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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 conferenc

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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.

hackerlight 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.