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There are 10 homes being built within a quarter mile radius of me here in the mountains of Utah. These lots have stood empty for decades, with one or two homes

There are 10 homes being built within a quarter mile radius of me here in the mountains of Utah. These lots have stood empty for decades, with one or two homes going up per year. It makes no sense to me why they are all building now. Two of these homes are literally some of the largest homes I've ever seen in person. One is 10,000 sq ft, one is 20,000 sq ft. Unfortunately, with very few exceptions, they're all being built by retired "empty nesters". My wife and I are always hopeful that families with young kids will move in so they can be friends with our children. But wealthy rural communities are pretty inaccessible to young couples starting families. Funny, while so many in this community are discussing moving out into cheap rural areas, I'm longing for neighbors my age and friends for my kids and weighing moving to a city.

ponker 6y ago
I could have moved into a 10,000 square foot house in Utah but wouldn’t want to normalize that for my kids. Why not just a regular family suburb somewhere? You don’t have to go all the way to the city life to get neighbors with kids.
- ngngngng 6y ago
  We don't live in 10,000 sq ft, that's just what my new neighbors are building. A lot of it came down to cost. Right now we're in a large home on a large lot in the woods up in the mountains. For the same money I could have been closer to my office in a home half the size with no yard. Some of this dilemma was caused by anomalies in the market at the time we were shopping. People in suburban areas were listing their houses for FAR above market and no one was buying, the stalemate lasted a while and pushed us rural.
  - teekert 6y ago
    This is what is happening here in the Netherlands. 10 years ago we wanted a house in a specific neighborhood and it was just out of reach financially. Now I make twice as much and it is still out of reach. We are also considering going more rural, prices are just insane now in and around the cities. But we have hardly any building going on, when a house hits the market sometimes 20-40 couples line up and they make one offer blindly, usually well above what the sellers asked for. It's pretty frustrating, soon started will no longer be able to find a house.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      In one of the previous housing bubbles (in the run up to the GFC) we had friends who were making offers on properties here in Scotland that were 70% over the asking price and still failing to buy something.
      - teekert 6y ago
        Crazy. How did that pan out? House building solved it? People moved more rural?
        arethuza 6y ago
        Eventually things stopped being quite so crazy and they got somewhere nice - did take a long time though. Note this was ~15 years ago.
- smichel17 6y ago
  I wouldn't worry about it too much, as long as you don't totally insulate them from the downsides. I grew up (age 5-17) in an 8k square foot house. Then I moved into a 2k sqft house and have since lived in smaller, and I much prefer smaller homes. Less to clean, fewer places for stuff to accumulate and get lost, generally "cozier".. The only thing I'd really take back is the ping pong table in the basement.
lgessler 6y ago
Can I ask what brought you to where you live today? Or is it where you're from?
- ngngngng 6y ago
  Easy, my parents lived here and we were planning on having children soon. We figured we could either live close to my office in a much smaller home, or have a longer commute in a larger home, and be 2 minutes away from my parents for babysitting. The only downside is the neighbors are all old. We're literally closer in age to our neighbors teenage children than we are to any of our neighbors.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Funny you mention this. We’re a family with young kids building a new home in Idaho. We’re escaping CA and worried our neighbors will be just other CA transplants. We’re trying to find a place where people are different than what we experienced in California — small/no families, workaholics, tech obsessed, “progressive”...
- namdnay 6y ago
  Move to Alabama, you won’t be disappointed...
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Unfortunately California is exporting its people in droves to the most desirable smaller cities in other states right now, overwhelming their local cultures and politics. It really is very destructive and sad to witness. In my experience, CA transplants don’t respect the existing cultures and politics of other places, but rather look down upon them and aggressively try to reprogram them into the same thing they left behind. This is exactly what happened to Seattle between 2005-2020, basically SF-ifying a sleepy town in the northwest. We will simply be seeing the same thing play out in a much faster and in a more widespread manner in the 2020s.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Transplants. What a parochial term! It is so interesting that the sentiment is so common in America: natives > transplants. Having lived in places where there are lots of foreigners, I find this aspect of America intriguing.
    - throwawaysea 6y ago
      I disagree that it is narrow minded, if that’s what you mean. Many people want a space for their culture and way of life to thrive. When that is threatened or eliminated, it can be devastating. It’s a loss of identity and belonging and a space to call their own. Does every place really need to be another vanilla progressive west coast clone? To me what is surprising is that people are willing to accept that cultural erasure is a problem in contexts like colonization or gentrification of poor neighborhoods in urban areas, but can’t accept that the same applies to other people and places. It feels a bit like that empathy only exists for favored causes and groups.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
Empty nester or not, 20,000 square feet seems extremely impractical. How do you keep it clean? Why pay excessive heating/cooling expenses? How much will you spend on furnishings? Will you even use at least half the rooms on any regular basis? Clearly, these homes aren't status symbols; as you mention, they're in rural communities where nobody is appreciating them besides the 2 people living in them. Consider me quite confused as well.
- souprock 6y ago
  Maybe one of the rooms is really big. It could be a velodrome, a baseball field, or a speed skating rink. In a rural area near me, somebody built a big luxury "house" with an unfinished interior. It was not for living; the building was dedicated to growing illegal drugs.
  - ric2b 6y ago
    Or a back garden with a pool, if they were referring to land area.
- arethuza 6y ago
  "How do you keep it clean?" Maybe you don't - when a room gets dirty just close the door and move onto the next one?
- notacoward 6y ago
  > How do you keep it clean? Nobody buying a house like that does significant housework themselves. It usually starts with a paid landscaping service, then interior cleaning service (to clean furnishings picked out by an interior designer), then cooks, etc. I know families who pay photographers to take regular "candid" pictures to post on Instagram. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that at least one of my acquaintances has hired a house manager to deal with all the other hired help. And I don't know anybody in a 20,000sf home. > nobody is appreciating them Probably not the case. Or maybe day to day, but I'm sure they have plenty of visitors whenever they want. This is also the realm of people who have at least a 1/8 share of a private plane (including pilot) in their budget, and fly across the country on a whim. It's a very different world up there, where there's never any serious question of needing to work and money is little more than a way to keep score. Anyone who doesn't realize we've already returned to Gilded Age levels of separation between the aristocracy and the rest of us hasn't been paying attention.
chrisseaton 6y ago
I would have thought a city was the last place to move to find friends for your children? Most cities have a creepy lack of children.
ip26 6y ago
Funny, while so many in this community... I think it's easy to overlook that aspect, people are focused on the upsides and it doesn't even occur to them they might not have any neighbors under sixty. I'm not sure wealth is the key barrier. Rather, if a parent ranks school quality & neighborhood playmates highly when buying a house, they will wind up close to good schools. I've seen this in action myself- I lived all over the place, rural, urban, suburban, for ten years and saw virtually no children. Then I moved within sight of a good school, and now kids of all ages are a constant presence outside. Quite a few of my neighbors could easily afford to live in a lavish rural mountain mansion, but have told me point blank they live here for their kids.

