14 ms·

Why are American houses so flimsy and poorly built?

• geff82 5y ago
  When I visited family in Canada, I found that the floor plans of the houses there were much more attractive than most found in Germany, but what I also said is: The quality even of the door to the house is less than the quality of the door to my toilet. My dream would be: North American floor plans with German/Swiss build quality. Those would be the best houses in the world.
  • rsynnott 5y ago
    Those would cost an absolute fortune (and I’m sure they exist on the ultra high end in the US). Typical American home construction seems to be ~100usd/sqft; Germany appears to be 2-3000eur/sqm. And very (IMO pointlessly) big houses are currently in vogue in the US; there’d probably be limited market for moderate sized houses of high quality construction vs 3000sqft houses of cheap construction.
    • mschuster91 5y ago
      > Germany appears to be 2-3000eur/sqm. Most of this, especially in urban areas, is "thanks" to explosion in construction ground prices - up to 70% and more of the price of flats is the share of the underlying plot (https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-grundstueckspreis-immobilien-bodenrichtwert-1.4580410 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-grundstueckspr...).
      • rsynnott 5y ago
        Net of land costs in both cases. Though to be clear they’re just the first figures I found, and the German figures in particular are all over the place.
    • rocqua 5y ago
      Converting the US price to eur/sqm yields 925 eur/sqm. Making US prices 2-3 times cheaper than EU prices.
    • avianlyric 5y ago
      You’ve swapped all the units in your comparison, making it a little tricky to actually do a comparison. So make it a little easier for everyone: $100/sqft ≈ 925€/sqm 2-3000€/sqm ≈ $216-324/sqft Or double to tripped per unit area.
    • dsq 5y ago
      I did a little arithmetic, at 1.16 dollars per euro and 11.11 sqft per sqm, and reulted in 1228 eur/sqm in the US, compared with 2-3000 eur/sqm in Germany. So half or a third the cost. That is significant. [Edited: I see others have had the same idea to regularize the units, now we can check each other's work ;)].
    • georgeoliver 5y ago
      > Typical American home construction seems to be ~100usd/sqft US building costs are highly variable by region. If you're going to compare to anywhere in the EU it'd be better to control for COL. Here in Seattle our builds start at $300/sq.ft.
  • Fricken 5y ago
    "Nothing but gyp rock, chip board and vinyl siding. The cheapest materials you can buy!", my grandpa would lament whenever we would drive past freshly erected sprawl. He was getting a little senile at that time, so he would say it a lot.
  • 9dev 5y ago
    Exactly! Gosh, I never understood why placing a bathroom next to the bedroom - the first and last room you visit everyday - is such a foreign idea to german architects...
    • MatekCopatek 5y ago
      This could be a space-saving measure. A bathroom also needs to be used by other occupants of the house/apartment (children, guests staying over etc.) and if it's only available by passing through the master bedroom, it becomes a privacy issue. As a consequence, you need to add more bathrooms (which requires additional space and money) or make the primary one accessible in a more public way (from the hallway).
      • 9dev 5y ago
        That's a valid concern, I wouldn't want guests to have to move through my bedroom to access the toilet either. However I've seen lots of American apartments with a two door bathroom - one to the master bedroom, the other to the hallway. That definitely does make the most sense in my opinion. Aside from this, even in spacious and expensive German flats or houses, this isn't common.
    • funcDropShadow 5y ago
      The point is, that they usually plan one bathroom per floor, not per bedroom. The primary reasons for that are prices and available space. At the moment it is quite hard to buy land on which you can build a large house in Germany. It is not only expensive, but there is often almost nothing available.
    • saiya-jin 5y ago
      Maybe to not disturb your SO with flushing/shower etc? If I will ever building a house toilet & bathroom will have to be as far from sleeping parts as possible. Quality of deep sleep is far more important than walking 5m extra from time to time
      • geff82 5y ago
  • tjansen 5y ago
    There are a few companies that build such houses, like bostonhaus.de and whitehouse.de .
• rapsey 5y ago
  My guess is that the industry has been developed in one way and there is too much history, infrastructure and experience to change. In Europe builders know how to build brick houses because that is what they have always done. In the US they are built from wood because that is what they have always done.
  • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    The USA has plenty of wood to make wood construction feasible, whereas that is more of a constrained resource. Japan has it bad in both ways: they are addicted to wood construction (quality is lower than even the USA) and have to import it all from Canada. But at least Japan is realistic about pricing in structure depreciation.
