11 ms·

The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

43 points by tysone 8y ago

howard941 8y ago
No. Common walls and shared floor/ceiling sucks, thank you very much. Better to be in a trailer (which I quite like)
- aaronarduino 8y ago
  This. Home separation is important for quality of life.
- HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
  Exactly. People living in urban areas are used to the noise or the requirement for silence but when I moved to an apartment from my parents' house I hated every second of it.
supermw 8y ago
What is the point of these opinion pieces? Why should we care about what someone at New York Times says over any other person? These kind of articles must be made simply to drive traffic and stimulate rage. It will be interpreted as just another coastal elite telling Americans they should aspire to live and die in a cold steel and concrete box partitioned out in a shared building with neighbors on all sides pestering them and a condo HOA breathing down their backs. I guess it worked.
- benj111 8y ago
  As opposed to The National Association of Home Builders giving us their opinion on what we should live in? Isn't it reasonable to have a conversation about what kind of houses we want to live in, we want builders to build, we want government to encourage?
- matt4077 8y ago
  Well, as you say, it's an opinion piece. It's raison d'être is to allow people to make informed decisions. To that purpose, it is helpful for a society to have reasoned analyses that go beyond the low-value collection of stereotypes and bad-faith of sentences like: > just another coastal elite telling Americans they should aspire to live and die in a cold steel and concrete box partitioned out in a shared building with neighbors on all sides pestering them
- gowld 8y ago
  You don't need to read the NYT if you don't want to. They publish things that people seem to enjoy reading. Concrete is warmer than wood, it's a much better insulator.
tibbon 8y ago
I'm remembering how weird of a place (Boston) I'm living in. > This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet (the lot encompasses 65,340 square feet). Even properties that Red Sox players are living in west of the city are rarely over 6,000sq/ft. When I see a listing for a home over 3,000sq/ft here it's a rarity. ~1200-2400 sq/ft homes are pretty average in the Boston/Cambridge area. Many condos are more in the 800-1600 sq/ft range, and it's also not uncommon to find 1200sq/ft houses. I guess that being said, almost everything here is 100 years old. I'm personally against a condo for myself because I'm just too damn loud (drums and guitar), and I'm sure to piss off most neighbors with that. If it wasn't for that hobby, I'd be totally happy with a condo. I just checked, and there is one property for sale in Boston-proper (which includes JP and Dorchester) over 9,000 sq/ft for sale right now, and it's a 15k sq/ft estate for nearly 4mm.
- nugget 8y ago
  In my experience houses greater than 6k sq ft are useful for one of a couple scenarios: either you have >5 residents (parents, grandparents, kids, live-in help) and need lots of bedrooms/extra space, or you're throwing frequent social events and need your home to function as an event venue. I briefly lived in an 8.5k sq ft house with two other people and on many mornings I felt like Jack Nicholson in the Shining. Never again.
  - gowld 8y ago
    You can easily fit >5 people in 3500 sqft -- that's enough for 4 large bedrooms upstairs and a whole living unit in basement, with a large main floor for "entertaining".
    - majewsky 8y ago
      > You can easily fit >5 people in 3500 sqft I used to live with my two brothers (so three people total) in a 860 sqft apartment and we never had problems with stepping on each other's toes.
- sopooneo 8y ago
nimbius 8y ago
a major point people dont consider is the HOA. Speaking from experience of a friend who was a plumber for one of these condo complexes: In a condo, if an HOA is required to fix plumbing or landscaping, paint, or roofing, then it comes out of the CAM fees paid by the residents. However, if the HOA does NOT pay for that work, or tries to stiff the construction firm they hire, the construction company can take out a lien on the property until their bill is paid. That lien means you cannot sell your condo until the HOA pays their debt. In my friends case, the HOA had blown all their CAM money on lavish vacations and dinners for key members of the HOA board. They had no money to pay for a sewage repair job, and left 54 members of the housing compex stuck with a $20,000USD repair bill. After a grisly court battle the HOA was disbanded, CAM fees were agreed to be paid directly to the plumbing company for the year, and the complex went into foreclosure after the debt had been paid as most tenants had sold.
