved example of the above kit house: http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1a/fc/e1/1afce1e9d2ed2c4691efe12475a1d50d.jpg http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1a/fc/e1/1afce1e9d2ed... Very handsome building!
- timcederman 10y ago
  Also doesn't include price of cement, brick, or plaster.
- willvarfar 10y ago
  I've been doing some pretty ambitious self-build shed projects recently so have a really good handle on material costs. The costs of building houses, from a materials perspective, is around $40000 in Sweden. The labour would be 3x that. I dream of building a proper house, but I already live in a good one.
  - iheartmemcache 10y ago
    This is interesting. I have a lot of family in Bergen and they're fairly well off, but that's the arm of the family with whom we don't really talk finance. Is that 40k USD for a complete build in materials of a home, or just for the extension you planned? (200k USD for a full home in materials and labour is quite reasonable). What sort of foundations are common in your region? (I.e., in New England, you have to dig at least X inches below the frost-line, hence why basements are common here-- however in Florida, you'll hit the water table if you try to go even half that far, which is why basements are nearly non-existent there). On the coasts (i.e., your intention is literally to build a home on sandy beach), most foundations are cylinder concrete piers and rebar that go down ~5-10 meters per cylinder (contributing largely to the expense, compared to an average home foundation. (After which, your framing is pretty much going to be standard 2x4 'stick-and-post' truss/stud/post build-outs, while some modern commercial structures opt for steel structure and aluminium framing in lieu of wood.) Do you guys still use the traditional Skiftesverk/Resvirke/Stavverk construction? Has the 'green house' (as in eco-friendly) trend that Germany's been pushing made it into other regions of Europe?
Lazare 10y ago
$47k might sound cheap. However: 1. It ignores the cost of land, or more specifically, building permits. Houses are fairly cheap to build; the right to build one in a desirable area is amazingly expensive. 2. It ignores the cost of labour, which added a fair bit then and a lot more now (cf. Baumol's cost disease). 3. It ignores changes in house size, quality, fixtures, whiteware, plumbing, insulation, glazing, efficiency, safety, fire risk, etc. You could buy what that $47k got you, today, for quite a bit less (the cost of building materials has been headed down steadily). But...why would you want to?
- carsongross 10y ago
  Do you think you could get the materials (including the finished details) for this house for $47k? Why don't we see $150k new builds with this level of fractal detail and material quality then? Or at $500k? Yes, wiring costs money, but come on.
  - Lazare 10y ago
    > Why don't we see $150k new builds with this level of fractal detail and material quality then? Or at $500k? I think you're hugely underestimating the impact of labour, land/permits, and house size. People with $500k to spend on a house don't want a 1250 foot 1 bathroom house in an undesirable neighborhood, no matter how much "fractal detail" it may have, but if they did they could build one. Like...it's not rocket science. The materials are all things which are still being made, and they're not appreciably more expensive now than in 1921. It's not some lost secret of the ancients. It's just not something people do, because it's a moderately expensive way to get a fairly crappy house unless you have pretty unique tastes. But you totally can do it. That's why places like this exist: https://www.thehousedesigners.com https://www.thehousedesigners.com
    - carsongross 10y ago
      The house above is 1600-1700 square feet, small by modern standards, and needs two more bathrooms (which are expensive rooms). I think you could safely double the materials cost to get something close to what a modern family would want, larger, with wiring, air, etc: $94k Labor is typically about the cost of the materials. So double the cost again. $188k A rule of thumb is the house should cost about 3x what the lot you build on does. Obviously this varies wildly, but let's use it for an example, because it gets us to a nice round number of 250k. I just don't see new builds in that price range anywhere even approaching the quality and aesthetics of this house. That's not to say that in rust-belt towns you can't buy old homes of a similar era for around that cost (or much less, if the economy has tanked, e.g. detroit) but new builds in that price range are gonna be stucco sh*t boxes. When I say "fractal detail" I mean that the house has visual interest at different scales: the eaves are interesting up close, at five feet, at fifty feet, etc. It's detailing (often disparaged, and sometimes fairly, as ornament) that requires a level of care and craftsmanship to execute far out of proportion to, say, slapping up a long stucco wall with some flashing. I suppose I'm not going to convince anyone of much, but I think that many of the excuses for the atrociousness of modern buildings are intellectually lazy.
internaut 10y ago
> What's crazy is the price: $47,085.20 in todays dollars. You're not crazy. Houses really were more affordable for your grandparents. The same with mine. Today for I or you to purchase the same thing would cost many multiples. At lowest I'd say 150k, but most likely 350 and in what the middle class today euphemistically call a "good school distinct" it would be about over a million dollars. So many educated people in 'modern days' have beliefs about the present and past which are in complete opposition to the facts. > Something very bad happened in architecture around world war 2. Thank you for noticing. The answer is literally a conspiracy against traditional building. I won't 'go on'. I'll demonstrate with images. Here I'll insert a former comment I made related to this subject. http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3641/3546348607_d60d612554_z.jpg http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3641/3546348607_d60d612554_z.j... The first thought that struck me when I saw it was "that is a visual expression of Orwellian thought". Deep down a majority of people prefer to live in houses that look like this: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/40/a4/2e40a4bf4e335a68f7c721cf622f7601.jpg http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/40/a4/2e40a4bf4e33... http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/74/71/2747107_896ab244.jpg http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/74/71/2747107_896ab24... Do you remember the Shire in the Lord of the Rings? That is a synopsis of what people feel when they think of 'home'. Honest, humble but well crafted dwellings affordable by the average hobbit. As master Bilbo is keen to tell us: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." Brutalism is quite obviously something that came out of Minas Morghul. