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My concern is whether owning a multi-family home would really give me the autonomy that leads me to want to own a home in the first place. It seems to me that n

My concern is whether owning a multi-family home would really give me the autonomy that leads me to want to own a home in the first place. It seems to me that non-single family homes are more similar to rental apartments than they are to true ownership. For example: - You probably can't put in a workshop because the noise would bother the neighbors. - You often don't have any sort of yard or outside space so you can't pursue hobbies that can't reasonably be practiced indoors. - You can't modify the outside of the house so you are limited in your ability to customize your home. I guess my concern is that this would lead to a world where only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes. At least in the current system the middle class and the richer end of the working class can often afford single family homes.

guyzero 6y ago
https://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/market-focus-amateur-woodworkers-32900/all/ https://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/market-focus-amat... - " A survey conducted by National Family Opinion on behalf of Wood magazine found that approximately 5.5 million Americans actively participate in woodworking as a hobby" There are approx 128.6 million US households so at most 4.2% of US households have someone who considers themselves a woodworker. There are numerous shared wood shops out there, so an even smaller percentage will have home woodshops. I think the "missing middle" seems like a great option for the 95+% of US households who don't need a wood shop. edit: I just realized you said "workshop" and not "woodshop" but I don't think it makes a huge difference to my argument.
- harimau777 6y ago
  For what it's worth, I actually was thinking of woodworking! (Except for the "outside hobbies" thing in which case I was thinking of blacksmithing)
dionidium 6y ago
I don't know what you're picturing, but I'm in the process of buying a two-family home in Providence and it invalidates each of your objections: - There is a detached garage and a basement, so you have workshop options similar to any homeowner's. - There is a yard (and this is common in most U.S. cities where two-, three-, and four-flats are prevalent). - Of course you can modify the outside of the house? I'm confused by this objection. You own the home. You can modify its appearance within the bounds of the law, just as you can with a SFH. (Edit: perhaps you're imagining owning a unit in the home and not the home itself? That makes more sense.) Obviously, it's not exactly like living in a SFH; it's a multi-family building, after all. But I've lived in these kinds of two-flats both as a renter and a homeowner and it's much more like owning (even as a renter) than it is like living in an apartment "complex."
- notJim 6y ago
  In your two-family home, who gets to decide what color the building is? It would be sort of interesting to have an ongoing war between both occupants, but probably not a good way of structuring things long term.
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    You get to paint your half. Unless their dwelling completely enclosed yours, I don't see the problem.
    - notJim 6y ago
      Now that you mention it, I actually have seen that arrangement before. It can look really cool if both people have complementary taste.
    - asdff 6y ago
      Sometimes you have a homeowners agreement limiting what you can do about the appearance of the property.
  - dionidium 6y ago
    I think we're getting some terms crossed. In my two-family home I will own the entire building. I will live in one unit and will rent the other unit to another family. So I (read: my wife) decide what color the building is. (This kind of owner-occupied arrangement is historically very common in my neck of the woods.)
    - notJim 6y ago
      So that's not an arrangement where both occupants get to control the building then. It's a situation where you get to control it, and if your tenant doesn't like it they can pound sand. It obviously does not address the scenario your parent is describing.
      - 6y ago
enragedcacti 6y ago
The parent comment was edited considerably and is a much better jumping off point for discussion than I felt it was when I wrote what is below. Leaving it for posterity. > The view that a human can only have autonomy and dignity through either a workshop or outdoor hobbies is absolutely wild. You should try to understand other people perspectives, interests, and value functions before you proclaim stuff like this.
- Lammy 6y ago
  I don't think they meant to imply "only", just inserting a particular personal want. Insert your own favorite noise-making activity, like how I wish my living situation let me have a drum set.
  - enragedcacti 6y ago
    The comment was edited considerably after I posted.
- notJim 6y ago
  I don't think they meant to imply that these things are requirements for everyone. More like highlighting and discussing the reasons a person might feel pushed to prefer a particular type of home.
- scarface74 6y ago
  I wanted a large house because I don’t enjoy outside activities. It’s especially come in handy post COVID. I have one bedroom that I converted into an office, another that is a gym with cardio equipment and my wife converted our (unused) formal dining room into an exercise studio where she both teaches and takes online fitness classes. We live in a relatively low cost of living suburbs of a major metropolitan city - $2200 month mortgage for a 3000 square foot home. After we got married, I moved from my house that was about the same size in a good neighborhood but horrible school system and moved to an apartment for my (step)children. Between rent going up constantly (went from $1200 to $1700 in 4 years, it’s now $2100 4 years after we moved), noisy neighbors, horrible WiFi and being forced to pay for Comcast, I would never want to live in any type of shared housing.
jeffbee 6y ago
"True ownership" is not universally worshiped. Take, for example, Vienna, Austria. Fewer than 23% of this city lives in owner-occupied dwellings, yet they have a rewarding artistic, social, industrial, scientific society. Not everything hinges on the ability to park a boat in your yard.
- notJim 6y ago
  I would guess that there are social accommodations and expectations for these kinds of things that might be missing in the US. Sort of like how in Europe, delivery is widely available for large goods, because many don't own cars. This does not exist in the US. I thinking making American society more accommodating will be helpful toward breaking the ideology of single-family homes.
  - tomjakubowski 6y ago
