4 ms·

We don't build small starter homes anymore. 1-3 bedroom, 1-2 bath homes, single car garage. A small bungalow - the only ones you see were built in the 50s and 6

We don't build small starter homes anymore. 1-3 bedroom, 1-2 bath homes, single car garage. A small bungalow - the only ones you see were built in the 50s and 60s. You simply never see them in new construction. Actual small, modest affordable homes without expensive features or excessive size. I don't know why it is this way, but it's frustrating to observe this. You have to look in the old neighborhoods for these and sometimes they are bad areas, sometimes they are good. In the good areas a lot of these homes get torn down and replace with expensive homes 2-3x the size. In America, we simply stopped building small affordable, HOA-free homes. Why?

fzeroracer 3y ago
First of all, this is unrelated to the article which is discussing rent. Second of all, we do build starter homes in the burbs. The problem is that a growing amount of those homes are bought by private equity to sit on and invest, partition and rent out or convert to Airbnb. Third, these homes are simply just not as profitable to be built. So the incentives in our economy mean more luxurious homes which have a higher return.
bell-cot 3y ago
NIMBYism, which is mostly driven by: Homeowner Greed - if fast-rising home prices are making you richer & richer, then (per the classic supply vs. demand price curve) you only want a token number of very upscale homes to be built anywhere near your house. Municipal Finances - when local government is mostly supported by property taxes, a $4M luxury house pays 40X the taxes that a $100K starter house does, and the cost of providing municipal services is not much different between the two...guess what? "Wrong Sort" FUD - if lots of people are scared of (or bigoted against) anyone who's poorer than them, or has darker skin, or ... well, they'll for-sure find reasons to zealously oppose anything that might attract "those sorts" to the area around their homes.
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  These reasons are used mostly for dense projects like apartment blocks, not small homes. There are, on the other hand, plenty of reasonable objections that arise from the nature of dense housing in certain areas, rather than from people's race/class/etc. Sometimes development projects really do destroy nice lower-middle to middle class communities (consisting of exactly the homes the parent is describing), that people have worked their whole lives to live in (one of the last remnants of the simple version of the American Dream). Developers are no more rational/benevolent than governments, and therefore not everybody who has opposed any one development project is a villain who is racist/elitist/immoral in comparison to you.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gorbachev 3y ago
I have a home exactly like that. Its market value is about $900K at the moment, so even if they were still being built, nobody can afford them.
- foogazi 3y ago
  Is that the value of the structure or the land it’s on ?
bryanlarsen 3y ago
- We still build some 800 - 1500 sq foot living spaces. They're called "condos" or apartments. We should be building a lot more of them, but we do still build some. - Small bungalows should still be built in rural areas, but they're highly inappropriate in urban areas. The secondary costs of the car-dependent sprawl required by inexpensive single family homes is massive. They may have been built for $6,000 in the 50's but today likely cost the cities that house them more than $6,000 per year in infrastructure maintenance costs.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  There was some report published here a few years ago that I'm too lazy to look up that did it cost analysis of City infrastructure and found that cities make money in the highly dense impoverished areas and lose money in the Richer areas simply because of the cost of distance that roads, pipes, cops, etc have to travel down. That, of course reminded me of the New Orleans shotgun and the reason for it: for a while, property taxes were based on linear frontage feet, directly proportional to the length of the road in front of the house, because that was its cost to the government according to the rational French...
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago
  Townhouses/rowhouses can also be a good middle ground.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Definitely, those and other forms of the "missing middle" that traditionally dominated cities.
  - thehoff 3y ago
    We rented a townhouse for several years before buying our place. If one had gone up for sale while we were looking we would have stayed in that community. It was perfect for us, small community/neighborhood, and the house was just the right size. A two car garage would have been nice but we made it work. We ended up in a house on the smaller end of what was available and we still think its probably too big for us (great neighborhood though).

fzeroracer 3y ago

First of all, this is unrelated to the article which is discussing rent. Second of all, we do build starter homes in the burbs. The problem is that a growing amount of those homes are bought by private equity to sit on and invest, partition and rent out or convert to Airbnb. Third, these homes are simply just not as profitable to be built. So the incentives in our economy mean more luxurious homes which have a higher return.

bell-cot 3y ago

NIMBYism, which is mostly driven by: Homeowner Greed - if fast-rising home prices are making you richer & richer, then (per the classic supply vs. demand price curve) you only want a token number of very upscale homes to be built anywhere near your house. Municipal Finances - when local government is mostly supported by property taxes, a $4M luxury house pays 40X the taxes that a $100K starter house does, and the cost of providing municipal services is not much different between the two...guess what? "Wrong Sort" FUD - if lots of people are scared of (or bigoted against) anyone who's poorer than them, or has darker skin, or ... well, they'll for-sure find reasons to zealously oppose anything that might attract "those sorts" to the area around their homes.

happytoexplain 3y ago
These reasons are used mostly for dense projects like apartment blocks, not small homes. There are, on the other hand, plenty of reasonable objections that arise from the nature of dense housing in certain areas, rather than from people's race/class/etc. Sometimes development projects really do destroy nice lower-middle to middle class communities (consisting of exactly the homes the parent is describing), that people have worked their whole lives to live in (one of the last remnants of the simple version of the American Dream). Developers are no more rational/benevolent than governments, and therefore not everybody who has opposed any one development project is a villain who is racist/elitist/immoral in comparison to you.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gorbachev 3y ago

I have a home exactly like that. Its market value is about $900K at the moment, so even if they were still being built, nobody can afford them.

foogazi 3y ago
Is that the value of the structure or the land it’s on ?

bryanlarsen 3y ago

- We still build some 800 - 1500 sq foot living spaces. They're called "condos" or apartments. We should be building a lot more of them, but we do still build some. - Small bungalows should still be built in rural areas, but they're highly inappropriate in urban areas. The secondary costs of the car-dependent sprawl required by inexpensive single family homes is massive. They may have been built for $6,000 in the 50's but today likely cost the cities that house them more than $6,000 per year in infrastructure maintenance costs.

readthenotes1 3y ago
There was some report published here a few years ago that I'm too lazy to look up that did it cost analysis of City infrastructure and found that cities make money in the highly dense impoverished areas and lose money in the Richer areas simply because of the cost of distance that roads, pipes, cops, etc have to travel down. That, of course reminded me of the New Orleans shotgun and the reason for it: for a while, property taxes were based on linear frontage feet, directly proportional to the length of the road in front of the house, because that was its cost to the government according to the rational French...
TheCoelacanth 3y ago
Townhouses/rowhouses can also be a good middle ground.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Definitely, those and other forms of the "missing middle" that traditionally dominated cities.
- thehoff 3y ago
  We rented a townhouse for several years before buying our place. If one had gone up for sale while we were looking we would have stayed in that community. It was perfect for us, small community/neighborhood, and the house was just the right size. A two car garage would have been nice but we made it work. We ended up in a house on the smaller end of what was available and we still think its probably too big for us (great neighborhood though).