16 ms·

As a Brit something that always struck me as strange was that Americans all seemed to own large, detatched houses. It just seemed odd to me, and whilst it's tru

by slivym 8y ago

As a Brit something that always struck me as strange was that Americans all seemed to own large, detatched houses. It just seemed odd to me, and whilst it's true that a lot of the US is less dense than the UK I find it fascinating that the zoning laws seem to massively encourage and protect single family homes.

tudelo 8y ago
Do you not want a large, detached house? :) I think part of it has to do with the fact that that is what people want... When you have such a place you don't have to worry as much about how much noise you're making or if you're disturbing your neighbors.
- 5040 8y ago
  Speaking for myself, I'd love a small house with no parking and without a backyard. These houses are basically impossible to find because of zoning rules.
  - claydavisss 8y ago
    Huh? In most suburbs this is the only type of housing being built. Go look at any new construction in San Jose etc, its all vertical townhouse stuff with one parking spot and communal green space.
    - tacomonstrous 8y ago
      Perhaps this is because most suburbs are not in the Bay Area?
      - claydavisss 8y ago
        What reasonably large metro in the US has no available townhouse-style housing? edit: responses below are moving the goalposts. I didn't ask what major metros are missing culturally vibrant dense communities with a great mix of walkable amenities, I asked what metros didn't have townhouse-style developments (small house, no yard). The answer is obvious if you spend ten minutes in redfin - every major metro has plenty
        tacomonstrous 8y ago
        It's possible that the GP doesn't live in a large metro area and therefore doesn't have access to a good supply of townhomes.
        rayiner 8y ago
        Most of them. What makes Japanese dense detached housing work is mixing residential and low impact retail. In many US suburbs, you have town house style housing, but vast swaths of it with no retail. So you need to get in a car (and cross a giant parking lot) to pick up milk. It’s a problem even in mixed residential retail areas. I lived in a development in Atlanta that had a Target. But going there meant crossing an enormous, unshaded parking lot. Very different than Japan, where you might walk down some tree lined streets to get to the corner store.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        francisofascii 8y ago
        Townhouses are tough to find in medium size metros in good school districts. And the ones you do find are over 55 communities.
      - magduf 8y ago
        There's tons of this stuff in the northern Virginia/DC metro area too.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Note that in Japan, where people are allowed to build what they want, there are tons of detached houses with no yards or small gardens. http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4113/4983103056_ec5b955217_b.jpg http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4113/4983103056_ec5b955217_b.j... http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2143/2206169789_71e4f452b3_b.jpg http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2143/2206169789_71e4f452b3_b.j...
- adrianN 8y ago
  Modern construction is reasonably sound proof so that you don't have to worry too much about your neighbors even if there is no yard separating you.
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  I think it mostly just reflects the age and histories of our cities, and the cultures that comes from that.
- rsynnott 8y ago
  > Do you not want a large, detached house? No, because if everyone else had them too that'd mean living in a very low-density area, likely without anything in walking distance or decent public transport.
  - magduf 8y ago
    Yes, but Americans like that, because they all like having giant SUVs to drive everywhere and they don't like walking. Of course, this results in them all being morbidly obese, but they don't seem to mind that either, and talk about things like "fat acceptance", "big is beautiful", etc. Source: I'm American, and I see this stuff every day.
    - ForRealsies 8y ago
      UK named most overweight nation in Western Europe as obesity rate rises faster than US https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/uk-obesity-rate-rising-overweight-worst-country-western-europe-world-us-ranking-oecd-research-a8049451.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/uk-obesity-rate-ri...
    - tudelo 8y ago
      To be fair, driving 20 - 30 minutes for work is not strange, and on a highway with a 65mph speed limit you can go far fast. If you have some data to correlate low density housing to obesity that would be really interesting though.
      - bpicolo 8y ago
        As a loose metric, obesity rates are definitely higher in rural areas vs cities. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2685156 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26851... It doesn't look like you can correlate directly on city density though: https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-cities-in-america/10532/ https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-cities-in-america/10532/ Feels like obesity rates are a large part culturally driven - the foods and lifestyle you and your relatives/those around you encourage. That's sorta why the South is "winning" the game.