    • hinoki 5y ago
      Having seen quite a few wood frame houses under construction in Japan, at least the framing seems much higher quality than in Canada. Studs are thicker, cut more precisely, and spaced closer together with more cross bracing than I have ever seen in Canada. The insulation and other fittings are of course not at the same level. But winter is much milder and earthquakes much worse.
      • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        The winters aren’t really more mild in Japan. They invented the kotatsu to get around poor insulation (I’ve stayed in low quality housing in Japan in the winter and it wasn’t fun). Japanese rebuild their structures much more often than in Canada and the USA and so don’t overbuild accordingly. The result is that housing quality appears better simply because the structures are newer. See https://japanpropertycentral.com/2014/02/understanding-the-lifespan-of-a-japanese-home-or-apartment/ https://japanpropertycentral.com/2014/02/understanding-the-l...
      • Aeolun 5y ago
        Fittings are getting there now. We’re not quite at triple paned glass, but the house which I bought 2 years ago (in Japan) is very well isolated, and incredibly easy to keep comfortable with help from the aircon units installed. The house feels extremely solid, though that’s not an experts opinion.
• baybal2 5y ago
  Most people in China don't believe me when I tell that most Americans are living in wooden houses. More or less the same in Russia. People keep thinking that what they see in movies is some kind of massive stage set, or something.
  • sedan_baklazhan 5y ago
    Yes, in Russia stick houses are only fitting lowest-price market segment and only in the southern regions of the country. Mostly they are considered to be "not real houses".
• rxm 5y ago
  One of my pet theories is that flimsy homes reflect an economics signaling problem: it is hard to prove to a buyer the value of quality. Whereas size is easier. As a suburban home owner, I would have preferred the quality-square footage point to lean a bit more towards quality.
• triangleman83 5y ago
  What a garbage hit piece, this comment said it well: >Hey bud next time talk to engineers and architects before writing on a subject. Research the subject and subject area. Or at the top just note that this article is an unresearched, uninformed opinion post. A bit of Google-fu would save some face.
• timonoko 5y ago
  Noticed how badly built hotels were in Alaska. How it is living in with one-glass windows in midwinter? I have 3 layers in Helsinki, and it was little bit chilly when it was -35°C in 1985.
  • fwsgonzo 5y ago
    Same here. 3 layer glass in Norway, with AC and ventilation system. 250mm isolation in the walls and 350mm under the roof. Because of this I have almost no energy bill. It was expensive, though.
    • swarnie 5y ago
      In comparison when i lived in Russia we had double glazing but the gap between the panes was about 9 inches wide. We used to use the space as a make-shift freezer, worked great, 10/10.
      • chmod775 5y ago
        > In comparison when i lived in Russia we had double glazing but the gap between the panes was about 9 inches wide. That's the older way of doing insulation. Here in Germany houses from around 60 years ago are likely to feature the same.
        • swarnie 5y ago
          It was quite a shock as i'd never seen it before growing up. In the UK we had a bit of a double glazing boom in the late 70s, highlighted well in the TV show "White Gold" This generic PVC stuff became so common place i'd never seen anything else and just assumed the rest of the world was the same.
      • soco 5y ago
        And that's the kind of window which makes ice flowers in freezing times! Oh, childhood memories...
    • throw0101a 5y ago
• anovikov 5y ago
  Main reason is that in many countries there isn't much in the way of stock market so there is no other way to indefinitely keep money but by building big, permanent stone or brick buildings that can survive centuries with minimal maintenance.
  • gjulianm 5y ago
    If that reason were true, you'd see new buildings now being built american style, now that we have wide access to the stock market, but it isn't happening. Even single-family houses are built with bricks.
    • rob74 5y ago
      Because people won't buy anything else - and why should they?! I mean (at least in Europe), the cost of the actual building materials is dwarfed by the cost of the plot on which the house is built, the interior fittings and above all the labor costs of building the house. So going cheap on the building materials is simply not worth it...
  • Aaargh20318 5y ago
    We don’t build flimsy houses in the Netherlands, and we invented the stock market.