ponker 6y ago

I could have moved into a 10,000 square foot house in Utah but wouldn’t want to normalize that for my kids. Why not just a regular family suburb somewhere? You don’t have to go all the way to the city life to get neighbors with kids.

ngngngng 6y ago
We don't live in 10,000 sq ft, that's just what my new neighbors are building. A lot of it came down to cost. Right now we're in a large home on a large lot in the woods up in the mountains. For the same money I could have been closer to my office in a home half the size with no yard. Some of this dilemma was caused by anomalies in the market at the time we were shopping. People in suburban areas were listing their houses for FAR above market and no one was buying, the stalemate lasted a while and pushed us rural.
- teekert 6y ago
  This is what is happening here in the Netherlands. 10 years ago we wanted a house in a specific neighborhood and it was just out of reach financially. Now I make twice as much and it is still out of reach. We are also considering going more rural, prices are just insane now in and around the cities. But we have hardly any building going on, when a house hits the market sometimes 20-40 couples line up and they make one offer blindly, usually well above what the sellers asked for. It's pretty frustrating, soon started will no longer be able to find a house.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    In one of the previous housing bubbles (in the run up to the GFC) we had friends who were making offers on properties here in Scotland that were 70% over the asking price and still failing to buy something.
    - teekert 6y ago
      Crazy. How did that pan out? House building solved it? People moved more rural?
      - arethuza 6y ago
        Eventually things stopped being quite so crazy and they got somewhere nice - did take a long time though. Note this was ~15 years ago.
smichel17 6y ago
I wouldn't worry about it too much, as long as you don't totally insulate them from the downsides. I grew up (age 5-17) in an 8k square foot house. Then I moved into a 2k sqft house and have since lived in smaller, and I much prefer smaller homes. Less to clean, fewer places for stuff to accumulate and get lost, generally "cozier".. The only thing I'd really take back is the ping pong table in the basement.