- rayiner 8y ago
  If people wanted it so much, counties wouldn’t have to make it illegal to build other kinds of housing through zoning laws.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    Not exactly. Most people want it that much. A few people want otherwise, if we didn't have zoning laws those few would build something different and ruin it for the rest of us.
    - rayiner 8y ago
      Explain how that would work. People who want detached homes with big yards wouldn't be able to buy them because developers would only build multi-family dwellings? Despite the majority of people wanting detached homes?
      - bluGill 8y ago
        No, people want detached homes in a neighborhood with only detached homes. However one person will build a store or apartment and ruin the entire neighborhood. (Note that I'm playing devils advocate here)
        rayiner 8y ago
        So it's not just that people want a detached home, it's that people want a detached home and want other people to have a detached home. Which is an infringement on private property rights I don't thing the law should condone.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    I mentioned this to another commenter, but you are confusing what residents want with what people want. If companies + individuals (i.e. what makes up the economic group of "people" in an area) wanted it so much, then yes you wouldn't need the laws. You shouldn't confuse what people want with what people can/will buy or do with their money, votes are more equal than wallets.
- Arnt 8y ago
  Do you have in mind a large, detached house and a long commute, or just a large, detached house? The answer you get always depends on the question you ask. Me, I'd love to have a large, centrally located, detached house at an affordable price. It's not a realistic desire though, and that lack of realism means that any policy based on it will be equally unrealistic.
- dtech 8y ago
  In the Netherland you can definitly have such a house at a reasonable price, 25km+ outside of cities. You can also choose a smaller, non-detached house for the same prices inside a denser neighborhood. You then don't need a car and can bike or take publish transport to everything. Most people prefer the latter.
- PuffinBlue 8y ago
  > Do you not want a large, detached house? Not in the sense that that is somehow the only way to define 'success' in living arrangements. Personally I value community and amenities to a vastly higher degree than I do the house itself. Totting it up so far I think I've lived in 9 different houses in 3 different countries. Some house were large and detached, some were semi-detached, one was end terrace. If the house was large enough to live in and put my things in it became essentially a utility that performed a function. The most important thing was who lived next to or near me, what services and amenities were around and how easy access was to them and what were schools like for kids. Perhaps that's because I didn't own them but rented them, but I do own a house that I haven't lived in yet and I feel no more attachment to it than the rest. Instead choosing the area and community over the bricks and mortar themselves.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  My ideal is a 5 bedroom house on about 1/2 acre of lawn right smack in the middle of Manhattan.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    It's yours after your first few billion. I wonder if you had the money could you pull this off?
    - rsynnott 8y ago
      You wouldn't want it even if you could do it; it would be permanently overshadowed unless it was actually in Central Park or somewhere.
      - mfringel 8y ago
        ...or on top of an existing building.
        maxxxxx 8y ago
        That already exists as penthouse. I was thinking if you would get permission to build a farmhouse with lawn around it in the middle of Manhattan if you could afford the land.
    - ggg9990 8y ago
      Hehe, I wouldn’t even really want it. Was just needling the people who want their nice big houses without thinking about the isolating car culture it creates.
- Zach_the_Lizard 8y ago
  > Do you not want a large, detached house? :) I think part of it has to do with the fact that that is what people want If people truly wanted this, we wouldn't need a large zoning law apparatus to legally enforce it, now would we? Historically these laws came about due to White Flight and wanting to keep the "other" people out. My hypothesis is these laws persist due to effectively creating legally enforced housing cartel, pushing up house prices. Throw in some rent control to turn some poor folks against new housing, and you've got a recipe for ever increasing house prices, falling fertility rates, and the squeezing of the middle class.
  - tudelo 8y ago
    Are you referring to housing demand in and around high population areas? Well, I'm not making a claim people don't want to live close to these areas, but as someone who isn't buying a million dollar house, I don't even consider it as an option.