    What sort of large goods do you mean? I live in central Los Angeles, a city famously reliant on personal automobile ownership, and it has never been an issue having items like furniture delivered to my door. I do understand your larger point about a city's infrastructure accommodating the culture of its inhabitants. Taking LA as an example again, because of the widespread reliance on car commuting in the city, it's harder here to close some streets down to personal vehicle traffic, as has been done in other cities recently.
    - notJim 6y ago
      If you go to IKEA in LA, do they deliver? What about Home Depot? In my experience, most of the time they don't, but I think in Europe it's different.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Almost certainly yes. You may well need to pay for it but you can get most things delivered from, certainly, major chains. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/services/delivery/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/services/deliver... https://www.homedepot.com/c/About_Your_Online_Order https://www.homedepot.com/c/About_Your_Online_Order
luckylion 6y ago
Not having a workshop is a minor concern, I believe: plenty of people don't desire one. I wouldn't buy an apartment in a multi-family home either though, simply because your money is tied for quite a while and it's essentially a lottery whether you have terrible neighbors or not. If they suck, you can't easily leave. With a detached single-family home, you'll at least have a few meters and two walls between your neighbors and you, and if they can't sleep and walk about and start to sort their books, it won't keep you awake, researching the perfect crime on Google.
- dionidium 6y ago
  This subthread has focused on buying a unit in a multi-family building, but historically owner-occupied multi-families are very common. I'm in the process of buying one to occupy myself. Owners enjoy many of the benefits of ownership, the rental income is a path to wealth (and an opportunity to qualify for a mortgage you may not otherwise have been able to afford), and the city benefits from increased housing supply and landlords who are present and attentive.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    That requires a bit more wealth to start with though, right? With 20-30% equity, the number of people who'd be able to afford a multi-family building (at least where I live) is tiny, and has a large overlap with those who can afford multiple multi-family buildings, I believe. What's somewhat more common in Germany (at least in the rural areas) is having a single small apartment inside a single family home that was usually rented to workers.
    - dionidium 6y ago
      Yes, that's true, although most lenders only require 15% down for owner-occupied two-families.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
enragedcacti 6y ago
To your last point, keep in mind that there is upward pressure on the price of single-family homes from people who want to live in a certain area but don't care about having a yard or a workshop or whatever. when you build a 4-plex on a SFH plot you've gotten rid of 1 SFH but reduced the pressure on the remaining stock by up to 3 buyers.
notJim 6y ago
I had these same concerns, so I bought a SFH. Going from always having rented, I wanted to try out full ownership. I'm happy with it, but I've realized that all of those things come with downsides as well. Maintaining a yard is rewarding (assuming you like caring for plants and stuff), but also a hassle and a fair amount of work. Similar with all the other items. Of course you can pay people to do more of it, but it's not like that has zero cost, either. As far as the workshop, I have a friend who does a ton of woodworking out of the garage of his townhouse. It does feel a little bit like luck of the draw with HOA, though. Generally, I think we talk a lot about the benefits of SFH, but not enough about their downsides, or about the upsides of shared housing. When I lived in an apartment before, tons of things were taken care of for me that I now have to worry about. For now, that is a burden I am interested in taking on, but I think as a society we should stop acting like that should be the default, and all other options are inferior compromises.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  We're not talking about defaults. We're talking about laws that prohibit people from choosing to live in a duplex. There are vanishingly few places in the USA where the law forbids you from building a detached single-family home if that's your preference.
  - notJim 6y ago
    Are we allowed to talk about both? The idea that SFH is the preferred default is one of the drivers of those laws. It is part of the ideology of SFH, and deconstructing it will help deconstruct the implementation of that ideology in things like laws.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      The idea that people prefer detached SFHs is just a talking point used to obscure an agenda. The current agenda is that incumbent landowners profit from scarcity. The old agenda is that SFH zoning excluded minorities. Either one isn't great. There is no evidence of a revealed or stated preference for SFHs among American homebuyers when presented with multiple choices. If people really preferred detached SFHs this strongly, we wouldn't need to enshrine the preference in the law. The comment elsewhere in this discussion by "enragedcacti" is spot-on: if the law requires everyone to eat black beans, it will seem like everyone strongly prefers black beans.
zacherates 6y ago
Townhomes, duplexes, triplexes, etc are substitutes for single family homes (not for everybody, but for some people... like me). You'd expect that allowing them to be built would make single family homes more accessible not less as the people who currently are forced to buy SFHs but would be happy in a townhome would stop competing for them. More supply of a substitute (in this case, townhomes) should result in lowered demand/price of SFHs.
chrisseaton 6y ago
When you say 'multi-family home' do you mean a single house with lots of families sharing a kitchen and things? Or do you mean like a terrace home? Like a town-house? Those are super common in many places and it doesn't cause any of the problems you're imagining in my experience. My house shares one wall with another family. Not sure how you'd tell or what impact you think it'd have. I still have power tools in my garage.
- asdff 6y ago
  Issues depend on the quality of your construction. I've shared some pretty thin walls in my time.
war1025 6y ago