- webdood90 8y ago
  54 people couldn't cough up $20k?
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    54 people couldn't pay the bare modicum of attention to their HOA's budget to stop them from spending on meals and vacations that have nothing to do with the HOA's role?
    - magduf 8y ago
      I've lived in HOA neighborhoods before; the power any individual resident has over the HOA is nearly nil. You'd basically have to run around to all the neighbors and convince them to vote for someone else at the next board election; it's just like regular government politics that way.
      - lazyasciiart 8y ago
        Yes, that's a pretty bare modicum of effort.
imgabe 8y ago
>Every year, the National Association of Home Builders presents its vision for the New American Home, > This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet Wait a minute, you mean the trade association for residential homebuilders thinks we should build absurdly large, expensive houses? Well, I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
refurb 8y ago
After owning a few different place, single family home and two condos, I've decided that I will never own a condo again, only a SFH. Too much crap to put up with.
pxeboot 8y ago
In my area (Texas), condos in desirable areas cost more than McMansions, so I don't see things changing here anytime soon.
- criddell 8y ago
  Are the McMansions you are talking about in the same desirable area?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
helen___keller 8y ago
Personally I'm a fan of tightly packed townhomes (or, SFH packed with just a few inches between them, as seen in some places), but I think an important step towards the walkable urbanism the authors want is simply to remove unnecessary restrictions on housing. Like, I get that some people want big lawns and backyards but I don't get why this needs to be the only housing that's legal in the majority of all suburbs in the country (even many inner suburbs just a few miles from major urban centers). Why can't I do what I want with my property? Is there really that much of a public interest in forcing an entire neighborhood to be grass farmers?
- gowld 8y ago
  The big problem with townhomes and apartments is shoddy construction making neighbors a noise nuisance. Also, economics is weird. Townhomes cost almost the same as nearby houses, perhaps because they are relatively limited supply and more cost-efficient to maintain, so people look at the sticker price and think "oh, I can get a lot more footage for a little more price". Also, townhomes tend to get built as sound buffers alongside highways, making them unpleasant to live in.
  - Zimahl 8y ago
    Townhomes, at least in the Portland OR suburbs, cost exactly the same as stand alone homes while being typically smaller, sometimes with a one-car garage, and maybe only a small backyard (sometimes no backyard). While the list price of the townhome is typically less, you can pay hundreds of dollars per month for a HOA which brings your monthly payment up to almost the same price as a stand alone home.
  - lazyasciiart 8y ago
    None of that seems like an explanation for banning them.
  - alistairSH 8y ago
    Those problems are solvable. My perception... the real problem is Americans expect a lot of space. They would rather trade quality for sqft. A 2200sqft TH with thin walls is more sellable than a 1600sqft TH with thick walls. Additionally, THs are considered "starter" homes. Certainly here in DC, a couple is expected to "move up" to a single-family in the outer 'burbs when their family grows. It's all quite silly. And I say that having bought the single family in my 20s, hated it, sold it in my early 40s to go back to a TH. Now I walk to work, shorter drive to pretty much everything when needed, less maintenance. I'm much happier.
madengr 8y ago
Screw condos. I’ll take a home where I can put up ham radio antennas and shoot guns, without pesky neighbors.
- superkuh 8y ago
  You're not wrong and this isn't just a throwaway sentiment. Yours is an actual realistic criticism of the ideas of the article despite what the urbanites think.
  - lazyasciiart 8y ago
    "The urbanites" are 80% of America. "I personally don't want it" is actually a pretty vacuous criticism of a proposal that most people should do something.
  - tom_ 8y ago
    I'm not really sure it's a criticism, more just an minor splash of inchoate rage, and we're supposed to sort of figure out the implied criticism. Which is, I assume, that perhaps more people want a massive house in the middle of nowhere than don't, and that most people don't actually want to live in a city, but put up with it for one reason for another. And then perhaps this massive house should be the ideal home, because what is the point of an ideal if it's something that most people don't want?
