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This is a very simplistic view. I live in Austria. Believe me - houses are built very differently here. There are strict and severe regulations, governing the s

This is a very simplistic view. I live in Austria. Believe me - houses are built very differently here. There are strict and severe regulations, governing the safety of the building, low energy consumption. Therefore houses are expensive. But they are built to last for generations. And I am not talking about the requirement of building a sturdier structure because of more cold weather conditions. This is in stark contrast to the private houses I know of the US which may be even hauled from A to B and in my perception are more of cardboard-quality.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
The view that US houses are cardboard-quality is a very simplistic view. There is nothing inherently wrong with stick built houses using drywall.
- pinko 5y ago
  (not a rhetorical question) Won't stick+drywall houses require more diligent maintenance in order to stand 500 years? E.g., new asphalt roofs, etc. It's not unusual for homes in Europe to last that long with major maintenance needed every hundred+ years rather than every thirty. It also seems like the impact of deferred maintenance is lower on stone+clay homes (e.g., you can realistically restore a stone farmhouse that's gone to ruin more easily than a stick+drywall house that has), no? My sense is that the 500-year TCO is many times higher (maybe as much as an order of magnitude) for US-style homes.
  - whafro 5y ago
    They may require more maintenance, but that maintenance may also be lighter. You could also argue that this type of construction allows more room for generational upgrades than those expected to last 500 years. Integrating PV solar into the roof might be a more reasonable proposition if you know you're planning to replace the roof in a few years. If you don't expect to have to replace it for several more decades, you're less likely to make that investment. This also applies to insulation, air sealing, electrical upgrades, etc.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Why would I want a house to stand 500 years? Just in the short 30 years I have been alive, there have been amazing advances in communications technology (cat 5 and cat 6 wiring), Wi-Fi, mobile phones, PVC to plex plumbing, insulation technology, zone heating / cooling, etc. > e.g., you can realistically restore a stone farmhouse that's gone to ruin more easily than a stick+drywall house that has), no? My sense is that the 500-year TCO is many times higher (maybe as much as an order of magnitude) for US-style homes. No, labor for masonry related work is insanely expensive, and rightfully so. Even at its most basic, more mass needs more force to move around. It is so cheap and easy to cut some wood and drywall and install new things and patch it up rather than deal with masonry that will last 500 years.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - stonemetal12 5y ago
    My house has a steel reinforced concrete slab under it. Reinforced concrete has a life time of 50-100 years, if everything was done right. You are going to have a hard time convincing me that I should care if the building on top will last longer than that.
- CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
  In the US, you get what you pay for. Housing being as expensive as it is, basically all new builds are being built as cheaply as possible while builders cash in on the market. The fact that all inspections (at least in the areas I know of) are STILL being done virtually, or not at all, only adds to the corners currently being cut. Older houses tend to be much higher quality. You can obviously find custom homes or more expensive homes built with better materials, but according to my contacts in the home building business, ~90% of homes being built right now are the bare minimum required to get the customer to buy, and most of them wouldn't meet regulatory requirements because the inspections just weren't done.
  - carabiner 5y ago
    Why are older homes in the US generally cheaper if they are also better quality?
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Because people don’t want to deal with old wiring, lead paint, and old pipes. I.e. they are not better quality. I would never choose an old US suburban house over a new US suburban house. The standards have been greatly raised, the materials and technology have greatly advanced.
      - Ancapistani 5y ago
        I feel like I got the "best of both worlds" here. My home was built in the 1970s, at the same time as most of the others in the neighborhood. There was a fire that gutted about half of the home in ~2008, and as a result the entire electrical system, internal plumbing, insulation, and most of the windows were replaced. Because of this the home was priced like others from the 70s, but I'm very confident that I won't have any major and unexpected structural, electrical, or plumbing issues in the near future. The only real downsides are that there isn't a basement (I have a dirt crawlspace, with a ~10x10 area dug out enough to stand up for the water heaters and such), and I own one of the few homes inside city limits with a septic tank. City code prevents me from making major repairs on the septic system, so within the next few years I'll need to connect the home to the sewer. That's going to cost between ~$500 (if I do the work myself, which will probably take about a week of full-time, dirty work) and ~$10k (if I just pay someone to do it all). I'll likely end up hiring someone to dig the trench needed in the front yard and in the crawlspace but do the rest myself.
- SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
  > There is nothing inherently wrong with stick built houses using drywall. There are some things wrong, just to list a few: - Stick+drywall building have terrible sound isolation, that drives people away from more efficient high density housing options, everybody wants a fully detached house so the air between the houses may help isolate you from the neighbor's noises. - Stick+drywall needs more diligent maintenance (a simple leak may destroy a house), so again it drives people towards fully detached houses, otherwise your neighbor's bad maintenance may cause troubles for you. Good walls make good neighbors. I'm convinced that big part of the American aversion to urban living comes from their use of sticks+drywall.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I was replying to a comment comparing the quality of Austrian houses (presumably detached single family homes) to US houses. I agree with you that stick built is not desirable for multifamily housing or any housing that shared walls with other families. I disagree that people dislike shared and more dense housing because of their conceptions about what what noise insulation could be. Shared maintenance would be more of a concern, but shared and dense housing has a ton of other drawbacks (on an individual family level), even though the society wide level benefits are positive. Who would not want space to park their individual cars and store their skis and beach gear and have a backyard to throw parties in? Not to mention the use of zoning only for detached single family housing on larger plots of land to be able to keep out people who cannot afford as much from the local schools. But that is a separate conversation.