As someone who owns a townhome, I feel that this is a misinformed, but common, view of the situation. > You probably can't put in a workshop because the noise would bother the neighbors. We hear far more noise from the neighborhood in general than the neighbors we share a wall with. Granted they might just be particularly quiet people, but there is some significant sound-deadening in that wall. I think this is partly because of fire code that says the wall needs to withstand a 30 minute fire before crossing over into the neighboring unit. > You often don't have any sort of yard or outside space so you can't pursue hobbies that can't reasonably be practiced indoors. This is perhaps unique to our situation, but the area has never been fully built-out, so we have a 5 acre plot of land that the kids can play on as they please. Since most of our neighbors never come outside, we actually have an enormous yard that we get basically to ourselves. > You can't modify the outside of the house so you are limited in your ability to customize your home This is true to an extent, but there isn't really all that much worth customizing on the outside of a house. I guess you could pick different colored siding, but that seems like an expense I wouldn't be motivated enough to take on. > I guess my concern is that this would lead to a world where only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes. Honestly this stigma is something I am benefiting from a ton. I have 1200 feet of living space, plus an attached 2 car garage, plus a 5 acre yard. I paid $106k for all that. I pay $100 / month to the HOA and get lawn / snow taken care of. It's honestly great. To get an equivalent standalone house in the area I'd be looking at 2-3x the cost.
- TheCoelacanth 6y ago
  > We hear far more noise from the neighborhood in general than the neighbors we share a wall with. Ditto. I never hear a peep from the adjoining townhouses and one of them has a grand piano.
- atombender 6y ago
  What area?
  - war1025 6y ago
    Iowa
Hokusai 6y ago
> my concern is that this would lead to a world where only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes. I love to live in a city. I love to have access to museums, gardens, universities and good public transportation. My fear is that people may end up killing the city in favor of single-family homes and making owning a car mandatory. That cities that I love like New York, London, Tokyo or Shanghai may disappear and become an endless shapeless blob of single-family homes without identity were people looks suspiciously to anyone that "do not belong to the neighborhood". It would be a loss to humanity to get rid of the creativity, the openness, the heterogeneity of the city. People has gathered in cities as long as civilization has existed. Cities are civilization. I have lived in London, Barcelona and Stockholm. Great cities on their own, with good public transportation, services, restaurants, that feel safe, alive, and a bridge between past and future. But, your experience may vary depending on the quality of the cities you have lived in.
- majormajor 6y ago
  > My fear is that people may end up killing the city in favor of single-family homes and making owning a car mandatory. That cities that I love like New York, London, Tokyo or Shanghai may disappear and become an endless shapeless blob of single-family homes without identity were people looks suspiciously to anyone that "do not belong to the neighborhood". It would be a loss to humanity to get rid of the creativity, the openness, the heterogeneity of the city. People has gathered in cities as long as civilization has existed. Cities are civilization. In what universe is anyone proposing tearing down the buildings in NY, London, Tokyo, or Shanghai and replacing them with SFH? I've seen some articles about new mega-rich construction in London with homes going deep underground, but largely replacing existing townhomes and the like, not lowering density. There are just very few people who would spend enough money to buy up a bunch of units and turn them into a handful of houses... The only push for active change is the opposite direction: people who want to change the cities with abundant single family homes.
  - reportingsjr 6y ago
    In the US there are massive subsidies for suburbs with single family homes, to the point where cities are stymied as people in the cities are the ones that end up paying for a massive chunk of this subsidy. As a result there is less of a drive for people who are in between, or even want to live in the city a bit, to live there and make it a more lively area since it ends up being artificially more expensive. On top of this, a lot of zoning makes interesting, dense cities straight up illegal or incredibly expensive to build, again, in preference of low density single family homes. This is what people are concerned with and want to change.
goodcanadian 6y ago
I think this is a particularly (North) American take on townhouses. In the UK, the majority of houses are terraced. Your ownership rights are exactly the same as with a detached house. Most have their own garden; you can build a shed or a shop in the back if you have room. You extend and modify as you like (within reason and planning consents). There is no HOA; you are entirely responsible for the bit of roof over your house and your yard/garden. The only shared responsibility is the shared wall, but that is made of brick and likely won't have any problems longer than you are alive.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  This is the case in Canada as well. I rent a basement suite in Vancouver, and as far as I know, the owners can do whatever they want. Noise issues are noise issues, but we haven't had them so far.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    How much does that cost you these days? My partner is from Victoria and we’ve eyed places out there on a whim but even up island doesn’t seem to be big savings. Maybe a bit more bang for the buck than out here in Ontario.
    - brailsafe 6y ago
      Being from Winnipeg, I get a tremendous amount more value here in Vancouver for the money I pay. My gf and I pay about $1450 + insurance with utilities (water, electricity) included, and in-suite washer dryer + dishwasher + separate entrance in a new house. I don't need to own a car, grocery and cafes are within a very small walking distance, and the mountains can be bused to. We both have access to jobs that make it more manageable. Likewise, a friend of mine who likes a more bougie setup is paying $2100 for a new 1 bdr in a tower in a good neighborhood, and has amenities like washer and dryer in-suite, balcony, and underground parking included, which seems much more typical here. I took a look at Victoria rentals when I was interviewing for a job out there, but ended up realizing that there is less selection, less availability, and less public infrastructure that would otherwise make it a worthwhile move. I love the island generally speaking, if I have access to a car, and am hoping to do some backcountry camping out there soon, but it doesn't suit me as more of an urbanite at this time. In my current neighborhood, I can get downtown without a car in about 25 minutes, and my neighborhood is very laid back with tons of greenery and small shops. What I've heard about the suburbs of Toronto, are that it's a long-ass commute into the city proper, comparatively expensive, and with less access to nature, but perhaps easier access to Montreal, Ottawa, and Buffalo, but I haven't talked to anyone about the specifics of price/amenities. What has your experience been?
