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How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

constructionphysics.substack.com

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Re: How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

#301

Post by rr808 »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #128
rr808 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes its interesting example, but 1914 Sears house didn't have electricity, or hot water (was an extra), no shower, I'm guessing its single glazed and lightly insulated. Certainly I think most modern houses are too luxurious with marble and complicated accessories that aren't really needed.

Are most modern houses really too luxurious where you're from? What I see is that they have pretty poor build quality when you look closely, and are thrown together as cheaply as possible, and are not designed all that well. Where I am, "marble" would be engineered stone (which I don't have a problem with it's functional and looks okay), but many new kitchens (and bathrooms) aren't well designed for the space they ta…

Yes build quality is poor. "Luxurious" to me has quotes, looks pretty on the brochure but everything needs replacing after 10 years.

Re: How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

#302

Post by thedougd »

brimble wrote: post #127
kube-system wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard of construction has also changed since 1914. Not only do few people want to build a 900sqft freestanding home, if they did it today with that Sears kit, it would break nearly every building code in the book. A more equal comparison would be to a prefab or mobile home, which you can get for that inflation adjusted price.

Quality lumber is incredibly expensive now compared with 1914. I owned a 1910s-construction house for a while, and they used huge, thick wooden boards around the foundation where the structure met the stone-and-mortar basement walls, and in the floor joists (visible in the basement), and in the diagonally-run underfloor boards (used where we'd use plywood, today). Nearly knot-free, perfectly straight, that stuff woul…

Long leaf pine of the South Eastern United States is now also used as a heating and electricity generation fuel as far away as Europe. North Carolina is on track to become the World's largest single source of wood pellets[1]. On the other hand, during the lumber shortage of 2020/1 the bottleneck was at the mill.

1. https://energynews.us/2019/12/02/estonia-is-beginning-to-see...

Re: How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

#303

Post by rr808 »

neilwilson wrote: post #253
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The recent trend towards 4 story narrow houses doesn't help. A literal 1/3rd of the house is taken up by stairs" If you want vertical efficiency, we have apartments for that. You get a single staircase and 20 single-story homes instead of 20 staircases in 20 homes. Its funny that US/UK/ anglosphere seems to have never figured out apartments, in Uk you can't even be a true owner - first you pay leasehold, then you pa…

Nobody really wants to live in an apartment. People really want to live in their own little hut - as we have done for centuries. "in Uk you can't even be a true owner " You can never be the 'true owner' of any land in England. All land is technically owned by the Crown. You can only ever hold an interest in land in England - a freehold being the best you can get, and even those are littered with covenants these days.

I have a family with a teenager and apartment living is great, needs parking and a good location though.

Re: How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

#304

Post by rr808 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #179
com2kid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a personal example, my wife complains that an 1800 sqft house is too small. A modern blueprint 1800sqft house, yeah, for sure. But somehow a 1960s split level at 1800sqft is spacious. We are throwing square footage away on multiple large bathrooms, 2 living rooms, 2 dining rooms, and then wonder why the rooms we actually occupy are so small. The recent trend towards 4 story narrow houses doesn't help. A literal…

"The recent trend towards 4 story narrow houses doesn't help. A literal 1/3rd of the house is taken up by stairs" If you want vertical efficiency, we have apartments for that. You get a single staircase and 20 single-story homes instead of 20 staircases in 20 homes. Its funny that US/UK/ anglosphere seems to have never figured out apartments, in Uk you can't even be a true owner - first you pay leasehold, then you pa…

I'd love a review of legal systems for apartments globally because it does seem to differ between countries.

Re: How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

#305

Post by mauvehaus »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #209
mauvehaus wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. You buy a 4"x4" post (nominal. Actually 3.5"x3.5") at your local home improvement store and it has wane on all four corners and the pith running down the middle. Translation: it's made from the smallest possible tree you could plausibly saw a 4x4 out of. And the pith (the center of the trunk) running through the middle guarantees that the post will split along the radial plane as it dries. If you go to a better…

Heard you should get the largest lumber you can get and rip it down. Like get 2 x 12's and rip down to 2 x 4's. Makes sense that the larger cross-sectional lumber needs to come from a larger cross-sectional tree with few defects. The crap-wood they can turn into 2x4, 2x3....

The risk of doing that is that you might start with a straight 2x12 and end with three crooked 2x4's.