    - dimmke 5y ago
      >I disagree that people dislike shared and more dense housing because of their conceptions about what what noise insulation could be Have you ever lived in apartments? Because It's the reason I bought a house instead of a condo or townhouse. Not everybody has families, in fact single person households are on the rise in the US and this style of living would be ideal for them.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
- zcw100 5y ago
  I don't get why people lose their minds about basic economics when they talk about housing construction. It's not like you can't get bricks and concrete in the US. You can, it's just going to cost you including the added labor costs. I would also argue that old houses are not built better. The materials that you consider "better" where cheaper back when it was built. So it's not like someone back then sat around and said, like some people like to imagine, "I could use cheaper material but I like to do things right. Let's spend twice as much as we need to and future generations will thank us." Old houses have problems as people have pointed out. Have you seen the windows on a 100 year old house, the insulation, the wiring, plumbing. I think there's also a lot of survivorship bias. You know what kind of house makes it 100 years? One that had a certain construction. What happened to all the crappy houses? They were razed or they fell apart. I also see people looking at what was a mansion, probably owned by some turn of the century robber Barron, and is now just some quirky fixer upper and saying, "They just don't build them like they used to" but that would be like moving into Jeff Bezos's mansion in 100 years and saying, "wow they just don't build them like they used it". They never built them like that. You're just looking at what's left or was worth saving.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - sigstoat 5y ago
    > I think there's also a lot of survivorship bias. this is critical to keep in mind every time somebody is wanking about how old things are better. you only see the old things that happened to make it. the cast iron pan that happened not to have any voids near the surface, the cheap wooden furniture that happened not to have any sapwood in the pieces used for it. or whatever.
- handrous 5y ago
  I do notice that even the nicer side of middle-class houses use worse finishing materials now. I've got relatives in ones built in the 80s and early 90s (and I lived in such myself, for many years). Solid wood doors, actual wood trim, throughout. Even cheap houses then at least had hollow wood veneer doors and real wood trim. Now? Hollow particle board (so, basically heavy cardboard) doors, particle board trim, even on a half-million dollar house (in a market where that's still pretty damn expensive).
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    That is a result of people choosing to spend more on land (i.e. location) than the house. Probably explained by population exploding more than the number of desirable places to live. But the underlying fact remains that the structure and infrastructure (electrical, plumbing, gas, air ventilation) of a 2021 house are likely going to be much better than those of a home from a previous era.
kleinsch 5y ago
My house (2500 sq ft) has an insurance cost of $300K to rebuild from scratch. You’re saying they’re spending $8M building houses better in China? In most of these places with insane house price to income ratio, it’s the land, not building costs that contribute most of the price.
fasteddie31003 5y ago
I've designed a residential house form the ground up in the US. The current building codes in the US are very strict and high quality. Especially around energy consumption. There are blower door tests to makes sure the house is air-tight. The insulation requirements make it so the furnace rarely comes on even on the coldest days.
- kingkawn 5y ago
  You’re ruining his chance to imagine he’s superior
  - k8sToGo 5y ago
    I have lived in California, I am living in Europe. Build quality is very different. Not sure why you think it is an imagination.
- whafro 5y ago
  Directionally, I agree with this, but it's important to be clear that it varies by jurisdiction. A blower door score of 3.0 ACH50 (air changes per hour at 50 pascals) is code in some states, while a less-performant 5.0 ACH50 is code in others. Neither of these are terribly "air tight" and you can generally get to 1.5 or even 1.0 without too much additional effort. But my 1920s house – built very sturdily – scored a 19.5 ACH50 when we moved in, and after a not-insignificant amount of weekend work is now at a 10.33, well off from modern code even in lax areas.
  - modo_mario 5y ago
    How does that happen tho? I'm thinking about the gaps in my own that's only slightly younger and the only gaps i can think of are at the door and maybe there's a gap at one corner of the roof but i can easily fix. Nothing gets trough that brick and mortar.
    - whafro 5y ago
      First, there are many gaps in pretty much every home. Junctions between drywall/plaster joints, windows and window frames, every electrical switch/outlet box, details in the attic and roof, the rim joists and sill plates, and yes, even any exposed masonry. Secondly, exposed masonry does often warrant being air sealed: https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/insulating-old-brick-buildings https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/insulating-old-... https://www.jlconline.com/how-to/insulation/air-sealing-a-brick-wall_o https://www.jlconline.com/how-to/insulation/air-sealing-a-br...
drstewart 5y ago
>But they are built to last for generations I like how you say this like it's undoubtedly a good thing. In Japan, old houses are rightfully considered depreciated as things like "severe regulations" and "low energy consumption" change over time as technology improves. Having a house built in the 1700s sure isn't going to be easy to solarize or insulate. So paying for 300+ years of that upfront seems pretty dumb. In Austria, are there severe regulations on the safety of building and energy consumption of cars? I take it that it's very common to see 60, 70, 80 year old cars on the road there and they're not just disposable cardboard quality things, right?
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > In Japan, old houses are rightfully considered depreciated Even newer buildings in Japan are made in cardboard, with no/little isolation, and everything is made to be destroyed 30 years down the road anyway. Disposable houses/apartments that cost an arm and a leg anyway. > Having a house built in the 1700s sure isn't going to be easy to solarize or insulate. You have no idea what you are talking about. In Europe, stuff built in the 1700s and still standing today were built with thick walls and will last several other centuries without any issue, and have excellent isolation (sound and heat).
  - oyashirochama 5y ago
    You don't pay for the house in Japan; you pay for the land usage, thats a fairly common and understood thing here. You CAN build good houses in Japan but most developers don't see the point due to extreme changes in codes, and due to the everpresent threat of earthquakes causing percieved structure damage.