c3534l 6y ago
If some people are willing to live in those kinds of houses, it will decrease the cost of living in the kinds of houses you personally want to live in. This is an allocation problem, not a production problem. If you want or need those things, then building alternatives for people who don't will free up space for people who do want those things. This isn't a zero-sum game.
jseliger 6y ago
where only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes This is the world right now, except that many are "stuck" not in multi-family, but instead are precariously housed, or not housed at all: https://www.evictedbook.com/ https://www.evictedbook.com/ The big missing factor in your analysis is cost. Someone who might be able to afford a $200K home might not be able to at $400K. The goal is to give people a diversity of options. https://jamesjgleeson.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/how-tokyo-built-its-way-to-abundant-housing/ https://jamesjgleeson.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/how-tokyo-bui...
shard 6y ago
In some regions of the world, multi-family homes are actually preferred compared with single family homes. In Korea, modern apartment highrises offer many benefits that make them a more popular choice, including: better energy efficiency, wired for high speed internet, spacious outdoor recreational areas (playgrounds and parks, often gyms (indoor and outdoor)), attached small businesses (e.g. 7-11 and restaurants on the 1st floor), security guard in the complex (and sometimes in the building), a view if on a high floor, high tech amenities such as keyless entry / video intercom / subfloor heating systems, and more modern design & aestetics. I see a similar trend starting in China as well. Single family homes are either the homes of the ultra-rich or the poor, or traditional country-side homes.
- treis 6y ago
  We have those in the US too. They're just way more expensive than a suburban house. Strongtowns has this blindness about how most Americans live. Look at this quote: >you’d see higher-end restaurants, organic groceries, day care facilities, hardware stores, boutiques or bakeries or doctor's offices, depending on the mix of residents nearby. Yeah obviously if you're well off it's awesome to live in walking distance to these things. But most people aren't. And the suburban home where you drive to a grocery store is a way cheaper life than living in Madison
  - username90 6y ago
    Most cheap apartments in Sweden are within walking distance to those things. If you build more such neighborhoods they get cheaper, it isn't rocket science.
    - treis 6y ago
      That's not true at all. As an example, a 4 bedroom 2,000 sq ft house in the suburbs can be had for around 150k. What sort of apartment can you buy in Sweden for that much?
      - asdff 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nostrademons 6y ago
Most duplexes & triplexes allow #2 & 3. The owner occupies one unit and has full rights & responsibilities over the property: they can paint it, landscape it, put in solar panels, etc. Then they rent out the other unit(s) as a normal landlord/tenant relationship. It's extra income for them, and it's a normal apartment for the tenant (except often a bit nicer because many duplexes have yards and the owner has a stronger incentive to fix things quickly). Townhomes/condos with an HOA are a different beast. That's a function of the ownership structure (SFH vs. condo vs. TIC vs. apartment) rather than the physical dwelling, though. At least in the Bay Area, it's not uncommon to find SFHs that have been converted into multi-family properties with the addition of an in-law unit or ADU. The vast majority of these use a traditional landlord/tenant relationship.
SamWhited 6y ago
Others have said this in various forms here, but I don't think this is really a problem because the same logic that applies to multi-family homes applies to other aspects of your life, like a workshop or garden. I have a garden at home, and I love it, but I miss my old apartment where I had to rent a community garden plot, and therefore got to know the community while I gardened. If I live in a co-op housing project and I'm a bit older and can't do repair work on my house, I have a neighbor who can do that for me. If I want a wood shop but wouldn't be able to afford a house big enough to build one even if I can afford to buy my own house, I can get together with a bunch of other people in my community and build that too, pooling resources and owning it jointly. If the internet options in my neighborhood are terrible (ie. I live in a place where my options are AT&T which goes out once a day and wants to charge me $100 before they'll even talk to me about it or Spectrum where I've gotten literally half of the advertised speed and just been told "sorry, our copper isn't very good in that area"), then the tech-knowledgeable neighbors can spin up a local wireless ISP and we can all share a bit of bandwidth depending on what we can chip in and have more reliable, faster, internet for everyone, etc. All of this makes me get to know the people in those communities, fostering neighborly cooperation and understanding. This is why any business I ever start will be a co-op, collective, or some similar model: everyone gets what they want cheaper than if they do it individually, and it builds community at the same time. I sometimes think that the richer you are the harder it is to build real community because no one has to work together towards a common goal. Most (not all, of course) of the rich people I know if they host a party will have the single house that's hosting grill/buy beer and get catering and don't know their neighbors very well (or at all, in most cases). In a community I used to be a part of where most people weren't as privileged as me and didn't have great tech jobs, we'd all get together and throw a pot luck, each person contributing what they could and everyone knew each other because we'd had to work so much more closely to make the event happen. TL;DR support your local co-ops and the co-op economy. Democratically run community owned businesses are hard, but well worth the effort.
TheCoelacanth 6y ago
> only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes That's what we have now. Either you pay for the full detached single-family experience or you are in a high-rise with no autonomy. You don't have the option of with slightly less autonomy than a detached house but more than a high-rise for a lower price that you can get with townhouses or duplexes.

