5 ms·

Your calculations ignore property taxes and any other tax based upon the value of your house. Your rates also seem off. http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.

by sbov 8y ago

Your calculations ignore property taxes and any other tax based upon the value of your house. Your rates also seem off. http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.html http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.html claims the average rate in 1999 was 7.44% and in 2018 it was 4.54%. The fed also just raised their rates in December and plan to do more raising in 2019 so expect these numbers to rise. Beyond that, it doesn't matter if the price per square foot is the same if they aren't building smaller houses. Points like this is like tricks we pull to keep inflation down. All that matters is how expensive is a house that can put a roof over the head of the number of people I need to. We have 3 kids and we were looking for 4 bedrooms. Newer ones in our area are massive 3,000+ square foot structures we can't afford. So we're stuck in a 50 year old 1900 square foot house that we can afford. With a 50 year old house comes all sorts of annoyances such as asbestos, lead paint, and orangeburg pipes.

skookumchuck 8y ago
> We have 3 kids and we were looking for 4 bedrooms My family was short on bedrooms growing up, so we doubled up. Nothing wrong with that.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  Me too, but it’s definitely a compromise, especially as the kids get older. I’d rather have a slightly lower-quality property than shared bedrooms unless the situation makes that infeasible.
  - cheald 8y ago
    It's certainly preferable to not have to double up bedrooms, but we have to remember that our parents did it just fine. I grew up in a family of 6 in a 1600 sq ft house. It worked just fine, but we'd look at that today and consider it unacceptably cramped. Demand for space per occupant has risen. It doesn't make sense to expect our parents' price tags when we're demanding larger properties.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - skookumchuck 8y ago
      There's some evidence that kids who share bedrooms have better social skills. Historically, the concept of separate bedrooms is very, very recent. The expected size of bedrooms has also risen dramatically in the last few years. Some are even bigger than the living rooms of houses built in the 1970s.
      - EADGBE 8y ago
        It's a slippery slope; always needing to be more successful than our previous generations (At a younger age to boot!).
cheald 8y ago
Sure, there are lots of factors in play. Property taxes vary by county and are difficult to make broad statements about (in my county, annual increases are capped so my property taxes are not assessed based on the retail value of the property, for example). Rates examples were literally just my first Google results to illustrate via some napkin math that the loan rate has a substantial effect on monthly payment that isn't necessarily captured in the list price. The temptation when we read stats like "the real price has doubled in 20 years" is to interpret it as "the real payment per comparable unit has doubled", when no such thing is true. I don't know what your market is like, but mine has had a lot of new townhome development in the 1-2k sq ft range. The idea that we're only building 4k sq ft behemoths just isn't true in my part of the country, at least.
oliwarner 8y ago
50 years is old? Britain here, in my 130yo house. I'm not sure I'd trust a house that hadn't survived at least one World War and all the weather since.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  There are a lot of efficiency, insulative, and electrical system improvements that have been made since then, assuming the developer didn’t cut all the corners.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Yeah, it's swings and roundabouts. We recently modernised my grandmother's terraced house. Positive points: - high ceilings and windows. Predated Parker-Morris: if you can find one those are absolutely the best. Modern houses are horribly shrunken by comparison, especially when we sell by bedroom count rather than area - good sound insulation - solid brick construction (although no cavity wall insulation) Minus points: - very leaky of heat - lead piping embedded in concrete floors - ancient electrical system (already reworked a few times) - perilously steep staircase - bathroom had been retrofitted in the 50s. Yes, the house was built without an inside bathroom, I think it only just had an inside toilet.
    - lotsofpulp 8y ago
      I have the opposite problem in the US. All the houses are too big, with high ceilings and giant 2 story foyers. Other than advertising that you can afford higher heating and cooling costs, I don’t understand the purpose of these high ceilings. And the 2 story foyer means the second floor is constantly too warm and 1st floor is too cold as the heat has no reason to stay at the bottom.
      - EADGBE 8y ago
        > And the 2 story foyer means the second floor is constantly too warm and 1st floor is too cold as the heat has no reason to stay at the bottom. I understand your nitpicking. It was almost a deal breaker for me when we bought our new home. But we have a zoned system regulating the single unit we would have had regardless. There's no temperature difference now between floors. And with the ability to shut off the upstairs until bedtime, we use about 1/3 more energy to heat/cool 3.5x the space.

