How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing? • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by throwawaygal7 » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #261

throwaway19423 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Canada, where we are swimming in lumber (in theory). I just don't understand why it is so expensive. I know the processing and treatment is very sophisticated but there is so much automation throughout the whole chain. My only explanation is that lumber is a globally traded commodity .. price isn't determined by just Canadian demand for lumber but the global demand. It makes me wonder .. if the US shutdown…

I don't think most countries build houses of wood like North America does. In Europe houses are mostly built of various kinds of bricks and concrete. Only the roofs in detached houses are usually made of wood (and not all of them). That's how most houses are built in central Europe for example: https://budujemydom.pl/i/2020/01/02/215608-d885-1100x0-sc1x5... Of course later the insulation is added: https://s3.eu-centr…

In the American south, there are a lot of masonry, or concrete homes or even AAC. See florida.

In the north masonry homes have a lot of problems with freeze thaw cycles. As far as upgrades , remodeling, overall costs goes stick built homes are superior.

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

#312

Post by ajuc » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

throwawaygal7 wrote: post #311

ajuc wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most countries build houses of wood like North America does. In Europe houses are mostly built of various kinds of bricks and concrete. Only the roofs in detached houses are usually made of wood (and not all of them). That's how most houses are built in central Europe for example: https://budujemydom.pl/i/2020/01/02/215608-d885-1100x0-sc1x5... Of course later the insulation is added: https://s3.eu-centr…

In the American south, there are a lot of masonry, or concrete homes or even AAC. See florida. In the north masonry homes have a lot of problems with freeze thaw cycles. As far as upgrades , remodeling, overall costs goes stick built homes are superior.

> In the north masonry homes have a lot of problems with freeze thaw cycles

That's weird, central Europe has pretty northern climate with cold snowy winters and hot summers and I've never heard about any such problems. I've lived my whole life in such houses. You just need proper insulation (but you need it anyway cause heating is expansive). I think Americans don't much care for good windows for example, at least in the movies they have these weird 1-layer sliding windows that nobody would use here :).

> As far as upgrades , remodeling, overall costs goes stick built homes are superior.

There's a bit of stigma against wooden houses here and they are considered worse investment because they degrade and lose value much faster.

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

#313

Post by clpm4j » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 3:44 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #248

clpm4j wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High density is not desirable to affluent families when the alternative could be a 3,000sqft single family home with a sizeable backyard in San Francisco, and these people tend to make the rules.

You sure? The 2000 sqft apartments at 181 Fremont are going for $7M. [1] If you want to live in a secluded detached single-family with a huge yard, live outside of town. [1] https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/181-Fremont-St-94105...

You can get a 3 bedroom SFH in Noe Valley for under $4m. Outer Sunset for under $2.5m. I'd be hard pressed to find any family that would ever want to buy a new condo anywhere near downtown SF - that's a very particular type of buyer.

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

#314

Post by kube-system » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

_uy6i wrote: post #260

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.

Compliance with building codes higher quality I grew up in a small farm house built in the 1700’s - post and beam construction, that will far outlast “code compliant” building methods of today

“Lasting a long time” also higher quality. There’s a lot of other factors that more closely contribute to making a house a nice place to live. Whether it lasts for hundreds of years after the owners death is relatively unimpactful on their quality of life.

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

#315

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

R0b0t1 wrote: post #176

rootusrootus wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, hiring an engineer to actually put their name on your home construction will almost certainly cost significantly more than the city inspection cost.

Every location (in the US) I'm aware of requires houses to be signed off on by an engineer before construction. You always have to pay for it. The issue is engineers are usually obligated to enforce code, and a lot of them try to be stamp mills -- they only want to look over and assure designs that are very similar so they don't have to think about it. There's an unfortunate number of locations in the US where you mu…

I will admit that I don't know regulations outside of my area, and I'm guilty of assuming they are somewhat standardized across the US (and indeed, for some codes, internationally).