guyzero 6y ago

https://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/market-focus-amateur-woodworkers-32900/all/ https://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/market-focus-amat... - " A survey conducted by National Family Opinion on behalf of Wood magazine found that approximately 5.5 million Americans actively participate in woodworking as a hobby" There are approx 128.6 million US households so at most 4.2% of US households have someone who considers themselves a woodworker. There are numerous shared wood shops out there, so an even smaller percentage will have home woodshops. I think the "missing middle" seems like a great option for the 95+% of US households who don't need a wood shop. edit: I just realized you said "workshop" and not "woodshop" but I don't think it makes a huge difference to my argument.

harimau777 6y ago
For what it's worth, I actually was thinking of woodworking! (Except for the "outside hobbies" thing in which case I was thinking of blacksmithing)

dionidium 6y ago

I don't know what you're picturing, but I'm in the process of buying a two-family home in Providence and it invalidates each of your objections: - There is a detached garage and a basement, so you have workshop options similar to any homeowner's. - There is a yard (and this is common in most U.S. cities where two-, three-, and four-flats are prevalent). - Of course you can modify the outside of the house? I'm confused by this objection. You own the home. You can modify its appearance within the bounds of the law, just as you can with a SFH. (Edit: perhaps you're imagining owning a unit in the home and not the home itself? That makes more sense.) Obviously, it's not exactly like living in a SFH; it's a multi-family building, after all. But I've lived in these kinds of two-flats both as a renter and a homeowner and it's much more like owning (even as a renter) than it is like living in an apartment "complex."

notJim 6y ago
In your two-family home, who gets to decide what color the building is? It would be sort of interesting to have an ongoing war between both occupants, but probably not a good way of structuring things long term.
- bsanr2 6y ago
  You get to paint your half. Unless their dwelling completely enclosed yours, I don't see the problem.
  - notJim 6y ago
    Now that you mention it, I actually have seen that arrangement before. It can look really cool if both people have complementary taste.
  - asdff 6y ago
    Sometimes you have a homeowners agreement limiting what you can do about the appearance of the property.
- dionidium 6y ago
  I think we're getting some terms crossed. In my two-family home I will own the entire building. I will live in one unit and will rent the other unit to another family. So I (read: my wife) decide what color the building is. (This kind of owner-occupied arrangement is historically very common in my neck of the woods.)
  - notJim 6y ago
    So that's not an arrangement where both occupants get to control the building then. It's a situation where you get to control it, and if your tenant doesn't like it they can pound sand. It obviously does not address the scenario your parent is describing.
    - 6y ago

enragedcacti 6y ago

The parent comment was edited considerably and is a much better jumping off point for discussion than I felt it was when I wrote what is below. Leaving it for posterity. > The view that a human can only have autonomy and dignity through either a workshop or outdoor hobbies is absolutely wild. You should try to understand other people perspectives, interests, and value functions before you proclaim stuff like this.

Lammy 6y ago
I don't think they meant to imply "only", just inserting a particular personal want. Insert your own favorite noise-making activity, like how I wish my living situation let me have a drum set.
- enragedcacti 6y ago
  The comment was edited considerably after I posted.
notJim 6y ago
I don't think they meant to imply that these things are requirements for everyone. More like highlighting and discussing the reasons a person might feel pushed to prefer a particular type of home.
scarface74 6y ago
I wanted a large house because I don’t enjoy outside activities. It’s especially come in handy post COVID. I have one bedroom that I converted into an office, another that is a gym with cardio equipment and my wife converted our (unused) formal dining room into an exercise studio where she both teaches and takes online fitness classes. We live in a relatively low cost of living suburbs of a major metropolitan city - $2200 month mortgage for a 3000 square foot home. After we got married, I moved from my house that was about the same size in a good neighborhood but horrible school system and moved to an apartment for my (step)children. Between rent going up constantly (went from $1200 to $1700 in 4 years, it’s now $2100 4 years after we moved), noisy neighbors, horrible WiFi and being forced to pay for Comcast, I would never want to live in any type of shared housing.

jeffbee 6y ago

"True ownership" is not universally worshiped. Take, for example, Vienna, Austria. Fewer than 23% of this city lives in owner-occupied dwellings, yet they have a rewarding artistic, social, industrial, scientific society. Not everything hinges on the ability to park a boat in your yard.

