6 ms·

Whatever we are doing now is also not encouraging people to have children. I'm sure many young people would rather choose a 1200 sqft home than no home at all,

by bojan 2y ago

Whatever we are doing now is also not encouraging people to have children. I'm sure many young people would rather choose a 1200 sqft home than no home at all, which is currently the case. Your example of two teenagers is only relevant for 6 years of a family's lifetime. Why should we optimise for those 6 years?

BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
My spouse and I chose to have kids because we could provide for them and house them in nice conditions. I would support making that a reality for more people. There are new suburbs that are slowly coming online where I live, just a little further out than what's currently available, and more of that would be great. And we don't need to be "optimizing" like you're talking about. "Well it's only 6 years of our life, not a big deal for everyone to suffer that long!" Good lord. Just build the houses people want. And clearly some of them want the SQFT - we can meet that demand.
- bojan 2y ago
  How is living in a 1200 sqft "suffering"? My spouse and I also went for the kids when we were financially stable, and now we live in a 1500 sqft home, and I don't see why would we need a bigger one. We both work from home, the kids have their own rooms, we even have a tiny guest room. What would I do with a 2400 sqft one? Cleaning and maintaining thus one is already a lot of work. In a situation where there is a housing crisis all over the West, building bigger houses, except for a niche market that does exist, just doesn't make sense.
  - BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
    I'm in a home around that size and am in the process of upsizing. It's just too small. I don't know you have room for you and your spouse to both take conference calls at the same time, plus have sizeable rooms for the kids, plus have a nice kitchen and living area with that SQFT. If you're living in California that makes more sense though. As for maintenance, we pay for help with cleaning. Around here, I think there is definitely a market for bigger houses, because any house with 3K+ sqft sells for a butt ton and people are tripping over each other to fight for them. The new suburbs that are being built are getting a ton of demand and their prices have spiked in the past few years at a far greater rate than surrounding housing.
    - hackerlight 2y ago
      We should be building 3K sqft condos. There is practically unlimited vertical space for that. This will make spacious living more accessible because the purchase price will be more about construction cost than land cost. It will also relieve pressure on suburban house prices, making suburban life more accessible for people who want it.
      - BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
        Agreed on all your points. But I would add you can still do mixed SFH's and condos/townhomes in new developments, which is how they do it around here, but the SFH's are still fairly packed in. The demand for SFHs will always exist - some people are willing to pay extra not to hear or smell their neighbors through the walls. We can meet that demand with new builds, and once pressure is relieved from current suburban areas, you can go back and start to incrementally redevelop those areas more efficiently as well.
        hackerlight 2y ago
        > some people are willing to pay extra not to hear or smell their neighbors through the walls. There's a worthwhile discussion to be had on this point alone. I believe condos are so small and bad because of a confluence of two factors: (1) a lack of regulations around quality, (2) too many regulations around zoning, making vertical space scarce instead of abundant. Factor (1) leads to a lack of privacy and noise because the builder wants to save on materials costs. Factor (2) leads to condos being too small because vertical "land" is so expensive when it should be cheap if restrictions didn't exist. It should not be possible to hear your neighbors through the walls, if we use multiple layers of air gapped steel or concrete. Condos that achieve this exist. They're just not common because regulations don't enforce it.
- butterchaos 2y ago
  You are utterly delusional.
  - BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
    Maybe, but unfortunately you won't be able to downvote me until you start making more substantive comments.

by bojan 2y ago

BaculumMeumEst 2y ago

My spouse and I chose to have kids because we could provide for them and house them in nice conditions. I would support making that a reality for more people. There are new suburbs that are slowly coming online where I live, just a little further out than what's currently available, and more of that would be great. And we don't need to be "optimizing" like you're talking about. "Well it's only 6 years of our life, not a big deal for everyone to suffer that long!" Good lord. Just build the houses people want. And clearly some of them want the SQFT - we can meet that demand.

bojan 2y ago
How is living in a 1200 sqft "suffering"? My spouse and I also went for the kids when we were financially stable, and now we live in a 1500 sqft home, and I don't see why would we need a bigger one. We both work from home, the kids have their own rooms, we even have a tiny guest room. What would I do with a 2400 sqft one? Cleaning and maintaining thus one is already a lot of work. In a situation where there is a housing crisis all over the West, building bigger houses, except for a niche market that does exist, just doesn't make sense.
- BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
  I'm in a home around that size and am in the process of upsizing. It's just too small. I don't know you have room for you and your spouse to both take conference calls at the same time, plus have sizeable rooms for the kids, plus have a nice kitchen and living area with that SQFT. If you're living in California that makes more sense though. As for maintenance, we pay for help with cleaning. Around here, I think there is definitely a market for bigger houses, because any house with 3K+ sqft sells for a butt ton and people are tripping over each other to fight for them. The new suburbs that are being built are getting a ton of demand and their prices have spiked in the past few years at a far greater rate than surrounding housing.
  - hackerlight 2y ago
    We should be building 3K sqft condos. There is practically unlimited vertical space for that. This will make spacious living more accessible because the purchase price will be more about construction cost than land cost. It will also relieve pressure on suburban house prices, making suburban life more accessible for people who want it.
    - BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
      Agreed on all your points. But I would add you can still do mixed SFH's and condos/townhomes in new developments, which is how they do it around here, but the SFH's are still fairly packed in. The demand for SFHs will always exist - some people are willing to pay extra not to hear or smell their neighbors through the walls. We can meet that demand with new builds, and once pressure is relieved from current suburban areas, you can go back and start to incrementally redevelop those areas more efficiently as well.
      - hackerlight 2y ago
        > some people are willing to pay extra not to hear or smell their neighbors through the walls. There's a worthwhile discussion to be had on this point alone. I believe condos are so small and bad because of a confluence of two factors: (1) a lack of regulations around quality, (2) too many regulations around zoning, making vertical space scarce instead of abundant. Factor (1) leads to a lack of privacy and noise because the builder wants to save on materials costs. Factor (2) leads to condos being too small because vertical "land" is so expensive when it should be cheap if restrictions didn't exist. It should not be possible to hear your neighbors through the walls, if we use multiple layers of air gapped steel or concrete. Condos that achieve this exist. They're just not common because regulations don't enforce it.
butterchaos 2y ago
You are utterly delusional.
- BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
  Maybe, but unfortunately you won't be able to downvote me until you start making more substantive comments.