    - superkuh 8y ago
      Okay, I'll spell it out for you. I understand that most people in the world and the USA are packed in to high density cities on the coast. But your numerical superiority does not mean that your ideals define what is or what should be. Nor does commenting on alternative views of what is good mean we are full of 'rage' despite what your stereotypes may suggest. Living in high density areas is a trade of individual rights for job opportunities. And it makes sense. You can't have people in high density areas playing around with things that make loud noises because everything you do in such areas effects others. It's just common curtesy if not against the local laws. It's not about house size. It's about all the comprimises you have to constantly make when you don't really own the land or building you live in and can't chose what behaviors you want to do even if they don't hurt others (ie, San Fran saying they can tell you what you can do with your apartment or house re: airbnb). This diminishment of the individual is bad for US society as it has existed for most of the past. Unfortunately the urbanization of America by relative population is unlikely to stop and those born into it will likely never know freedom is available elsewhere. ps, high density areas have terrible, terrible radio frequency interference. If you want to set up an amateur radio astronomy kit or do a bit of ham radio you're pretty much out of luck except for the line of sight VHF and up bands that are, mostly, boring. And don't even try to to put up a decent size tower; it won't be approved because all the people nearbye will be "effected" by being able to see it and complain (if it's not explicitly against local law).
LyndsySimon 8y ago
Granted I only skimmed the article, but it seemed rather myopic to me. Why is the "dream home" assumed to be in an urban/suburban area? Why not in a small town or rural area? In January 2018, we moved back from Charlottesville, VA (which itself isn't even "urban") to Harrison, AR. I was able to buy a five bedroom, two bath home on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood for under $125k. My wife and I are beginning to put together our requirements for our next home, which will likely be a bit further from other people, outside city limits, and likely be on 5-10 acres. The cost will till be far less than even a three bedroom townhome would have been in Charlottesville.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  Because 80% of Americans live in urban and suburban areas.
- matt4077 8y ago
  Almost by definition, people prefer to live in dense areas. In terms of prescriptive advice, high-density housing reduces urban sprawl. If you can convince a third of suburbia to change to denser housing, commute times for everyone would be cut in half. Vast swaths of land could also return to farmland or nature preserves. So even people who personally prefer to live "just outside the city" should advocate for denser housing. When the city builds up, everything moves towards the center. I just measured the distance from city centre to the countryside for two cities of about equal size: Hamburg (Pop 1.5 mil): 8mi Houston (Pop 1.8 mil): 22mi (I chose these because LA and Chicago have coastal layouts which aren't comparable. They also connect directly to other urban areas which for the purposes of this exercise should be considered as "farmland". Or you could add their respective populations which would further amplify the difference)
  - epistasis 8y ago
    > So even people who personally prefer to live "just outside the city" should advocate for denser housing. When the city builds up, everything moves towards the center. Thanks for making this point, so many people vociferously object to any density anywhere. Nobody is being forcibly relocated to dense living, but people are being forcibly denied the option of dense living. It's similar to transit and traffic: though other people taking transit helps drivers encounter traffic, far too many drivers will attack transit because it's "not something they use." Realizing that other people want different things and that those different things might help you with your own wants is a complicated topic for public discussion.
acheron 8y ago
Ideally I never want to encounter any other person that I don't actually live with at my residence. Condos are terrible, as are townhouses, and indeed normal houses built on tiny lots squished up next to each other ruled over by an HOA. L'enfer, c'est les autres. Yes, condos have a place, and are necessary sometimes, but they're an unfortunate compromise, not even remotely a "dream home".
castlecrasher2 8y ago