    - Zach_the_Lizard 8y ago
      It's all over. Memphis to Miami, New York to Nevada, San Francisco to Syracuse. The historical ratio of house price to income that was considered affordable was about 2.6. If you earn $100k, you should spend $260k at most on your house under this rule. Nowadays very few metros have median house prices at a level where the median household income would qualify, using that 2.6 ratio. Almost all of the cities with cost levels at that ratio or better are Rust Belt cities, and even many of them are right at the threshold. Check out the full list: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-price-to-income-ratio-is-most-out-of-whack/561404/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-price... Obviously interest rates, tax policy, etc. can change the monthly expense equation, so what may have been too expensive in the past might be more affordable now with lower interest rates. However, even with a reduced cost to finance, there are still hefty down payments that need to be saved up for which are cost prohibitive. And higher property values need to pay higher property taxes. Maybe even "mansion" taxes in a few places.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    People absolutely want large detached houses, but housing developers want to build densely packed multi-family housing because they're more profitable. Here's the problem: - Start with a nice, quiet, picturesque suburban neighborhood. - Naturally people want to move into this neighborhood because it's so nice and want it to be affordable so, absent zoning, developers build apartments and condos to fill the need. - Then all the people move in and the neighborhood slowly learns that the reason it was actually nice and picturesque was the low density and high buy-in. - Property values start going down, along with tax revenue, the schools decline, $/student plummets, and all the people with the means move somewhere else. Without at least some laws it's incredibly difficult to break this cycle.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  > Do you not want a large, detached house? No. In most central and southern Europe there are laws to ensure that density stays above a threshold, cities stays walkable and apartments are built with proper walls and corridors to prevent any noise from the neighbors. This led to much cheaper housing and less need for driving.
- gutnor 8y ago
  > Do you not want a large, detached house? :) The smiley implies a lot of people want that. That's true, but the flip side of that question is "Do you no want to drive for everything you need?" which, especially in Europe, is going to get a lot of people answering "Hell no".
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "Do you not want a large, detached house? :) I think part of it has to do with the fact that that is what people want... " I don't want one. They also say that people want SUVs but I don't want that either. I think there is a lot of cultural conditioning in what people want.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Do you have more than two kids?
- ferongr 8y ago
  I live in a hole of an apartment in a European city and contrary to most Hackernews I'd love a detached house with a hobby shed to house some metalworking equipment and a driveway were I could wrench on my motorcycle. Also, there's no "sense of community" that comes from condensed living quarters in my urban hellscape, it's a dog-eat-dog world of depressed people.
  - varjag 8y ago
    Same, down to the metal shop! In the 10 years we owned an apartment, we didn't get to know any neighbours except that asshole who had a habit blasting music 2am on Saturdays. Life is so much more mellow in a house.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Sometimes I think I’m the only person on HN who strongly prefers a detached, single family house with plenty of space between neighbors. I’ve done apartment living and condo living and will never voluntarily return to it. Some benefits of owning a single family detached home: 1. I have a small kid with a lot of running energy who plays in the yard every day. Having to walk to the nearest park (if one exists) is inconvenient especially if it’s miles away. 2. I’m done with loud neighbors. Constant parties, loud bass music rattling the shared walls, loud sex at all hours, loud conversations right outside my door. It was a constant attribute of dense urban living. 3. Hobbies that require lots of private space and machinery, like sheet metal working and carpentry. Not going to be possible in a townhome without being yourself the annoying loud neighbor. 4. Freedom to customize. If I want to mount a huge antenna on my roof or build a backyard shed, only a detached home allows this. 5. Related to 4: Authority to fix things when they break. If my roof is leaking I can choose if and when to fix it. I can shop around for contractors to make sure I’m not overpaying. I can inspect and approve the work. In an apartment or condo these important tasks are out of my hands and done (always poorly) by an incompetent committee or landlord. 6. (For car owners) Indoor car parking and protection from the elements measurably reduces the maintenance cost of those cars. And fixing cars is tons easier in a garage. Nothing worse than replacing your power steering system in a 2 by 4 meter parking space surrounded by your neighbors’ cars. Ask me how I know.