Wood can have a fair amount of internal stress in it, and cutting it can release it in ways that cause your boards to warp, twist, or bend.

Re: How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

#306

Post by Rd6n6 »

michaelt wrote: post #264
Thorrez wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is why is the sale price $100. If it's 0 effort, you would think it would be cheaper.

Imagine my great-grandfather planted a seed 150 years ago for $0, then we did nothing but wait for 150 years, then I chop it down and get $100 of lumber. But you can't enter the market and compete with me, because you don't have the right grandfather.

Property values in Canada are quite high. That free free squatted on non-free land for 150 years before you got to chop it down. How many dollars per year did the land cost for those 150 years?

Just saying that the free tree isn’t free

Re: How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

#307

Post by pinephoneguy »

giantg2 wrote: post #8

It's all about consumer preference. It seems this article largely misses this. People want to live in specific locations, or have to in order to find work. This drives land values up as demand increases. Policies can make this worse, but the problem will still manifest itself to some degree. (Potentially as affluent people, especially in suburban areas, buying up more land to create setbacks, or simply buying because…

No post body was provided.

Re: How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

#308

Post by driverdan »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #297
joe_the_user wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only do few people want to build a 900sqft freestanding home, if they did it today with that Sears kit, it would break nearly every building code in the book . Lots of people want to build 900 sqft homes. It's just that with land costing 100s of ks and utility hookups etc at 100k, it make no sense to build a 900 sqft house. Basically, areas with high house prices have created a situation building a little house o…

900 square feet is pretty close the the average size of a family home in the UK.

How many new houses are built to that size though? The UK has a lot of very old housing stock.

Re: How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

#309

Post by learc83 »

OJFord wrote: post #286
learc83 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average craftsman home built 100 years ago isn’t going for the same price as a 25 year old house. The craftsman homes that have survived for 100 years in good condition are. That’s a very different thing. Old houses also have tons of problems even when upgraded, and they just aren’t anywhere near equivalent to a modern home unless you essentially gut them and rebuild. Insulation isn’t nearly as good. Bathrooms ar…

> The floor plans aren’t nearly as open. This last one in particular is a big cost difference because creating large open spans is expensive. That especially is just fashion, I'd be really careful with that sort of conversion. Or, if the only 'problem' with a property is that it has too many segregated rooms, and that's depressing the price.. snap it up, fashion's bound to come around. (Unless it's for you to live in…

There’s probably some an element of fashion to it, but there’s also a technical element. Engineered lumber allows for cheaper, larger unsupported spans.

Cooking is also less frequent, extraction fans are better/cheaper, we don’t use wood burning stoves. When people do cook it’s less likely to be an all day process, and less likely to involve methods like deep frying in bacon grease. It’s also less likely that a middle class family has a servant to do the cooking for them.

All this leads to less need to segregate the kitchen from the rest of the house.

If you look at Victorian houses, kitchens were placed as far away from living spaces as possible. Going forward from the 19th century there has been an overall trend towards integrating the kitchen with living spaces. Culminating in the modern trend of combining the kitchen and living room into one large space.

Families are also smaller than they used to be, so there’s less need for as many rooms. Plus furniture is larger on average.

The point is there are factors pushing houses towards larger open spaces, and larger open rooms in general that are likely durable.

Re: How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?

#310

Post by throwaway0a5e »

moistly wrote: post #252
selestify wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so that we have good-paying jobs for our own citizens. Protectionism isn't always a good idea. Doing so would've made the final lumber output more expensive for Canadian consumers. Automation is coming for the good-paying jobs sooner or later, anyways. The solution wasn't/isn't to ban outsourcing/automation, it's to better distribute the gains from outsourcing/automation across society.

The better mills have amazing automation. Penetrating scan of the log and then laser-guided slicing and dicing to maximize wood usage and profitability. Now if only the lumber were properly dried instead of shipped slopping wet. (Actually, I suspect the kiln-dried lumber is destined for wealthy foreign markets; we locals get the c-grade crap. I have spent literally more than an hour picking through stacks to find eno…

The kiln drying process is exactly why you get what you get. When you crank the kiln to 11 in order to get the most throughput out of it you get residual stress and bent boards.

A covered pile outdoors or in a warehouse will yield straighter lumber (or just don't crank the kiln to 11) but that is not economically viable for random pine that people frame things with.

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