Here we just have city inspectors to check basic code compliance. They'll take a quick look at the framing, electrical, and plumbing before the sheetrock goes up, and then they come back for a walk-through before issuing the certificate of occupation. No engineers.

The biggest fees by far are the permit fees, but that's for revenue and would still exist if engineers were doing the analysis for the construction.

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

#316

Post by 83 » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 3:54 PM UTC

daniel-cussen wrote: post #225

s1artibartfast wrote: post #50

Some interesting historical context on construction costs: 100 years ago the cost of construction was about $45/sqft when adjusted for inflation and today it is closer to $220/sqft, approximately 5x the cost. Blue collar wedges are pretty similar across time, but the cost of house construction (ignoring land) is dramatically higher. The 1914 sears Model 147 house was 900sqft and cost $872 for materials, estimated at…

They cost about the same. There's a few differences, like some better tech--also some worse tech, like preferring lasers and CPUs over older cheaper techniques that also work better[1]. There's more regulation too. And wages have swung upward and downward in the intervening time, right now we're barely past the bottom of the cycle[2] of the relationship between leaf-node employee wages and everything else. But the re…

I take it you haven't done any construction with a modern laser level? Have fun hanging level ceiling tile grid with your hose, hauling it around and keeping it filled between sites, making sure those walls are level horizontally AND vertically, and while you could use a hose/string for laying tile it's going to be much quicker and easier with a laser.

The only levels where you might have more than a couple buttons and need a manual are specialty ones like for surveying, not something you would do with a hose anyways.

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

#317

Post by giantg2 » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

mrep wrote: post #271

giantg2 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see no tax on primary home property at all. Just for commercial/investment properties. Unfortunately, a lot of that would be passed on to renters unless income taxes were assessed differently. But that would also mean drastically changing school funding, which could be a good opportunity but would likely turn this into every more of an impossible shitshow.

If you are referencing property taxes funding schools, you should know that it actually only funds about half of total school funding. The other half comes from federal and state governments and the way they give out funding is to selectively counteract that misallocation such that 47 states actually allocate more per-student funding to poor areas than to wealthier ones and according to this article [0], it has been…

I thought it says they are relatively neutral? And that 35 states have policies to counter local discrepancies?

Maybe I'm just missing stuff - that page is a design/user nightmare. But I do agree that the pet student funding tends to be pretty fairly distributed.

"So if you actually informed people that the wealthy areas don't get more funding, I don't see why it would be an issue."

I generally agree. I think the main point that the rich areas would not like, is that often the state money has restrictions on what it can be used for, or comes with policy requirements attached. If I remember correctly, PA schools could lose state funding if they didn't implement and enforce the state's masking policy. This caused a bit of friction in many districts.

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

#318

Post by yholio » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #240

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…

The US has large apartment buildings, the problem is that there is not a whole lot of anything between 5-20 stories, and there is a construction premium for 20+ story buildings. (And in the US it would be two staircases and 20 single story homes, specifically because building codes require two staircases to prevent a Grenfell-like disaster.

In all honesty, Grenfell was caused by bad construction choices, materials and political penny-pinching. A second stairway filled with cyanide smoke would have had very limited benefits.

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

#319

Post by JKCalhoun » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

mauvehaus wrote: post #305

JKCalhoun wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did the above to create a nice workbench with few knots. It helped of course that the lumber I ripped was glued up to make the butcher-block-style top, the uprights and cross braces also doubled, tripled up.

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

#320

Post by JKCalhoun » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

moistly wrote: post #220

JKCalhoun wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not be surprised if Canadian lumber was going to China. I believe a lot of Alaskan lumber, if not the majority of it, was China bound (this may have been close to two decades ago though when I had heard that).

Canadians are so stupid that we have allowed raw logs to be sold to Chinese offshore lumber mill ships, to be sold back to us, instead of insisting that the value-added processes be kept on-shore so that we have good-paying jobs for our own citizens.

Yes, that's right. I believe it was just the trees that went to China, finished lumber probably was sold back to us.