6 ms·

Pre-fab houses exist, even pretty affordable ones. But as long as land is worth as much as it is, it makes no sense to have the house on said land cost less th

Pre-fab houses exist, even pretty affordable ones. But as long as land is worth as much as it is, it makes no sense to have the house on said land cost less than a certain percentage of the total value. Hence why homes still cost what they do.

walrus01 7y ago
In many urban and suburban parts of the USA there's specific ordinances against manufactured housing, because of shoddily built singlewide and doublewide "mobile homes" that people who already own property in the area don't want put in place, for fear of driving down property values. Unfortunately this also tends to encompass the definition of many higher end manufactured homes, or even prefab/modular housing that might cost more than a stick built 1600 sq ft bungalow.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  Excuse the stereotypes in this observation but it's kinda funny that (some) Americans firmly believe that they have the right to own whatever guns they wish, that if my neighbor doesn't have health insurance that's his problem but woe betide him if he dares live in an ugly home.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    Being in an ugly home affects the property values of the neighbors. Having guns or health insurance does not.
    - VBprogrammer 7y ago
      Counter-point: living in an ugly home isn't going to kill anyone.
      - homonculus1 7y ago
        There are more civilian-owned guns than people in the US. The exact number isn't known but let's ballpark it very conservatively at 400,000,000. There are about 13,000 homicides by firearm each year, including justified ones but let's also conservatively ignore those. Now to be extremely conservative let's make the ridiculous assumption that those homicides are evenly distributed throughout gun-owning population, and not correlated to any particular individuals, demographics, or social circumstances. So then having assumed guns are the problem in the first place, and not say, violent urban gangs, your neighbors' still only have at most a 0.00325% annual chance of being used to kill someone. I don't know what your threshold is but to me that's firmly in "not going to kill anyone" territory. A trailer next door being ugly, though, is guaranteed!
        VBprogrammer 7y ago
        I wasn't trying to start a gun control debate. I just found the contrast between the defense of personal rights and restricting the rights of others interesting in this case.
        homonculus1 7y ago
        You're right, in general a lot of people pay lip service to higher principles when it's convenient, but as soon as the issue is something they don't like then there are all kinds of vague second-order reasons why the mere potential of another person's rights are harmful and must be restricted. Zoning laws and gun regulation are both great examples. But as another commenter pointed out I suspect that there's actually more overlap between these particular issues than otherwise, they're both hallmarks of well-off suburbanites who want protection from the rabble.
    - zwkrt 7y ago
      So living in an ugly home is the only one of the three with no effect on the physical well-being of others?
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    I think you're mixing and matching political sub groups to find a contradiction that mostly doesn't exist. One of the places that gun control is popular is affluent suburbs. This is also where regressive zoning is popular. The major exception I can think of is the Southeast where gun control really isn't very popular at all outside the inner city but many affluent neighborhoods are HOA'd to hell and back. I assure you, the hardcore libertarian "my tactical nukes are none of the government's business" types have no love for zoning.
    - VBprogrammer 7y ago
      Yeah, I think that's a good point. While the contradiction may exist when taking the country as a whole; there are few individuals for who that contradiction actually applies.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  It's intended to exclude low cost housing, with the intent of excluding the poor, especially racial minorities. "Shoddiness" is just an excuse. See also: zoning.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  For what it's worth, the nicest house I ever lived in was a modular home on a hillside in San Luis Obispo. Zillow has it over $600k atm. In other places, there can be discrimination and prejudice - mobile homes are a favoured accommodation of Irish Travelers and it's illegal to use a mobile home for non-temporary accommodation in Ireland.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  An interesting twist on this is in rural areas or the exurban fringe, it's common to see large multimillion dollar estates next to decaying mobile homes and middle class 3+2 ranch style homes. There seems to be very little friction between the different housing types.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
    This is actually the situation I'm living in. I live out in the country and while my house isn't a mobile home, it is more than 3x smaller than my neighbor's gigantic palace across the street.
tim333 7y ago
There is still a fair manufactured homes industry but the ones people want look more like regular houses than space pods. See for example https://www.manufacturedhomes.com/blog/top-10-manufactured-homes-model/ https://www.manufacturedhomes.com/blog/top-10-manufactured-h...
- ianai 7y ago
  I think tha market segment essentially fills a leading edge or marginal case for expansion. Ie they’re most likely to make sense where the cost of land matches their cost of manufacture. Overtime the surrounding area may get developed and this increase in value - incentivizing further improvements to the land the original manufactured homes sit upon.
CalRobert 7y ago
Homes cost what they do because we have a wide number of policies designed to keep housing expensive (how many politicians celebrate falling house prices, after all?). Mobile/Manufactured homes are often de facto illegal (even if they're allowed in theory they're hard to get planning on) though it depends a lot on the area. If you were allowed to buy a plot of land and plop a mobile home on it for $50k what's going to keep you working yourself to the bone? (though zoning is a somewhat different consideration from mobile homes, and there are practical reasons for not wanting a bunch of scattered houses on big lots in the middle of nowhere).
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Mortgages can be difficult to obtain for mobile homes. Part of the reason is that mobile homes tend to decay and lose value over time. After a certain number of years almost no moving company will accept the risk of moving one. As a result, mortgage loan rates can be higher with less issuers to choose from. Also due to changes in regulations from the Great Recession, smaller mortgages can be very difficult to obtain. Banks don't like making home loans under $150k due to fixed costs they're not allowed to adjust for the size of the loan.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    All true, not to mention that a mobile home can be stolen if you're in possession of a tractor-trailer. A bank sending someone to their now-repossessed empty site might decide not to lend on mobile homes again. Of course, if we had a constrained supply of mobile homes like we do stick or block-built homes, the mere existence of mortgages would drive the price up. There's a weird bifurcation in the housing market between "banks will lend on this" and "you'll never get a mortgage on this" - the latter is shockingly cheap in part because it can be dodgy, but ALSO because without the availability of mortgages you face far, far, far reduced competition. This is how I ended up buying a house (stone cottage, thatched roof, needed work) for hardly more than the deposit I'd saved up before giving up on my dysfunctional city. The cost of a house seems to always adjust to the amount of debt available to purchase it. Sweden had an average mortgage length of 140 years until recently - now capped at 105 (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/sweden-cuts-maximum-mortgage-term-to-105-years-the-average-is-14/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/swede... ) - and of course anyone who thinks "I'd like to pay my house off in 30 years" has to compete with someone who will take out a 4-generation mortgage. But that's separate from whether or not mobile homes should be permitted - hell, I can't build a yurt without planning permission (which I'd never get). I'm a lefty greenie type at heart and actually think a bunch of one-off houses on big lots tend to be terrible for auto-dependence, service delivery, social isolation, etc. but when we started allowing the government to restrict where people are allowed to build AND didn't ensure that it at least meets population growth (not to mention letting asset owners vote on whether to create more of said asset) we laid the seeds for our current housing predicament.