>This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet (the lot encompasses 65,340 square feet). No, this is an exaggeration for the sake of a highly slanted opinion piece. The average size of a new house in the US is about 2500 sq ft if I remember correctly. >Does anyone need 10,000 square feet to live in? Does anyone want to put up with petulant condo associations/HOA squabbles? Besides, if someone wants to pay housekeeping to clean it or spend half their week cleaning that's their business. >Enter the Green New Deal oh so this is just a thinly disguised anti-rich opinion piece
- alistairSH 8y ago
  No, this is an exaggeration for the sake of a highly slanted opinion piece. The average size of a new house in the US is about 2500 sq ft if I remember correctly. No, the NAHB titles their test home "The New American Home".
- anth_anm 8y ago
  > oh so this is just a thinly disguised anti-rich opinion piece are you rich? I'm very anti-rich.
seanalltogether 8y ago
As long as the new dream home has thick walls and soundproof ceilings... But I'm not gonna bet too heavily on builders caring about those features.
- Simulacra 8y ago
  A friend of ours has a condo that was built in the 60s, and there’s a foot of concrete between every floor and unit. I envy that.
abawany 8y ago
I have dealt with more than my fair share of HOAs in such housing (townhomes organized as condos, high-rise, etc.) Some of the stories of dysfunctional HOAs are right on the money unfortunately. Also, state laws give HOAs more power than they typically deserve: until about 2012, Texas allowed HOAs the following: place liens on shareholders' properties without explicitly informing them, deny them xeriscapy options, and define where they may or may not place flags. It is horrifying what trouble a bunch of tinpot bullies can cause when they manage to infest an HOA board. Transparency is another problem area: it is often difficult, without going though the expense of making a purchase offer, to get HOA terms, details of board meetings, and budgets; this makes it tough to go in with informed consent when making one of the biggest purchases that you will make. I had to withdraw a purchase offer (and lose my option fee; I since learned that a good realtor would get the information before going through the process of making an offer) once after reading the 60+ page HOA terms, which appeared to mandate that the buyer must leave a key with the central office and that the latter may visit properties as they needed with unacknowledged prior notice. I wish HOAs had to be treated as public concerns so that the light would shine brightly on pathological boards and buyers would have the best available information possible.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mnm1 8y ago
Yeah, but how are rich Americans supposed to feel superior to poor Americans in an 1800 sq ft condo? Ridiculous. That's just for plebs. /s
Simulacra 8y ago
NO. Condos are actually really crappy places to live, like being in an apartment complex but you have to pay a (generally) overly burdensome HOA, deal with politics and power play issues, not to mention the noise and nuisance of being in an apartment. Townhomes are better, but truly the "dream home" is still your own house, no HOA, with space between you and your neighbors, a dedicated place to park your car, and the freedom to say "get off my lawn."
- anth_anm 8y ago
  Lawns are ridiculous wastes of water.
fred3300 8y ago
Reading the article and these comments is somewhat entertaining. 1. The size of the show home is dictated in part by the desire of the associations to incorporate and show off the different products of the sponsors. More sponsors means more revenue for the show. 2. Roads are needed to transport goods from urban center to urban center in addition for rural to urban. Years ago the livestock industry changed their slaughtering and processing from urban center to rural (or small town). 3. This author is based in San Francisco. By the standards of my part of the world, SF is now a third world country, people shooting up in the street, taking a dp where hey like (in the road, etc. If she can't fix where she lives what right does she have telling me how to live?
wjossey 8y ago
There's something super amusing about some of the stuff they describe in the article, along with the diagram of the public transportation options. What they don't mention is that everyone who lives in that building almost certainly would drive to work- Because, Los Angeles. Those units will be near a new subway line that will be completed in the next five years (but they'd still have to bank on their office being on that line). I also don't tend to find a lot of new condo developments in this area that are for sale. They all seem to be rented by the builder. My presumption being that credit continues to be so cheap, they can afford the slow burn down from rents, since thye're not getting crushed by the interest payment. But, I'm not a landlord, so I don't know for sure.

