Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bfi.uchicago.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 426 posts

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

#381

Post by nocoiner »

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…

When you say the deal will lose money, do you mean that (1) the project’s operating expenses exceed its income, (2) the building can’t be satisfactorily recapped after completion/stabilization, (3) the MOIC at exit will be less than 1.0x, (4) the investor won’t receive their full preferred return or (5) the sponsor won’t earn any promote?

I could see any of these as being a way to describe a deal that “loses money.”

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

#382

Post by rtkwe »

notch656c wrote: post #209
rtkwe wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just labor in that cost there's materials to consider too.

Valid point. I looked up average materials cost for a 2000 sq ft house and it was estimated at $120k. Materials costs vary much less across the country than land and labor. For 580k I could hire 2 skilled men and 3 undocumented immigrants for a year. Something isn't right.

There's a lot wrong but a lot of it is in your assumptions. For starters there's more than 2 skilled trades that go into a house for starters. Then by hiring them yourself either you or one of those people are going to be playing project manager to make sure they don't run out of materials which is a job in and of itself if you're not familiar with it.

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

#383

Post by notch656c »

rtkwe wrote: post #382
notch656c wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valid point. I looked up average materials cost for a 2000 sq ft house and it was estimated at $120k. Materials costs vary much less across the country than land and labor. For 580k I could hire 2 skilled men and 3 undocumented immigrants for a year. Something isn't right.

There's a lot wrong but a lot of it is in your assumptions. For starters there's more than 2 skilled trades that go into a house for starters. Then by hiring them yourself either you or one of those people are going to be playing project manager to make sure they don't run out of materials which is a job in and of itself if you're not familiar with it.

Hey you can play fuck fuck games all day about how 5 person years of labor, almost half of that highly skilled (I'm accounting ~150k+ all in compensation) is not enough for a cookie cutter 2000 sq ft house. I'm calling bullshit; if it really is taking that much for a McClone basic bitch house then someone is taking the piss somewhere.

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

#384

Post by notch656c »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #351
marcusverus wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ironically modern tighter boarder controls contribute to more people moving here permanently/semi-permanently. Border crossings are at a 20 year high, but the problem is that border controls are too tight? That seems odd.

The problem you're having here is that you think "border crossings = bad", but that's not really the issue, is it? If a person doesn't live in the US, and is instead allowed to commute to/from Mexico, you get the upsides of their labor without the "downsides" of supporting them (IMO a disgusting way of thinking about it but here we are). Considering they pay income taxes, sales taxes, social security/medicaid, and do…

It's more profitable to our lower classes to keep the Mexicans / Guatemalans / whatever locked up in their own country to suppress their wages and competition and then allow free trade of goods. That gets us lots of cheap shit without having to pay USA wages.

I'm in favor of open borders mostly on humanitarian grounds, and I offer our lower wage laborers as offerings on the pillar of sacrifice for that.

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

#385

Post by marcusverus »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #351
marcusverus wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ironically modern tighter boarder controls contribute to more people moving here permanently/semi-permanently. Border crossings are at a 20 year high, but the problem is that border controls are too tight? That seems odd.

The problem you're having here is that you think "border crossings = bad", but that's not really the issue, is it? If a person doesn't live in the US, and is instead allowed to commute to/from Mexico, you get the upsides of their labor without the "downsides" of supporting them (IMO a disgusting way of thinking about it but here we are). Considering they pay income taxes, sales taxes, social security/medicaid, and do…

Your comment would make sense if the primary goal of our border policy was to facilitate cross-border commuting for Mexicans without work visas. If the primary goal is having control of your border (i.e. choosing who gets to come into your country, which is a basic function of competent governments) then this activity would be either prevented, or regulated via special work visas.

Either way, the idea that "tight border controls" are a contributing factor to the large number of illegal immigrants in the united states is entirely divorced from reality.