  - persedes 5y ago
    True on the insulation, but having rented in one of those places, dealing with plumbing is an absolute nightmare. Same goes for electrical work, which can be all over the place. Structural repairs are very expensive too, because you need specialized constructors to handle the old building and if the house is put under "Denkmalschutz" (monument protection?), it'll limit your options of what you can alter and who can do it even more.
aetherson 5y ago
My current house is about 60 years old. My previous one was 80. America's housing stock is perfectly capable of lasting generations.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  Indeed, my house is ~150... made of wood.
  - JackFr 5y ago
    My apartment building is > 100 years old. Fifteen stories, upper Manhattan, steel framed.
papito 5y ago
It always bothered me when someone on America's Funniest Home Videos leaned into a wall (or, ran into it, gently), making a giant hole in it.
- vlozko 5y ago
  Videos where you see that happening is usually because the drywall was built on studs spacing more than 16" on center. 16" on center is pretty universal and it takes a significantly larger amount of directed force to create such holes.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Why? I cannot think of a reason to invest in solid walls that cannot be broken unless you are living in a war zone.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Sound insulation? My mum has a house that's literally built from concrete, and it's impossible to hear anything from one room to another, it's amazing.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      You can get the same by using quality drywall and insulation and proper air gaps. The minimum code built house will not get you that, but it is easily achievable with stick built. Concrete and steel are still superior of course, and I opt for those in commercial construction. But I have never seen a need for concrete and/or steel in suburban home construction just for noise.
    - geoduck14 5y ago
      By the way, sound travels better through solids (like concrete) than air.
      - gambiting 5y ago
        I mean......that's true but only if the emitter is attached to the solid, and also only if you measure the transferrence in the solid itself, the solid to air transmission after is extremely poor. Otherwise you'd be telling me that if I suddenly put a concrete wall between us I should hear you better, not worse, right? /s
folli 5y ago
The main cost driver is the cost of land, not the cost of construction.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  In that case, housing should be better quality? Because higher quality construction would increase a price insignificantly because it's the land that bring up costs. That's why I think that this is just an excuse for a low quality, cheap work.
bufferoverflow 5y ago
Do you think US houses fall apart after one generation? 20-25 years? Do you think US houses are not insulated?
- k8sToGo 5y ago
  Not fall apart, but depending on region, you guys really like to just use "sticks" and dry wall :) In central Europe, usually the center is made out of concrete and then bricks on the outside.
  - jjk166 5y ago
    Brinks and concrete are common materials in Europe due to the lack of abundant lumber. Much of Europe was deforested centuries ago, and what forests remain are generally heavily protected. In North America, there are trees out the wazoo. In the parts of europe that do still have substantial lumber supplies, like Sweden, you see substantially more lumber used in construction. Lumber is easy to produce, easy to transport, easy to form into structures, has excellent tensile strength and flexibility. It is an ideal construction material. There is a reason even the wealthiest in North America still live in stick frame buildings.
  - sulam 5y ago
    You do know that the R value of air is better than bricks, right? And repairing sticks and dry wall is a small job for the weekend vs needing to call out a mason? My house is over 90 years old and has had two remodels, with a third being done now. It will easily last 100 more barring some disaster. Cheaper does not always mean better. I’d be fascinated to see what your house does in an 8.0 earthquake, but for your sake not while you’re inside of it.
    - k8sToGo 5y ago
      My house does nothing, because I can't afford a house :( I would also prefer a house of sticks than no house ;)
    - PeterisP 5y ago
mitchdoogle 5y ago
Moving houses from A to B? Are you talking about manufactured homes? Outside of those, which do not represent the average American home, I've never heard of a house being moved except in very unique, very costly circumstances.
- Kye 5y ago
  Manufactured homes also typically don't move once installed except to the scrap yard once they're too old to meet regulations for being moved to live in.
- deleted 5y ago
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jcfrei 5y ago
Talking from a Swiss perspective here: What usually happens here is that facades are protected to "maintain the look" of a certain neighborhood. But everything inside the exterior walls is ripped out and completely rebuilt from scratch every 50 years or so. I think European cities are just denser than North American ones and the resulting buildings more expensive per square meter.
pjc50 5y ago
This seems to have started a fight; in both countries the price of the house is probably going to be a small part of the cost in major cities. Certainly construction costs have not doubled at the same rate as house prices. The UK perspective on old vs. new: newer houses tend to be tiny and feel less comfy even if built to stricter standards. Old houses come with more problems. In Edinburgh "New" Town (late 1700s), it's common to see cabling being run up the outside for things like broadband, because the building is of stone and there's no other sensible way to do it. Retrofitting all the old housing stock is going to be difficult-to-impossible. Don't forget planning regulations. Gutting a building and effectively building a new one inside incurs far less paperwork (and possible objections!) than demolishing it and building a new one. The UK loves declaring anything and everything to be historic.
aerosmile 5y ago