43 points by tysone 8y ago

howard941 8y ago

No. Common walls and shared floor/ceiling sucks, thank you very much. Better to be in a trailer (which I quite like)

aaronarduino 8y ago
This. Home separation is important for quality of life.
HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
Exactly. People living in urban areas are used to the noise or the requirement for silence but when I moved to an apartment from my parents' house I hated every second of it.

supermw 8y ago

What is the point of these opinion pieces? Why should we care about what someone at New York Times says over any other person? These kind of articles must be made simply to drive traffic and stimulate rage. It will be interpreted as just another coastal elite telling Americans they should aspire to live and die in a cold steel and concrete box partitioned out in a shared building with neighbors on all sides pestering them and a condo HOA breathing down their backs. I guess it worked.

benj111 8y ago
As opposed to The National Association of Home Builders giving us their opinion on what we should live in? Isn't it reasonable to have a conversation about what kind of houses we want to live in, we want builders to build, we want government to encourage?
matt4077 8y ago
Well, as you say, it's an opinion piece. It's raison d'être is to allow people to make informed decisions. To that purpose, it is helpful for a society to have reasoned analyses that go beyond the low-value collection of stereotypes and bad-faith of sentences like: > just another coastal elite telling Americans they should aspire to live and die in a cold steel and concrete box partitioned out in a shared building with neighbors on all sides pestering them
gowld 8y ago
You don't need to read the NYT if you don't want to. They publish things that people seem to enjoy reading. Concrete is warmer than wood, it's a much better insulator.

tibbon 8y ago

I'm remembering how weird of a place (Boston) I'm living in. > This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet (the lot encompasses 65,340 square feet). Even properties that Red Sox players are living in west of the city are rarely over 6,000sq/ft. When I see a listing for a home over 3,000sq/ft here it's a rarity. ~1200-2400 sq/ft homes are pretty average in the Boston/Cambridge area. Many condos are more in the 800-1600 sq/ft range, and it's also not uncommon to find 1200sq/ft houses. I guess that being said, almost everything here is 100 years old. I'm personally against a condo for myself because I'm just too damn loud (drums and guitar), and I'm sure to piss off most neighbors with that. If it wasn't for that hobby, I'd be totally happy with a condo. I just checked, and there is one property for sale in Boston-proper (which includes JP and Dorchester) over 9,000 sq/ft for sale right now, and it's a 15k sq/ft estate for nearly 4mm.

nugget 8y ago
In my experience houses greater than 6k sq ft are useful for one of a couple scenarios: either you have >5 residents (parents, grandparents, kids, live-in help) and need lots of bedrooms/extra space, or you're throwing frequent social events and need your home to function as an event venue. I briefly lived in an 8.5k sq ft house with two other people and on many mornings I felt like Jack Nicholson in the Shining. Never again.
- gowld 8y ago
  You can easily fit >5 people in 3500 sqft -- that's enough for 4 large bedrooms upstairs and a whole living unit in basement, with a large main floor for "entertaining".
  - majewsky 8y ago
    > You can easily fit >5 people in 3500 sqft I used to live with my two brothers (so three people total) in a 860 sqft apartment and we never had problems with stepping on each other's toes.
sopooneo 8y ago

nimbius 8y ago

a major point people dont consider is the HOA. Speaking from experience of a friend who was a plumber for one of these condo complexes: In a condo, if an HOA is required to fix plumbing or landscaping, paint, or roofing, then it comes out of the CAM fees paid by the residents. However, if the HOA does NOT pay for that work, or tries to stiff the construction firm they hire, the construction company can take out a lien on the property until their bill is paid. That lien means you cannot sell your condo until the HOA pays their debt. In my friends case, the HOA had blown all their CAM money on lavish vacations and dinners for key members of the HOA board. They had no money to pay for a sewage repair job, and left 54 members of the housing compex stuck with a $20,000USD repair bill. After a grisly court battle the HOA was disbanded, CAM fees were agreed to be paid directly to the plumbing company for the year, and the complex went into foreclosure after the debt had been paid as most tenants had sold.