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/enbLZaUyr3s/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/enbLZaUyr3s/maxresdefault.jpg It is an architectural anti-thesis. Mr Wtbob on HN made the most apropos remark that: There is little more care for the inhabitants inside than there is for the ants, the ivy, the birds, the earthworms which could live on & around a homier structure. A Brutalist building spares no more thought for its inhabitants than does an abbatoir for those who enter its confines: they are a necessary nuisance, but mustn't be permitted to intrude upon the happiness of the architect anymore than absolutely required. Brutalism is a kind of totalitarianism of architecture, a demand that those who build, those who inhabit and those who maintain must constantly bend their wills to the will of the Great Man (the architect), bend without love, without understanding, without hope, without fear, without joy, just mute, abject obedience to a cold and uncaring plan. No thanks. Give me ivy, give me bricks, give me marble, give me dirt and grass and trees; give me men and women and children; give me sheep and dogs and horses; give me colours and light and ornament; give me emotion and delight; give me, in short, life. It's clear to internaut and probably wtbob, that so called modern architecture is actually an attempt to erase the past, which is all the more amazing because all the users want traditional architecture to be built. When all the end users want one thing, and most of the designers are wanting another thing we have to seriously ask what is doing on. Of course it's not just architecture, it's in the art world too and the music world. Nothing remarkable has come out of those for many decades now. The public is unable to name a 'masterwork' from those fields of endeavor.
mattbroekhuis 10y ago
I live in one of these about 2 miles out of downtown Minneapolis. It was built in 1903. A "four square" house. It's about 1900 square feet finished space. The house has a foundation that's 3 foot of mixed limestone chunks. The walls are made of 2x4s but the lumber is old growth trees --driving a nail into it is significantly harder than something you'd get at Home Depot. The interior woodwork is the real gem. It makes the house special. 12 inch baseboards with a chair rail. Ornate headers on the doors and room transitions. I had to replace a few sections when moving some walls around and it cost a small fortune to get replacement pieces. I can't imagine doing it to a new build. I also can't imagine being excited about moving into a new place with trim that is made out of some composite material. It's a simple, efficient design that I've appreciated more lately with these "McMansion" posts.
- vosper 10y ago
  My wife is from MN and lived in Minneapolis, and we occassionally think about moving back there. A house like you describe sounds great - are there more in your area? Do they tend to sell for a premium over other houses due to the style?
- lostlogin 10y ago
  The best bit is that wear on a house like that adds to it, the corners round, the wood changes colour etc. It doesn't feel any different. Wear on a new house is detrimental and looks tatty quickly.
- beat 10y ago
  I love pre-WWII Minneapolis architecture. I live a couple blocks north of Minnehaha Park, and it's such a beautiful neighborhood - simple bungalows from the early 20th century, but lovely. What's sad is that swaths of the worst of north Minneapolis are architecturally identical to my neighborhood, but they're worth half as much and the whole area is in deep decay.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
  I lived in a smaller house than that (about 900sf) in SW Minneapolis. Built in the late 40's/early 50's, it was really a beautiful little house with trim similar to what you describe. But then I moved to the suburbs to a boring 1980's ranch house a bit more than 2x the size and watched my heating & cooling bills drop to less than half what they were before. Charming as the Mpls house was, its HVAC costs were insane (since it was my first house, I had no frame of reference). There's a lot to be said for thick insulation and modern windows. I live in an even larger house now, with a largely glass east-facing wall and my heating bills are about the same as the second house. Again, modern insulation & 12" thick walls makes a huge difference.
gozur88 10y ago
>Something very bad happened in architecture around world war 2. That's a very nice looking house, but the reason it's very nice is it has a lot of low-materials high-labor details people don't want to pay for when they're not doing the work. It does seem like wood is awfully expensive these days, though.
- trprog 10y ago
  It may just be a supply Vs demand issue with demand rising with the population while supply takes time to increase as you can't pull new timber out of thin air. I suspect environmental protection laws play a part too. These days there are fewer and fewer places where you can just show up somewhere with trees, chop down whatever you like and haul it away.
ChoGGi 10y ago
I see you already have a few replies, but as people have mentioned labour is pretty pricey, it also doesn't include: land permits foundation insulation (though I live in Canada) electrical plumbing heating cooling kitchen bathroom changing your mind about something after it's already done (charge extra for that) Also I doubt you'd want cedar shingles on your roof. On the bright side you can knock off the price of the sash weights, and probably "building paper" (unless that means they pay the price to have the blueprints signed off by an engineer).
- jedberg 10y ago
  > insulation (though I live in Canada) Even here in California we have insulation. It's just a lot cheaper than where you are because it doesn't have to be all that good.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  Building paper is that which has largely been replaced with Tyvek house wrap on vertical members and rubber ice dam guard and roofing felt underlayment on the roof. It's still "there" in concept, which is to provide an air barrier and block the wind coming straight though.
  - ChoGGi 10y ago
    Ah right, forgot about Tyvek.
lostlogin 10y ago
Something bad happened to houses in New Zealand around that time too. The California Bungalow that was given a great local style was replaced by much inferior bungalows with a mass produced, cheap feeling too them. The reasons are pretty obvious but something was definitely lost.
bamurphymac1 10y ago
Can confirm. I'm living in a sears house right now. A bungalow style built in 1918. I'm regularly surprised by the nice little touches and the way the whole thing really works as a unit. The only real "problem" is the small size of a bungalow's reduced upper floor. People obviously used to spend less time in their bedrooms and more downstairs together or outside. Which I guess tells you something.
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Spooky23 10y ago
More demand, more capital and the crazy psychological tricks of subdivisions. Alot of construction now is driven by builder spec homes. It's too expensive for "working rich" people to have an architect design. So you have design-build from big homebuilders, who spec houses as cheaply as possible, then nickel and dime you for upgrades. My cousin bought a house that's probably a 8 on this scale, but it had no "options"... everything inside was the cheapest junk. The chandelier in the dining room of this home (which originally sold for $750k in a cheap market) cost $50 at Home Depot.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
  This is something that bugs me. The house I live in was built by the former owner soon before they put it up for sale (divorce) and it has the cheapest crap you can imagine. The general construction is fine, it's the appliances, lights, cabinetry, etc., and internal details that's so cheap. I feel like they built the biggest house they could and then ran out of money to finish fitting it out. Sure, it's all stuff we can replace, but it still irks me.