It's a cultural thing. In Austria, people build multi-generational houses because it's expected that your kids and grandkids will live in the same house. In fact, Austria only has one city with two million residents - the rest live in mostly tiny towns where everyone knows everyone (and if you're a newbie, that's not a good thing). Anyone who opens up a business, names it after their family. In other words, where you come from is important, and ideally you come from a family that's been in this town forever. So, in a world where your heritage is a disproportionately big part of your standing in the society, geographic mobility is not a universally good thing. I am sure there are parts of the Midwest that work the same way, but that's by and large not how the majority of the US works. Your heritage is refreshingly irrelevant, and therefore you can move freely from one place to another. Most people realize that big cities offer better career opportunities, and also that big cities suck for retirement. So you essentially see the following migration pattern: 1. [some place where you were born] 2. [your college town] 3. [career-related move to a bigger city] (this part can repeat itself many times) 4. [retirement somewhere warm and/or affordable] So if you're going to move somewhere in the range of 5+ times, why would you invest in a multi-generational home? Finally, as an aside, interesting to note the correlation between the geographic and economic mobility: the American Dream may or may not be alive anymore, but I've seen so many kids from my college come from nothing and make a fortune (and shockingly, kids from good families end up as failures, mostly due to some sort of conflict with their family). I think the society in the US has accepted that there's a lot of uncertainty when it comes to predicting a kid's future. That stuff simply doesn't happen in Austria on that scale - if you're poor, you'll stay poor, and vice versa. So a good family name leads to a good standing in the society, and the loop repeats itself (this is where your residence can also serve as a signal for your wealth to reinforce that loop). Why risk leaving all that and moving to a new city where you'd be starting from scratch?
f23f233233 5y ago
Typical European superiority complex. Europe is slowly becoming a third world union. Salaries for software developers after tax are even lower than in Ukraine (!!!). What else could be worse?
MarkusWandel 5y ago
North American houses have environmental forces constantly try to destroy them that are stronger than those in Central Europe. In the north, we get frosts down to -35 degrees Celsius, that can freeze ground about 1.5m deep in extreme cases. In the south, they get humidity and termites. That being said, what's important about a house is the foundation and the roof. The foundation of mine is as good as any in Europe. The roof, well, asphalt shingles on top of 5/8" plywood on top of roof trusses. Ho hum. But such a roof and attic can be properly maintained, which means keeping it vented even when there are 3 feet of snow on the roof - the modern pagoda style vents go a long way to solving that problem - to avoid ice dam issues, and of course replacing the shingles every 20-30 years. It is possible to get European style masonry roofs here. Perhaps such a roof over a properly insulated and vented (i.e. cold!) attic would work here. I see them here and there but don't know anyone personally who has one. I have encountered the occasional North American house owned by traditional Europeans. And they looked just as nice and impeccably maintained as any in Europe. And while maintained this well, will last for centuries. Unmaintained, they certainly deteriorate more quickly.
OldManAndTheCpp 5y ago
Those homes that can be hauled from A to B in the US are not the only type of home available, they are just the cheapest option to get a home. They are called (if the speaker is kind) "mobile homes", or (if the speaker is derogatory) "trailers", leading to the insult "trailer trash" for the people living there. People living in these mobile homes are typically poor, and the low cost of these homes is all they can afford.[&] Moving up a step is American style 2"x4" framed houses. These are typically built on a concrete foundation, but the structure is formed by inexpensive lumber. This system was designed to go up fast and cheaply, substituting more cheap lumber rather than any sophisticated carpentry [$]. This cheapness offers a home to more people, at the expense of craftsmanship and (probably) longevity. The cheap construction allows people to build enormous homes if they have the means, displaying wealth through sheer size rather than higher quality construction (the resulting homes are mockingly called a "McMansion", a joke pointing out that a big McDonalds hamburger is still... McDonalds quality. A blog making fun of these McMansions can be found here: https://mcmansionhell.com/ https://mcmansionhell.com/ However, if you don't want a cheaply constructed home, you don't have to have one! You can find a builder that will build a home to your specifications. This will of course be more expensive, as you aren't tying into the continent sized supply chain for the cheaper construction, but if you prefer quality work, you can certainly make that tradeoff.[-] In any event, it is usually the land under the home that truly appreciates, not the structure itself. This dynamic broadens the wealth divide between mobile home owners and owners of the second and third type of house. Mobile homes are often placed in "trailer parks", where the owner of the home rents a space to park their trailer, meaning they don't participate in any land value appreciation (and in fact will see their rent go up if the land appreciates). Still, the focus on cost, and the several levels of price-point allow more people to be housed. The fundamental question is "is it better for a person to have a low quality house, or no house at all?" It seems that Austria has chosen the second, while the US chooses the first. [&] When I loaded this page searching Montana (a remote, low population, low income state), I see some listings between $20-30 thousand USD. This is incredibly inexpensive, and affordable by basically anyone with a job in the US. https://www.zillow.com/mt/mobile/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pagination%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22mapBounds%22%3A%7B%22west%22%3A-118.88328297656251%2C%22east%22%3A-99.80003102343751%2C%22south%22%3A36.823841281960846%2C%22north%22%3A55.35198084446213%7D%2C%22regionSelection%22%3A%5B%7B%22regionId%22%3A35%2C%22regionType%22%3A2%7D%5D%2C%22isMapVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22filterState%22%3A%7B%22sort%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3A%22globalrelevanceex%22%7D%2C%22ah%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22sf%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22con%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22mf%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22land%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22tow%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22apa%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22apco%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%7D%2C%22isListVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22mapZoom%22%3A6%7D https://www.zillow.com/mt/mobile/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pag... [$] Notice all the focus on cost and speed on this technical manual for the system https://www.civilengineeringx.com/bdac/Stud-Wall-Construction/ https://www.civilengineeringx.com/bdac/Stud-Wall-Constructio... [-] This reference specifies a ~$300,000 USD cost for a timber framed house, quite a bit more than the mobile home variety!
sparrc 5y ago
Do you actually believe that most of the people in the US live in mobile homes? My house was built in 1916 and will easily last another 100+ years. Almost all the houses in my neighborhood were built around the same time and are still standing in good condition. Yes it's a wood house and yes wood houses can last a long time.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