webdood90 8y ago
54 people couldn't cough up $20k?
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  54 people couldn't pay the bare modicum of attention to their HOA's budget to stop them from spending on meals and vacations that have nothing to do with the HOA's role?
  - magduf 8y ago
    I've lived in HOA neighborhoods before; the power any individual resident has over the HOA is nearly nil. You'd basically have to run around to all the neighbors and convince them to vote for someone else at the next board election; it's just like regular government politics that way.
    - lazyasciiart 8y ago
      Yes, that's a pretty bare modicum of effort.

imgabe 8y ago

>Every year, the National Association of Home Builders presents its vision for the New American Home, > This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet Wait a minute, you mean the trade association for residential homebuilders thinks we should build absurdly large, expensive houses? Well, I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

refurb 8y ago

After owning a few different place, single family home and two condos, I've decided that I will never own a condo again, only a SFH. Too much crap to put up with.

pxeboot 8y ago

In my area (Texas), condos in desirable areas cost more than McMansions, so I don't see things changing here anytime soon.

criddell 8y ago
Are the McMansions you are talking about in the same desirable area?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

helen___keller 8y ago

Personally I'm a fan of tightly packed townhomes (or, SFH packed with just a few inches between them, as seen in some places), but I think an important step towards the walkable urbanism the authors want is simply to remove unnecessary restrictions on housing. Like, I get that some people want big lawns and backyards but I don't get why this needs to be the only housing that's legal in the majority of all suburbs in the country (even many inner suburbs just a few miles from major urban centers). Why can't I do what I want with my property? Is there really that much of a public interest in forcing an entire neighborhood to be grass farmers?

gowld 8y ago
The big problem with townhomes and apartments is shoddy construction making neighbors a noise nuisance. Also, economics is weird. Townhomes cost almost the same as nearby houses, perhaps because they are relatively limited supply and more cost-efficient to maintain, so people look at the sticker price and think "oh, I can get a lot more footage for a little more price". Also, townhomes tend to get built as sound buffers alongside highways, making them unpleasant to live in.
- Zimahl 8y ago
  Townhomes, at least in the Portland OR suburbs, cost exactly the same as stand alone homes while being typically smaller, sometimes with a one-car garage, and maybe only a small backyard (sometimes no backyard). While the list price of the townhome is typically less, you can pay hundreds of dollars per month for a HOA which brings your monthly payment up to almost the same price as a stand alone home.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  None of that seems like an explanation for banning them.
- alistairSH 8y ago
  Those problems are solvable. My perception... the real problem is Americans expect a lot of space. They would rather trade quality for sqft. A 2200sqft TH with thin walls is more sellable than a 1600sqft TH with thick walls. Additionally, THs are considered "starter" homes. Certainly here in DC, a couple is expected to "move up" to a single-family in the outer 'burbs when their family grows. It's all quite silly. And I say that having bought the single family in my 20s, hated it, sold it in my early 40s to go back to a TH. Now I walk to work, shorter drive to pretty much everything when needed, less maintenance. I'm much happier.

madengr 8y ago

Screw condos. I’ll take a home where I can put up ham radio antennas and shoot guns, without pesky neighbors.