sailfast 10y ago
This design was released ~1910[1]. Average income was around $574/year.[2] This house would've cost 4-5 years income just for the parts to be delivered to the plot of land you didn't own yet. (at the 1916 price of $1663) You can buy a LOT more house these days relative to annual incomes mostly because comparative incomes across the board have risen substantially, and interest rates are so much lower. That said, the cost of the lot and the labor would've been cheaper to finish the house back then so that's something! [1]http://www.searshomes.org/index.php/tag/saratoga-sears-house/ http://www.searshomes.org/index.php/tag/saratoga-sears-house... [2]http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e_prices1.htm http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e_prices1.htm
iheartmemcache 10y ago
Despite all of the negative publicity pre-fabricated homes get, you can get a pretty decently constructed home placed on an acceptable plot of land for ~150k all-in (subject to location, of course), as you benefit from the economies of scale Ford model. There's also the added bonus of having major structural components all prepped in a controlled environment, so the quality of work has the potential to be pretty high up there (a CNC can weld joints or plane the warp out of wood with a lot more accuracy then some dead-tired tradesman hoisting up some framing after 7 hours in the rain). I don't own one, but the 10-year-after build quality of the homes I've seen have been effectively on par with McMansions if not better. RE: Sears - A friend of mine bought a fixer-upper circa 2008 while getting his Pharm.D. in San Diego. He shopped around for the best deal and ultimately settled with king-of-MDF IKEA to redo his whole kitchen. 10 grand later, he had a functional, aesthetically consistent (albeit somewhat bland) remodel complete without having to go through every single supplier/distributor to select 'which faucet will go well with this lighting enclosure'. Sears re-branded everything they bought. They didn't manufacture any of their tools (though they did stand behind them with a fantastic warranty). I'm sure it's easy for us to say "things were so great back in the day!". Things were a bit better constructed domestically, but they were a lot more expensive too. I've talked to a lot of old-timers because I'm a bit of a history nerd - when they went down to Sears and bought a lathe (which was usually a re-branded Logan) this was a big purchase for them. Tools were expensive both to manufacture and buy, so the extra 10% went into each unit to ensure that lathe was going to turn your stock true. Now we can go to Home Depot and buy a $50 drill (that Ryobi is just like your proverbial McMansion - built for a specific grade of consumer) because consumers don't really want/have the need to buy an industrial quality Hilti or Fein. (I happily buy beat up pre-TTI Milwaukee NiCad drills off eBay for ~60 which I consider to be prosumer/almost-but-not-quite-contractor-grade equipment, throw new carbon brushes in there, convert them to Li-ion with Sanyo or Panasonic greens and have a tool I know is going to last ~10 years (got 3 years out of this beater so far, we'll have to wait another 7 to see)). \/\/ RE: On par with McMansions - that was my whole point. Those pre-fabs get a bad rap by the McMansion owners but are constructed just as well if not better. My comment was one on society -- the supply for McMansions would not exist if there wasn't a demand for it. The rampant number of McMansions constructed as a result of consumer demand (and easy credit, but that's a whole different topic) is a reflection of the 'disposable unit' mentality of the consumer on the whole. Much like people will buy a pretty crappy Ryobi $50 because they're not focused on longevity of their unit -- though I'll be the first one to admit that analogy is somewhat flawed because not everyone needs industrial quality tooling. I'm just saying that Harbor Freight and Walmart stay in business for a reason. Furniture, art, and hell, rugs[1] used to be passed down as heirlooms because guess what, that old-growth oak table was made by a craftsman who charged the equivalent tens of thousands of dollars for it. It's no surprise that your $200 Ikea dining set complete with 4 chairs isn't as stable after you tore it down to move to your new apartment. The holding-torque of a fastener decreases upon re-assembly in material like MDF and particle board? Who knew.. [1] Remember in The Godfather where the guy was like "do you want a rug?" "of course! but who can afford a rug!" Before the era of cheap imports, shipping containers, being able to injection mold plastic widgets for pennies, and mass-production, there was a premium on production per unit, so items had a longer shelf-life that often spanned generations.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
What about the cost of labor and the lot? Those are significant. Does it include things like sinks, tiles, tubs, and cabinetry? Also significant cost. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/05/10/why-your-home-is-not-a-good-investment/8900911/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/05/... >from 1890 to through 1980, real home prices actually declined by about 10%.
beat 10y ago
My father was born in a Sears house (a much cheaper one than that), in the Kentucky sticks. I saw it about ten years ago, but it was slated for demolition. Sad, cheap piece of crap for tenant farmers who were doing well enough to get more than a tar paper shack.
mcguire 10y ago
I suspect that inflation calculators are inaccurate for housing. IIRC, in the '70s, housing was removed from the cost of living index because it raised the value beyond what was 'reasonable'. Further, easily available loan money for mortgages in the '90s and 2000s added to the problem. That example would be, what, $25/sq ft?
acveilleux 10y ago
Not unlike the house I live in in terms of scale though a different style. House I'm in was build ca. 1896-1906, about 1550 square feet with 3 bedrooms upstairs (one of which is quite small and my office.) The material costs are not directly comparable to modern materials of similar quality and the HVAC and electricals (and probably plumbing) would be lacking. Still, you could build a house like that for probably 65-85k$ in material (including concrete for foundation, excluding real bricks) depending on where you are in the US (or Canada.) I'm in Canada so we need a bit more insulation then you can get away with in some part of the US. That material cost does not include the cost of the lot, the cost of utility installation, the road, sewers and so on (those are usually included in builder's prices in new subdivisions) and it doesn't include labor. By which point you're probably looking at 125-250k$ minimum. The two biggest variables being land costs and labor. If the house was factory built for assembly onsite (closer to that sears house) like "modular homes" than labor will be much cheaper but so will be the overall finishing level, something like this: http://www.kenthomes.com/kent-homes-browse-homes-two-storey-southhaven.aspx http://www.kenthomes.com/kent-homes-browse-homes-two-storey-... I've seen urban tax assessments (in Montreal) where the house was practically worthless compared to the land value. My own tax assessment puts the bare lot as over 50% of the value.
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Turing_Machine 10y ago