notJim 6y ago
I would guess that there are social accommodations and expectations for these kinds of things that might be missing in the US. Sort of like how in Europe, delivery is widely available for large goods, because many don't own cars. This does not exist in the US. I thinking making American society more accommodating will be helpful toward breaking the ideology of single-family homes.
- tomjakubowski 6y ago
  What sort of large goods do you mean? I live in central Los Angeles, a city famously reliant on personal automobile ownership, and it has never been an issue having items like furniture delivered to my door. I do understand your larger point about a city's infrastructure accommodating the culture of its inhabitants. Taking LA as an example again, because of the widespread reliance on car commuting in the city, it's harder here to close some streets down to personal vehicle traffic, as has been done in other cities recently.
  - notJim 6y ago
    If you go to IKEA in LA, do they deliver? What about Home Depot? In my experience, most of the time they don't, but I think in Europe it's different.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Almost certainly yes. You may well need to pay for it but you can get most things delivered from, certainly, major chains. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/services/delivery/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/services/deliver... https://www.homedepot.com/c/About_Your_Online_Order https://www.homedepot.com/c/About_Your_Online_Order

luckylion 6y ago

Not having a workshop is a minor concern, I believe: plenty of people don't desire one. I wouldn't buy an apartment in a multi-family home either though, simply because your money is tied for quite a while and it's essentially a lottery whether you have terrible neighbors or not. If they suck, you can't easily leave. With a detached single-family home, you'll at least have a few meters and two walls between your neighbors and you, and if they can't sleep and walk about and start to sort their books, it won't keep you awake, researching the perfect crime on Google.

dionidium 6y ago
This subthread has focused on buying a unit in a multi-family building, but historically owner-occupied multi-families are very common. I'm in the process of buying one to occupy myself. Owners enjoy many of the benefits of ownership, the rental income is a path to wealth (and an opportunity to qualify for a mortgage you may not otherwise have been able to afford), and the city benefits from increased housing supply and landlords who are present and attentive.
- luckylion 6y ago
  That requires a bit more wealth to start with though, right? With 20-30% equity, the number of people who'd be able to afford a multi-family building (at least where I live) is tiny, and has a large overlap with those who can afford multiple multi-family buildings, I believe. What's somewhat more common in Germany (at least in the rural areas) is having a single small apartment inside a single family home that was usually rented to workers.
  - dionidium 6y ago
    Yes, that's true, although most lenders only require 15% down for owner-occupied two-families.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

enragedcacti 6y ago

To your last point, keep in mind that there is upward pressure on the price of single-family homes from people who want to live in a certain area but don't care about having a yard or a workshop or whatever. when you build a 4-plex on a SFH plot you've gotten rid of 1 SFH but reduced the pressure on the remaining stock by up to 3 buyers.

notJim 6y ago

I had these same concerns, so I bought a SFH. Going from always having rented, I wanted to try out full ownership. I'm happy with it, but I've realized that all of those things come with downsides as well. Maintaining a yard is rewarding (assuming you like caring for plants and stuff), but also a hassle and a fair amount of work. Similar with all the other items. Of course you can pay people to do more of it, but it's not like that has zero cost, either. As far as the workshop, I have a friend who does a ton of woodworking out of the garage of his townhouse. It does feel a little bit like luck of the draw with HOA, though. Generally, I think we talk a lot about the benefits of SFH, but not enough about their downsides, or about the upsides of shared housing. When I lived in an apartment before, tons of things were taken care of for me that I now have to worry about. For now, that is a burden I am interested in taking on, but I think as a society we should stop acting like that should be the default, and all other options are inferior compromises.

jeffbee 6y ago
We're not talking about defaults. We're talking about laws that prohibit people from choosing to live in a duplex. There are vanishingly few places in the USA where the law forbids you from building a detached single-family home if that's your preference.
- notJim 6y ago
  Are we allowed to talk about both? The idea that SFH is the preferred default is one of the drivers of those laws. It is part of the ideology of SFH, and deconstructing it will help deconstruct the implementation of that ideology in things like laws.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    The idea that people prefer detached SFHs is just a talking point used to obscure an agenda. The current agenda is that incumbent landowners profit from scarcity. The old agenda is that SFH zoning excluded minorities. Either one isn't great. There is no evidence of a revealed or stated preference for SFHs among American homebuyers when presented with multiple choices. If people really preferred detached SFHs this strongly, we wouldn't need to enshrine the preference in the law. The comment elsewhere in this discussion by "enragedcacti" is spot-on: if the law requires everyone to eat black beans, it will seem like everyone strongly prefers black beans.

zacherates 6y ago

Townhomes, duplexes, triplexes, etc are substitutes for single family homes (not for everybody, but for some people... like me). You'd expect that allowing them to be built would make single family homes more accessible not less as the people who currently are forced to buy SFHs but would be happy in a townhome would stop competing for them. More supply of a substitute (in this case, townhomes) should result in lowered demand/price of SFHs.

chrisseaton 6y ago

When you say 'multi-family home' do you mean a single house with lots of families sharing a kitchen and things? Or do you mean like a terrace home? Like a town-house? Those are super common in many places and it doesn't cause any of the problems you're imagining in my experience. My house shares one wall with another family. Not sure how you'd tell or what impact you think it'd have. I still have power tools in my garage.

asdff 6y ago
Issues depend on the quality of your construction. I've shared some pretty thin walls in my time.

