Dream Homes from the Past Century • Hacker News Board

Re: Dream Homes from the Past Century

#81

Post by ghaff » Sun, Jun 14, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #80

ghaff wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, many towns have minimum lot sizes. My (admittedly somewhat rural) town has a minimum of two acres and that's not at all uncommon.

That sounds pretty huge, even to me. The typical American suburban neighborhood is lots of 1/4-1/3 acre or so.

This is an ex-urban town. We have apple orchards and the like. Not typical suburbia but this is about an hour outside of Boston. And I'm sure there are grandfathered plots that are smaller. On the other hand, I lived in a more conventionally suburban town for a number of years and a somewhat tonier adjacent suburban town had similar lot minimums as I recall.

Re: Dream Homes from the Past Century

#82

Post by mod » Sun, Jun 14, 2020, 10:23 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #76

cheesecracker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I was actually hoping to see lots of outdated dreams, like "look what they thought would be cool, but turned out to be completely impractical". Also, all such posts miss location. What good is a cool house, if the next supermarket is 50 miles away?

50 miles is not really all that far, especially if there are closer markets that aren't full-blown supermarkets. Under the right circumstances--and assuming Internet etc.--I would certainly consider living 50 miles from a supermarket.

I agree, and I live something like 40 miles from a walmart.

We do have a local grocery closer, it's about a 30 minute drive.

We strive to produce a lot of our own food, and that which we do not produce, we buy in bulk. We make a trip to the grocery every couple of weeks, primarily for things that perish quickly--produce in the winter (when we are not producing it in our garden), milk, etc.

Internet isn't great, but it can stream a few TVs worth of netflix, so it's not terrible either.

With 40 acres, mostly of hardwood forest I can romp around in--I love it there, truly.

Re: Dream Homes from the Past Century

#83

Post by mod » Sun, Jun 14, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #54

pkamb wrote: post #37

I'd love a service that surfaced "architecturally desirable" homes for sale in your area, at various price points. This is a hard criteria to define. But I know it when I see it. Some combination of materials, craftsmanship, age, and design. Not necessarily location or price. It's very hard to filter for using Redfin or Zillow. I wish there was an MLS site that showed you 50+ listing thumbnails on a single page and a…

100% agree. I usually search Zillow with “modern” or “contemporary” or “architect”, which usually means 5-10% will actually be interesting houses. It seems the vast majority of even extremely expensive homes are completely devoid of any sense of design beyond “however the other McMansions look”.

Perhaps this has something to do with location, as well.

The town my business is located in (American South) has a great, long history. Many, many homes are now over 100 years old. A lot of them are very large, and have exquisite crafstmanship oozing everywhere--for me, that's primarily woodwork. Exposed beams, winding staircases, etc.

Anyway there's a couple hundred of those here, I think.

There are also a ton of more modern (1970s-era) homes that were definitely swanky at the time, but now are really lackluster. They just look dated, while the 100-year-old homes look magnificent.

Re: Dream Homes from the Past Century

#84

Post by freetime2 » Sun, Jun 14, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #73

harpratap wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's in the middle of bumbfuck-nowhere, population steadily declining for 40 years. Even if you want to work remotely there's no guarantee the infrastructure will keep up with proper electricity, medical facilities, internet, mail and all the 1st world conveniences.

What's in the middle of "bumbfuck-nowhere" as you so eloquently put it? Kanazawa--which was the subject of the comment that you appear to be replying to--has a population of about half a million people. I've never personally been there but that doesn't seem to be a very accurate description.

They were referring to the real estate listing (the second URL I linked), which is located in Itoigawa. Admittedly Itoigawa is very rural (population 40,000 and on the decline) and wouldn't be my first choice of location. But on the other hand, it is a stop on the Hokuriku Shinkansen line which means you are within a couple hours at most of Tokyo, Takasaki, Nagano, Toyama, and Kanazawa. It also has good skiing an hour to the South in Hakuba (where they held the 1998 winter olympics) and hiking in the nearby mountains. For anyone interested in a self-sufficient lifestyle, you could also buy some inexpensive farmland and grow a lot of your own produce. It may not be for everyone, but I can think of worse places in the world to live.

Re: Dream Homes from the Past Century

#85

Post by fullito » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 8:44 AM UTC

ido wrote: post #43

fullito wrote: post #41

My biggest worry is, when i finaly have the money and the ground to build my dream, that i'm not allowed to due to building restrictions :(... Germany is densily populated and you can get a house + ground with 2-5 acres for 200-500.000k but they are all in the so called 'outter area' and apparently we don't want that. You have strict building restrictions. you can't just tear it down and rebiuld it (what you often ne…

google is telling me an acre is a bit more than 4000 square meter...You need 8000-20,000 square meter plot for your house & yard or am I reading something wrongly? The house my father was born in (& my grandmother still lived in till shortly before she died) was on a ~2500 square meter plot that seemed huge to me, so much that when my father & uncle sold the property 4 more houses were built on the same plot. From wh…

Yeah the house but my park would not fit on 1000 square meter :)

Re: Dream Homes from the Past Century

#86

Post by LockAndLol » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 8:10 PM UTC

anm89 wrote: post #25

LockAndLol wrote: post #22

Really nice to know that I'd have to work till I'm 60 to afford a house like that without taking on serious debt. What a time to be alive. I'm so grateful.

The horror of having to settle for having all your needs met and living without insane luxury. Poor you. These houses would have been unaffordable to almost everyone at any time I'm history and two hundred years ago no amount of wealth could have bought you them at all. So what again is special about being alive now?

This "argument" of "things were worse then, now things are better" keeps coming back as if we're already living in a utopia. It's like saying "back then there was shit sandwich, but without bread and now we at least have bread". Wow, what an improvement. I'm too lazy to look up the name of the fallacy.

But to answer your question about what's special about living now? In absolute terms: Nothing.

Re: Dream Homes from the Past Century

#87

Post by cheesecracker » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #76

cheesecracker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I was actually hoping to see lots of outdated dreams, like "look what they thought would be cool, but turned out to be completely impractical". Also, all such posts miss location. What good is a cool house, if the next supermarket is 50 miles away?

50 miles is not really all that far, especially if there are closer markets that aren't full-blown supermarkets. Under the right circumstances--and assuming Internet etc.--I would certainly consider living 50 miles from a supermarket.

Well personally, I don't want to depend on a car. So 50 miles would be very far.