The "something bad" that happened was that VA home loans became available, and many returning servicemen took advantage of them. However, the maximum amount was small ($2,000 at first). Whether this was actually "bad" or not depends on whether you think it was better to keep returning veterans in crowded, archaic housing, or whether it was better to let them have a modern house (with modern wiring, plumbing, etc.) that doesn't conform to your personal taste in the year 2016. Note also that your 1921 Sears house doesn't include electrical wiring, plumbing, or heating.

carsongross 10y ago
Well, given the post WW2 built environment... Yeah, I'm gonna call it something bad. But this is the problem, I suppose. It's obvious that the fractal complexity, materials, beauty and craftsmanship of older buildings is vastly superior to what even rich folks can afford today, but we have to sit around and argue about taste and air conditioning, rather than figure out what the hell happened.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  Off-the-rack clothing doesn't match the materials, beauty, and craftsmanship of a bespoke Savile Row English cut suit, either, but neither does it cost $3-5,000 a pop. I personally like having more than one set of clothes to wear. I also like air conditioning when I'm in a hot climate and central heat in a cold one. Electricity and running water are also nice.
  - carsongross 10y ago
    Completely agree. I live in Sacramento, air conditioning is a must. But this house was sold to average humans, in contrast to Savile Row suits. I think we need to embrace the healing power of "and" here: the modern amenities and size are great, but we've lost something very significant in the materials and aesthetic quality (regardless of taste, I have seen well done houses in nearly every style save brutalism) far out of proportion to what we pay for housing.
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      > But this house was sold to average humans, in contrast to Savile Row suits. I don't think so. From some not-too-reliable numbers I found in Google (if you have better ones, feel free), the median house price in 1925 was $6,000. This Sears house cost almost 60% of that just for materials. No land, labor, mechanical... If we apply your 4x adjustment, the Sears house cost about $14,000 as built. That's more than twice the median house price of the day. This was a house for wealthy people.
      - Someone 10y ago
        "just for materials" And not even all of them: "Price does not include cement, brick, or plaster"