walrus01 7y ago

In many urban and suburban parts of the USA there's specific ordinances against manufactured housing, because of shoddily built singlewide and doublewide "mobile homes" that people who already own property in the area don't want put in place, for fear of driving down property values. Unfortunately this also tends to encompass the definition of many higher end manufactured homes, or even prefab/modular housing that might cost more than a stick built 1600 sq ft bungalow.

VBprogrammer 7y ago
Excuse the stereotypes in this observation but it's kinda funny that (some) Americans firmly believe that they have the right to own whatever guns they wish, that if my neighbor doesn't have health insurance that's his problem but woe betide him if he dares live in an ugly home.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  Being in an ugly home affects the property values of the neighbors. Having guns or health insurance does not.
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    Counter-point: living in an ugly home isn't going to kill anyone.
    - homonculus1 7y ago
      There are more civilian-owned guns than people in the US. The exact number isn't known but let's ballpark it very conservatively at 400,000,000. There are about 13,000 homicides by firearm each year, including justified ones but let's also conservatively ignore those. Now to be extremely conservative let's make the ridiculous assumption that those homicides are evenly distributed throughout gun-owning population, and not correlated to any particular individuals, demographics, or social circumstances. So then having assumed guns are the problem in the first place, and not say, violent urban gangs, your neighbors' still only have at most a 0.00325% annual chance of being used to kill someone. I don't know what your threshold is but to me that's firmly in "not going to kill anyone" territory. A trailer next door being ugly, though, is guaranteed!
      - VBprogrammer 7y ago
        I wasn't trying to start a gun control debate. I just found the contrast between the defense of personal rights and restricting the rights of others interesting in this case.
        homonculus1 7y ago
        You're right, in general a lot of people pay lip service to higher principles when it's convenient, but as soon as the issue is something they don't like then there are all kinds of vague second-order reasons why the mere potential of another person's rights are harmful and must be restricted. Zoning laws and gun regulation are both great examples. But as another commenter pointed out I suspect that there's actually more overlap between these particular issues than otherwise, they're both hallmarks of well-off suburbanites who want protection from the rabble.
  - zwkrt 7y ago
    So living in an ugly home is the only one of the three with no effect on the physical well-being of others?
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  I think you're mixing and matching political sub groups to find a contradiction that mostly doesn't exist. One of the places that gun control is popular is affluent suburbs. This is also where regressive zoning is popular. The major exception I can think of is the Southeast where gun control really isn't very popular at all outside the inner city but many affluent neighborhoods are HOA'd to hell and back. I assure you, the hardcore libertarian "my tactical nukes are none of the government's business" types have no love for zoning.
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    Yeah, I think that's a good point. While the contradiction may exist when taking the country as a whole; there are few individuals for who that contradiction actually applies.
pfdietz 7y ago
It's intended to exclude low cost housing, with the intent of excluding the poor, especially racial minorities. "Shoddiness" is just an excuse. See also: zoning.
CalRobert 7y ago
For what it's worth, the nicest house I ever lived in was a modular home on a hillside in San Luis Obispo. Zillow has it over $600k atm. In other places, there can be discrimination and prejudice - mobile homes are a favoured accommodation of Irish Travelers and it's illegal to use a mobile home for non-temporary accommodation in Ireland.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
An interesting twist on this is in rural areas or the exurban fringe, it's common to see large multimillion dollar estates next to decaying mobile homes and middle class 3+2 ranch style homes. There seems to be very little friction between the different housing types.
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  This is actually the situation I'm living in. I live out in the country and while my house isn't a mobile home, it is more than 3x smaller than my neighbor's gigantic palace across the street.

