6 ms·

home prices also dont scale linearly across their subcomponents. the most expensive part of a home is often the kitchen and bathroom. once youre on the hook f

home prices also dont scale linearly across their subcomponents. the most expensive part of a home is often the kitchen and bathroom. once youre on the hook for those costs, the tendency is to increase square footage overall in order to justify the price at all to the market. the nadier of homebuilding during the bush era was the McMansion at around 5000-6000 sqft, with a triple garage. not that you had three cars, just that the Hummer H2 took most of that real estate. most of these either got demolished after 2008 or sit in a capital management firms investment portfolio, about as attractive as a barrel of radioactive waste. the other issue is a lot of municipalities (United States in particular) mandate and encourage large single family homes with outmoded energy and environmental requirements. suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities, sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize this largesse.

bluGill 2y ago
> suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities, sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize this largesse. That is the narrative, but it doesn't stand up. Suburbs have existed for over 100 years now, and those older ones have managed to tear out the streetcars (on hindsight a mistake), put in sewer, water, phone, electric, cable tv - most of the above list has been replaced several times. They seem like they must be siphoning from the larger city until you realize that they are not replacing all of that every 20 years and so depreciation is not a clue as to the real long term costs. There are exurbs where you get acres of land, those are generally surrounded by farms (at least for the first 30 years until the suburbs expand out that far - but then a developer will buy those acres and divide it for more houses) In the suburbs you are looking at more like 10 houses per acre - which is not very dense, but still much denser. The US has good building codes. There is no place where you can get by with an uninsulated attic - except in the bad parts of big cities where houses from 1880 are still around and not upgraded. edit: uninsulated attic
- telotortium 2y ago
  > There is no place where you can get by with an insulated attic Surely you mean “uninsulated attic” here?
  - jandrese 2y ago
    I admittedly don't tour a lot of homes, but I'm pretty sure insulating between the attic space and the living space is close to universal in my area. Maybe if you live in Southern California or Hawaii and your home doesn't have A/C you could get away without it. Especially if you have a whole house fan that vents into the attic. But even then it is so cheap to blow in insulation that it seems foolish to not do it.
    - robohoe 2y ago
      Yep, it's pretty universal in the US. You insulate the attic floor (ceiling of your rooms). This also means that you need to keep your attic cold. You do that by letting air in from your soffit vents to either ridge or gable vent. Ridge vent is arguably better because it runs along the right of your roof allowing the air to travel between the trusses that holds your roof up.
    - rconti 2y ago
      why would you be able to "get away with it" specifically without A/C? Seems to me having A/C would make a house with an uninsulated attic at least somewhat less miserable.
      - jandrese 2y ago
        It's more because you'll have your windows open all the time because you live in paradise.
        rconti 2y ago
        Oh. But I mean, you'd still be much better off with insulation. FWIW I wouldn't want to live in SoCal (hot) or Hawaii (hot and humid) without A/C. We don't have A/C here in the bay area, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere warmer without it.
ben_w 2y ago
> the most expensive part of a home is often the kitchen and bathroom Absolutely this. Back in 2018, mum got dementia and her old home was not one the rest of us could really move back into due to commutes, so we sold it and bought a new one in a better location. The new one wasn't quite big enough, so we converted the existing garage into a granny annex with its own mini-kitchen and shower. That took about 6 months. - I've also recently had one kitchen installed (4m^2 for an apartment I let out), and ordered a second (6 m^2, for a house I'm about to move into), and despite both being tiny and already having the water and electrical connections, they were both in the £€ 10k range.
- whycome 2y ago
  What about it makes it so expensive? Appliances? Storage?
  - jandrese 2y ago
    Plumbing, cabinets, countertops, appliances, and even the flooring. Everything adds up, and quickly. To be fair there are lots of ways to save money when doing a kitchen or bath remodel, but if you're doing the remodel in the first place you aren't opting for the linoleum floors, plastic countertops, and "builder grade" appliances.
    - danans 2y ago
      > you aren't opting for the linoleum floors Linoleum floors are amazingly durable and water resistant (some were recovered intact from the Titanic), made from a renewable source (linseed oil), and quite attractive these days. Perhaps you are thinking of vinyl flooring, which is petroleum derived, and the among cheapest types of flooring.
      - jandrese 2y ago
        > and quite attractive these days. [citation needed] Kitchen remodels that I've seen pretty much always opt for some form of tile, which adds considerably to the cost.
telotortium 2y ago
> suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities, sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize this largesse. There’s a reason that this narrative, the Strong Towns narrative, comes from an organization with “Towns” in the name. It was originally noticed in small rural American cities (county seats in the rural US and the like), and applies fairly well there, since the trend is to build suburbs in unincorporated land surrounding the main city to avoid city taxes. Suburbs surrounding large American cities tend to be incorporated cities of their own, so they raise their own taxes and don’t steal from the main city. One major advantage cities used to have in the US but no longer do is that it used to be necessary to be annexed to a city to get access to things like their water system. That was a major driver of cities growing pre-WWII. However, as the US got richer and governmental structures became more sophisticated, things like water districts not coterminous with a city became common. Now there was little reason to become annexed to the city in most cases, unless your city or county ran into budget troubles, in which case the central city probably doesn’t want to pay for you either. Lots of suburbs remain separate specifically to avoid being subject to the city school system as well.
- kiliantics 2y ago
  While this might be true on the technical level you mention, I don't know the details, I think the general pattern holds true even for larger cities. Think of NYC, where many suburbanite "bridge and tunnel folks" choose to live in Jersey, Long Island, etc. to avoid the higher city taxes but have no problem availing of all the city-funded infrastructure. They even caused the state governor to backtrack on congestion pricing so they could keep driving their vehicles in at the expense of NYC residents.
  - telotortium 2y ago
    Ah, but NYC benefits from suburbanites and other outsiders visiting the city for work, deliveries, government services, culture and everything else. Sure, they have to build infrastructure (very much including trains) to service them, but the return is that NYC gets to accrue a larger metro area and the associated wealth. Also, it’s easy to forget that much of NYC’s infrastructure needs to live in suburban areas due to NYC’s density. All the warehouses needed to keep NYC fed and supplied can’t fit inside the city, to name one prominent example. Even to bring all the residential housing in the metro area into the city itself would make the city have to spend an ungodly amount on infrastructure to support them inside the city limits. The city actually benefits by having other jurisdictions be responsible for housing much of the metro area population.
philwelch 2y ago
> with a triple garage. not that you had three cars There are so many things you can do with garage space other than park cars in it though.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Ain’t that the truth! I have 4.5 spots in my garage (not a big house, just 3000sf, but it’s very common in my area to oversize the garages) but only two ever have cars in them. The rest is my home gym, craft area, and a workshop.
adolph 2y ago
> home prices also dont scale linearly across their subcomponents See also why small cars aren't proportionately less expensive.