war1025 6y ago

As someone who owns a townhome, I feel that this is a misinformed, but common, view of the situation. > You probably can't put in a workshop because the noise would bother the neighbors. We hear far more noise from the neighborhood in general than the neighbors we share a wall with. Granted they might just be particularly quiet people, but there is some significant sound-deadening in that wall. I think this is partly because of fire code that says the wall needs to withstand a 30 minute fire before crossing over into the neighboring unit. > You often don't have any sort of yard or outside space so you can't pursue hobbies that can't reasonably be practiced indoors. This is perhaps unique to our situation, but the area has never been fully built-out, so we have a 5 acre plot of land that the kids can play on as they please. Since most of our neighbors never come outside, we actually have an enormous yard that we get basically to ourselves. > You can't modify the outside of the house so you are limited in your ability to customize your home This is true to an extent, but there isn't really all that much worth customizing on the outside of a house. I guess you could pick different colored siding, but that seems like an expense I wouldn't be motivated enough to take on. > I guess my concern is that this would lead to a world where only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes. Honestly this stigma is something I am benefiting from a ton. I have 1200 feet of living space, plus an attached 2 car garage, plus a 5 acre yard. I paid $106k for all that. I pay $100 / month to the HOA and get lawn / snow taken care of. It's honestly great. To get an equivalent standalone house in the area I'd be looking at 2-3x the cost.

TheCoelacanth 6y ago
> We hear far more noise from the neighborhood in general than the neighbors we share a wall with. Ditto. I never hear a peep from the adjoining townhouses and one of them has a grand piano.
atombender 6y ago
What area?
- war1025 6y ago
  Iowa

Hokusai 6y ago

> my concern is that this would lead to a world where only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes. I love to live in a city. I love to have access to museums, gardens, universities and good public transportation. My fear is that people may end up killing the city in favor of single-family homes and making owning a car mandatory. That cities that I love like New York, London, Tokyo or Shanghai may disappear and become an endless shapeless blob of single-family homes without identity were people looks suspiciously to anyone that "do not belong to the neighborhood". It would be a loss to humanity to get rid of the creativity, the openness, the heterogeneity of the city. People has gathered in cities as long as civilization has existed. Cities are civilization. I have lived in London, Barcelona and Stockholm. Great cities on their own, with good public transportation, services, restaurants, that feel safe, alive, and a bridge between past and future. But, your experience may vary depending on the quality of the cities you have lived in.

majormajor 6y ago
> My fear is that people may end up killing the city in favor of single-family homes and making owning a car mandatory. That cities that I love like New York, London, Tokyo or Shanghai may disappear and become an endless shapeless blob of single-family homes without identity were people looks suspiciously to anyone that "do not belong to the neighborhood". It would be a loss to humanity to get rid of the creativity, the openness, the heterogeneity of the city. People has gathered in cities as long as civilization has existed. Cities are civilization. In what universe is anyone proposing tearing down the buildings in NY, London, Tokyo, or Shanghai and replacing them with SFH? I've seen some articles about new mega-rich construction in London with homes going deep underground, but largely replacing existing townhomes and the like, not lowering density. There are just very few people who would spend enough money to buy up a bunch of units and turn them into a handful of houses... The only push for active change is the opposite direction: people who want to change the cities with abundant single family homes.
- reportingsjr 6y ago
  In the US there are massive subsidies for suburbs with single family homes, to the point where cities are stymied as people in the cities are the ones that end up paying for a massive chunk of this subsidy. As a result there is less of a drive for people who are in between, or even want to live in the city a bit, to live there and make it a more lively area since it ends up being artificially more expensive. On top of this, a lot of zoning makes interesting, dense cities straight up illegal or incredibly expensive to build, again, in preference of low density single family homes. This is what people are concerned with and want to change.

goodcanadian 6y ago

I think this is a particularly (North) American take on townhouses. In the UK, the majority of houses are terraced. Your ownership rights are exactly the same as with a detached house. Most have their own garden; you can build a shed or a shop in the back if you have room. You extend and modify as you like (within reason and planning consents). There is no HOA; you are entirely responsible for the bit of roof over your house and your yard/garden. The only shared responsibility is the shared wall, but that is made of brick and likely won't have any problems longer than you are alive.

brailsafe 6y ago
This is the case in Canada as well. I rent a basement suite in Vancouver, and as far as I know, the owners can do whatever they want. Noise issues are noise issues, but we haven't had them so far.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  How much does that cost you these days? My partner is from Victoria and we’ve eyed places out there on a whim but even up island doesn’t seem to be big savings. Maybe a bit more bang for the buck than out here in Ontario.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    Being from Winnipeg, I get a tremendous amount more value here in Vancouver for the money I pay. My gf and I pay about $1450 + insurance with utilities (water, electricity) included, and in-suite washer dryer + dishwasher + separate entrance in a new house. I don't need to own a car, grocery and cafes are within a very small walking distance, and the mountains can be bused to. We both have access to jobs that make it more manageable. Likewise, a friend of mine who likes a more bougie setup is paying $2100 for a new 1 bdr in a tower in a good neighborhood, and has amenities like washer and dryer in-suite, balcony, and underground parking included, which seems much more typical here. I took a look at Victoria rentals when I was interviewing for a job out there, but ended up realizing that there is less selection, less availability, and less public infrastructure that would otherwise make it a worthwhile move. I love the island generally speaking, if I have access to a car, and am hoping to do some backcountry camping out there soon, but it doesn't suit me as more of an urbanite at this time. In my current neighborhood, I can get downtown without a car in about 25 minutes, and my neighborhood is very laid back with tons of greenery and small shops. What I've heard about the suburbs of Toronto, are that it's a long-ass commute into the city proper, comparatively expensive, and with less access to nature, but perhaps easier access to Montreal, Ottawa, and Buffalo, but I haven't talked to anyone about the specifics of price/amenities. What has your experience been?

