9 ms·

Two things... First, looking through their design guide (https://www.wikihouse.cc/guides/design https://www.wikihouse.cc/guides/design), the only thing they me

by rmah 4y ago

Two things... First, looking through their design guide (https://www.wikihouse.cc/guides/design https://www.wikihouse.cc/guides/design), the only thing they mention is that space (32mm in walls, I guess, and 70mm under ceilings) is provided. Given that the plumbing, electrical, ventilation, appliances, etc. are the majority of the cost of a home, I find this a bit odd. A typical American full bathroom costs something like $5k to $20k (and up... way up) depending on the quality. A kitchen can cost multiple times more. Sure, you can build them cheaper, but that's the rub... most people who are in the market to purchase a home don't want low-end bathrooms and kitchens. Or windows. Or lighting. Or wall fixtures. Or anything really. Second, IMO, the problem with affordable housing is not a construction cost problem. We can build small, livable (for various definitions) homes for $50k (or less) today, ignoring land costs. But the regulatory costs, the land costs, the market demands all make building such homes a non-profitable endeavor. Why build 20 $50k homes on the land and make $200k profit when you can build 10 $500k homes and make $1mil in profit? The affordable housing crisis in the America do not have a technical solution, only a socio-political one. And since nearly all the power related to zoning, building costs, etc are managed at the local and state level, that means engaging with local politics.