TylerE 10y ago

Keep in mind that price is less lot, labor, piping, wiring, and things like permitting and surveying costs.

carsongross 10y ago
To be sure. But let us double cost to make the house bigger and double it again for the lot, labor and electric. You are still at $188,340.8. Let us double it again for Nest thermostats and turret mounted gatling guns and you are still under 400k. Something happened.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  I already told you what happened. The maximum loan guarantee under the GI Bill was $2,000 (in their dollars) 4x the cost of your Sears house is $13,964 (also in their dollars). The buyers preferred a house that they could afford to one they couldn't. Simple as that.
- TylerE 10y ago
  $200k buys a lot of house in the vast majority of American cities in 2016.
  - carsongross 10y ago
    That's a reasonable point, California is crazy and perhaps coloring my views.
    - nommm-nommm 10y ago
      The median price paid for a new home in Aug 2016 the US is $284,000 and the average is $353,600. https://www.census.gov/construction/nrs/pdf/uspricemon.pdf https://www.census.gov/construction/nrs/pdf/uspricemon.pdf
  - flubert 10y ago
    Let's see what we can do for one tenth that amount: 1,400 sqft -- http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/263-W-Ramsey-St-Pembina-ND-58271/2104033409_zpid/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/263-W-Ramsey-St-Pembina-ND... 750 sqft -- http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/705-W-Douglas-St-New-Douglas-IL-62074/4922890_zpid/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/705-W-Douglas-St-New-Dougl... 1,718 sqft -- http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5-Allen-Ct-Stewartstown-NH-03576/99274646_zpid/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5-Allen-Ct-Stewartstown-NH...

jordanb 10y ago

Well that price didn't include labor which was a very substantial part of the cost of a house even then. Also those houses didn't have any mechanicals, which also drives up the cost of modern housing. And of course the price doesn't include transportation away from the rail lines (which is why so many kit houses are built near the tracks), nor, for that matter, does it include the cost of the land or improvements. I think the biggest problem with postwar housing is the attached garage. That throws absolutely everything off aesthetically. PS: This appears to be a well-preserved example of the above kit house: http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1a/fc/e1/1afce1e9d2ed2c4691efe12475a1d50d.jpg http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1a/fc/e1/1afce1e9d2ed... Very handsome building!

timcederman 10y ago
Also doesn't include price of cement, brick, or plaster.
willvarfar 10y ago
I've been doing some pretty ambitious self-build shed projects recently so have a really good handle on material costs. The costs of building houses, from a materials perspective, is around $40000 in Sweden. The labour would be 3x that. I dream of building a proper house, but I already live in a good one.
- iheartmemcache 10y ago
  This is interesting. I have a lot of family in Bergen and they're fairly well off, but that's the arm of the family with whom we don't really talk finance. Is that 40k USD for a complete build in materials of a home, or just for the extension you planned? (200k USD for a full home in materials and labour is quite reasonable). What sort of foundations are common in your region? (I.e., in New England, you have to dig at least X inches below the frost-line, hence why basements are common here-- however in Florida, you'll hit the water table if you try to go even half that far, which is why basements are nearly non-existent there). On the coasts (i.e., your intention is literally to build a home on sandy beach), most foundations are cylinder concrete piers and rebar that go down ~5-10 meters per cylinder (contributing largely to the expense, compared to an average home foundation. (After which, your framing is pretty much going to be standard 2x4 'stick-and-post' truss/stud/post build-outs, while some modern commercial structures opt for steel structure and aluminium framing in lieu of wood.) Do you guys still use the traditional Skiftesverk/Resvirke/Stavverk construction? Has the 'green house' (as in eco-friendly) trend that Germany's been pushing made it into other regions of Europe?

Lazare 10y ago

$47k might sound cheap. However: 1. It ignores the cost of land, or more specifically, building permits. Houses are fairly cheap to build; the right to build one in a desirable area is amazingly expensive. 2. It ignores the cost of labour, which added a fair bit then and a lot more now (cf. Baumol's cost disease). 3. It ignores changes in house size, quality, fixtures, whiteware, plumbing, insulation, glazing, efficiency, safety, fire risk, etc. You could buy what that $47k got you, today, for quite a bit less (the cost of building materials has been headed down steadily). But...why would you want to?

