291–300 of 426 posts
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PEX is great. I highly recommend keeping some shark bites and spare pieces of PEX around, as it's easy to do repairs on your own if you have an issue.
Sharkbites are a recipe for disaster when their O-rings fail.
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…
The two are interrelated. There'd be a lot less opportunity for error if building codes were cut in half. For example where I live there is a fair bit oil heating & therefore underground oil tanks. Building code requires that upon switching to something else, like natural gas, the submitted plans must include information about the planned removal or decommissioning of the tank.
This wasn't always a requirement, but now that it is that means someone has to check the plans to make sure that requirement is met. So, bureaucracy and building codes go hand in hand.
Of course in the case of residential oil tanks remaining in the ground, or not being properly decommissioned, there it can cause a variety of problems. Water contamination for example, a major concern for abandoned tanks in any area where residential well water is common. (and for other reasons)
I'm not arguing that bureaucracy as it exists is at all a model of efficiency, but you can't examine or solve that problem without understanding how we got there.
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But people still want and yell for “affordable housing”. Can’t have your cake and eat it too
Immigrant labor does not carry their own housing on their backs. It competes in the housing market for homes built by past generations of the native born.
How many houses did you build, $username?
Touche?
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> You can build an awesome home today out of excellent materials like engineered wood, high quality OSB/ply/ZipSystem, and of course whatever you want to spend on flooring, siding, windows, etc. Of course, there will always be different quality materials available at different prices. But I would bet the lowest quality house with the lowest quality materials and build quality 100 years ago is much worse than the same…
Why stop there? Get particle board cabinets, molded composite doors, vinyl windows, laminate counters, etc. Yeah it's all going to look awful in about 2 years but you can just replace it with more cheap junk. I get it, everyone has different tastes and budgets, and values. to me, wood floors feel nice, they look nice, and they sound nice when walked on. Laminate flooring clicks and areas that get walked on just a bit…
> Yeah it's all going to look awful in about 2 years but you can just replace it with more cheap junk.
That is the difference, it does not. The higher quality (and even decent quality) LVT performs very well, and for a long time. Even hotels use it, and in my experience, for normal wear and tear around a house, anything Costco quality and up will not noticeably degrade. I am regularly in many tract built houses from 5 to 7 years ago, and the flooring does not look worn at all.
There probably is super low quality cheap LVT that does not have sufficient longevity, but my point is just because something is composite instead of “real”, or lightweight instead of heavy, does not mean it cannot do the job.
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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.
Stop blaming everything on immigrants, pls. You have your own agency, dont play a victim and get your destiny in your own hands.
Immigrant labor is what keeps this country together, all those back breaking jobs that Americans consider themselves too good for and prefer sitting on the welfare/unemployment/etc - these jobs are done by immigrants while being paid peanuts.
Without immigrants the housing would be even more expensive and unaffordable, as well as all other services like plumbing, electricians, fast food/dining, hospitality, etc
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I can: - Vinyl windows compared to old growth wood windows from 100 years ago. - Vinyl siding compared to cedar shakes. - Extremely poor wood quality in the lower end 2x4 and 2x6 lumber. - Sheathing that's essentially cardboard in really cheap builds. - Flooring is sad today in cheap to moderate homes. Thing is there were really badly built homes 100 years ago and they just aren't standing any longer. We do get a but…
Most of the contractors who like to talk about the good old days are simply spreading FUD. New homes will hold up better a hundred years from now, and have a much lower chance of catching on fire, collapsing in an earthquake, and are less harmful to the planet since they use a fraction of the energy. - Old windows from 100 years ago were single pane. I grew up with them. My bedroom was freezing cold in the winter and…
Yes but you can (and should) weatherstrip them. Fully integrated weather stripping and storm windows will solve the problems you're addressing. Yes still lower R-value but old homes are leaky and putting in modern windows won't save you much in these instances.
> New homes will hold up better a hundred years from now
Most won't. My home is over 100 years old and I'm 100% positive it will outlast 90% of modern construction put up today 100 years from now. I've seen my house gutted in many places and it's pristine. I've seen many 20 year old homes that are full of mold and rot.
> Cedar shake is a fire hazard.
Depends where you live. It looks great and there are millions of homes with it. At least where I live where there is a lot of spacing between homes and we don't have forest fires like out West.
> - New constructions (At least mine was) built with 2x6, so it has a higher R rating and better soundproofing. My energy bills are a fraction of those for an older house.
That's how I'd do a new build. But what does it have to do with sound proofing? I can use 5/8 drywall and use rock-wool or w/e between rooms if I want. It's what I've done when I remove plaster and lath walls. Agree about energy.
> New homes are better sealed, and contain air tight vapor barriers. Water can't get in and rot the wood like with old homes. Yes, it's not old growth wood, but it will last longer. Better sealing, air filtration and HVAC will reduce your chance of getting lung cancer from air pollution.
Might be. Hope the guy installing it cared enough not to install some flashing wrong or didn't forget to seal something. There's so much bad workmanship and a lot of today's better materials demand it's done very precisely. Saying that, a good contractor will inspect and test, but most won't. Old homes are still standing because water was/is kept away with larger eves (ever notice homes after water barriers came out stopped having large eves or any?) and by virtue of not having great insulation. They literally dry themselves out. God, the number of windows I've seen where the vapor barrier is installed/folded wrong or the flashing is wrong; or ZipSystem walls where the taped seals aren't quite right because of a weird angle.
> Better sealing, air filtration and HVAC will reduce your chance of getting lung cancer from air pollution
You can install HVAC with whatever filters you want in an old house. I've done it.
> Modern high end LVP flooring is substantially more robust than hardwood
I think it's appropriate in a basement room but I'd never consider having it in the rest of my home.
An old house in disrepair or what hasn't bene renovated is probably a pretty bad thing that isn't going to last long. But if you've put the money into it and renovated you have a home that's setup for another 100 years and simply has gobs of character and charm you'll never get in a new home. But that's all a value call.
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Your comment only makes sense if you ignore the rest of the sentence you quoted. "It also made the required rent higher to recoup those costs and try to be profitable (that deal will lose money)." required rent =/= planned rent =/= actual rent Higher costs than expected can easily cause a project that would be profitable to be a loss.
To be fair, GP has a point: unexpected expenses and delays in construction represent sunk costs, and don't matter with respect to maximising profits, as the landlord should pick the price which maximises profits with respect to whatever the operating costs of the apartment are, without considering the cost of construction. However, as sibling comments to yours mentioned, there are flaws to this perspective: - You can…
>If, all along, you could have rented it out for more money ... why were you planning to rent it out for less money?
... the original post never said they would rent it out for less money. Nor did it say they would rent it out for more money. They only said the rent required to break even went up.
This is clear in the original post, which says they could not achieve this higher rent required to break even.
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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 u…
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My logic is the entitled fucks that vote for this policy should be made to eat their own medicine. Either it's OK to have a house without the safety criteria in the code, or it isn't. Forcing them to eat their own medicine would allow the youth to also have the chance to build a house, even if it's not perfectly safe, closer to the cost their parents had to spend. Rather than changing the game and screwing over new e…
By the same logic, all the houses built in the earthquake zones of San Francisco and LA should also be raised. I've noticed that there has been mass hysteria in some California-centric websites that flood insurance must be provided by the Federal government in Florida, but not that earthquake insurance must be provided by the Federal government in California. Botton line, the private sector doesn't handle this type o…
Earthquake insurance availability is mandated within the state. Why would we need a Federal mandate when we have an effective state mandate. It's not attractively priced, but Federal flood insurance often isn't attractively priced when they've updated maps recently either.