ReptileMan 4y ago
You are right to a point. But one problem is that everyone is trying to cram into the same couple of places. Every country in the world tries to become effectively a city state. The housing shortage is secondary to this trend. You may turn every block into kwaloon walled city and there will still be housing shortage. I am not against density - I am fond of European 6 story buildings. But you have a fundamental demand problem. The big cities are bleeding dry the rest of the countries.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  That's very, very incorrect. At the population density of Kowloon in 1987, 1,255,000 per square kilometer, and today's population of 8 billion people, it would only take 6375 square km to house everyone. That's less than five cities the size of Phoenix, Arizona. Reasonable urban population density -- the kind where there is still green space and buildings are mostly just a few stories high -- would be about 7500 per square km, about 1.1 million square km for the world population. That sounds like a lot, but it's only about one tenth the metro area of Paris. There is a clean water problem. There is a good sewage treatment problem. There are energy delivery problems. But people will happily live in much denser arrangements than they do on average, and cities make all of the other problems more efficient to deal with. These are policy problems.
  - ReptileMan 4y ago
    In Europe we also have housing crisis in the capitals and other desirable places and there thr density already what the YIMBY want. If you want to solve the housing crisis don't ask why the rent is so high in NY, SF or London. Ask why there are so few desirable pleaces for people to live.
    - dsr_ 4y ago
      The main thing that makes a place desirable to live in is good infrastructure: water, climate, education, healthcare, transportation. A place that has all of those attracts people; work arises where people want to live; good work pays for the infrastructure and makes it more likely that people want to live there. It's a chicken-and-egg problem, made worse by people who want to not pay for the infrastructure and maintenance.
    - nine_k 4y ago
      The rent is damn high in downtown / midtown Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn because there is enough business people, movie stars, stock traders, even software developers who are willing to pay as much. If you step back into southern Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, the prices go down to reasonable, while still being within < 1 hour commute by public transport from the downtown area.
      - mike50 4y ago
        Significant parts of eastern queens have no subway line at all. They might have LIRR service at twice the price.
  - fangorn 4y ago
    France takes up 643801 km2, so are you sure Paris is in the 11mln km2 ballpark?
    - dsr_ 4y ago
      Thank you, I grabbed the wrong figure from Wikipedia -- population instead of area. 13,024,518 people, 18,940.7 km2
cookieswumchorr 4y ago
even in the US, i'm sure there are places where land is still cheap. Thinking globally, there's even more of them. That's the beauty of it being opensource: you can build in any part of the earth
- progre 4y ago
  It's cheap because noone wants to live there.
  - dirheist 4y ago
    Nobody wants to live there because there is no local work. If you work remote it's an amazing value proposition.
    - substation13 4y ago
      It's not just work though. It's shops, supermarkets, schools, community groups, cinemas, bars, ... you get the idea!
      - wizofaus 4y ago
        I thought living in huge estates (or even suburbs) with none of those things was fairly common in much of the US? There are examples of it here (Australia) too and there still seems to be plenty of demand to live in such places, despite the fact that everybody who does so after a few months or years starts complaining about it (in fairness, often such facilities are sold as "coming soon").
        xyzzyz 4y ago
        Suburbs in US almost universally have these things, even suburbs of decaying cities like Detroit or Cleveland (which often offer more facilities than than the city cores themselves).
        4y ago
tinco 4y ago
This might be true in the US, but because of stringent building requirements construction cost definitely is a problem for affordable housing in the UK and in some European countries. Here in The Netherlands it certainly is not possible to build a house for $50k (or less) according to commercial developers. Municipalities have been complaining about developers only building houses at the $400k or more price point, and developers have been saying that due to the building requirements it isn't economically feasible to build houses for less. Also, what's the soil like where you're building those $50k homes? I've often seen that being spent just on the foundation. That said, I'm not sure this construction method is cheaper than existing similar techniques like for example structural isolated panels.
- spaniard89277 4y ago
  In Europe we have stricter building codes on average but it's still very much a non-technical problem. Prices of land are insane in Spain, and I bet in other countries too. And taxes, and a myriad of other things that have nothing to do with actually building the thing.
  - tweetle_beetle 4y ago
    I'm not sure by what measure Spain has high land prices. It effectively has the lowest population density of any sizeable (under 11 million) country in Europe [1]. It also has one of the highest rates of second property ownership in Europe [2]. I can't find figures but I suspect it also has one of highest rates of home ownership by non domeciles too. Lots of factors contribute to all this and like anywhere it's always 'location, location, location', but outside a few major cities and popular holiday locations I think it's probably pretty cheap - in relative terms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_European_countries?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_Europea... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Secondary-property-ownership-and-landlordism-among-salaries-workers-and-self-employed-in_tbl1_332210090 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Secondary-property-owner...
    - spaniard89277 4y ago
frankbreetz 4y ago
>> Why build 20 $50k homes on the land and make $200k profit when you can build 10 $500k homes and make $1mil in profit? I don't understand this comment. This is the same profit margin. You invest 1 million (20 * 50k) and make 20% (200k) or invest 5 million(10 * 500k) and make 20% (1 million). Depending on the amount of initial capitol you want to invest you may choose one over the other.
- kbenson 4y ago
  Because the constraints are time, getting Landon, getting permits, etc. Each additional house is more overhead from regulations you have to meet and permits, as well as area improvements such as roads that need to be made or improved, and more houses mean more roads and sidewalks. Even if they have the same profit, o ly one of those strategies scales to allow you to pump more money in and get more money out without significantly changing the resources required to accomplish it.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Landon never calls me back either. I should stop blaming myself for these delays.
    - kbenson 4y ago
      LOL, this was so confusing for a second. My son is named Landon, which is probably why my phone was so quick to auto correct to that. :)
- archi42 4y ago
  As a contractor or manufacturing company that's not what you're investing into. You build the machines and process and design the house. So in one case you get 200k out of the invest, and in the other 1000k. At least that's how I'm reading this. If you, as a single household, plan to build a 50k house on your land, you might be unable to find someone to build it for you. Of course in larger cities/projects with a single developer reselling units it's a bit different. As I said, that's how I'm reading it.
- 4y ago
robomartin 4y ago
> We can build small, livable (for various definitions) homes for $50k (or less) today Not sure I agree with this. If we assume a labor at a rate in the order of 1 worker-hour per square foot (this is highly variable, from 0.5 to 2 hr/ft^2), a 2000 sqf home would require 2000 hours. At minimum wage ($15/hour) that means $30K, just for labor. This does not include concrete, lumber, stucco, sheetrock, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, appliances, landscaping, etc. It also does not include permits and design fees. And of course, assuming $15 per hour would not be accurate at all. By the time you get a contractor involved and various trades you are paying significantly more than that, perhaps closer to $75 per hour on average. That gets you up to $200K, again, just in labor costs. DIY is a different matter. And yet, it isn't. At some point opportunity cost comes into the equation. It would be silly for me to DIY a home until I am retired or unemployed. The loss of income --opportunity cost-- of devoting thousands of hours to home-building would be massive. If we are talking about building homes at scale, except for some very specific locations and types (pre-fab?), I am not sure you could build something for $50K these days. For example, I have personally had to deal with LA County's Building for permits and plan-checks for my 13 kW solar array (yes, I DIY'd that). They easily added $50K, if not more, to my budget without reason or justification. The most grotesque example of this is that they made me put in 64,000 lbs of concrete into the footings for my ground-mount structure. An architect friend of mine told me I could support a four-story building with that amount of concrete. Why? Nobody knows. Once the plan checker made that decision there was no way to reason with him. Power trip? It was death by a thousand cuts.
- bombcar 4y ago
  "Small, livable" ... 2000 square feet ... Low-cost building is something like $85 a square, so 50k gets you about 600 square. It is totally doable and that's with "current" setups (these are often built as "cabins" etc. But the permits and other things destroy them (which is why so many "tiny homes" are technically mobile homes because then you just deal with the DMV). And you can buy brand new homes including land around here for $300k so I suspect that they didn't cost $200k in labor. But maybe they do?
  - robomartin 4y ago
mikestaub 4y ago
The real solution will look very similar to https://www.quixotecommunities.org https://www.quixotecommunities.org imo. Get cheap land, build net-zero tiny home communities, along with regenerative agriculture. Solar punk style.