    • 1cvmask 5y ago
      There are economists who argue that it dates to the Romans: Economist Ulrike Malmendier of the University of California at Berkeley argues that a share market existed as far back as ancient Rome, that derives from Etruscan "Argentari". In the Roman Republic, which existed for centuries before the Empire was founded, there were societates publicanorum, organizations of contractors or leaseholders who performed temple-building and other services for the government. One such service was the feeding of geese on the Capitoline Hill as a reward to the birds after their honking warned of a Gallic invasion in 390 B.C. Participants in such organizations had partes or shares, a concept mentioned various times by the statesman and orator Cicero. In one speech, Cicero mentions "shares that had a very high price at the time". Such evidence, in Malmendier's view, suggests the instruments were tradable, with fluctuating values based on an organization's success. The societas declined into obscurity in the time of the emperors, as most of their services were taken over by direct agents of the state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_exchange
• 1cvmask 5y ago
  I only noticed the difference while traveling abroad. I assume like most things the builders are customer driven and clearly there is no market for it in many places??? Or that we are relatively peripatetic and mobile compared to other parts of the world. Another weird observation is the flush performance of European toilets. They don't clog up: https://www.hunker.com/13400906/what-is-the-difference-between-american-european-toilets https://www.hunker.com/13400906/what-is-the-difference-betwe... Flush Performance Most American toilets use siphoning or sucking action to forcibly draw the used toilet water through toilet trap and into the attached sewer plumbing. The neck of the toilet hole is small enough to facilitate suction, a design choice that often necessitates the use of a plunger in the case of a clog. European toilets typically utilize a washdown flushing system in which water inside the toilet is forced out through water flowing from the rim of the bowl. The neck of the toilet hole tends to be larger so there is less of a chance of clogs, but the bowls may require more frequent cleaning from any leftover residue.
  • illys 5y ago
    Thanks for the article. Some parts are funny and not very representative... About European toilets in villages or residential areas: "Though some modern squat toilets feature a flushing mechanism, others require you to pour water down the hole using a provided bucket." I have more than 40 years using toilets in many European countries - France, Belgium, Albania, Germany, Italy, Netherlands... - and I have never used a bucket to flush :-) US tourists find very exotic stuff when travelling in Europe :-)
  • swarnie 5y ago
    Its one of those weird reddit comments that the bots always make in default subs "Always have a plunger", "always buy a plunger" I always wondered about this... I'm 31 and have never needed to use one, i assumed it must be super common in another English speaking country but never knew why.
  • nabla9 5y ago
    That was something that confused me long time when growing up. First I saw it mentioned in passing some American sitcoms, maybe in some movie, then in Usenet discussions etc. Combined with the "American style portions" in some restaurants, I developed a sense of awe when thinking Americans routinely taking shits that clog the toilet. So many, so big shits that their toilets have plungers.
• PaywallBuster 5y ago
  Missing out on geography, e.g. availability of materials in the surroundings
  • rob74 5y ago
    Ok, if you are a colonist building a house in the Wild West, that's a concern, but in the 21st century?! In the 21st century of course you can say "we always did it this way", same as with the Imperial System, but then you shouldn't be surprised about articles like this.
    • rocqua 5y ago
      I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of shipping brick over large distances were actually enormous. This might be one of those things that is just way better off if produced close to where it is consumed.
      • PaywallBuster 5y ago
        also USA have multiple regions in risk of earthquakes, flooding and hurricanes, maybe cheaper/wood based constructions is more suited to the local conditions and even if today moving material around is cheaper than colonial times, regulations move very slowly and could be another factor
• refurb 5y ago
  "In the United States a 50-year-old house is considered old and is torn down to make room for another flimsy yet expensive structure." This is terribly written. Go to a city like San Francisco where there are thousands of houses over 100 years old who are still holding up well. Go to Boston and you can find ones even older. Hell, even in new cities like LA there are plenty of 1950's built houses that make up most of the housing stock. They aren't build "well" by modern standard (no shit), but they are built very solidly. There is nothing about a wood frame house that makes it intrinsically "flimsy" or "poorly built". Go and check out the concrete and brick houses in Asia and tell me that those are intrinsically "well built".
  • youngNed 5y ago
    If you look at the airplanes that are coming back, you can see clearly that the enemy is targeting our wings
    • hackeraccount 5y ago
      Nice.
    • refurb 5y ago
      It’s not survivorship bias when there are vast swaths of US cities with century old wood housing. If I had said “SF has a few examples of 100+ old homes” then sure.
      • Arnt 5y ago
        You seem to be suggesting that the US has vast swathes of well-built old houses, and agreeing that what's currently built is flimsy. Is that a correct reading? If so, do you have any opinion about why what's currently built is so flimsy? The flimsiness is even more puzzling if almost everyone (among both builders and buyers) has experience with solidly built houses.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
• mshroyer 5y ago
  > In contrast, houses and most buildings in Europe are much sturdier, being built with stone or cinder blocks or brick for the whole wall and inside walls. I don't know the stats, but cinder block construction is very common in Florida. The house I grew up in is cinder block, which helps with hurricane protection. I currently live in California, and one of the big surprises when moving out here was how much of the construction is simple wooden frames. I wouldn't extrapolate that to all of America.