tim333 7y ago

There is still a fair manufactured homes industry but the ones people want look more like regular houses than space pods. See for example https://www.manufacturedhomes.com/blog/top-10-manufactured-homes-model/ https://www.manufacturedhomes.com/blog/top-10-manufactured-h...

ianai 7y ago
I think tha market segment essentially fills a leading edge or marginal case for expansion. Ie they’re most likely to make sense where the cost of land matches their cost of manufacture. Overtime the surrounding area may get developed and this increase in value - incentivizing further improvements to the land the original manufactured homes sit upon.

CalRobert 7y ago

Homes cost what they do because we have a wide number of policies designed to keep housing expensive (how many politicians celebrate falling house prices, after all?). Mobile/Manufactured homes are often de facto illegal (even if they're allowed in theory they're hard to get planning on) though it depends a lot on the area. If you were allowed to buy a plot of land and plop a mobile home on it for $50k what's going to keep you working yourself to the bone? (though zoning is a somewhat different consideration from mobile homes, and there are practical reasons for not wanting a bunch of scattered houses on big lots in the middle of nowhere).

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Mortgages can be difficult to obtain for mobile homes. Part of the reason is that mobile homes tend to decay and lose value over time. After a certain number of years almost no moving company will accept the risk of moving one. As a result, mortgage loan rates can be higher with less issuers to choose from. Also due to changes in regulations from the Great Recession, smaller mortgages can be very difficult to obtain. Banks don't like making home loans under $150k due to fixed costs they're not allowed to adjust for the size of the loan.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  All true, not to mention that a mobile home can be stolen if you're in possession of a tractor-trailer. A bank sending someone to their now-repossessed empty site might decide not to lend on mobile homes again. Of course, if we had a constrained supply of mobile homes like we do stick or block-built homes, the mere existence of mortgages would drive the price up. There's a weird bifurcation in the housing market between "banks will lend on this" and "you'll never get a mortgage on this" - the latter is shockingly cheap in part because it can be dodgy, but ALSO because without the availability of mortgages you face far, far, far reduced competition. This is how I ended up buying a house (stone cottage, thatched roof, needed work) for hardly more than the deposit I'd saved up before giving up on my dysfunctional city. The cost of a house seems to always adjust to the amount of debt available to purchase it. Sweden had an average mortgage length of 140 years until recently - now capped at 105 (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/sweden-cuts-maximum-mortgage-term-to-105-years-the-average-is-14/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/swede... ) - and of course anyone who thinks "I'd like to pay my house off in 30 years" has to compete with someone who will take out a 4-generation mortgage. But that's separate from whether or not mobile homes should be permitted - hell, I can't build a yurt without planning permission (which I'd never get). I'm a lefty greenie type at heart and actually think a bunch of one-off houses on big lots tend to be terrible for auto-dependence, service delivery, social isolation, etc. but when we started allowing the government to restrict where people are allowed to build AND didn't ensure that it at least meets population growth (not to mention letting asset owners vote on whether to create more of said asset) we laid the seeds for our current housing predicament.