by rmah 4y ago

ReptileMan 4y ago

You are right to a point. But one problem is that everyone is trying to cram into the same couple of places. Every country in the world tries to become effectively a city state. The housing shortage is secondary to this trend. You may turn every block into kwaloon walled city and there will still be housing shortage. I am not against density - I am fond of European 6 story buildings. But you have a fundamental demand problem. The big cities are bleeding dry the rest of the countries.

dsr_ 4y ago
That's very, very incorrect. At the population density of Kowloon in 1987, 1,255,000 per square kilometer, and today's population of 8 billion people, it would only take 6375 square km to house everyone. That's less than five cities the size of Phoenix, Arizona. Reasonable urban population density -- the kind where there is still green space and buildings are mostly just a few stories high -- would be about 7500 per square km, about 1.1 million square km for the world population. That sounds like a lot, but it's only about one tenth the metro area of Paris. There is a clean water problem. There is a good sewage treatment problem. There are energy delivery problems. But people will happily live in much denser arrangements than they do on average, and cities make all of the other problems more efficient to deal with. These are policy problems.
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  In Europe we also have housing crisis in the capitals and other desirable places and there thr density already what the YIMBY want. If you want to solve the housing crisis don't ask why the rent is so high in NY, SF or London. Ask why there are so few desirable pleaces for people to live.
  - dsr_ 4y ago
    The main thing that makes a place desirable to live in is good infrastructure: water, climate, education, healthcare, transportation. A place that has all of those attracts people; work arises where people want to live; good work pays for the infrastructure and makes it more likely that people want to live there. It's a chicken-and-egg problem, made worse by people who want to not pay for the infrastructure and maintenance.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    The rent is damn high in downtown / midtown Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn because there is enough business people, movie stars, stock traders, even software developers who are willing to pay as much. If you step back into southern Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, the prices go down to reasonable, while still being within < 1 hour commute by public transport from the downtown area.
    - mike50 4y ago
      Significant parts of eastern queens have no subway line at all. They might have LIRR service at twice the price.
- fangorn 4y ago
  France takes up 643801 km2, so are you sure Paris is in the 11mln km2 ballpark?
  - dsr_ 4y ago
    Thank you, I grabbed the wrong figure from Wikipedia -- population instead of area. 13,024,518 people, 18,940.7 km2

cookieswumchorr 4y ago

even in the US, i'm sure there are places where land is still cheap. Thinking globally, there's even more of them. That's the beauty of it being opensource: you can build in any part of the earth

progre 4y ago
It's cheap because noone wants to live there.
- dirheist 4y ago
  Nobody wants to live there because there is no local work. If you work remote it's an amazing value proposition.
  - substation13 4y ago
    It's not just work though. It's shops, supermarkets, schools, community groups, cinemas, bars, ... you get the idea!
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      I thought living in huge estates (or even suburbs) with none of those things was fairly common in much of the US? There are examples of it here (Australia) too and there still seems to be plenty of demand to live in such places, despite the fact that everybody who does so after a few months or years starts complaining about it (in fairness, often such facilities are sold as "coming soon").
      - xyzzyz 4y ago
        Suburbs in US almost universally have these things, even suburbs of decaying cities like Detroit or Cleveland (which often offer more facilities than than the city cores themselves).
        4y ago

tinco 4y ago

This might be true in the US, but because of stringent building requirements construction cost definitely is a problem for affordable housing in the UK and in some European countries. Here in The Netherlands it certainly is not possible to build a house for $50k (or less) according to commercial developers. Municipalities have been complaining about developers only building houses at the $400k or more price point, and developers have been saying that due to the building requirements it isn't economically feasible to build houses for less. Also, what's the soil like where you're building those $50k homes? I've often seen that being spent just on the foundation. That said, I'm not sure this construction method is cheaper than existing similar techniques like for example structural isolated panels.