c3534l 6y ago

If some people are willing to live in those kinds of houses, it will decrease the cost of living in the kinds of houses you personally want to live in. This is an allocation problem, not a production problem. If you want or need those things, then building alternatives for people who don't will free up space for people who do want those things. This isn't a zero-sum game.

jseliger 6y ago

where only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes This is the world right now, except that many are "stuck" not in multi-family, but instead are precariously housed, or not housed at all: https://www.evictedbook.com/ https://www.evictedbook.com/ The big missing factor in your analysis is cost. Someone who might be able to afford a $200K home might not be able to at $400K. The goal is to give people a diversity of options. https://jamesjgleeson.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/how-tokyo-built-its-way-to-abundant-housing/ https://jamesjgleeson.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/how-tokyo-bui...

shard 6y ago

In some regions of the world, multi-family homes are actually preferred compared with single family homes. In Korea, modern apartment highrises offer many benefits that make them a more popular choice, including: better energy efficiency, wired for high speed internet, spacious outdoor recreational areas (playgrounds and parks, often gyms (indoor and outdoor)), attached small businesses (e.g. 7-11 and restaurants on the 1st floor), security guard in the complex (and sometimes in the building), a view if on a high floor, high tech amenities such as keyless entry / video intercom / subfloor heating systems, and more modern design & aestetics. I see a similar trend starting in China as well. Single family homes are either the homes of the ultra-rich or the poor, or traditional country-side homes.

treis 6y ago
We have those in the US too. They're just way more expensive than a suburban house. Strongtowns has this blindness about how most Americans live. Look at this quote: >you’d see higher-end restaurants, organic groceries, day care facilities, hardware stores, boutiques or bakeries or doctor's offices, depending on the mix of residents nearby. Yeah obviously if you're well off it's awesome to live in walking distance to these things. But most people aren't. And the suburban home where you drive to a grocery store is a way cheaper life than living in Madison
- username90 6y ago
  Most cheap apartments in Sweden are within walking distance to those things. If you build more such neighborhoods they get cheaper, it isn't rocket science.
  - treis 6y ago
    That's not true at all. As an example, a 4 bedroom 2,000 sq ft house in the suburbs can be had for around 150k. What sort of apartment can you buy in Sweden for that much?
    - asdff 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nostrademons 6y ago

Most duplexes & triplexes allow #2 & 3. The owner occupies one unit and has full rights & responsibilities over the property: they can paint it, landscape it, put in solar panels, etc. Then they rent out the other unit(s) as a normal landlord/tenant relationship. It's extra income for them, and it's a normal apartment for the tenant (except often a bit nicer because many duplexes have yards and the owner has a stronger incentive to fix things quickly). Townhomes/condos with an HOA are a different beast. That's a function of the ownership structure (SFH vs. condo vs. TIC vs. apartment) rather than the physical dwelling, though. At least in the Bay Area, it's not uncommon to find SFHs that have been converted into multi-family properties with the addition of an in-law unit or ADU. The vast majority of these use a traditional landlord/tenant relationship.

SamWhited 6y ago

Others have said this in various forms here, but I don't think this is really a problem because the same logic that applies to multi-family homes applies to other aspects of your life, like a workshop or garden. I have a garden at home, and I love it, but I miss my old apartment where I had to rent a community garden plot, and therefore got to know the community while I gardened. If I live in a co-op housing project and I'm a bit older and can't do repair work on my house, I have a neighbor who can do that for me. If I want a wood shop but wouldn't be able to afford a house big enough to build one even if I can afford to buy my own house, I can get together with a bunch of other people in my community and build that too, pooling resources and owning it jointly. If the internet options in my neighborhood are terrible (ie. I live in a place where my options are AT&T which goes out once a day and wants to charge me $100 before they'll even talk to me about it or Spectrum where I've gotten literally half of the advertised speed and just been told "sorry, our copper isn't very good in that area"), then the tech-knowledgeable neighbors can spin up a local wireless ISP and we can all share a bit of bandwidth depending on what we can chip in and have more reliable, faster, internet for everyone, etc. All of this makes me get to know the people in those communities, fostering neighborly cooperation and understanding. This is why any business I ever start will be a co-op, collective, or some similar model: everyone gets what they want cheaper than if they do it individually, and it builds community at the same time. I sometimes think that the richer you are the harder it is to build real community because no one has to work together towards a common goal. Most (not all, of course) of the rich people I know if they host a party will have the single house that's hosting grill/buy beer and get catering and don't know their neighbors very well (or at all, in most cases). In a community I used to be a part of where most people weren't as privileged as me and didn't have great tech jobs, we'd all get together and throw a pot luck, each person contributing what they could and everyone knew each other because we'd had to work so much more closely to make the event happen. TL;DR support your local co-ops and the co-op economy. Democratically run community owned businesses are hard, but well worth the effort.

TheCoelacanth 6y ago

> only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes That's what we have now. Either you pay for the full detached single-family experience or you are in a high-rise with no autonomy. You don't have the option of with slightly less autonomy than a detached house but more than a high-rise for a lower price that you can get with townhouses or duplexes.