  - zzzzzzzza 8y ago
    4 -> local hackerspace (but like 1 whether or not city has this depends on your location) 5. You could buy a condo and then be responsible for repairs if you so wished (though this adds another point, sometimes you'll have to deal with e.g. upstairs neighbors toilet leaking) 6. Of course one of the biggest appeals of urban living for many would be not having to own a car
  - lmm 8y ago
    It comes down to: do I get more value out of space with other people in or space without them? Would I rather my kid have lots of space to play by themselves, or lots of other kids to play with (but only one park between them all)? Would I rather have space for my own carpentry shop, or enough neighbours that there will be a few carpenters among them (but only one workshop between us)? Would I rather have car parking spaces or cafes and theatres? I think more people around me is a net positive overall, though there are definitely exceptions.
swebs 8y ago
>Americans all seemed to own large, detatched houses That's only really true for the suburbs and rural areas. Most Americans live in cities, where rowhomes and apartment complexes are more popular.
- wilsonnb2 8y ago
  I'd like to see a source for your claim that most Americans live in cities. As far as I know, the census does not differentiate between suburban and urban areas so we don't have any "official" numbers on how many Americans live in suburban areas. They are just lumped into the urban population.
  - opencl 8y ago
    Yes, the census "80% of people live in cities" thing really just means "incorporated areas". In reality ~2/3 of housing stock in the US is detached[1]. Traditional detached houses and mobile homes combined are around 78 million. Now I have not seen detailed statistics about the exact number of people living in each type but it seems pretty safe to say that the average household size for detached housing is at least as high as for apartments, and most likely higher. US average household size is 2.58 people which would imply ~200 million people in detached housing, well over half the population. [1]https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/units.html https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/unit...
  - ghaff 8y ago
    In fact the US census definition is even wider than that for urban. My town's a good example. It's essentially a 7K population rural town; I'm in the middle of about 100 acres with a couple neighbors. But I'm fairly near a major city and I'm solidly urban per the census. It's complicated to determine what's urban and suburban--much less exurban (which is what ESRI calls where I live). [1] But the census uses a measure where the areas it counts as "rural" are mostly very rural. [1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-american-cities/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-am...
Symmetry 8y ago
Partially this is social engineering. Progressives at the time zoning became popular thought that if you isolated people with their families and made it less convenient to get to, e.g., taverns then they would become more responsible. This was considered particularly important when the people affected were Irish, Italians, Poles, etc who were considered in need of becoming more responsible at the time.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  I don't think that's quite right. Such groups wouldn't be able to afford detached homes, which in many cases was the point (Atlanta, on an infamous example, also is deliberately designed to make it impossible for buses to get to done neighborhoods).
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    What I'm talking about took place in the 1910s, things were different then.
aphextron 8y ago
>. It just seemed odd to me, and whilst it's true that a lot of the US is less dense than the UK I find it fascinating that the zoning laws seem to massively encourage and protect single family homes. You have to understand that in the US houses are not just houses. They are the primary vehicle by which the middle class is able to build wealth. There are scores of tax regulation and perks to home owning that don't exist for any other asset class.
PopsiclePete 8y ago
As a European living in a large-ish American city, it's very entertaining to me to listen endlessly to Americans complain how "bad traffic has become lately with all these people moving in!" They want: 1. Large, sparsely populated suburbs, away from everything. 2. Cars to drive long-distances from their suburbs to "the things we want to actually go to when not sleeping". 3. No heavy traffic, please! Good luck achieving all 3! And yeah, public transport sucks here. For obvious reasons - nobody can design effective public transport when the average commute from someone's house to their work is fifteen miles one-way and there's no population density to speak of to make it cost-effective. I consider myself lucky that I can just walk to a nice grocery store and don't have to get in a car to go buy some milk.