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

#386

Post by feoren »

Kukumber wrote: post #360
Kukumber wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that explains the current situation, it's all bullshit :clown_face: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/construction-work... https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/web-developer/sal...

people in this website have a hard time with factual data, everything that goes against their narrative is downvoted, it's funny, reality check incoming soon enough

It's not worth trying to explain to you why two data points illustrating an effect that has been true for all of human history is not evidence that "society does not value hard work anymore", so you get downvoted instead. Did the robber barons of the 1800s pay their rail workers well? Did Medieval European feudal lords pay their serfs well? I'm not saying the current situation is ideal, I'm saying "society doesn't value hard work anymore" is 100% bullshit.

What is my narrative, exactly? You seem to think you know. I'd love to hear what it is.

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

#387

Post by tonymet »

pixl97 wrote: post #215
tonymet wrote: post #142

Does any government office work on efficiency? I can think of local , state, federal offices working to slow things down, but none working on speeding things up.

Standards across the industry in theory should increase efficiency. Problem is homes are highly customized quite often. Add to that home building is very boom/bust. The county I live in currently has 1900 homes in progress. A year from now if the market goes down that number could be 100. Trying to scale things that have regulated and licensed inspections is massively difficult. And the answer is not let the builder…

that's not universal, some will slow things down and some may speed things up.

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

#388

Post by eropple »

notch656c wrote: post #375
HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yeah, isn't that just enforcing the codes? If you didn't have to go back and fix it, you could build as many sloppy houses as you want and the codes would be meaningless.

I would only apply such standard if it passes the symmetry principle with currently legal houses which is the context in which above mentioned about the not being worth bulldozing/fixing if they met the old codes. I.e. if the problem was legal for the construction of a currently inhabited house then the same logic about not being worth it to start over applies to the new house as the old house. Therefore it couldn't…

Your argument collapses to "forget improvement, let me externalize", and we as a society have strong reasons to provide a glide path towards reducing those externalities for old construction (which we do through updates during renovations, rebates, etc.) while disallowing them for new.

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

#389

Post by SpeedilyDamage »

marcusverus wrote: post #385
SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem you're having here is that you think "border crossings = bad", but that's not really the issue, is it? If a person doesn't live in the US, and is instead allowed to commute to/from Mexico, you get the upsides of their labor without the "downsides" of supporting them (IMO a disgusting way of thinking about it but here we are). Considering they pay income taxes, sales taxes, social security/medicaid, and do…

Your comment would make sense if the primary goal of our border policy was to facilitate cross-border commuting for Mexicans without work visas. If the primary goal is having control of your border (i.e. choosing who gets to come into your country, which is a basic function of competent governments) then this activity would be either prevented, or regulated via special work visas. Either way, the idea that "tight bor…

I'm confused; why isn't the idea of making something more or less legal related to how many people illegally do that thing?

They wouldn't be illegal immigrants if we didn't have "tight border controls" by definition, so it feels related and not "divorced from reality"...

We lived through this, basically all of American history up until 9/11, where the Mexican border was "loose"(er, the US committed some pretty fucked up atrocities using that border a few times in its history); it seems to me that if we returned to that level of interaction with Mexico, the vast majority of concerns raised by anti-immigration folks would be quelled.

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

#390

Post by notch656c »

eropple wrote: post #388
notch656c wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would only apply such standard if it passes the symmetry principle with currently legal houses which is the context in which above mentioned about the not being worth bulldozing/fixing if they met the old codes. I.e. if the problem was legal for the construction of a currently inhabited house then the same logic about not being worth it to start over applies to the new house as the old house. Therefore it couldn't…

Your argument collapses to "forget improvement, let me externalize", and we as a society have strong reasons to provide a glide path towards reducing those externalities for old construction (which we do through updates during renovations, rebates, etc.) while disallowing them for new.

The argument of existing homeowners is "forget improving my own house, let me externalize costs to others to raise my own property values."

We as a society have strong reasons to provide a glide path towards reducing that moral hazard created by old entrants.

Post reply on HN