lgessler 6y ago

Can I ask what brought you to where you live today? Or is it where you're from?

ngngngng 6y ago
Easy, my parents lived here and we were planning on having children soon. We figured we could either live close to my office in a much smaller home, or have a longer commute in a larger home, and be 2 minutes away from my parents for babysitting. The only downside is the neighbors are all old. We're literally closer in age to our neighbors teenage children than we are to any of our neighbors.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

Funny you mention this. We’re a family with young kids building a new home in Idaho. We’re escaping CA and worried our neighbors will be just other CA transplants. We’re trying to find a place where people are different than what we experienced in California — small/no families, workaholics, tech obsessed, “progressive”...

namdnay 6y ago
Move to Alabama, you won’t be disappointed...
throwawaysea 6y ago
Unfortunately California is exporting its people in droves to the most desirable smaller cities in other states right now, overwhelming their local cultures and politics. It really is very destructive and sad to witness. In my experience, CA transplants don’t respect the existing cultures and politics of other places, but rather look down upon them and aggressively try to reprogram them into the same thing they left behind. This is exactly what happened to Seattle between 2005-2020, basically SF-ifying a sleepy town in the northwest. We will simply be seeing the same thing play out in a much faster and in a more widespread manner in the 2020s.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Transplants. What a parochial term! It is so interesting that the sentiment is so common in America: natives > transplants. Having lived in places where there are lots of foreigners, I find this aspect of America intriguing.
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    I disagree that it is narrow minded, if that’s what you mean. Many people want a space for their culture and way of life to thrive. When that is threatened or eliminated, it can be devastating. It’s a loss of identity and belonging and a space to call their own. Does every place really need to be another vanilla progressive west coast clone? To me what is surprising is that people are willing to accept that cultural erasure is a problem in contexts like colonization or gentrification of poor neighborhoods in urban areas, but can’t accept that the same applies to other people and places. It feels a bit like that empathy only exists for favored causes and groups.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

Empty nester or not, 20,000 square feet seems extremely impractical. How do you keep it clean? Why pay excessive heating/cooling expenses? How much will you spend on furnishings? Will you even use at least half the rooms on any regular basis? Clearly, these homes aren't status symbols; as you mention, they're in rural communities where nobody is appreciating them besides the 2 people living in them. Consider me quite confused as well.

souprock 6y ago
Maybe one of the rooms is really big. It could be a velodrome, a baseball field, or a speed skating rink. In a rural area near me, somebody built a big luxury "house" with an unfinished interior. It was not for living; the building was dedicated to growing illegal drugs.
- ric2b 6y ago
  Or a back garden with a pool, if they were referring to land area.
arethuza 6y ago
"How do you keep it clean?" Maybe you don't - when a room gets dirty just close the door and move onto the next one?
notacoward 6y ago
> How do you keep it clean? Nobody buying a house like that does significant housework themselves. It usually starts with a paid landscaping service, then interior cleaning service (to clean furnishings picked out by an interior designer), then cooks, etc. I know families who pay photographers to take regular "candid" pictures to post on Instagram. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that at least one of my acquaintances has hired a house manager to deal with all the other hired help. And I don't know anybody in a 20,000sf home. > nobody is appreciating them Probably not the case. Or maybe day to day, but I'm sure they have plenty of visitors whenever they want. This is also the realm of people who have at least a 1/8 share of a private plane (including pilot) in their budget, and fly across the country on a whim. It's a very different world up there, where there's never any serious question of needing to work and money is little more than a way to keep score. Anyone who doesn't realize we've already returned to Gilded Age levels of separation between the aristocracy and the rest of us hasn't been paying attention.

chrisseaton 6y ago

I would have thought a city was the last place to move to find friends for your children? Most cities have a creepy lack of children.

ip26 6y ago

Funny, while so many in this community... I think it's easy to overlook that aspect, people are focused on the upsides and it doesn't even occur to them they might not have any neighbors under sixty. I'm not sure wealth is the key barrier. Rather, if a parent ranks school quality & neighborhood playmates highly when buying a house, they will wind up close to good schools. I've seen this in action myself- I lived all over the place, rural, urban, suburban, for ten years and saw virtually no children. Then I moved within sight of a good school, and now kids of all ages are a constant presence outside. Quite a few of my neighbors could easily afford to live in a lavish rural mountain mansion, but have told me point blank they live here for their kids.