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The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

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Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#281

Post by toast0 »

notch656c wrote: post #273
frankus wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it shows that there's at least a basic cost-benefit analysis taking place, where things that we've learned provide a safety benefit that can be added at minimal cost during construction are required, but bulldozing a house because it will burn down 15 minutes faster doesn't pencil out.

And yet if I built a new house against code they would still make me go back and fix it, even though I could make the exact argument you made about the old house not penciling out to go back and make them fix it.

In theory, building inspections at each stage of construction should find omissions and other non conformance while it's economic to fix them. I do acknowledge that building inspections have a lot of issues, one of which is different inspector, different rules, and a later stage inspector may have you redo something the earlier stage inspector said was fine (sometimes, even with the same inspector!), but the idea is there. I've heard that locally, a lot of inspections are done by video conference now, and contractors find that goes a lot faster and more direct. Not sure if that'll stay post-covid.

It's also difficult to know what's on the inside of built houses (which is why inspection is supposed to happy during construction, not after). Commercial buildings often have both plans and as-built drawings; but residential buildings don't, and when you get on-site and the plan doesn't match the house, you really don't know what's in the walls. Some sort of government driven new code compliance inspection for existing housing stock seems really expensive. Even public use buildings take a long time to get code compliance updates, such as retrofits on unreinforced masonry buildings in many places, and there's both more risk and more enforcement power for public use buildings.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#282

Post by karaterobot »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #274
eagleinparadise wrote: post #115

CRE guy here. A lot of this "productivity loss" is also due to government related staffing issues and bureaucracy. Most people are describing more complex building codes, so I'll add something new. I had a project that was delayed by over a year during Covid because the city approved incorrect plans, came back and requested revisions, and then lost the physical plans (without us knowing until we checked in asking wha…

IIRC, during Covid there were only something like half a dozen elevator inspections for the entire state of CA. The source below says there was 15 in 2019. If your elevator inspection is 2 months late... guess what, your project is going to be late. I couldn't believe this is true, so I actually read the article. Turns out, it's not true. It's multiple orders of magnitude off. There were 15 inspectors for the city (n…

Seems like the off the cuff guess about the numbers is wrong, but the actual point they were making remains valid.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#283

Post by medvezhenok »

JamesBarney wrote: post #240
elmomle wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, "illegal immigrant" is a sometimes-used dysphemism for "undocumented immigrant". I'm not aware of any other class of people who break a law who are called "illegal" as a result; it's a rather dehumanizing impulse.

People refer to other people who break the law by the law they broke all the time. Thieves, murders, fraudsters, etc Illegal immigrant doesn't seem especially derogatory for someone who illegally immigrated. I think it would be better to focus on the fact their felony crime rate is far below the native population than arguing over a pretty tame word used to describe them.

It's interesting to see how the language changed over time from "foreign born" to illegal immigrant depending on who was doing the immigrating:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=illegal+immigr...

Look at the amount of legal immigration:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/ann...

There have been plenty of people who have been in this country without appropriate paperwork historically - they were never called illegals (see above). In fact even now people make differentiations between "visa overstayers" and people who snuck across the border, even though both are technically illegal aliens.

I think you don't have to go far to see the implications.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#284

Post by yamtaddle »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #40
markus_zhang wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However many modern homes use inferior material for the job comparing to the older homes in the same area. Probably to cut cost. I'm not sure if it was also the case for older homes built in the 50s/60s though.

Can you give an example of inferior material?

Some finish materials are much worse. Small (by modern standards) ordinary middle-class homes in, say, the 1950s, had the kind of interior and exterior doors, and baseboards/molding, that'd be considered luxury-tier today. Even big expensive McMansions usually don't have doors and molding that nice, now. The higher end might get the luxury-tier front door... maybe. But any back or side doors won't be that nice, and usually not the interior doors, either. Totally normal houses were still getting solid-wood molding and baseboards as a matter of course into the early 90s, while now it's almost unheard of unless you pay a huge premium for a custom job during construction.

Very nice wood floors used to be more common, too. Very nice by modern standards, anyway—normal, then. "Very nice" back then would have been ultra-luxe now, like fancy patterns or parquet or something.

Basically, decent wood has become incredibly expensive. Almost all our lumber sucks now, unless you pay crazy-high prices. So things like nice solid-wood doors are impractically expensive unless you salvage them (and then you have the problem of sizing and constructing framing for them, rather than for standard frame-included modern doors)

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#285

Post by mindslight »

goodSteveramos wrote: post #259
harvey9 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am an unprincipled landlord then it may be in my best interest to change from renting to families to renting to sharers. Four working adults may be able to pay more in total than two parents supporting two children can.

Exactly. This is how immigration has totally screwed family formation and depressed birth rates for Americans. Young couples cant afford to buy or rent a home in their own city and have to either delay marriage to live with their parents or abandon their families and lifelong friends to move somewhere with lower cost of living. All so employers can go 40 years with giving workers a raise.