superkuh 8y ago
You're not wrong and this isn't just a throwaway sentiment. Yours is an actual realistic criticism of the ideas of the article despite what the urbanites think.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  "The urbanites" are 80% of America. "I personally don't want it" is actually a pretty vacuous criticism of a proposal that most people should do something.
- tom_ 8y ago
  I'm not really sure it's a criticism, more just an minor splash of inchoate rage, and we're supposed to sort of figure out the implied criticism. Which is, I assume, that perhaps more people want a massive house in the middle of nowhere than don't, and that most people don't actually want to live in a city, but put up with it for one reason for another. And then perhaps this massive house should be the ideal home, because what is the point of an ideal if it's something that most people don't want?
  - superkuh 8y ago
    Okay, I'll spell it out for you. I understand that most people in the world and the USA are packed in to high density cities on the coast. But your numerical superiority does not mean that your ideals define what is or what should be. Nor does commenting on alternative views of what is good mean we are full of 'rage' despite what your stereotypes may suggest. Living in high density areas is a trade of individual rights for job opportunities. And it makes sense. You can't have people in high density areas playing around with things that make loud noises because everything you do in such areas effects others. It's just common curtesy if not against the local laws. It's not about house size. It's about all the comprimises you have to constantly make when you don't really own the land or building you live in and can't chose what behaviors you want to do even if they don't hurt others (ie, San Fran saying they can tell you what you can do with your apartment or house re: airbnb). This diminishment of the individual is bad for US society as it has existed for most of the past. Unfortunately the urbanization of America by relative population is unlikely to stop and those born into it will likely never know freedom is available elsewhere. ps, high density areas have terrible, terrible radio frequency interference. If you want to set up an amateur radio astronomy kit or do a bit of ham radio you're pretty much out of luck except for the line of sight VHF and up bands that are, mostly, boring. And don't even try to to put up a decent size tower; it won't be approved because all the people nearbye will be "effected" by being able to see it and complain (if it's not explicitly against local law).

LyndsySimon 8y ago

Granted I only skimmed the article, but it seemed rather myopic to me. Why is the "dream home" assumed to be in an urban/suburban area? Why not in a small town or rural area? In January 2018, we moved back from Charlottesville, VA (which itself isn't even "urban") to Harrison, AR. I was able to buy a five bedroom, two bath home on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood for under $125k. My wife and I are beginning to put together our requirements for our next home, which will likely be a bit further from other people, outside city limits, and likely be on 5-10 acres. The cost will till be far less than even a three bedroom townhome would have been in Charlottesville.

lazyasciiart 8y ago
Because 80% of Americans live in urban and suburban areas.
matt4077 8y ago
Almost by definition, people prefer to live in dense areas. In terms of prescriptive advice, high-density housing reduces urban sprawl. If you can convince a third of suburbia to change to denser housing, commute times for everyone would be cut in half. Vast swaths of land could also return to farmland or nature preserves. So even people who personally prefer to live "just outside the city" should advocate for denser housing. When the city builds up, everything moves towards the center. I just measured the distance from city centre to the countryside for two cities of about equal size: Hamburg (Pop 1.5 mil): 8mi Houston (Pop 1.8 mil): 22mi (I chose these because LA and Chicago have coastal layouts which aren't comparable. They also connect directly to other urban areas which for the purposes of this exercise should be considered as "farmland". Or you could add their respective populations which would further amplify the difference)
- epistasis 8y ago
  > So even people who personally prefer to live "just outside the city" should advocate for denser housing. When the city builds up, everything moves towards the center. Thanks for making this point, so many people vociferously object to any density anywhere. Nobody is being forcibly relocated to dense living, but people are being forcibly denied the option of dense living. It's similar to transit and traffic: though other people taking transit helps drivers encounter traffic, far too many drivers will attack transit because it's "not something they use." Realizing that other people want different things and that those different things might help you with your own wants is a complicated topic for public discussion.

acheron 8y ago

Ideally I never want to encounter any other person that I don't actually live with at my residence. Condos are terrible, as are townhouses, and indeed normal houses built on tiny lots squished up next to each other ruled over by an HOA. L'enfer, c'est les autres. Yes, condos have a place, and are necessary sometimes, but they're an unfortunate compromise, not even remotely a "dream home".