by slivym 8y ago

tudelo 8y ago

Do you not want a large, detached house? :) I think part of it has to do with the fact that that is what people want... When you have such a place you don't have to worry as much about how much noise you're making or if you're disturbing your neighbors.

5040 8y ago
Speaking for myself, I'd love a small house with no parking and without a backyard. These houses are basically impossible to find because of zoning rules.
- claydavisss 8y ago
  Huh? In most suburbs this is the only type of housing being built. Go look at any new construction in San Jose etc, its all vertical townhouse stuff with one parking spot and communal green space.
  - tacomonstrous 8y ago
    Perhaps this is because most suburbs are not in the Bay Area?
    - claydavisss 8y ago
      What reasonably large metro in the US has no available townhouse-style housing? edit: responses below are moving the goalposts. I didn't ask what major metros are missing culturally vibrant dense communities with a great mix of walkable amenities, I asked what metros didn't have townhouse-style developments (small house, no yard). The answer is obvious if you spend ten minutes in redfin - every major metro has plenty
      - tacomonstrous 8y ago
        It's possible that the GP doesn't live in a large metro area and therefore doesn't have access to a good supply of townhomes.
      - rayiner 8y ago
        Most of them. What makes Japanese dense detached housing work is mixing residential and low impact retail. In many US suburbs, you have town house style housing, but vast swaths of it with no retail. So you need to get in a car (and cross a giant parking lot) to pick up milk. It’s a problem even in mixed residential retail areas. I lived in a development in Atlanta that had a Target. But going there meant crossing an enormous, unshaded parking lot. Very different than Japan, where you might walk down some tree lined streets to get to the corner store.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - francisofascii 8y ago
        Townhouses are tough to find in medium size metros in good school districts. And the ones you do find are over 55 communities.
    - magduf 8y ago
      There's tons of this stuff in the northern Virginia/DC metro area too.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Note that in Japan, where people are allowed to build what they want, there are tons of detached houses with no yards or small gardens. http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4113/4983103056_ec5b955217_b.jpg http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4113/4983103056_ec5b955217_b.j... http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2143/2206169789_71e4f452b3_b.jpg http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2143/2206169789_71e4f452b3_b.j...
adrianN 8y ago
Modern construction is reasonably sound proof so that you don't have to worry too much about your neighbors even if there is no yard separating you.
madeofpalk 8y ago
I think it mostly just reflects the age and histories of our cities, and the cultures that comes from that.
rsynnott 8y ago
> Do you not want a large, detached house? No, because if everyone else had them too that'd mean living in a very low-density area, likely without anything in walking distance or decent public transport.
- magduf 8y ago
  Yes, but Americans like that, because they all like having giant SUVs to drive everywhere and they don't like walking. Of course, this results in them all being morbidly obese, but they don't seem to mind that either, and talk about things like "fat acceptance", "big is beautiful", etc. Source: I'm American, and I see this stuff every day.
  - ForRealsies 8y ago
    UK named most overweight nation in Western Europe as obesity rate rises faster than US https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/uk-obesity-rate-rising-overweight-worst-country-western-europe-world-us-ranking-oecd-research-a8049451.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/uk-obesity-rate-ri...
  - tudelo 8y ago
    To be fair, driving 20 - 30 minutes for work is not strange, and on a highway with a 65mph speed limit you can go far fast. If you have some data to correlate low density housing to obesity that would be really interesting though.
    - bpicolo 8y ago
      As a loose metric, obesity rates are definitely higher in rural areas vs cities. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2685156 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26851... It doesn't look like you can correlate directly on city density though: https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-cities-in-america/10532/ https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-cities-in-america/10532/ Feels like obesity rates are a large part culturally driven - the foods and lifestyle you and your relatives/those around you encourage. That's sorta why the South is "winning" the game.
rayiner 8y ago
If people wanted it so much, counties wouldn’t have to make it illegal to build other kinds of housing through zoning laws.
- bluGill 8y ago
  Not exactly. Most people want it that much. A few people want otherwise, if we didn't have zoning laws those few would build something different and ruin it for the rest of us.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Explain how that would work. People who want detached homes with big yards wouldn't be able to buy them because developers would only build multi-family dwellings? Despite the majority of people wanting detached homes?
