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The labor and the land. Those are by far the most expensive components of a home.
by nikanj 8y ago
The labor and the land. Those are by far the most expensive components of a home.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wbl 8y agoAnd planning permission.
- Broken_Hippo 8y agoThis truly isn't so horrible in some places. Build slightly outside a town of 3000 in the midwest and see where you get. So long as you aren't taking away farmland, you'll usually get your permission.
- bobthepanda 8y agoLand, labor, and politics. Bare land in cities doesn't exist anymore and isn't cheap. Labor is expensive due to high living standards. And politics can lower the supply of potential developable land even further, raise the cost of labor, as well as drive other differentiating concerns. Your neighbors can sue you (or compel the government or an HOA to step in) if they don't want you to build. And it's probably next to impossible to design a kit home that could meet the developmental codes of all fifty states, let alone all the municipalities. It's why comparisons between say, Hyperloop and CAHSR are so infuriating. The technology is not the reason why traditional high speed rail construction in California is so expensive and slow.
- gambiting 8y agoYep. People outside of the construction business can be shocked by how cheap materials to build a house actually are. It's the land and labour where the money goes.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoContractors are like lawyers. You're not paying them to argue your case. You're paying them because they have a professional relationship with all the other parties that's been built upon years of doing business with them. The lawyer knows the prosecutor and the judge. The contractor knows all the inspectors and bureaucrats. They get favorable treatment compared to some nobody off the street. A huge chunk of what you pay them is compensation for all the time they spend building that professional relationship with the people who you need to appease. The fact that services are rendered is what blurs the line between business and corruption.
- encoderer 8y agoThis guy remodels. Seriously, good luck getting the subcontractor back to finish quickly when somebody who has been providing him with work consistently calls and needs a hand. As a homeowner you are back burner.
- nikanj 8y agoVery similar to trying to get support from a software company, when you're a one-off $19.95 customer, and their biggest enterprise clients are also calling.
- someguydave 8y agoYeah I think this is correct. It's rational for the prime contractor to increase his prices when he can deliver "value" in the form of greasing the wheels with subcontractors and inspectors. At least on the inspector side, I wonder if governments started privatizing home inspection if this would help establish a more "market-based" treatment of builders. The city could honor certain third-party inspections as being "reasonable" for permitting. I could see this working even better if the inspection service bills the building owner rather than the builder. Then the incentivizes are aligned for a fair inspection and fair treatment of builders that is in the owner's interest.
- walrus01 8y agoLand isn't that expensive if you are looking for a really rural location. But you will have significant expenses for septic system and well. You can buy 20 acres in Okanogan county, WA, in a very rural ranch area about 40 minutes drive from Omak for about $23,000.