The view that US houses are cardboard-quality is a very simplistic view. There is nothing inherently wrong with stick built houses using drywall.

pinko 5y ago
(not a rhetorical question) Won't stick+drywall houses require more diligent maintenance in order to stand 500 years? E.g., new asphalt roofs, etc. It's not unusual for homes in Europe to last that long with major maintenance needed every hundred+ years rather than every thirty. It also seems like the impact of deferred maintenance is lower on stone+clay homes (e.g., you can realistically restore a stone farmhouse that's gone to ruin more easily than a stick+drywall house that has), no? My sense is that the 500-year TCO is many times higher (maybe as much as an order of magnitude) for US-style homes.
- whafro 5y ago
  They may require more maintenance, but that maintenance may also be lighter. You could also argue that this type of construction allows more room for generational upgrades than those expected to last 500 years. Integrating PV solar into the roof might be a more reasonable proposition if you know you're planning to replace the roof in a few years. If you don't expect to have to replace it for several more decades, you're less likely to make that investment. This also applies to insulation, air sealing, electrical upgrades, etc.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Why would I want a house to stand 500 years? Just in the short 30 years I have been alive, there have been amazing advances in communications technology (cat 5 and cat 6 wiring), Wi-Fi, mobile phones, PVC to plex plumbing, insulation technology, zone heating / cooling, etc. > e.g., you can realistically restore a stone farmhouse that's gone to ruin more easily than a stick+drywall house that has), no? My sense is that the 500-year TCO is many times higher (maybe as much as an order of magnitude) for US-style homes. No, labor for masonry related work is insanely expensive, and rightfully so. Even at its most basic, more mass needs more force to move around. It is so cheap and easy to cut some wood and drywall and install new things and patch it up rather than deal with masonry that will last 500 years.
- deleted 5y ago
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- stonemetal12 5y ago
  My house has a steel reinforced concrete slab under it. Reinforced concrete has a life time of 50-100 years, if everything was done right. You are going to have a hard time convincing me that I should care if the building on top will last longer than that.
CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
In the US, you get what you pay for. Housing being as expensive as it is, basically all new builds are being built as cheaply as possible while builders cash in on the market. The fact that all inspections (at least in the areas I know of) are STILL being done virtually, or not at all, only adds to the corners currently being cut. Older houses tend to be much higher quality. You can obviously find custom homes or more expensive homes built with better materials, but according to my contacts in the home building business, ~90% of homes being built right now are the bare minimum required to get the customer to buy, and most of them wouldn't meet regulatory requirements because the inspections just weren't done.
- carabiner 5y ago
  Why are older homes in the US generally cheaper if they are also better quality?
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Because people don’t want to deal with old wiring, lead paint, and old pipes. I.e. they are not better quality. I would never choose an old US suburban house over a new US suburban house. The standards have been greatly raised, the materials and technology have greatly advanced.
    - Ancapistani 5y ago
      I feel like I got the "best of both worlds" here. My home was built in the 1970s, at the same time as most of the others in the neighborhood. There was a fire that gutted about half of the home in ~2008, and as a result the entire electrical system, internal plumbing, insulation, and most of the windows were replaced. Because of this the home was priced like others from the 70s, but I'm very confident that I won't have any major and unexpected structural, electrical, or plumbing issues in the near future. The only real downsides are that there isn't a basement (I have a dirt crawlspace, with a ~10x10 area dug out enough to stand up for the water heaters and such), and I own one of the few homes inside city limits with a septic tank. City code prevents me from making major repairs on the septic system, so within the next few years I'll need to connect the home to the sewer. That's going to cost between ~$500 (if I do the work myself, which will probably take about a week of full-time, dirty work) and ~$10k (if I just pay someone to do it all). I'll likely end up hiring someone to dig the trench needed in the front yard and in the crawlspace but do the rest myself.
SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
> There is nothing inherently wrong with stick built houses using drywall. There are some things wrong, just to list a few: - Stick+drywall building have terrible sound isolation, that drives people away from more efficient high density housing options, everybody wants a fully detached house so the air between the houses may help isolate you from the neighbor's noises. - Stick+drywall needs more diligent maintenance (a simple leak may destroy a house), so again it drives people towards fully detached houses, otherwise your neighbor's bad maintenance may cause troubles for you. Good walls make good neighbors. I'm convinced that big part of the American aversion to urban living comes from their use of sticks+drywall.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I was replying to a comment comparing the quality of Austrian houses (presumably detached single family homes) to US houses. I agree with you that stick built is not desirable for multifamily housing or any housing that shared walls with other families. I disagree that people dislike shared and more dense housing because of their conceptions about what what noise insulation could be. Shared maintenance would be more of a concern, but shared and dense housing has a ton of other drawbacks (on an individual family level), even though the society wide level benefits are positive. Who would not want space to park their individual cars and store their skis and beach gear and have a backyard to throw parties in? Not to mention the use of zoning only for detached single family housing on larger plots of land to be able to keep out people who cannot afford as much from the local schools. But that is a separate conversation.
  - dimmke 5y ago
    >I disagree that people dislike shared and more dense housing because of their conceptions about what what noise insulation could be Have you ever lived in apartments? Because It's the reason I bought a house instead of a condo or townhouse. Not everybody has families, in fact single person households are on the rise in the US and this style of living would be ideal for them.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
zcw100 5y ago
I don't get why people lose their minds about basic economics when they talk about housing construction. It's not like you can't get bricks and concrete in the US. You can, it's just going to cost you including the added labor costs. I would also argue that old houses are not built better. The materials that you consider "better" where cheaper back when it was built. So it's not like someone back then sat around and said, like some people like to imagine, "I could use cheaper material but I like to do things right. Let's spend twice as much as we need to and future generations will thank us." Old houses have problems as people have pointed out. Have you seen the windows on a 100 year old house, the insulation, the wiring, plumbing. I think there's also a lot of survivorship bias. You know what kind of house makes it 100 years? One that had a certain construction. What happened to all the crappy houses? They were razed or they fell apart. I also see people looking at what was a mansion, probably owned by some turn of the century robber Barron, and is now just some quirky fixer upper and saying, "They just don't build them like they used to" but that would be like moving into Jeff Bezos's mansion in 100 years and saying, "wow they just don't build them like they used it". They never built them like that. You're just looking at what's left or was worth saving.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sigstoat 5y ago
  > I think there's also a lot of survivorship bias. this is critical to keep in mind every time somebody is wanking about how old things are better. you only see the old things that happened to make it. the cast iron pan that happened not to have any voids near the surface, the cheap wooden furniture that happened not to have any sapwood in the pieces used for it. or whatever.
handrous 5y ago
I do notice that even the nicer side of middle-class houses use worse finishing materials now. I've got relatives in ones built in the 80s and early 90s (and I lived in such myself, for many years). Solid wood doors, actual wood trim, throughout. Even cheap houses then at least had hollow wood veneer doors and real wood trim. Now? Hollow particle board (so, basically heavy cardboard) doors, particle board trim, even on a half-million dollar house (in a market where that's still pretty damn expensive).
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  That is a result of people choosing to spend more on land (i.e. location) than the house. Probably explained by population exploding more than the number of desirable places to live. But the underlying fact remains that the structure and infrastructure (electrical, plumbing, gas, air ventilation) of a 2021 house are likely going to be much better than those of a home from a previous era.