    - bluGill 8y ago
      No, people want detached homes in a neighborhood with only detached homes. However one person will build a store or apartment and ruin the entire neighborhood. (Note that I'm playing devils advocate here)
      - rayiner 8y ago
        So it's not just that people want a detached home, it's that people want a detached home and want other people to have a detached home. Which is an infringement on private property rights I don't thing the law should condone.
- kodablah 8y ago
  I mentioned this to another commenter, but you are confusing what residents want with what people want. If companies + individuals (i.e. what makes up the economic group of "people" in an area) wanted it so much, then yes you wouldn't need the laws. You shouldn't confuse what people want with what people can/will buy or do with their money, votes are more equal than wallets.
Arnt 8y ago
Do you have in mind a large, detached house and a long commute, or just a large, detached house? The answer you get always depends on the question you ask. Me, I'd love to have a large, centrally located, detached house at an affordable price. It's not a realistic desire though, and that lack of realism means that any policy based on it will be equally unrealistic.
dtech 8y ago
In the Netherland you can definitly have such a house at a reasonable price, 25km+ outside of cities. You can also choose a smaller, non-detached house for the same prices inside a denser neighborhood. You then don't need a car and can bike or take publish transport to everything. Most people prefer the latter.
PuffinBlue 8y ago
> Do you not want a large, detached house? Not in the sense that that is somehow the only way to define 'success' in living arrangements. Personally I value community and amenities to a vastly higher degree than I do the house itself. Totting it up so far I think I've lived in 9 different houses in 3 different countries. Some house were large and detached, some were semi-detached, one was end terrace. If the house was large enough to live in and put my things in it became essentially a utility that performed a function. The most important thing was who lived next to or near me, what services and amenities were around and how easy access was to them and what were schools like for kids. Perhaps that's because I didn't own them but rented them, but I do own a house that I haven't lived in yet and I feel no more attachment to it than the rest. Instead choosing the area and community over the bricks and mortar themselves.
ggg9990 8y ago
My ideal is a 5 bedroom house on about 1/2 acre of lawn right smack in the middle of Manhattan.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  It's yours after your first few billion. I wonder if you had the money could you pull this off?
  - rsynnott 8y ago
    You wouldn't want it even if you could do it; it would be permanently overshadowed unless it was actually in Central Park or somewhere.
    - mfringel 8y ago
      ...or on top of an existing building.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        That already exists as penthouse. I was thinking if you would get permission to build a farmhouse with lawn around it in the middle of Manhattan if you could afford the land.
  - ggg9990 8y ago
    Hehe, I wouldn’t even really want it. Was just needling the people who want their nice big houses without thinking about the isolating car culture it creates.
Zach_the_Lizard 8y ago
> Do you not want a large, detached house? :) I think part of it has to do with the fact that that is what people want If people truly wanted this, we wouldn't need a large zoning law apparatus to legally enforce it, now would we? Historically these laws came about due to White Flight and wanting to keep the "other" people out. My hypothesis is these laws persist due to effectively creating legally enforced housing cartel, pushing up house prices. Throw in some rent control to turn some poor folks against new housing, and you've got a recipe for ever increasing house prices, falling fertility rates, and the squeezing of the middle class.
- tudelo 8y ago
  Are you referring to housing demand in and around high population areas? Well, I'm not making a claim people don't want to live close to these areas, but as someone who isn't buying a million dollar house, I don't even consider it as an option.
  - Zach_the_Lizard 8y ago
    It's all over. Memphis to Miami, New York to Nevada, San Francisco to Syracuse. The historical ratio of house price to income that was considered affordable was about 2.6. If you earn $100k, you should spend $260k at most on your house under this rule. Nowadays very few metros have median house prices at a level where the median household income would qualify, using that 2.6 ratio. Almost all of the cities with cost levels at that ratio or better are Rust Belt cities, and even many of them are right at the threshold. Check out the full list: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-price-to-income-ratio-is-most-out-of-whack/561404/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-price... Obviously interest rates, tax policy, etc. can change the monthly expense equation, so what may have been too expensive in the past might be more affordable now with lower interest rates. However, even with a reduced cost to finance, there are still hefty down payments that need to be saved up for which are cost prohibitive. And higher property values need to pay higher property taxes. Maybe even "mansion" taxes in a few places.