by sbov 8y ago

skookumchuck 8y ago

> We have 3 kids and we were looking for 4 bedrooms My family was short on bedrooms growing up, so we doubled up. Nothing wrong with that.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
matthewmacleod 8y ago
Me too, but it’s definitely a compromise, especially as the kids get older. I’d rather have a slightly lower-quality property than shared bedrooms unless the situation makes that infeasible.
- cheald 8y ago
  It's certainly preferable to not have to double up bedrooms, but we have to remember that our parents did it just fine. I grew up in a family of 6 in a 1600 sq ft house. It worked just fine, but we'd look at that today and consider it unacceptably cramped. Demand for space per occupant has risen. It doesn't make sense to expect our parents' price tags when we're demanding larger properties.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    There's some evidence that kids who share bedrooms have better social skills. Historically, the concept of separate bedrooms is very, very recent. The expected size of bedrooms has also risen dramatically in the last few years. Some are even bigger than the living rooms of houses built in the 1970s.
    - EADGBE 8y ago
      It's a slippery slope; always needing to be more successful than our previous generations (At a younger age to boot!).

cheald 8y ago

Sure, there are lots of factors in play. Property taxes vary by county and are difficult to make broad statements about (in my county, annual increases are capped so my property taxes are not assessed based on the retail value of the property, for example). Rates examples were literally just my first Google results to illustrate via some napkin math that the loan rate has a substantial effect on monthly payment that isn't necessarily captured in the list price. The temptation when we read stats like "the real price has doubled in 20 years" is to interpret it as "the real payment per comparable unit has doubled", when no such thing is true. I don't know what your market is like, but mine has had a lot of new townhome development in the 1-2k sq ft range. The idea that we're only building 4k sq ft behemoths just isn't true in my part of the country, at least.

oliwarner 8y ago

50 years is old? Britain here, in my 130yo house. I'm not sure I'd trust a house that hadn't survived at least one World War and all the weather since.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
There are a lot of efficiency, insulative, and electrical system improvements that have been made since then, assuming the developer didn’t cut all the corners.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Yeah, it's swings and roundabouts. We recently modernised my grandmother's terraced house. Positive points: - high ceilings and windows. Predated Parker-Morris: if you can find one those are absolutely the best. Modern houses are horribly shrunken by comparison, especially when we sell by bedroom count rather than area - good sound insulation - solid brick construction (although no cavity wall insulation) Minus points: - very leaky of heat - lead piping embedded in concrete floors - ancient electrical system (already reworked a few times) - perilously steep staircase - bathroom had been retrofitted in the 50s. Yes, the house was built without an inside bathroom, I think it only just had an inside toilet.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    I have the opposite problem in the US. All the houses are too big, with high ceilings and giant 2 story foyers. Other than advertising that you can afford higher heating and cooling costs, I don’t understand the purpose of these high ceilings. And the 2 story foyer means the second floor is constantly too warm and 1st floor is too cold as the heat has no reason to stay at the bottom.
    - EADGBE 8y ago
      > And the 2 story foyer means the second floor is constantly too warm and 1st floor is too cold as the heat has no reason to stay at the bottom. I understand your nitpicking. It was almost a deal breaker for me when we bought our new home. But we have a zoned system regulating the single unit we would have had regardless. There's no temperature difference now between floors. And with the ability to shut off the upstairs until bedtime, we use about 1/3 more energy to heat/cool 3.5x the space.