kleinsch 5y ago

My house (2500 sq ft) has an insurance cost of $300K to rebuild from scratch. You’re saying they’re spending $8M building houses better in China? In most of these places with insane house price to income ratio, it’s the land, not building costs that contribute most of the price.

fasteddie31003 5y ago

I've designed a residential house form the ground up in the US. The current building codes in the US are very strict and high quality. Especially around energy consumption. There are blower door tests to makes sure the house is air-tight. The insulation requirements make it so the furnace rarely comes on even on the coldest days.

kingkawn 5y ago
You’re ruining his chance to imagine he’s superior
- k8sToGo 5y ago
  I have lived in California, I am living in Europe. Build quality is very different. Not sure why you think it is an imagination.
whafro 5y ago
Directionally, I agree with this, but it's important to be clear that it varies by jurisdiction. A blower door score of 3.0 ACH50 (air changes per hour at 50 pascals) is code in some states, while a less-performant 5.0 ACH50 is code in others. Neither of these are terribly "air tight" and you can generally get to 1.5 or even 1.0 without too much additional effort. But my 1920s house – built very sturdily – scored a 19.5 ACH50 when we moved in, and after a not-insignificant amount of weekend work is now at a 10.33, well off from modern code even in lax areas.
- modo_mario 5y ago
  How does that happen tho? I'm thinking about the gaps in my own that's only slightly younger and the only gaps i can think of are at the door and maybe there's a gap at one corner of the roof but i can easily fix. Nothing gets trough that brick and mortar.
  - whafro 5y ago
    First, there are many gaps in pretty much every home. Junctions between drywall/plaster joints, windows and window frames, every electrical switch/outlet box, details in the attic and roof, the rim joists and sill plates, and yes, even any exposed masonry. Secondly, exposed masonry does often warrant being air sealed: https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/insulating-old-brick-buildings https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/insulating-old-... https://www.jlconline.com/how-to/insulation/air-sealing-a-brick-wall_o https://www.jlconline.com/how-to/insulation/air-sealing-a-br...

drstewart 5y ago

>But they are built to last for generations I like how you say this like it's undoubtedly a good thing. In Japan, old houses are rightfully considered depreciated as things like "severe regulations" and "low energy consumption" change over time as technology improves. Having a house built in the 1700s sure isn't going to be easy to solarize or insulate. So paying for 300+ years of that upfront seems pretty dumb. In Austria, are there severe regulations on the safety of building and energy consumption of cars? I take it that it's very common to see 60, 70, 80 year old cars on the road there and they're not just disposable cardboard quality things, right?

ekianjo 5y ago
> In Japan, old houses are rightfully considered depreciated Even newer buildings in Japan are made in cardboard, with no/little isolation, and everything is made to be destroyed 30 years down the road anyway. Disposable houses/apartments that cost an arm and a leg anyway. > Having a house built in the 1700s sure isn't going to be easy to solarize or insulate. You have no idea what you are talking about. In Europe, stuff built in the 1700s and still standing today were built with thick walls and will last several other centuries without any issue, and have excellent isolation (sound and heat).
- oyashirochama 5y ago
  You don't pay for the house in Japan; you pay for the land usage, thats a fairly common and understood thing here. You CAN build good houses in Japan but most developers don't see the point due to extreme changes in codes, and due to the everpresent threat of earthquakes causing percieved structure damage.
- persedes 5y ago
  True on the insulation, but having rented in one of those places, dealing with plumbing is an absolute nightmare. Same goes for electrical work, which can be all over the place. Structural repairs are very expensive too, because you need specialized constructors to handle the old building and if the house is put under "Denkmalschutz" (monument protection?), it'll limit your options of what you can alter and who can do it even more.