  • vidarh 5y ago
    Conversely solid wood construction is common in Scandinavia. Still sturdier than a lot of US housing. I live in the UK now, in a brick house and I doubt it'd pass building inspection in Norway.
• willvarfar 5y ago
  In Sweden we often build ‘stick frame’ as is common in the US and shown in the pictures in the article. But we somehow manage to do it much more ruggedly than in the US, and finish with better materials and triple glazing and so on. We usually use vertical plank on the outside (vinyl is unheard of). I’m very interested in building, have done major renovations and am embarking on a self build project so I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos showing American construction. And it’s like the same as we use nowadays in the Nordics, but flimsier. And this is my subjective opinion, but uglier. Of course some parts of the US have to contend with heat and termites and things, but there is plenty of the US that is equiv climate to Sweden.
  • Yaggo 5y ago
    Same in Finland. Wooden stick frames are most common but I wouldn't describe them as "flimsy". There is heavy regulation for energy efficiency etc. Judging purely from stereotypical perspective[1], the houses in US seem to emphasize (big) size and fancy look. You can't build that cheaply unless you give up in quality, thus the flimsyness, I guess. [1] https://mcmansionhell.com https://mcmansionhell.com
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    In Canada there are a couple of communities in Northern Ontario that have Nordic roots, you can recognize them by the houses, they are so much prettier than the rest.
  • stooliepidgin 5y ago
    The single-story house I grew up in in south San Jose, CA had a stucco exterior. This is essentially a concrete-like material spread over chicken wire (hexagonal poultry netting) that is tacked onto the structure. An artistic texturing of the surface is applied as a final step. After drying, it is primed and painted. The structure was about 30 years old when it became infested with subterranean and flying termites, and required fumigation and major repairs to sill joists and pilings. It took a lot of time, money, and effort to repair it. The land was formerly a cherry orchard.
• meerita 5y ago
  I don't agree with the article at all. New materials and houses in Europe are built using wood and other derived products from wood, plastics and so on. Only a tiny fraction of the house is built on concrete. Having said so, some of the arguments to me are fit on Survivorship bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias. I'm a big follower of builers in Youtube and the amount of things that are done today in USA when building houses is quite impressive.
  • rapsey 5y ago
    > New materials and houses in Europe are built using wood and other derived products from wood, plastics and so on. Definite minority of those houses where I am.
    • feffe 5y ago
      Reporting from Sweden, almost all our stand alone houses (small houses) are built the same except with better insulation in walls, roof and windows (because of the climate). I've never considered our houses rickety, although I do think wood now days is worse than 50 years ago, less growth rings in construction lumber.
      • krzyk 5y ago
        In Poland majority of houses are built using some kind of hollow bricks + concrete for foundations/basements (basements in newer house are rare)/ floors and beams to support floors. Houses that are built using wood are so rare that most people would stop by and to some photos.
        • meerita 5y ago
          Same in USA. Basement is concrete or brick-concrete mix. Then they built up all using aluminium or treated wood. Last time i've checked a review about new techniques and material the builder said the house could last over 200 years and easily repareable in any part compared to brick houses.
• weitzj 5y ago
  My guess would be that there are enough natural catastrophes which make it cheaper to build a house from scratch than a sturdy house. There was a conference talk roughly ten years ago which talked about houses and joked about people not knowing the tale of the three little pigs.
  • Mordisquitos 5y ago
    Even if for the sake of the argument we accept that natural catastrophes incentivise cheaper construction over sturdiness (which is very debatable), surely the entirety of the USA + Canada are not subject to the same risk of natural disasters, nor is Europe as a whole safe from them altogether. As far as I know, construction is not sturdier in the safer regions of North America, nor is it cheaper in the less safe parts of Europe.
