I don't buy it. One thing that stands out to me: he has a ton of charts, but this crucial bit: >But, since 2008, vacancies have been declining steeply. is missing one. It looks like this statement is based on his estimates. So... original research. I'll leave it to an actual statistician to analyze his methodology, but that statement doesn't jive with my experience. I continue to suspect that the "housing shortage" (…
Household size and the housing stock
41–50 of 149 posts
Re: Household size and the housing stock
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again: I know builders. The size of the home is not a structural rule of the building industry, and is not universal or permanent. Just like any business, it's something builders decide based on who their market is and what they think they'll buy. The described strategy might be what you're seeing in your area and might be the only thing that makes sense to your own tastes, but there are plenty of cities and counties…
Builders build bespoke one off things for crazy people. Developers build bulk housing to try and make a profit, and they maximize FAR.
The options are not limited to {"bespoke custom house", "one size for all"}.
These ones from this builder vary from 80-320 square metres (~10 square feet per square meter): https://www.heinzvonheiden.de/hausfinder
It would be hilarious if the famously choice-filled capitalist USA has a building industry limited to Cold War DDR "commie block" identikit construction.
Re: Household size and the housing stock
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finished basements. The house in 1950 had a unfinished basement and was listed at 1200 sq ft. They finished the basement and later sold it as 2400. The difference is a couple pallets of drywall.
No basements in western states :)
3/6 of the houses I spent a lot of time in as a kid had finished basements.
Anecdotally, finished basements are practically required if there is any sort of hill, which fairly common in the west, whereas they're likely to be absent for houses built on the floodplain.
Re: Household size and the housing stock
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
You build the biggest thing you can within a parcel because there is plenty of demand at the top of the market. Want more, smaller homes? Reduce or eliminate minimum lot sizes, setbacks, constraints on number of units, and process required towards entitlement. What is legal is what gets built. Not enough is legal, and not enough is built as a result.
> You build the biggest thing you can within a parcel because there is plenty of demand at the top of the market. I know many people who have built many homes and I don't know a single one who thought that way or built a house that reflects it. While impacted by practical needs to a degree, preferred home size is just a fashion that changes over time and amounts to personal taste. The 3500sf McMansion of yesterday be…
"Who would want to heat all that" is very much dependent on the available energy subsidies.
Re: Household size and the housing stock
#45> and adults generally live on their own or with a spouse
This has not been historically true.
Re: Household size and the housing stock
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Not enough is legal, and not enough is built as a result." It's a preferences and distribution problem. There are plenty of places with vacancies or where it is legal and practical to build. The problem is people don't want to live there or it has too few jobs. If the market works the way it should, then people should shift out of the tighter areas and into the looser areas, reaching something closer to an equilibri…
One consideration is that, from a legal rights and social inclusion perspective, places aren’t fungible. The market can’t make a culturally inhospitable place welcoming.
It's not just culture. Not being American, I don't know what's really up with Detroit, but I categorise it as "like Blackpool" in that it was an economic powerhouse and then industry shifted and it became poor; there's now a lot of empty (or at least cheap) homes.
Re: Household size and the housing stock
#47In the 1950s, average size of new homes was about 1200 square feet. In 2000, it was more than 2400 square feet and held one less person (iirc: 4.5 VS 3.5 people). We are building 1950s suburban homes on steroids in a post-baby-boom world where average household size has shrunk. There are a lot of problems with this.
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Re: Household size and the housing stock
#48In the 1950s, average size of new homes was about 1200 square feet. In 2000, it was more than 2400 square feet and held one less person (iirc: 4.5 VS 3.5 people). We are building 1950s suburban homes on steroids in a post-baby-boom world where average household size has shrunk. There are a lot of problems with this.
We live in a wildly different world now. Cars, shopping centers, everything is bigger. Is that bad? Depends on your viewpoint. As far as I can tell, people are buying what they like so the customer is happy. There are side effects we don't like, but I can see attempting to solve that could have its side effects. Eventually, the market works this out. We got sick of sprawl some people moved back to the cities. Houses…
The market isn't allowed to work it out because of single family zoning
Re: Household size and the housing stock
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
You build the biggest thing you can within a parcel because there is plenty of demand at the top of the market. Want more, smaller homes? Reduce or eliminate minimum lot sizes, setbacks, constraints on number of units, and process required towards entitlement. What is legal is what gets built. Not enough is legal, and not enough is built as a result.
So why enough housing is not getting build in Europe, surely they don't have crazy american rules but still facing severe housing shortages all over.
Aren't most EU cities significantly more dense than in the US?
Re: Household size and the housing stock
#50In the 1950s, average size of new homes was about 1200 square feet. In 2000, it was more than 2400 square feet and held one less person (iirc: 4.5 VS 3.5 people). We are building 1950s suburban homes on steroids in a post-baby-boom world where average household size has shrunk. There are a lot of problems with this.
4.5 people in a 1200 sq ft house is packed.
I'd argue we are simply purchasing larger homes because that's what people want?