aetherson 5y ago

My current house is about 60 years old. My previous one was 80. America's housing stock is perfectly capable of lasting generations.

micromacrofoot 5y ago
Indeed, my house is ~150... made of wood.
- JackFr 5y ago
  My apartment building is > 100 years old. Fifteen stories, upper Manhattan, steel framed.

papito 5y ago

It always bothered me when someone on America's Funniest Home Videos leaned into a wall (or, ran into it, gently), making a giant hole in it.

vlozko 5y ago
Videos where you see that happening is usually because the drywall was built on studs spacing more than 16" on center. 16" on center is pretty universal and it takes a significantly larger amount of directed force to create such holes.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
Why? I cannot think of a reason to invest in solid walls that cannot be broken unless you are living in a war zone.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Sound insulation? My mum has a house that's literally built from concrete, and it's impossible to hear anything from one room to another, it's amazing.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    You can get the same by using quality drywall and insulation and proper air gaps. The minimum code built house will not get you that, but it is easily achievable with stick built. Concrete and steel are still superior of course, and I opt for those in commercial construction. But I have never seen a need for concrete and/or steel in suburban home construction just for noise.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    By the way, sound travels better through solids (like concrete) than air.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      I mean......that's true but only if the emitter is attached to the solid, and also only if you measure the transferrence in the solid itself, the solid to air transmission after is extremely poor. Otherwise you'd be telling me that if I suddenly put a concrete wall between us I should hear you better, not worse, right? /s

folli 5y ago

The main cost driver is the cost of land, not the cost of construction.

tut-urut-utut 5y ago
In that case, housing should be better quality? Because higher quality construction would increase a price insignificantly because it's the land that bring up costs. That's why I think that this is just an excuse for a low quality, cheap work.

bufferoverflow 5y ago

Do you think US houses fall apart after one generation? 20-25 years? Do you think US houses are not insulated?

k8sToGo 5y ago
Not fall apart, but depending on region, you guys really like to just use "sticks" and dry wall :) In central Europe, usually the center is made out of concrete and then bricks on the outside.
- jjk166 5y ago
  Brinks and concrete are common materials in Europe due to the lack of abundant lumber. Much of Europe was deforested centuries ago, and what forests remain are generally heavily protected. In North America, there are trees out the wazoo. In the parts of europe that do still have substantial lumber supplies, like Sweden, you see substantially more lumber used in construction. Lumber is easy to produce, easy to transport, easy to form into structures, has excellent tensile strength and flexibility. It is an ideal construction material. There is a reason even the wealthiest in North America still live in stick frame buildings.
- sulam 5y ago
  You do know that the R value of air is better than bricks, right? And repairing sticks and dry wall is a small job for the weekend vs needing to call out a mason? My house is over 90 years old and has had two remodels, with a third being done now. It will easily last 100 more barring some disaster. Cheaper does not always mean better. I’d be fascinated to see what your house does in an 8.0 earthquake, but for your sake not while you’re inside of it.
  - k8sToGo 5y ago
    My house does nothing, because I can't afford a house :( I would also prefer a house of sticks than no house ;)
  - PeterisP 5y ago

mitchdoogle 5y ago

Moving houses from A to B? Are you talking about manufactured homes? Outside of those, which do not represent the average American home, I've never heard of a house being moved except in very unique, very costly circumstances.

Kye 5y ago
Manufactured homes also typically don't move once installed except to the scrap yard once they're too old to meet regulations for being moved to live in.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jcfrei 5y ago

Talking from a Swiss perspective here: What usually happens here is that facades are protected to "maintain the look" of a certain neighborhood. But everything inside the exterior walls is ripped out and completely rebuilt from scratch every 50 years or so. I think European cities are just denser than North American ones and the resulting buildings more expensive per square meter.

pjc50 5y ago

This seems to have started a fight; in both countries the price of the house is probably going to be a small part of the cost in major cities. Certainly construction costs have not doubled at the same rate as house prices. The UK perspective on old vs. new: newer houses tend to be tiny and feel less comfy even if built to stricter standards. Old houses come with more problems. In Edinburgh "New" Town (late 1700s), it's common to see cabling being run up the outside for things like broadband, because the building is of stone and there's no other sensible way to do it. Retrofitting all the old housing stock is going to be difficult-to-impossible. Don't forget planning regulations. Gutting a building and effectively building a new one inside incurs far less paperwork (and possible objections!) than demolishing it and building a new one. The UK loves declaring anything and everything to be historic.