castlecrasher2 8y ago

>This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet (the lot encompasses 65,340 square feet). No, this is an exaggeration for the sake of a highly slanted opinion piece. The average size of a new house in the US is about 2500 sq ft if I remember correctly. >Does anyone need 10,000 square feet to live in? Does anyone want to put up with petulant condo associations/HOA squabbles? Besides, if someone wants to pay housekeeping to clean it or spend half their week cleaning that's their business. >Enter the Green New Deal oh so this is just a thinly disguised anti-rich opinion piece

alistairSH 8y ago
No, this is an exaggeration for the sake of a highly slanted opinion piece. The average size of a new house in the US is about 2500 sq ft if I remember correctly. No, the NAHB titles their test home "The New American Home".
anth_anm 8y ago
> oh so this is just a thinly disguised anti-rich opinion piece are you rich? I'm very anti-rich.

seanalltogether 8y ago

As long as the new dream home has thick walls and soundproof ceilings... But I'm not gonna bet too heavily on builders caring about those features.

Simulacra 8y ago
A friend of ours has a condo that was built in the 60s, and there’s a foot of concrete between every floor and unit. I envy that.

abawany 8y ago

I have dealt with more than my fair share of HOAs in such housing (townhomes organized as condos, high-rise, etc.) Some of the stories of dysfunctional HOAs are right on the money unfortunately. Also, state laws give HOAs more power than they typically deserve: until about 2012, Texas allowed HOAs the following: place liens on shareholders' properties without explicitly informing them, deny them xeriscapy options, and define where they may or may not place flags. It is horrifying what trouble a bunch of tinpot bullies can cause when they manage to infest an HOA board. Transparency is another problem area: it is often difficult, without going though the expense of making a purchase offer, to get HOA terms, details of board meetings, and budgets; this makes it tough to go in with informed consent when making one of the biggest purchases that you will make. I had to withdraw a purchase offer (and lose my option fee; I since learned that a good realtor would get the information before going through the process of making an offer) once after reading the 60+ page HOA terms, which appeared to mandate that the buyer must leave a key with the central office and that the latter may visit properties as they needed with unacknowledged prior notice. I wish HOAs had to be treated as public concerns so that the light would shine brightly on pathological boards and buyers would have the best available information possible.

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mnm1 8y ago

Yeah, but how are rich Americans supposed to feel superior to poor Americans in an 1800 sq ft condo? Ridiculous. That's just for plebs. /s

Simulacra 8y ago

NO. Condos are actually really crappy places to live, like being in an apartment complex but you have to pay a (generally) overly burdensome HOA, deal with politics and power play issues, not to mention the noise and nuisance of being in an apartment. Townhomes are better, but truly the "dream home" is still your own house, no HOA, with space between you and your neighbors, a dedicated place to park your car, and the freedom to say "get off my lawn."

anth_anm 8y ago
Lawns are ridiculous wastes of water.

fred3300 8y ago

Reading the article and these comments is somewhat entertaining. 1. The size of the show home is dictated in part by the desire of the associations to incorporate and show off the different products of the sponsors. More sponsors means more revenue for the show. 2. Roads are needed to transport goods from urban center to urban center in addition for rural to urban. Years ago the livestock industry changed their slaughtering and processing from urban center to rural (or small town). 3. This author is based in San Francisco. By the standards of my part of the world, SF is now a third world country, people shooting up in the street, taking a dp where hey like (in the road, etc. If she can't fix where she lives what right does she have telling me how to live?

wjossey 8y ago

There's something super amusing about some of the stuff they describe in the article, along with the diagram of the public transportation options. What they don't mention is that everyone who lives in that building almost certainly would drive to work- Because, Los Angeles. Those units will be near a new subway line that will be completed in the next five years (but they'd still have to bank on their office being on that line). I also don't tend to find a lot of new condo developments in this area that are for sale. They all seem to be rented by the builder. My presumption being that credit continues to be so cheap, they can afford the slow burn down from rents, since thye're not getting crushed by the interest payment. But, I'm not a landlord, so I don't know for sure.