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Not only that, but the construction costs are cheaper per square foot for larger houses. Much of the cost of a house is in the kitchen and bathrooms. But bigg
by magduf 8y ago
Not only that, but the construction costs are cheaper per square foot for larger houses. Much of the cost of a house is in the kitchen and bathrooms. But bigger houses almost always still only have one kitchen, even if it is a lot fancier, and the number of bathrooms doesn't go up linearly. Bigger houses just have bigger rooms mainly, and also extra rooms that are empty and don't cost much to build ("bonus rooms", dens, etc.).
- danans 8y agoHowever, the operational (heating, AC) and maintenance costs of a large house do scale more directly with it's size, especially for jobs that involve the whole structure, like re-roofing, re-siding, etc. So in the end they end up being far more expensive to live in.
- magduf 8y agoSiding costs do not go up linearly with interior volume. This is basic geometry which I shouldn't have to explain on this forum. Operational and maintenance costs are a different factor; we were talking about house price, and I went into construction cost. Operations costs are different, and consumers are pretty infamous for only looking at initial costs and not thinking about operational/maintenance costs. This is especially true with cars: people look only at the purchase price and don't think about how much gas costs, so they buy a giant SUV even though it gets 50% worse fuel economy, and then they complain about how much it costs to refuel.
- danans 8y ago> Siding costs do not go up linearly with interior volume. This is basic geometry which I shouldn't have to explain on this forum. Of course it doesn't scale linearly with volume, it scales linearly with exterior surface area, which itself scales with square footage, which was the base metric I used, not volume. The shape that minimizes the surface area to volume ratio is a sphere, which most houses are not.
- magduf 8y agoNo, but the circumference of a rectangle does not scale linearly with the area of that rectangle. The area increases quadratically with the circumference.
- danans 8y agoThe point is that bigger houses are more expensive to operate and maintain, all else equal.
- magduf 8y agoYes, they are, and that's why I responded by pointing out that consumers generally don't think about that factor, they only think about initial costs.
- danans 8y agoIt's hard to blame consumers if they are buying the average sized homes for their area that are still huge in operational and maintenance costs. In most newer SFH developments, house size is usually dictated by exclusionary zoning (i.e minimum lot and house sizes) and developer business priorities, not by what is financially prudent for buyers. And as your SUV example illustrates, bigger sells better. Choosing not to buy in to that usually requires relocating to an area that values efficiency over size, and those are often very expensive areas, since they are few and far between.
- magduf 8y agoThe consumers are always at fault, as they're the ones with the purchasing power, and the voting power. >And as your SUV example illustrates, bigger sells better. There's no such thing as "vehicle zoning"; if consumers wanted to buy smaller vehicles, they're out there on the market. No one's forcing them to buy and drive huge SUVs. >In most newer SFH developments, house size is usually dictated by exclusionary zoning (i.e minimum lot and house sizes) and developer business priorities, not by what is financially prudent for buyers. This is controlled by the local government, which is controlled by the voters, who are the consumers. They don't have these problems in Japan, because they don't have exclusionary zoning. If you own the lot, you can build whatever the heck you want on it, and the neighbors have no power to stop you.