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Household size and the housing stock

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Re: Household size and the housing stock

#81

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

hackerlight wrote: post #78
BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a home around that size and am in the process of upsizing. It's just too small. I don't know you have room for you and your spouse to both take conference calls at the same time, plus have sizeable rooms for the kids, plus have a nice kitchen and living area with that SQFT. If you're living in California that makes more sense though. As for maintenance, we pay for help with cleaning. Around here, I think there…

We should be building 3K sqft condos. There is practically unlimited vertical space for that. This will make spacious living more accessible because the purchase price will be more about construction cost than land cost. It will also relieve pressure on suburban house prices, making suburban life more accessible for people who want it.

Agreed on all your points. But I would add you can still do mixed SFH's and condos/townhomes in new developments, which is how they do it around here, but the SFH's are still fairly packed in.

The demand for SFHs will always exist - some people are willing to pay extra not to hear or smell their neighbors through the walls. We can meet that demand with new builds, and once pressure is relieved from current suburban areas, you can go back and start to incrementally redevelop those areas more efficiently as well.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#82

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

swatcoder wrote: post #9
zbrozek wrote: post #3

Earlier 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…

3500sf houses (my home is not a McMansion) are not likely to become unfashionable. They sell for insane amounts of money because they are so desirable - even old ones and all the maintenance issues that come along with them. We should be meeting the demand of what people want.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#83

Post by butterchaos »

BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #63
bojan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever we are doing now is also not encouraging people to have children. I'm sure many young people would rather choose a 1200 sqft home than no home at all, which is currently the case. Your example of two teenagers is only relevant for 6 years of a family's lifetime. Why should we optimise for those 6 years?

My spouse and I chose to have kids because we could provide for them and house them in nice conditions. I would support making that a reality for more people. There are new suburbs that are slowly coming online where I live, just a little further out than what's currently available, and more of that would be great. And we don't need to be "optimizing" like you're talking about. "Well it's only 6 years of our life, no…

You are utterly delusional.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#84

Post by hackerlight »

BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #81
hackerlight wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should be building 3K sqft condos. There is practically unlimited vertical space for that. This will make spacious living more accessible because the purchase price will be more about construction cost than land cost. It will also relieve pressure on suburban house prices, making suburban life more accessible for people who want it.

Agreed on all your points. But I would add you can still do mixed SFH's and condos/townhomes in new developments, which is how they do it around here, but the SFH's are still fairly packed in. The demand for SFHs will always exist - some people are willing to pay extra not to hear or smell their neighbors through the walls. We can meet that demand with new builds, and once pressure is relieved from current suburban a…

> some people are willing to pay extra not to hear or smell their neighbors through the walls.

There's a worthwhile discussion to be had on this point alone. I believe condos are so small and bad because of a confluence of two factors: (1) a lack of regulations around quality, (2) too many regulations around zoning, making vertical space scarce instead of abundant.

Factor (1) leads to a lack of privacy and noise because the builder wants to save on materials costs. Factor (2) leads to condos being too small because vertical "land" is so expensive when it should be cheap if restrictions didn't exist.

It should not be possible to hear your neighbors through the walls, if we use multiple layers of air gapped steel or concrete. Condos that achieve this exist. They're just not common because regulations don't enforce it.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#85

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

butterchaos wrote: post #83
BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My spouse and I chose to have kids because we could provide for them and house them in nice conditions. I would support making that a reality for more people. There are new suburbs that are slowly coming online where I live, just a little further out than what's currently available, and more of that would be great. And we don't need to be "optimizing" like you're talking about. "Well it's only 6 years of our life, no…

You are utterly delusional.

Maybe, but unfortunately you won't be able to downvote me until you start making more substantive comments.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#86

Post by giantg2 »

zbrozek wrote: post #19
giantg2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are housing shortages in localities due mostly to distribution issues. Nationally, the number of housing units exceeds the number of households (families). In theory that market should correct this by causing places (San Francisco, in your example) to be less attractive and people will choose other places to work and live.

You may have noticed a broad swell in house prices across the nation as the pandemic freed folks to work remotely. 10% vacancy is generally considered ok. 5% is what New York state defines as an emergency. Even Buffalo is at 4.9%. The shortage is real.

There are about 140 million units and about 15 million vacancies. Seems that nationally there are vacancies around 10%.

https://gigafact.org/fact-briefs/are-there-more-homes-people...

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#87

Post by giantg2 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39
zbrozek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have noticed a broad swell in house prices across the nation as the pandemic freed folks to work remotely. 10% vacancy is generally considered ok. 5% is what New York state defines as an emergency. Even Buffalo is at 4.9%. The shortage is real.

The work from home trend didn’t last and was largely unrealized. No, you can’t work from Butte, you need to be back in the office in Seattle. Buffalo has about half the population now than it did at its peak in 1950. They just tore down housing because they could not afford to maintain them, and before they would fall into disrepair and became dens for crime and rodents. Similar de-housification is also occurring in…

Yep, the tear downs are happening all through the rust belt and Appalachia.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#88

Post by giantg2 »

jltsiren wrote: post #26
giantg2 wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

There are a lot of homes in every country that are essentially worthless. You can live in them, and they may even be in good condition. But if you try to sell them, you probably can't find anyone willing to pay real money for them. Because very few people have a reason to live in that area. And good luck if you need to borrow money to renovate the home. Then there are areas where many people have a reason to live in.…

And why aren't we doing anything to address that distribution? If the employers are having to lay exorbitant salaries so people can afford housing, shouldn't they be looking at opting offices in other cities to reduce their cost? If not, the system is broken and the leaders are poor. In my opinion the leaders should be looking where they are creating jobs as part of their societal duties, maybe even put it under DEI (as worthless as the DEI programs tend to turn out in practice, maybe not).

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#89

Post by giantg2 »

RangerScience wrote: post #40
giantg2 wrote: post #15

Earlier 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.

"One consideration is that, from a legal rights and social inclusion perspective, places aren’t fungible."

You do understand that works both ways? If you reverse the areas you're thinking of, there are people who prefer the rights or social environment in the opposite direction. Shouldn't we be trying to bring similar opportunities to all social groups? If we want to look at how this turns out, take a look at Native American reservations.

Re: Household size and the housing stock

#90

Post by zbrozek »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #74
aidenn0 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, price per square foot is an important metric for appraisal. If the appraiser puts too low a price on the house, the buyer can't get a loan. Therefore if you are building in the US to sell the house, then you will maximize the square feet to maximize the appraised value. In addition, it is relatively rare in the US for an individual owner to commission a custom house to be built. Particularly in the more po…

The number of buyers able to obtain a loan increases if the home’s price is lower. Increasing a home’s price reduces the number of potential buyers. The reason to build a more expensive home is to be able to sell for a higher price. But if the population of buyers in a location cannot afford to pay more, then a builder would be stupid to build the most expensive home they can, because insufficient people will be able…

Exactly, and there is plenty of unmet demand from people who can afford high prices. It makes sense to build the most profitable thing you can sell.
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