• MarkusWandel 5y ago
  Two things. One, houses are built out of the most abundant/cheap materials. In some places this is literally concrete. In North America it is lumber. Two. The construction cost of the house follows that of the land. Cheap land, cheap construction (relatively). An anecdote. This has happened twice now with different visitors from my old country (Germany). I tour them around and show them exactly how houses are built here. In one case, the construction was so shoddy that there were holes in the exterior sheathing where they had slipped when cutting something with a chainsaw. In the other case, the construction was, by North American standards, quite good and solid, and the people building the house were happy to let us tour inside (two of my visitors in this case were construction carpenters). In both cases, after showing them how houses are built, I then took them to a model home. And in both cases they were absolutely floored by the luxury and wished they could have a house like that in Germany. Houses there may be solidly built, but they don't have, say, a huge basement with only minimal support columns and 8+ foot ceiling. Or a master bedroom with luxurious ensuite, walk-in closets and nearby laundry room. Or a family room with 12 foot high windows. When everything is tradition bound, flights of fancy like this don't happen at this price point.
  • tenns 5y ago
    Are you american ? I love it when people that are more than 5th generation immigrant still identify with the place they "originate" from lmao. If we did this in Europe, I'd be german, belgian, portugese, spanish, and Italian all at once! Ah and that's on top of actually being french, is it rooted in the deep racism or the fact people kept to their "group" ? Is that why people are fascinated with those DNA test that tell you nothing but where your ancestors lived only 200 years ago ? Regarding houses, the luxury you talk about being absent must be because most old houses weren't even built when there was electricity, running water, or a centralized sewage system, let alone built with where to place a TV in mind. Most houses need to be renovated/remodeled to better fit today's lifestyle. You should come to Europe, you'd feel the same way about luxury with those meter large walls, it feels like a cavern, cold inside in the summer, and no sound to be heard. Truly relaxing.
    • kwhitefoot 5y ago
• rsynnott 5y ago
  What I always wonder about is the energy efficiency of these houses. Increasingly, government policy in European countries is that houses must be highly energy efficient, but this requires good insulation and air tightness. That seems like it’d be hard to achieve with American style construction, particularly in the long term.
  • tjansen 5y ago
    I don't think so, because there are companies in Germany that build American-style houses that adhere to German energy efficiency rules, like https://www.bostonhaus.de https://www.bostonhaus.de . They use different windows and doors to achieve this, and it's certainly more expensive than a house built to American standards, but it's not fundamental issue with American style construction.
    • rsynnott 5y ago
      Oh, yeah, I doubt it's a fundamental issue, but given the apparent cheapness of most American construction, I can't imagine the energy efficiency is great.
• mschuster91 5y ago
  > The American mindset of bulldozing the old and building something new instead every few decades keeps us from having a sense of history, at least where architecture and physical structures are concerned. A very interesting point, raising a question from a sociological perspective: when most durable structures in a country are in the hand of the government (e.g. the Congress buildings), companies (corporate campuses) and rich individuals and the lower 99% are relegated to cheap housing they either don't own or have to tear down/rebuild once a generation because it fell apart or got destroyed in a natural disaster, what effects does this have on societal stability and cohesion?
• nabla9 5y ago
  In Japan it is common to get rid of the old house when the house is sold. Just 20-30 year old houses are demolished. They really buy only the plot. I think they have slightly different cultural reasons, but their houses are not build to last either.
• dd36 5y ago
  50 year old houses aren’t regularly torn down. Neither are wooden skyscrapers. They lost me with those statements.
• Slippery_John 5y ago
  We use technologically hidden costs to make up for a lot of the difference. For instance, European homes seem to be built to self-regulate temperature much more effectively than American homes are. Americans then make up for the difference with air conditioning. The initial costs may be lower, but there's an ongoing (and often massive) recurring cost that isn't readily apparent. My mom's home in Indiana, for instance, has an electric bill in the range of $600/month during peak of the hot months which is just nuts to me. The place just wasn't built to use passive cooling techniques.
  • rsj_hn 5y ago
    Residential electricity rates in Indiana are about 10.5 cents per kW/h, and the average home uses 1000kW/hr per month, for a bill of about $105/month. $600 is indeed nuts, but it sounds like something else is going on there - perhaps this was a larger bill that included electricity in it? https://www.electricitylocal.com/states/indiana/ https://www.electricitylocal.com/states/indiana/
    • Slippery_John 5y ago
      It's a remarkably poorly insulated 5 bedroom home with a purely global temperature control (i.e. she can't just cool / heat her bedroom). I gave her a bunch of money to do renovations so hopefully that goes down significantly.
      • rsj_hn 5y ago
        That makes sense. You can find old homes in SF with the natural gas heaters and it's easy to get a big gas bill if you leave those on with the terrible windows that don't close properly (the windows on those old victorians are awful).