spaniard89277 4y ago
In Europe we have stricter building codes on average but it's still very much a non-technical problem. Prices of land are insane in Spain, and I bet in other countries too. And taxes, and a myriad of other things that have nothing to do with actually building the thing.
- tweetle_beetle 4y ago
  I'm not sure by what measure Spain has high land prices. It effectively has the lowest population density of any sizeable (under 11 million) country in Europe [1]. It also has one of the highest rates of second property ownership in Europe [2]. I can't find figures but I suspect it also has one of highest rates of home ownership by non domeciles too. Lots of factors contribute to all this and like anywhere it's always 'location, location, location', but outside a few major cities and popular holiday locations I think it's probably pretty cheap - in relative terms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_European_countries?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_Europea... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Secondary-property-ownership-and-landlordism-among-salaries-workers-and-self-employed-in_tbl1_332210090 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Secondary-property-owner...
  - spaniard89277 4y ago

frankbreetz 4y ago

>> Why build 20 $50k homes on the land and make $200k profit when you can build 10 $500k homes and make $1mil in profit? I don't understand this comment. This is the same profit margin. You invest 1 million (20 * 50k) and make 20% (200k) or invest 5 million(10 * 500k) and make 20% (1 million). Depending on the amount of initial capitol you want to invest you may choose one over the other.

kbenson 4y ago
Because the constraints are time, getting Landon, getting permits, etc. Each additional house is more overhead from regulations you have to meet and permits, as well as area improvements such as roads that need to be made or improved, and more houses mean more roads and sidewalks. Even if they have the same profit, o ly one of those strategies scales to allow you to pump more money in and get more money out without significantly changing the resources required to accomplish it.
- tomcam 4y ago
  Landon never calls me back either. I should stop blaming myself for these delays.
  - kbenson 4y ago
    LOL, this was so confusing for a second. My son is named Landon, which is probably why my phone was so quick to auto correct to that. :)
archi42 4y ago
As a contractor or manufacturing company that's not what you're investing into. You build the machines and process and design the house. So in one case you get 200k out of the invest, and in the other 1000k. At least that's how I'm reading this. If you, as a single household, plan to build a 50k house on your land, you might be unable to find someone to build it for you. Of course in larger cities/projects with a single developer reselling units it's a bit different. As I said, that's how I'm reading it.
4y ago

robomartin 4y ago

> We can build small, livable (for various definitions) homes for $50k (or less) today Not sure I agree with this. If we assume a labor at a rate in the order of 1 worker-hour per square foot (this is highly variable, from 0.5 to 2 hr/ft^2), a 2000 sqf home would require 2000 hours. At minimum wage ($15/hour) that means $30K, just for labor. This does not include concrete, lumber, stucco, sheetrock, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, appliances, landscaping, etc. It also does not include permits and design fees. And of course, assuming $15 per hour would not be accurate at all. By the time you get a contractor involved and various trades you are paying significantly more than that, perhaps closer to $75 per hour on average. That gets you up to $200K, again, just in labor costs. DIY is a different matter. And yet, it isn't. At some point opportunity cost comes into the equation. It would be silly for me to DIY a home until I am retired or unemployed. The loss of income --opportunity cost-- of devoting thousands of hours to home-building would be massive. If we are talking about building homes at scale, except for some very specific locations and types (pre-fab?), I am not sure you could build something for $50K these days. For example, I have personally had to deal with LA County's Building for permits and plan-checks for my 13 kW solar array (yes, I DIY'd that). They easily added $50K, if not more, to my budget without reason or justification. The most grotesque example of this is that they made me put in 64,000 lbs of concrete into the footings for my ground-mount structure. An architect friend of mine told me I could support a four-story building with that amount of concrete. Why? Nobody knows. Once the plan checker made that decision there was no way to reason with him. Power trip? It was death by a thousand cuts.

bombcar 4y ago
"Small, livable" ... 2000 square feet ... Low-cost building is something like $85 a square, so 50k gets you about 600 square. It is totally doable and that's with "current" setups (these are often built as "cabins" etc. But the permits and other things destroy them (which is why so many "tiny homes" are technically mobile homes because then you just deal with the DMV). And you can buy brand new homes including land around here for $300k so I suspect that they didn't cost $200k in labor. But maybe they do?
- robomartin 4y ago

mikestaub 4y ago

The real solution will look very similar to https://www.quixotecommunities.org https://www.quixotecommunities.org imo. Get cheap land, build net-zero tiny home communities, along with regenerative agriculture. Solar punk style.