bluGill 2y ago

> suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities, sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize this largesse. That is the narrative, but it doesn't stand up. Suburbs have existed for over 100 years now, and those older ones have managed to tear out the streetcars (on hindsight a mistake), put in sewer, water, phone, electric, cable tv - most of the above list has been replaced several times. They seem like they must be siphoning from the larger city until you realize that they are not replacing all of that every 20 years and so depreciation is not a clue as to the real long term costs. There are exurbs where you get acres of land, those are generally surrounded by farms (at least for the first 30 years until the suburbs expand out that far - but then a developer will buy those acres and divide it for more houses) In the suburbs you are looking at more like 10 houses per acre - which is not very dense, but still much denser. The US has good building codes. There is no place where you can get by with an uninsulated attic - except in the bad parts of big cities where houses from 1880 are still around and not upgraded. edit: uninsulated attic

telotortium 2y ago
> There is no place where you can get by with an insulated attic Surely you mean “uninsulated attic” here?
- jandrese 2y ago
  I admittedly don't tour a lot of homes, but I'm pretty sure insulating between the attic space and the living space is close to universal in my area. Maybe if you live in Southern California or Hawaii and your home doesn't have A/C you could get away without it. Especially if you have a whole house fan that vents into the attic. But even then it is so cheap to blow in insulation that it seems foolish to not do it.
  - robohoe 2y ago
    Yep, it's pretty universal in the US. You insulate the attic floor (ceiling of your rooms). This also means that you need to keep your attic cold. You do that by letting air in from your soffit vents to either ridge or gable vent. Ridge vent is arguably better because it runs along the right of your roof allowing the air to travel between the trusses that holds your roof up.
  - rconti 2y ago
    why would you be able to "get away with it" specifically without A/C? Seems to me having A/C would make a house with an uninsulated attic at least somewhat less miserable.
    - jandrese 2y ago
      It's more because you'll have your windows open all the time because you live in paradise.
      - rconti 2y ago
        Oh. But I mean, you'd still be much better off with insulation. FWIW I wouldn't want to live in SoCal (hot) or Hawaii (hot and humid) without A/C. We don't have A/C here in the bay area, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere warmer without it.