carsongross 10y ago
Do you think you could get the materials (including the finished details) for this house for $47k? Why don't we see $150k new builds with this level of fractal detail and material quality then? Or at $500k? Yes, wiring costs money, but come on.
- Lazare 10y ago
  > Why don't we see $150k new builds with this level of fractal detail and material quality then? Or at $500k? I think you're hugely underestimating the impact of labour, land/permits, and house size. People with $500k to spend on a house don't want a 1250 foot 1 bathroom house in an undesirable neighborhood, no matter how much "fractal detail" it may have, but if they did they could build one. Like...it's not rocket science. The materials are all things which are still being made, and they're not appreciably more expensive now than in 1921. It's not some lost secret of the ancients. It's just not something people do, because it's a moderately expensive way to get a fairly crappy house unless you have pretty unique tastes. But you totally can do it. That's why places like this exist: https://www.thehousedesigners.com https://www.thehousedesigners.com
  - carsongross 10y ago
    The house above is 1600-1700 square feet, small by modern standards, and needs two more bathrooms (which are expensive rooms). I think you could safely double the materials cost to get something close to what a modern family would want, larger, with wiring, air, etc: $94k Labor is typically about the cost of the materials. So double the cost again. $188k A rule of thumb is the house should cost about 3x what the lot you build on does. Obviously this varies wildly, but let's use it for an example, because it gets us to a nice round number of 250k. I just don't see new builds in that price range anywhere even approaching the quality and aesthetics of this house. That's not to say that in rust-belt towns you can't buy old homes of a similar era for around that cost (or much less, if the economy has tanked, e.g. detroit) but new builds in that price range are gonna be stucco sh*t boxes. When I say "fractal detail" I mean that the house has visual interest at different scales: the eaves are interesting up close, at five feet, at fifty feet, etc. It's detailing (often disparaged, and sometimes fairly, as ornament) that requires a level of care and craftsmanship to execute far out of proportion to, say, slapping up a long stucco wall with some flashing. I suppose I'm not going to convince anyone of much, but I think that many of the excuses for the atrociousness of modern buildings are intellectually lazy.

internaut 10y ago

> What's crazy is the price: $47,085.20 in todays dollars. You're not crazy. Houses really were more affordable for your grandparents. The same with mine. Today for I or you to purchase the same thing would cost many multiples. At lowest I'd say 150k, but most likely 350 and in what the middle class today euphemistically call a "good school distinct" it would be about over a million dollars. So many educated people in 'modern days' have beliefs about the present and past which are in complete opposition to the facts. > Something very bad happened in architecture around world war 2. Thank you for noticing. The answer is literally a conspiracy against traditional building. I won't 'go on'. I'll demonstrate with images. Here I'll insert a former comment I made related to this subject. http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3641/3546348607_d60d612554_z.jpg http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3641/3546348607_d60d612554_z.j... The first thought that struck me when I saw it was "that is a visual expression of Orwellian thought". Deep down a majority of people prefer to live in houses that look like this: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/40/a4/2e40a4bf4e335a68f7c721cf622f7601.jpg http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/40/a4/2e40a4bf4e33... http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/74/71/2747107_896ab244.jpg http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/74/71/2747107_896ab24... Do you remember the Shire in the Lord of the Rings? That is a synopsis of what people feel when they think of 'home'. Honest, humble but well crafted dwellings affordable by the average hobbit. As master Bilbo is keen to tell us: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." Brutalism is quite obviously something that came out of Minas Morghul. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/enbLZaUyr3s/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/enbLZaUyr3s/maxresdefault.jpg It is an architectural anti-thesis. Mr Wtbob on HN made the most apropos remark that: There is little more care for the inhabitants inside than there is for the ants, the ivy, the birds, the earthworms which could live on & around a homier structure. A Brutalist building spares no more thought for its inhabitants than does an abbatoir for those who enter its confines: they are a necessary nuisance, but mustn't be permitted to intrude upon the happiness of the architect anymore than absolutely required. Brutalism is a kind of totalitarianism of architecture, a demand that those who build, those who inhabit and those who maintain must constantly bend their wills to the will of the Great Man (the architect), bend without love, without understanding, without hope, without fear, without joy, just mute, abject obedience to a cold and uncaring plan. No thanks. Give me ivy, give me bricks, give me marble, give me dirt and grass and trees; give me men and women and children; give me sheep and dogs and horses; give me colours and light and ornament; give me emotion and delight; give me, in short, life. It's clear to internaut and probably wtbob, that so called modern architecture is actually an attempt to erase the past, which is all the more amazing because all the users want traditional architecture to be built. When all the end users want one thing, and most of the designers are wanting another thing we have to seriously ask what is doing on. Of course it's not just architecture, it's in the art world too and the music world. Nothing remarkable has come out of those for many decades now. The public is unable to name a 'masterwork' from those fields of endeavor.

mattbroekhuis 10y ago

I live in one of these about 2 miles out of downtown Minneapolis. It was built in 1903. A "four square" house. It's about 1900 square feet finished space. The house has a foundation that's 3 foot of mixed limestone chunks. The walls are made of 2x4s but the lumber is old growth trees --driving a nail into it is significantly harder than something you'd get at Home Depot. The interior woodwork is the real gem. It makes the house special. 12 inch baseboards with a chair rail. Ornate headers on the doors and room transitions. I had to replace a few sections when moving some walls around and it cost a small fortune to get replacement pieces. I can't imagine doing it to a new build. I also can't imagine being excited about moving into a new place with trim that is made out of some composite material. It's a simple, efficient design that I've appreciated more lately with these "McMansion" posts.