- Spivak 8y ago
  People absolutely want large detached houses, but housing developers want to build densely packed multi-family housing because they're more profitable. Here's the problem: - Start with a nice, quiet, picturesque suburban neighborhood. - Naturally people want to move into this neighborhood because it's so nice and want it to be affordable so, absent zoning, developers build apartments and condos to fill the need. - Then all the people move in and the neighborhood slowly learns that the reason it was actually nice and picturesque was the low density and high buy-in. - Property values start going down, along with tax revenue, the schools decline, $/student plummets, and all the people with the means move somewhere else. Without at least some laws it's incredibly difficult to break this cycle.
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
> Do you not want a large, detached house? No. In most central and southern Europe there are laws to ensure that density stays above a threshold, cities stays walkable and apartments are built with proper walls and corridors to prevent any noise from the neighbors. This led to much cheaper housing and less need for driving.
gutnor 8y ago
> Do you not want a large, detached house? :) The smiley implies a lot of people want that. That's true, but the flip side of that question is "Do you no want to drive for everything you need?" which, especially in Europe, is going to get a lot of people answering "Hell no".
maxxxxx 8y ago
"Do you not want a large, detached house? :) I think part of it has to do with the fact that that is what people want... " I don't want one. They also say that people want SUVs but I don't want that either. I think there is a lot of cultural conditioning in what people want.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  Do you have more than two kids?
ferongr 8y ago
I live in a hole of an apartment in a European city and contrary to most Hackernews I'd love a detached house with a hobby shed to house some metalworking equipment and a driveway were I could wrench on my motorcycle. Also, there's no "sense of community" that comes from condensed living quarters in my urban hellscape, it's a dog-eat-dog world of depressed people.
- varjag 8y ago
  Same, down to the metal shop! In the 10 years we owned an apartment, we didn't get to know any neighbours except that asshole who had a habit blasting music 2am on Saturdays. Life is so much more mellow in a house.
ryandrake 8y ago
Sometimes I think I’m the only person on HN who strongly prefers a detached, single family house with plenty of space between neighbors. I’ve done apartment living and condo living and will never voluntarily return to it. Some benefits of owning a single family detached home: 1. I have a small kid with a lot of running energy who plays in the yard every day. Having to walk to the nearest park (if one exists) is inconvenient especially if it’s miles away. 2. I’m done with loud neighbors. Constant parties, loud bass music rattling the shared walls, loud sex at all hours, loud conversations right outside my door. It was a constant attribute of dense urban living. 3. Hobbies that require lots of private space and machinery, like sheet metal working and carpentry. Not going to be possible in a townhome without being yourself the annoying loud neighbor. 4. Freedom to customize. If I want to mount a huge antenna on my roof or build a backyard shed, only a detached home allows this. 5. Related to 4: Authority to fix things when they break. If my roof is leaking I can choose if and when to fix it. I can shop around for contractors to make sure I’m not overpaying. I can inspect and approve the work. In an apartment or condo these important tasks are out of my hands and done (always poorly) by an incompetent committee or landlord. 6. (For car owners) Indoor car parking and protection from the elements measurably reduces the maintenance cost of those cars. And fixing cars is tons easier in a garage. Nothing worse than replacing your power steering system in a 2 by 4 meter parking space surrounded by your neighbors’ cars. Ask me how I know.
- zzzzzzzza 8y ago
  4 -> local hackerspace (but like 1 whether or not city has this depends on your location) 5. You could buy a condo and then be responsible for repairs if you so wished (though this adds another point, sometimes you'll have to deal with e.g. upstairs neighbors toilet leaking) 6. Of course one of the biggest appeals of urban living for many would be not having to own a car
- lmm 8y ago
  It comes down to: do I get more value out of space with other people in or space without them? Would I rather my kid have lots of space to play by themselves, or lots of other kids to play with (but only one park between them all)? Would I rather have space for my own carpentry shop, or enough neighbours that there will be a few carpenters among them (but only one workshop between us)? Would I rather have car parking spaces or cafes and theatres? I think more people around me is a net positive overall, though there are definitely exceptions.