ben_w 2y ago

> the most expensive part of a home is often the kitchen and bathroom Absolutely this. Back in 2018, mum got dementia and her old home was not one the rest of us could really move back into due to commutes, so we sold it and bought a new one in a better location. The new one wasn't quite big enough, so we converted the existing garage into a granny annex with its own mini-kitchen and shower. That took about 6 months. - I've also recently had one kitchen installed (4m^2 for an apartment I let out), and ordered a second (6 m^2, for a house I'm about to move into), and despite both being tiny and already having the water and electrical connections, they were both in the £€ 10k range.

whycome 2y ago
What about it makes it so expensive? Appliances? Storage?
- jandrese 2y ago
  Plumbing, cabinets, countertops, appliances, and even the flooring. Everything adds up, and quickly. To be fair there are lots of ways to save money when doing a kitchen or bath remodel, but if you're doing the remodel in the first place you aren't opting for the linoleum floors, plastic countertops, and "builder grade" appliances.
  - danans 2y ago
    > you aren't opting for the linoleum floors Linoleum floors are amazingly durable and water resistant (some were recovered intact from the Titanic), made from a renewable source (linseed oil), and quite attractive these days. Perhaps you are thinking of vinyl flooring, which is petroleum derived, and the among cheapest types of flooring.
    - jandrese 2y ago
      > and quite attractive these days. [citation needed] Kitchen remodels that I've seen pretty much always opt for some form of tile, which adds considerably to the cost.

telotortium 2y ago

> suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities, sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize this largesse. There’s a reason that this narrative, the Strong Towns narrative, comes from an organization with “Towns” in the name. It was originally noticed in small rural American cities (county seats in the rural US and the like), and applies fairly well there, since the trend is to build suburbs in unincorporated land surrounding the main city to avoid city taxes. Suburbs surrounding large American cities tend to be incorporated cities of their own, so they raise their own taxes and don’t steal from the main city. One major advantage cities used to have in the US but no longer do is that it used to be necessary to be annexed to a city to get access to things like their water system. That was a major driver of cities growing pre-WWII. However, as the US got richer and governmental structures became more sophisticated, things like water districts not coterminous with a city became common. Now there was little reason to become annexed to the city in most cases, unless your city or county ran into budget troubles, in which case the central city probably doesn’t want to pay for you either. Lots of suburbs remain separate specifically to avoid being subject to the city school system as well.

kiliantics 2y ago
While this might be true on the technical level you mention, I don't know the details, I think the general pattern holds true even for larger cities. Think of NYC, where many suburbanite "bridge and tunnel folks" choose to live in Jersey, Long Island, etc. to avoid the higher city taxes but have no problem availing of all the city-funded infrastructure. They even caused the state governor to backtrack on congestion pricing so they could keep driving their vehicles in at the expense of NYC residents.
- telotortium 2y ago
  Ah, but NYC benefits from suburbanites and other outsiders visiting the city for work, deliveries, government services, culture and everything else. Sure, they have to build infrastructure (very much including trains) to service them, but the return is that NYC gets to accrue a larger metro area and the associated wealth. Also, it’s easy to forget that much of NYC’s infrastructure needs to live in suburban areas due to NYC’s density. All the warehouses needed to keep NYC fed and supplied can’t fit inside the city, to name one prominent example. Even to bring all the residential housing in the metro area into the city itself would make the city have to spend an ungodly amount on infrastructure to support them inside the city limits. The city actually benefits by having other jurisdictions be responsible for housing much of the metro area population.

philwelch 2y ago

> with a triple garage. not that you had three cars There are so many things you can do with garage space other than park cars in it though.

rootusrootus 2y ago
Ain’t that the truth! I have 4.5 spots in my garage (not a big house, just 3000sf, but it’s very common in my area to oversize the garages) but only two ever have cars in them. The rest is my home gym, craft area, and a workshop.

adolph 2y ago

> home prices also dont scale linearly across their subcomponents See also why small cars aren't proportionately less expensive.