vosper 10y ago
My wife is from MN and lived in Minneapolis, and we occassionally think about moving back there. A house like you describe sounds great - are there more in your area? Do they tend to sell for a premium over other houses due to the style?
lostlogin 10y ago
The best bit is that wear on a house like that adds to it, the corners round, the wood changes colour etc. It doesn't feel any different. Wear on a new house is detrimental and looks tatty quickly.
beat 10y ago
I love pre-WWII Minneapolis architecture. I live a couple blocks north of Minnehaha Park, and it's such a beautiful neighborhood - simple bungalows from the early 20th century, but lovely. What's sad is that swaths of the worst of north Minneapolis are architecturally identical to my neighborhood, but they're worth half as much and the whole area is in deep decay.
HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
I lived in a smaller house than that (about 900sf) in SW Minneapolis. Built in the late 40's/early 50's, it was really a beautiful little house with trim similar to what you describe. But then I moved to the suburbs to a boring 1980's ranch house a bit more than 2x the size and watched my heating & cooling bills drop to less than half what they were before. Charming as the Mpls house was, its HVAC costs were insane (since it was my first house, I had no frame of reference). There's a lot to be said for thick insulation and modern windows. I live in an even larger house now, with a largely glass east-facing wall and my heating bills are about the same as the second house. Again, modern insulation & 12" thick walls makes a huge difference.

gozur88 10y ago

>Something very bad happened in architecture around world war 2. That's a very nice looking house, but the reason it's very nice is it has a lot of low-materials high-labor details people don't want to pay for when they're not doing the work. It does seem like wood is awfully expensive these days, though.

trprog 10y ago
It may just be a supply Vs demand issue with demand rising with the population while supply takes time to increase as you can't pull new timber out of thin air. I suspect environmental protection laws play a part too. These days there are fewer and fewer places where you can just show up somewhere with trees, chop down whatever you like and haul it away.

ChoGGi 10y ago

I see you already have a few replies, but as people have mentioned labour is pretty pricey, it also doesn't include: land permits foundation insulation (though I live in Canada) electrical plumbing heating cooling kitchen bathroom changing your mind about something after it's already done (charge extra for that) Also I doubt you'd want cedar shingles on your roof. On the bright side you can knock off the price of the sash weights, and probably "building paper" (unless that means they pay the price to have the blueprints signed off by an engineer).

jedberg 10y ago
> insulation (though I live in Canada) Even here in California we have insulation. It's just a lot cheaper than where you are because it doesn't have to be all that good.
sokoloff 10y ago
Building paper is that which has largely been replaced with Tyvek house wrap on vertical members and rubber ice dam guard and roofing felt underlayment on the roof. It's still "there" in concept, which is to provide an air barrier and block the wind coming straight though.
- ChoGGi 10y ago
  Ah right, forgot about Tyvek.

lostlogin 10y ago

Something bad happened to houses in New Zealand around that time too. The California Bungalow that was given a great local style was replaced by much inferior bungalows with a mass produced, cheap feeling too them. The reasons are pretty obvious but something was definitely lost.

bamurphymac1 10y ago

Can confirm. I'm living in a sears house right now. A bungalow style built in 1918. I'm regularly surprised by the nice little touches and the way the whole thing really works as a unit. The only real "problem" is the small size of a bungalow's reduced upper floor. People obviously used to spend less time in their bedrooms and more downstairs together or outside. Which I guess tells you something.

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Spooky23 10y ago

More demand, more capital and the crazy psychological tricks of subdivisions. Alot of construction now is driven by builder spec homes. It's too expensive for "working rich" people to have an architect design. So you have design-build from big homebuilders, who spec houses as cheaply as possible, then nickel and dime you for upgrades. My cousin bought a house that's probably a 8 on this scale, but it had no "options"... everything inside was the cheapest junk. The chandelier in the dining room of this home (which originally sold for $750k in a cheap market) cost $50 at Home Depot.

HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
This is something that bugs me. The house I live in was built by the former owner soon before they put it up for sale (divorce) and it has the cheapest crap you can imagine. The general construction is fine, it's the appliances, lights, cabinetry, etc., and internal details that's so cheap. I feel like they built the biggest house they could and then ran out of money to finish fitting it out. Sure, it's all stuff we can replace, but it still irks me.

sailfast 10y ago

This design was released ~1910[1]. Average income was around $574/year.[2] This house would've cost 4-5 years income just for the parts to be delivered to the plot of land you didn't own yet. (at the 1916 price of $1663) You can buy a LOT more house these days relative to annual incomes mostly because comparative incomes across the board have risen substantially, and interest rates are so much lower. That said, the cost of the lot and the labor would've been cheaper to finish the house back then so that's something! [1]http://www.searshomes.org/index.php/tag/saratoga-sears-house/ http://www.searshomes.org/index.php/tag/saratoga-sears-house... [2]http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e_prices1.htm http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e_prices1.htm

