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The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

nytimes.com

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Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

#91

Post by lazyasciiart »

magduf wrote: post #80
lazyasciiart wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's a pretty bare modicum of effort.

Convincing your neighbors to vote a certain way is "a pretty bare modicum of effort"? If that were true, we wouldn't have our current democracy in such a terrible state. Billions of dollars are spent on every election to try to convince voters of how to vote, and look where it gets us. How do you think one person running around to his neighbors is going to convince them to vote for genuinely good HOA board members? R…

I'm on my HOA board, so yes, all of your objections appear to me as "I don't want to do anything at all". And comparing "talk to your 50 shared neighbors" to "organize an election with hundreds of millions of voters" is just off the charts hyperbole.

Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

#92

Post by lazyasciiart »

magduf wrote: post #85
WorldMaker wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "bare modicum of effort" in that case as the average person would be at least paying attention to the folks running around trying to get votes, and paying attention to what they are telling you. Billions of dollars are spent trying to convince voters to vote, because the only real winner in most general elections, whether HOA or national, is "apathy" as most votes are undecided or not even cast. Also, things like…

>because the only real winner in most general elections, whether HOA or national, is "apathy" as most votes are undecided or not even cast. That simply isn't true. As bad as voter turnout is in the US, it's still over 50%. The winner is ignorance, as so many voters actively vote against their own best interests (e.g., poor people voting for the party that passes tax breaks for millionaires). >why weren't the people r…

Voter turnout only goes over 50% for presidential elections. It isn't even that high for midterm federal elections, let alone local ones. A school bond failed in the next county last week because an overwhelming number of votes supported it - but they didn't have enough people vote to make it a legal quorum (or whatever it's called).

https://www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#voter_turnout_101

Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

#93

Post by epistasis »

matt4077 wrote: post #43
LyndsySimon wrote: post #25

Granted I only skimmed the article, but it seemed rather myopic to me. Why is the "dream home" assumed to be in an urban/suburban area? Why not in a small town or rural area? In January 2018, we moved back from Charlottesville, VA (which itself isn't even "urban") to Harrison, AR. I was able to buy a five bedroom, two bath home on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood for under $125k. My wife and I are beginning to put…

Almost by definition, people prefer to live in dense areas. In terms of prescriptive advice, high-density housing reduces urban sprawl. If you can convince a third of suburbia to change to denser housing, commute times for everyone would be cut in half. Vast swaths of land could also return to farmland or nature preserves. So even people who personally prefer to live "just outside the city" should advocate for denser…

> So even people who personally prefer to live "just outside the city" should advocate for denser housing. When the city builds up, everything moves towards the center.

Thanks for making this point, so many people vociferously object to any density anywhere. Nobody is being forcibly relocated to dense living, but people are being forcibly denied the option of dense living.

It's similar to transit and traffic: though other people taking transit helps drivers encounter traffic, far too many drivers will attack transit because it's "not something they use." Realizing that other people want different things and that those different things might help you with your own wants is a complicated topic for public discussion.

Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

#94

Post by magduf »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #91
magduf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convincing your neighbors to vote a certain way is "a pretty bare modicum of effort"? If that were true, we wouldn't have our current democracy in such a terrible state. Billions of dollars are spent on every election to try to convince voters of how to vote, and look where it gets us. How do you think one person running around to his neighbors is going to convince them to vote for genuinely good HOA board members? R…

I'm on my HOA board, so yes, all of your objections appear to me as "I don't want to do anything at all". And comparing "talk to your 50 shared neighbors" to "organize an election with hundreds of millions of voters" is just off the charts hyperbole.

Again, you didn't answer my question. Who exactly are you going to get them to vote for, if you don't like the guy who's running the place now?

And yes, talking to 50 neighbors sounds like a big PITA to me, when you aren't even on the board and don't have a way to contact everyone and arrange a meeting; you'll have to go door-to-door and hope to catch people when they're home. That's a significant project. You don't have to do this in neighborhoods that don't have HOAs. And finally, again, WHO will you have them vote for, if you can convince them to not vote for the other guy who's mismanaging funds? Are you volunteering to spend all your free time on this payless, thankless job?

Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

#95

Post by lazyasciiart »

magduf wrote: post #94
lazyasciiart wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on my HOA board, so yes, all of your objections appear to me as "I don't want to do anything at all". And comparing "talk to your 50 shared neighbors" to "organize an election with hundreds of millions of voters" is just off the charts hyperbole.

Again, you didn't answer my question. Who exactly are you going to get them to vote for, if you don't like the guy who's running the place now? And yes, talking to 50 neighbors sounds like a big PITA to me, when you aren't even on the board and don't have a way to contact everyone and arrange a meeting; you'll have to go door-to-door and hope to catch people when they're home. That's a significant project. You don't…

What do you mean, I didn't answer your question? I am volunteering, yes. I literally already do this. I would tell them to vote for me. I am very aware of what being on a HOA requires because I already do it and yes I think it is not that hard. So to be clear: ME.

(I might use magical technology like mailboxes to facilitate asynchronous communication if I didn't already have access to the email address of every homeowner, which as a member of the HOA you should have)

Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

#96

Post by danans »

magduf wrote: post #89
danans wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that bigger houses are more expensive to operate and maintain, all else equal.

Yes, they are, and that's why I responded by pointing out that consumers generally don't think about that factor, they only think about initial costs.

It's hard to blame consumers if they are buying the average sized homes for their area that are still huge in operational and maintenance costs.

In most newer SFH developments, house size is usually dictated by exclusionary zoning (i.e minimum lot and house sizes) and developer business priorities, not by what is financially prudent for buyers. And as your SUV example illustrates, bigger sells better.

Choosing not to buy in to that usually requires relocating to an area that values efficiency over size, and those are often very expensive areas, since they are few and far between.

Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

#97

Post by wjossey »

There's something super amusing about some of the stuff they describe in the article, along with the diagram of the public transportation options. What they don't mention is that everyone who lives in that building almost certainly would drive to work- Because, Los Angeles. Those units will be near a new subway line that will be completed in the next five years (but they'd still have to bank on their office being on that line).

I also don't tend to find a lot of new condo developments in this area that are for sale. They all seem to be rented by the builder. My presumption being that credit continues to be so cheap, they can afford the slow burn down from rents, since thye're not getting crushed by the interest payment. But, I'm not a landlord, so I don't know for sure.

Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

#98

Post by beatgammit »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #25

Granted I only skimmed the article, but it seemed rather myopic to me. Why is the "dream home" assumed to be in an urban/suburban area? Why not in a small town or rural area? In January 2018, we moved back from Charlottesville, VA (which itself isn't even "urban") to Harrison, AR. I was able to buy a five bedroom, two bath home on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood for under $125k. My wife and I are beginning to put…

I love the more rural areas, and I found a decent fit. I'm within 50 miles of an international airport, within 15 miles of a significant hub for my field, and there are fields just 5-10 min bike ride from my house. I'd consider my area to be suburban/semirural, and my main complaint is that it's starting to get crowded (there are 3 cities in my area > 100k people, though mine has 30k or so).

I started working remote, and my mind went immediately to moving to a less populated area.

I really don't understand the appeal of living in a city. There's a ton of traffic and noise, and it seems that people are way more busy in larger cities. But different strokes for different folks I suppose.

Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

#99

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

howard941 wrote: post #2

No. Common walls and shared floor/ceiling sucks, thank you very much. Better to be in a trailer (which I quite like)

Exactly. People living in urban areas are used to the noise or the requirement for silence but when I moved to an apartment from my parents' house I hated every second of it.

Re: The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo

#100

Post by majewsky »

gowld wrote: post #17
nugget wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience houses greater than 6k sq ft are useful for one of a couple scenarios: either you have >5 residents (parents, grandparents, kids, live-in help) and need lots of bedrooms/extra space, or you're throwing frequent social events and need your home to function as an event venue. I briefly lived in an 8.5k sq ft house with two other people and on many mornings I felt like Jack Nicholson in the Shining. Nev…

You can easily fit >5 people in 3500 sqft -- that's enough for 4 large bedrooms upstairs and a whole living unit in basement, with a large main floor for "entertaining".

> You can easily fit >5 people in 3500 sqft

I used to live with my two brothers (so three people total) in a 860 sqft apartment and we never had problems with stepping on each other's toes.

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