  • etempleton 5y ago
    Germanmy’s climate is relatively moderate compared to most of the US. In California most people do not have air conditioning. On the east coast you will be miserable in the summer because of the high heat and humidity. No amount of passive cooling will make that better and because of the humidity it remains hot all night. And $600 is an extreme electricity bill. I have never heard of anyone with a bill that high.
• wffurr 5y ago
  Are they? I live in a house built in 1927, converted from a multi-family to condos in 2009, and it seems fine. I don't live in an earthquake, fire-, or flood-prone area. I'm not aware of any major structural issues. As far as I know, it's a stick-built structure. I'm not sure what type of sheathing we have, if any. Plywood was certainly in use in 1927. I do agree about the quality, but in this case, that's more due to the insanity of the local real estate market than anything else. A house flipper can do a piss-poor job renovating and then sell for a substantial sum, leaving the owners with the choice of whether to re-do a bunch of work or just live with it. (So far we just live with it). There are some builders in the area who do a really great job. I've seen some very nicely finished houses with great energy efficiency, and they do command a premium, but not enough to encourage the flippers to build to the same standard. Regarding the comments about bulldozing and rebuilding, almost every American city I know of has a historical buildings commission. Good luck getting approvals through to demolish buildings that are under their purview! Lots of renovations happening in the urban cores. If anything, a bit more demolishing and rebuilding should be happening in America's cities. There's a lot of low-rise light industrial and retail in high demand areas that really ought to be at least 3-4 stories with housing above instead. Lots of light rail stops with parking and low-density building around them.
• Archelaos 5y ago
  If you leave aside the price of the plot, how do houses of a similar size compare when built US style vs. European style? European seems to require more money up front, but has lower maintenance costs and less wear and tear. But the money you spent up front is no longer available for investments, or you need to pay interests for a larger loan. After how many years is the break-even point reached?
• yosito 5y ago
  The reason is simple: Americans build what is attractive in the short term, big floor plans, lots of features, the latest technology. The long term durability, beyond say 50-60 years, isn't a concern. They plan to rebuild or rennovate (upgrade) with the latest technology by that time anyway. For commercial buildings this makes even more sense, because Americans expect their needs to grow by orders of magnitude. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. But having spent a lot of time in both Europe and the US, I've noticed that many buildings in Europe are built with brick and stone and are hundreds of years old. In the US, everything is built with wood and metal, and it's rare to find a building that stays around for more than 100 years, or was even intended to. For me the best illustration of this difference is European cathedrals which are built to last centuries or maybe even millennia, compared to American megachurches which are essentially temporary warehouse structures, decorated with fancy lights and smoke, that will be replaced in less than 50 years. There are advantages to each approach.
  • Aaargh20318 5y ago
    > For me the best illustration of this difference is European cathedrals which are built to last centuries or maybe even millennia Not just last centuries, they took centuries to build. Notre-Dame de Paris started construction in 1163 and was completed in 1345. Construction on the Sagrada Familia started in 1882. Current estimate is that it'll be finished around 2030-2032.
• tjansen 5y ago
  I always envied American Houses because they are so cheap and you get so much house for your money. Yes, they do feel flimsy to a German, especially the doors and windows, but that's something that would be easy to change (and I guess there must be some manufacturer that produces more sturdy doors in the US??). On the other hands, there are lots of brick&mortar single-family homes here in Germany, built in the 1970s or 80s, that no one wants to live in anymore. Poorly isolated, old-fashioned room size without open kitchen, often wet basement... quite a few are getting torn down already, or at least remodelled. Why put so much effort in a house that won't last 50 years anyway?
  • kylehotchkiss 5y ago
    There definitely are nicer windows. I’ve found that more solid/hardwood doors jam during humidity changes. The flimsy ones don’t get stuck when hung well. But you can punch a hole through them if you are angry!
  • kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > old-fashioned room size without open kitchen, If by that you mean a kitchen where there is no door between it and the living room then I really dislike that! I live in a 1950s wooden house in Norway with a separate kitchen and like it that way.
    • tjansen 5y ago
      Yes. I don't have any experience with that because I never lived in a house like that, but practically all newer houses and apartments in Germany have an open floor plan.
      • killtimeatwork 5y ago
        It looks great on the photos, but YMMV as far as the comfort of actually living there. I for one hate unnecessary noises, which you get plenty of from the fridge (even the quieter ones) and dishwasher.