iheartmemcache 10y ago

Despite all of the negative publicity pre-fabricated homes get, you can get a pretty decently constructed home placed on an acceptable plot of land for ~150k all-in (subject to location, of course), as you benefit from the economies of scale Ford model. There's also the added bonus of having major structural components all prepped in a controlled environment, so the quality of work has the potential to be pretty high up there (a CNC can weld joints or plane the warp out of wood with a lot more accuracy then some dead-tired tradesman hoisting up some framing after 7 hours in the rain). I don't own one, but the 10-year-after build quality of the homes I've seen have been effectively on par with McMansions if not better. RE: Sears - A friend of mine bought a fixer-upper circa 2008 while getting his Pharm.D. in San Diego. He shopped around for the best deal and ultimately settled with king-of-MDF IKEA to redo his whole kitchen. 10 grand later, he had a functional, aesthetically consistent (albeit somewhat bland) remodel complete without having to go through every single supplier/distributor to select 'which faucet will go well with this lighting enclosure'. Sears re-branded everything they bought. They didn't manufacture any of their tools (though they did stand behind them with a fantastic warranty). I'm sure it's easy for us to say "things were so great back in the day!". Things were a bit better constructed domestically, but they were a lot more expensive too. I've talked to a lot of old-timers because I'm a bit of a history nerd - when they went down to Sears and bought a lathe (which was usually a re-branded Logan) this was a big purchase for them. Tools were expensive both to manufacture and buy, so the extra 10% went into each unit to ensure that lathe was going to turn your stock true. Now we can go to Home Depot and buy a $50 drill (that Ryobi is just like your proverbial McMansion - built for a specific grade of consumer) because consumers don't really want/have the need to buy an industrial quality Hilti or Fein. (I happily buy beat up pre-TTI Milwaukee NiCad drills off eBay for ~60 which I consider to be prosumer/almost-but-not-quite-contractor-grade equipment, throw new carbon brushes in there, convert them to Li-ion with Sanyo or Panasonic greens and have a tool I know is going to last ~10 years (got 3 years out of this beater so far, we'll have to wait another 7 to see)). \/\/ RE: On par with McMansions - that was my whole point. Those pre-fabs get a bad rap by the McMansion owners but are constructed just as well if not better. My comment was one on society -- the supply for McMansions would not exist if there wasn't a demand for it. The rampant number of McMansions constructed as a result of consumer demand (and easy credit, but that's a whole different topic) is a reflection of the 'disposable unit' mentality of the consumer on the whole. Much like people will buy a pretty crappy Ryobi $50 because they're not focused on longevity of their unit -- though I'll be the first one to admit that analogy is somewhat flawed because not everyone needs industrial quality tooling. I'm just saying that Harbor Freight and Walmart stay in business for a reason. Furniture, art, and hell, rugs[1] used to be passed down as heirlooms because guess what, that old-growth oak table was made by a craftsman who charged the equivalent tens of thousands of dollars for it. It's no surprise that your $200 Ikea dining set complete with 4 chairs isn't as stable after you tore it down to move to your new apartment. The holding-torque of a fastener decreases upon re-assembly in material like MDF and particle board? Who knew.. [1] Remember in The Godfather where the guy was like "do you want a rug?" "of course! but who can afford a rug!" Before the era of cheap imports, shipping containers, being able to injection mold plastic widgets for pennies, and mass-production, there was a premium on production per unit, so items had a longer shelf-life that often spanned generations.

nommm-nommm 10y ago

What about the cost of labor and the lot? Those are significant. Does it include things like sinks, tiles, tubs, and cabinetry? Also significant cost. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/05/10/why-your-home-is-not-a-good-investment/8900911/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/05/... >from 1890 to through 1980, real home prices actually declined by about 10%.

beat 10y ago

My father was born in a Sears house (a much cheaper one than that), in the Kentucky sticks. I saw it about ten years ago, but it was slated for demolition. Sad, cheap piece of crap for tenant farmers who were doing well enough to get more than a tar paper shack.

mcguire 10y ago

I suspect that inflation calculators are inaccurate for housing. IIRC, in the '70s, housing was removed from the cost of living index because it raised the value beyond what was 'reasonable'. Further, easily available loan money for mortgages in the '90s and 2000s added to the problem. That example would be, what, $25/sq ft?

acveilleux 10y ago

Not unlike the house I live in in terms of scale though a different style. House I'm in was build ca. 1896-1906, about 1550 square feet with 3 bedrooms upstairs (one of which is quite small and my office.) The material costs are not directly comparable to modern materials of similar quality and the HVAC and electricals (and probably plumbing) would be lacking. Still, you could build a house like that for probably 65-85k$ in material (including concrete for foundation, excluding real bricks) depending on where you are in the US (or Canada.) I'm in Canada so we need a bit more insulation then you can get away with in some part of the US. That material cost does not include the cost of the lot, the cost of utility installation, the road, sewers and so on (those are usually included in builder's prices in new subdivisions) and it doesn't include labor. By which point you're probably looking at 125-250k$ minimum. The two biggest variables being land costs and labor. If the house was factory built for assembly onsite (closer to that sears house) like "modular homes" than labor will be much cheaper but so will be the overall finishing level, something like this: http://www.kenthomes.com/kent-homes-browse-homes-two-storey-southhaven.aspx http://www.kenthomes.com/kent-homes-browse-homes-two-storey-... I've seen urban tax assessments (in Montreal) where the house was practically worthless compared to the land value. My own tax assessment puts the bare lot as over 50% of the value.

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