I had to read these comments twice, because I had assumed the "families" were the immigrants and the "four working adults" were yuppies, both in line with my own experience. It's not immigration that has screwed over family formation - it's the housing racket itself, backed up by oppressive monetary policy that sucks real wealth into the financial industry. Making home ownership into a (guaranteed) investment combined with the individualist ideal of everyone needing their own house has done the equivalent of making everyone start off life with significant debt, and the time to pay it off becomes ever longer.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#286

Post by medvezhenok »

parineum wrote: post #218
elmomle wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, "illegal immigrant" is a sometimes-used dysphemism for "undocumented immigrant". I'm not aware of any other class of people who break a law who are called "illegal" as a result; it's a rather dehumanizing impulse.

What part of "illegal" or "immigrant" implies a person is not a human? It's just shorthand for "person who has immigrated illegally" anyway, arguing over these words is a distraction. You have any solutions?

Yes, fix legal immigration:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/ann...

The current legal immigration levels are way too low, hence people breaking the law trying to establish roots in the country (or fleeing persecution elsewhere). We used to call people foreign-born instead of illegal, and not care about their immigration status at all. Oh, wait - that's when the Europeans were immigrating: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/ann...

If many many people are breaking a law (i.e. jaywalking), one should consider whether the law is actually reasonable in the first place.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#287

Post by acuozzo »

kodah wrote: post #41
belval wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure this is the right answer and calling this "worker productivity" seems a bit harsh. A "Pretty Good House" (book that was on the front page last week) includes insulation above and below the foundation slab, vapour barriers, double studs to break thermal bridges, complex window installation (again thermal bridges), air exchangers and heat pumps with ducts (or mini-splits). New constructions (for cold zone),…

I have no data to back this observation up, but everyone (especially in the media, but also in corporate life) is attacking "worker productivity" lately. Everyone's got a reason, but when you dig into them they all stink.

My fear is that the driver behind this is widespread WFH due to COVID-19.

Assessing "worker productivity" is hard for all but the most simple jobs, but the desire to do so, I reckon, is buried deep within each mind of the pointy-haired.

The unfortunate reality of the situation is that so-called "bullshit jobs" form the basis for the only system approximating UBI in the US, so movement in this space will further erode what remains of the American middle class…

… and AI will grind it down to the nub.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#288

Post by loeg »

Gabriel54 wrote: post #223
dieselgate wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough many (with no claims to majority/minority numbers) "illegal"/migrant workers do have "documents" from what I've seen working in agriculture. The documents are sufficient if you don't look too closely or are not the business owner - speaking from my own experience. These may be cases where the workers are paying taxes etc.

Not sure what kind of documents you are referring to. The I-9 form is very clear about what documents are acceptable. It is not difficult to understand if someone is legally able to work or not.

People may present forged or stolen docs for I-9 purposes.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#289

Post by matwood »

joezydeco wrote: post #91
latchkey wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously can't recommend this guy enough for general repair/building work... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnorhjQR4zJkT7AVNhu395Q/vid... Friendly, super knowledgable, takes the fear out of the DIY. For electrical, I do a lot myself, but when it came to running a 50amp line + breaker panel inside my place (which also required outdoor ladder work) to replace the steel conduit indoors, I just hired a professional…

It's not the DIY aspect^, it's the idea of ProPress joint sitting pressurized behind a wall for a decade. ^ I'm knowledgeable enough to do my own wiring and plumbing, but pay for licensed/bonded contractors instead. I sleep better at night and my insurance company probably does as well.

Depends on what you're doing. I've done quite a bit of DIY, and much of it is probably better than if I hired someone for the simple fact I care, and I'm not trying to do it as fast as possible.

Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

#290

Post by seanmcdirmid »

arcticbull wrote: post #262
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Affordable housing is just a zoning issue. The cost of construction is a tiny fraction of the cost of a new house in major metros. No it is not. Construction costs (material, labor) are sky high even if property costs are as well. Building high-end housing has always been more profitable than otherwise, low-end housing is simply high-end housing 20 or 30 years in the future.

I did say "in major metros" - new construction in SF is about $440/sqft average vs a median listing price of almost $1000/sqft (average $964). This is the highest in the world. [1, 2] That's got nothing on San Mateo's $1264 average sale price and $160-350 per square foot in construction costs. [2] Outside of major metros zoning rules make houses massive, twice as big as in the 70s. While the inflation-adjusted per sq…

> new construction in SF is about $440/sqft average vs a median listing price of almost $1000/sqft (average $964).

Isn't much of the listing price related to land costs (and then of course profit)? To say that construction costs are only 50% of the sold to cost doesn't tell me much, how much did they pay for the land on a SQFT basis?

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