  • bradlys 5y ago
• insaneirish 5y ago
  Sigh. This trope again? Light frame wood construction (the technical term for this) is a robust, strong, and energy and environmentally friendly way to build when done right. You can do anything poorly, but you can build very, very good structures with wood. Wood buildings failing during storms, seismic events, and over time because of water intrusion are construction quality issues--not fundamental problems with the material. Masonry buildings are not necessarily superior. They use much more concrete (huge producer of CO2), are often trickier to air seal (energy penalty), and trickier to insulate (energy penalty).
  • BizarroLand 5y ago
    The other thing is maintenance. Any building will eventually collapse if not properly maintained. Second law of thermodynamics is that entropy always increases. The only way to decrease entropy in a closed system is to open the system and extract the entropy by some means. For a house that means cleaning, replacing broken and damaged parts, painting and general maintenance. Without releasing the entropy from time to time even a home made of solid stone will eventually weather away to ash and dust.
  • alkonaut 5y ago
    Many countries all over the world does light frame wood construction. The question is perhaps why that’s done flimsier in the US then. Or isn’t it? An 8-10” stud framed house is a reasonably well built and insulated construction. A building framed with 2x4” studs is an uninsulated bike shed.
• kylehotchkiss 5y ago
  I spent a few years living in a concrete apartment in Asia. No central air, just window AC units. Single-ply glass windows. Nothing sealed. No heat in the winter. Stuff breaks whenever it hits the concrete floor. Doors made of solid wood jam up during temperature and humidity changes. Concrete/plaster always chipping off the walls. You don’t hear people talking but you hear everything they drag on the floor quite clearly. I’ve experienced the opposite of American construction quality abroad and if anything missed the stick and plywood comforts I spent most of my life in. Central air with ducting is incredible. Dropping gadgets on wooden flooring doesn’t break them. The insulation in the walls keeps the power bills lower. And wooden construction can be quite hardy during earthquakes. There’s a tradeoff - houses in USA might not last centuries but they can provide a lot of comfort with limited structural maintenance for decades.
• fis 5y ago
  The article poses the question but doesn't try to answer it. There are some plausible sounding answers here in the comments. Mostly that it is cheaper to do it that way. But wouldn't that be true elsewhere too?
  • rsynnott 5y ago
    I suspect a lot of it is down to consumer preference. Americans seem to favour big houses as a kind of absolute priority. If you’ve decided upfront that the house must be 3000sqft, then it will either be really expensive, or cheaply built. And Americans are more okay than most with the style of very low density remote suburban development that makes really big houses feasible.
• jart 5y ago
  Live in New England. The homes are old there so you can sit down and relax without hearing someone breathing two rooms away. You get a home with 10x objectively higher quality for 10x cheaper. Plus the autumn is beautiful. If you must live somewhere like California then consider Bose earbuds.
• tealhat 5y ago
  A lot of false dichotomy in this article. Somehow brick is better than lumber in all cases? (No mention of the expense and cost, and environmental impact of making and shipping bricks). Population density is also a big factor in establishing the stringency of building codes. Codes set market standards. Ability to remodel a home is also a key piece of it's ability to maintain value, this is much more difficult with brick interior walls.
• anm89 5y ago
  As someone who was pre primed to agree with this article, I still think it is a garbage faux outrage piece. Roofs rot out on average after a few years? Give me a break. This journalism is flimsier than the houses it is discussing.
• SandunGunn 5y ago
  The house I grew up in, in the UK, was never re-sided, re-roofed or required its exterior re-painted in at least 200 years and parts of it 600 years These cheap houses built in the US create a lot of maintenance and waste. Siding/roofing seems to need to be replaced every 15 years or so Some friends are just going through the process of re-roofing. I asked them about going with a metal roof, or some other kind that might last longer. Their attitude was they don't plan on being in the house that long. In 15 years it'll be the next owners problem
• mihaic 5y ago
  I think the article touched on some points (construction boom on a budget), but I've always felt that contractor could get away with this level of shabby building because few Americans actually lived in other countries, and knew what standards could be realistically demanded.
• orwin 5y ago
  This article is unfair. Yes, there is cheap material used in some place, often sunny, and the standard of construction wouldn't cut it in eastern Europe now. Especially in Suburbland (Charleston, Hungtington WV). But most houses are quite solid and can last a long time. The main issue is carpentry technique/knowledge, and tooling. My genetic grandfather was a construction worker in Ohio for a long time (from his 30s to his 60s i guess), mostly worked with wood, and was baffled when he came to France in late 2000s and my father showed him his woodwork/construction techniques (he is a film carpenter/painter/decorator), which are far from the best. He then started a 3rd cabin in his property (so we could visit him), and you can really tell the difference in quality after merely 2 month and some emails exchanged.