swebs 8y ago

>Americans all seemed to own large, detatched houses That's only really true for the suburbs and rural areas. Most Americans live in cities, where rowhomes and apartment complexes are more popular.

wilsonnb2 8y ago
I'd like to see a source for your claim that most Americans live in cities. As far as I know, the census does not differentiate between suburban and urban areas so we don't have any "official" numbers on how many Americans live in suburban areas. They are just lumped into the urban population.
- opencl 8y ago
  Yes, the census "80% of people live in cities" thing really just means "incorporated areas". In reality ~2/3 of housing stock in the US is detached[1]. Traditional detached houses and mobile homes combined are around 78 million. Now I have not seen detailed statistics about the exact number of people living in each type but it seems pretty safe to say that the average household size for detached housing is at least as high as for apartments, and most likely higher. US average household size is 2.58 people which would imply ~200 million people in detached housing, well over half the population. [1]https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/units.html https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/unit...
- ghaff 8y ago
  In fact the US census definition is even wider than that for urban. My town's a good example. It's essentially a 7K population rural town; I'm in the middle of about 100 acres with a couple neighbors. But I'm fairly near a major city and I'm solidly urban per the census. It's complicated to determine what's urban and suburban--much less exurban (which is what ESRI calls where I live). [1] But the census uses a measure where the areas it counts as "rural" are mostly very rural. [1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-american-cities/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-am...

Symmetry 8y ago

Partially this is social engineering. Progressives at the time zoning became popular thought that if you isolated people with their families and made it less convenient to get to, e.g., taverns then they would become more responsible. This was considered particularly important when the people affected were Irish, Italians, Poles, etc who were considered in need of becoming more responsible at the time.

emodendroket 8y ago
I don't think that's quite right. Such groups wouldn't be able to afford detached homes, which in many cases was the point (Atlanta, on an infamous example, also is deliberately designed to make it impossible for buses to get to done neighborhoods).
- Symmetry 8y ago
  What I'm talking about took place in the 1910s, things were different then.

aphextron 8y ago

>. It just seemed odd to me, and whilst it's true that a lot of the US is less dense than the UK I find it fascinating that the zoning laws seem to massively encourage and protect single family homes. You have to understand that in the US houses are not just houses. They are the primary vehicle by which the middle class is able to build wealth. There are scores of tax regulation and perks to home owning that don't exist for any other asset class.

PopsiclePete 8y ago

As a European living in a large-ish American city, it's very entertaining to me to listen endlessly to Americans complain how "bad traffic has become lately with all these people moving in!" They want: 1. Large, sparsely populated suburbs, away from everything. 2. Cars to drive long-distances from their suburbs to "the things we want to actually go to when not sleeping". 3. No heavy traffic, please! Good luck achieving all 3! And yeah, public transport sucks here. For obvious reasons - nobody can design effective public transport when the average commute from someone's house to their work is fifteen miles one-way and there's no population density to speak of to make it cost-effective. I consider myself lucky that I can just walk to a nice grocery store and don't have to get in a car to go buy some milk.