aerosmile 5y ago

It's a cultural thing. In Austria, people build multi-generational houses because it's expected that your kids and grandkids will live in the same house. In fact, Austria only has one city with two million residents - the rest live in mostly tiny towns where everyone knows everyone (and if you're a newbie, that's not a good thing). Anyone who opens up a business, names it after their family. In other words, where you come from is important, and ideally you come from a family that's been in this town forever. So, in a world where your heritage is a disproportionately big part of your standing in the society, geographic mobility is not a universally good thing. I am sure there are parts of the Midwest that work the same way, but that's by and large not how the majority of the US works. Your heritage is refreshingly irrelevant, and therefore you can move freely from one place to another. Most people realize that big cities offer better career opportunities, and also that big cities suck for retirement. So you essentially see the following migration pattern: 1. [some place where you were born] 2. [your college town] 3. [career-related move to a bigger city] (this part can repeat itself many times) 4. [retirement somewhere warm and/or affordable] So if you're going to move somewhere in the range of 5+ times, why would you invest in a multi-generational home? Finally, as an aside, interesting to note the correlation between the geographic and economic mobility: the American Dream may or may not be alive anymore, but I've seen so many kids from my college come from nothing and make a fortune (and shockingly, kids from good families end up as failures, mostly due to some sort of conflict with their family). I think the society in the US has accepted that there's a lot of uncertainty when it comes to predicting a kid's future. That stuff simply doesn't happen in Austria on that scale - if you're poor, you'll stay poor, and vice versa. So a good family name leads to a good standing in the society, and the loop repeats itself (this is where your residence can also serve as a signal for your wealth to reinforce that loop). Why risk leaving all that and moving to a new city where you'd be starting from scratch?

f23f233233 5y ago

Typical European superiority complex. Europe is slowly becoming a third world union. Salaries for software developers after tax are even lower than in Ukraine (!!!). What else could be worse?

MarkusWandel 5y ago

North American houses have environmental forces constantly try to destroy them that are stronger than those in Central Europe. In the north, we get frosts down to -35 degrees Celsius, that can freeze ground about 1.5m deep in extreme cases. In the south, they get humidity and termites. That being said, what's important about a house is the foundation and the roof. The foundation of mine is as good as any in Europe. The roof, well, asphalt shingles on top of 5/8" plywood on top of roof trusses. Ho hum. But such a roof and attic can be properly maintained, which means keeping it vented even when there are 3 feet of snow on the roof - the modern pagoda style vents go a long way to solving that problem - to avoid ice dam issues, and of course replacing the shingles every 20-30 years. It is possible to get European style masonry roofs here. Perhaps such a roof over a properly insulated and vented (i.e. cold!) attic would work here. I see them here and there but don't know anyone personally who has one. I have encountered the occasional North American house owned by traditional Europeans. And they looked just as nice and impeccably maintained as any in Europe. And while maintained this well, will last for centuries. Unmaintained, they certainly deteriorate more quickly.

OldManAndTheCpp 5y ago

Those homes that can be hauled from A to B in the US are not the only type of home available, they are just the cheapest option to get a home. They are called (if the speaker is kind) "mobile homes", or (if the speaker is derogatory) "trailers", leading to the insult "trailer trash" for the people living there. People living in these mobile homes are typically poor, and the low cost of these homes is all they can afford.[&] Moving up a step is American style 2"x4" framed houses. These are typically built on a concrete foundation, but the structure is formed by inexpensive lumber. This system was designed to go up fast and cheaply, substituting more cheap lumber rather than any sophisticated carpentry [$]. This cheapness offers a home to more people, at the expense of craftsmanship and (probably) longevity. The cheap construction allows people to build enormous homes if they have the means, displaying wealth through sheer size rather than higher quality construction (the resulting homes are mockingly called a "McMansion", a joke pointing out that a big McDonalds hamburger is still... McDonalds quality. A blog making fun of these McMansions can be found here: https://mcmansionhell.com/ https://mcmansionhell.com/ However, if you don't want a cheaply constructed home, you don't have to have one! You can find a builder that will build a home to your specifications. This will of course be more expensive, as you aren't tying into the continent sized supply chain for the cheaper construction, but if you prefer quality work, you can certainly make that tradeoff.[-] In any event, it is usually the land under the home that truly appreciates, not the structure itself. This dynamic broadens the wealth divide between mobile home owners and owners of the second and third type of house. Mobile homes are often placed in "trailer parks", where the owner of the home rents a space to park their trailer, meaning they don't participate in any land value appreciation (and in fact will see their rent go up if the land appreciates). Still, the focus on cost, and the several levels of price-point allow more people to be housed. The fundamental question is "is it better for a person to have a low quality house, or no house at all?" It seems that Austria has chosen the second, while the US chooses the first. [&] When I loaded this page searching Montana (a remote, low population, low income state), I see some listings between $20-30 thousand USD. This is incredibly inexpensive, and affordable by basically anyone with a job in the US. https://www.zillow.com/mt/mobile/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pagination%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22mapBounds%22%3A%7B%22west%22%3A-118.88328297656251%2C%22east%22%3A-99.80003102343751%2C%22south%22%3A36.823841281960846%2C%22north%22%3A55.35198084446213%7D%2C%22regionSelection%22%3A%5B%7B%22regionId%22%3A35%2C%22regionType%22%3A2%7D%5D%2C%22isMapVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22filterState%22%3A%7B%22sort%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3A%22globalrelevanceex%22%7D%2C%22ah%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22sf%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22con%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22mf%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22land%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22tow%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22apa%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22apco%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%7D%2C%22isListVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22mapZoom%22%3A6%7D https://www.zillow.com/mt/mobile/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pag... [$] Notice all the focus on cost and speed on this technical manual for the system https://www.civilengineeringx.com/bdac/Stud-Wall-Construction/ https://www.civilengineeringx.com/bdac/Stud-Wall-Constructio... [-] This reference specifies a ~$300,000 USD cost for a timber framed house, quite a bit more than the mobile home variety!

sparrc 5y ago

Do you actually believe that most of the people in the US live in mobile homes? My house was built in 1916 and will easily last another 100+ years. Almost all the houses in my neighborhood were built around the same time and are still standing in good condition. Yes it's a wood house and yes wood houses can last a long time.