• lprd 5y ago
  I’m a US expat and have been living in France for ~9 years. This topic always comes to my mind when looking for a new place. In terms of costs, that’s a hard one to really compare. In my region, Île-de-France, the cost per sqm is very very high. Land is also a luxury which applies to most of Europe. Prices are just generally higher here. Having lived in multiple homes in the US, quality is also subject to whoever builds your home and what materials you invest in. I would say that the standard is generally higher in Europe, but that does come at a cost. I’ve rented multiple homes here in France. The apartment I am in now is simply amazing, I’m friends with my landlord and he explained to me the process he went through when developing the complex. One of the homes I rented was built in the 50s/60s, very solid but lacked a lot of modern amenities. It was also very damp and cold on the inside. The heating bill was horrible in the winters due to the high ceilings and outdated heating system. I upgraded to a more modern home after that, which was built in ’98 and was simply amazing. Layout was very practical, you could have a party on the main floor and the noise heard from the second floor was fairly minimal. There are pros and cons to both approaches. A few that come to mind: EU + sturdy construction that lasts longer than a standard US home + better sound isolation + more resilient to the elements - more expensive - home layouts are very odd due to age/changing standards - renovating is more involved and difficult/costly US + cheaper (in most places compared to EU) + renovating is much easier + better home layouts + easier to find something on a piece of land (if that's a criteria) - less sound isolation - needs repairs more frequently - much less noise isolation I think my biggest gripe is just the costs here in France. Being American, I like my space and having a little bit of land to play on. For what I am accustomed to having in the states would cost something north of a million in this region. Sure, you could find something in the center of France for dirt cheap, but you'll go stir crazy there... I guess the moral of the story is that your problems go away if you have enough money /s
  • bradlys 5y ago
    It’s also a difference in belief of quality. From what I’ve heard, some places in Germany (and I presume other parts of the EU) just don’t carry the cheap home construction goods that are abundant in the US. This is primarily because the cheap ones require more fixing, replacing, and don’t last as long. It’s only perceived to be better for cost of the good itself (which really gets into if it’s better when you still have to pay for labor somehow!). I think Europe is just more of a build once cry once type of region whereas the US is the polar opposite. I’ll also say that if you bring up your construction standards to European levels, the costs rise substantially. Somewhat due to the goods needing to be shipped in, somewhat due to just more expensive goods overall, somewhat due to more niche labor required, and somewhat due to builders knowing they can charge more. (Cause if you can afford European construction - you’re probably loaded)
• lamontcg 5y ago
  I was in the 8th floor of a brick building during the 2001 Nisqually quake. Very lucky that quake was so deep and that I'm still alive. More earth motion and I would have been buried in a pile of rubble. I'll be taking flimsy wood structures that bend and twist and don't crumble from now on thanks.
• georgeoliver 5y ago
  At the risk of repeating the obvious the OP is little more than a poorly researched and reasoned troll/drive-by generalization, but as a residential builder for 20+ years I do wish that a culture of quality was more highly valued in the US market. Unfortunately there are bigger factors in play than how thick your exterior walls are which decide what the value is.
• kozikow 5y ago
  I know a construction worker who emigrated to the USA from Europe and built a house for sale with a higher standard (e.g. reinforced concrete construction). He had a hard time selling it, as it was more expensive that other similarly looking houses and it was hard to explain to buyers that it's better. Shameless plug: one way to show an immidiate benefit of a higher quality house to the buyer is showing that the insurance rate will be better. At Tensorflight.com we extract building attributes using computer vision and other sources. We provide this data to property insurance companies, so more insurance companies can actually factor-in such information.
• dave333 5y ago
  Most properties need to be gutted and remodeled around once every 50 years or sooner so construction that is easily remodeled, sometimes in dramatic ways, is more optimal. That said may europeans live in old structures that are very suboptimal but they call it "character." Also most of the biggest houses built by european nobility over the centuries are now only usuable as museums, or as commercial conversions as schools or hotels, and again it's mostly about character rather than convenience and capability.
• cocothem 5y ago
  in the US I don't like the use of plywood indoors and vinyl outdoors of a house. Solid wood I have no problem with - although it matters a lot what it's treated/painted with. In Europe I have a house made of (a lot of) cement and bricks. To me plywood was only for sheds, but personally I woulnd't use it even for that. Why expose me to the nasty VOC?