[HN Gopher] Why Levittown didn't revolutionize homebuilding
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Why Levittown didn't revolutionize homebuilding
Author : sien
Score : 58 points
Date : 2024-07-25 10:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com)
| worldvoyageur wrote:
| While the slow strangulation of Levitt's mass production formula
| for building large volumes of homes that were affordable for
| people who otherwise couldn't afford housing was the saddest
| part, in 1994 Levitt died in poverty close to the well over
| 20,000 affordable homes he had built in Long Island.
| rob74 wrote:
| OTOH, with even larger volumes of affordable [single-family]
| homes, the US would have _even more_ suburban sprawl than it
| has now, which I think most people agree is not actually a good
| thing...
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| If it meant everyone could afford a home it would be worth
| it.
| underlipton wrote:
| I look at the restrictive covenant that forbid my family from
| living in the house we lived in when I was younger (after such
| covenants were deemed unenforceable, but not struck entirely
| from the house's deed), and play my tiniest violin.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " Supporters praised Levitt for giving thousands of Americans the
| chance to own a home, while others criticized the cookie-cutter
| Levittown homes as a further intrusion of a hollow consumerist
| culture and lifestyle."
|
| NIMBYs have always existed it seems, but we don't have the lax
| land use laws that result in screwing over young families less
| than we do now.
|
| Maybe housing policy is the great filter.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > NIMBYs have always existed it seems, but we don't have the
| lax land use laws that result in screwing over young families
| less than we do now.
|
| I mean that's just America. Every group trying to fuck over the
| group below them for an extra step up the proverbial ladder,
| usually without even knowing it.
|
| It's fuck or be fucked around here. And the poorer you are, the
| more people you've got in line to fuck you.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Seriously, we picked our house based on price, school district,
| and condition. We actually wanted less aesthetically appealing
| houses more but were outbid, so had to go with our third
| choice.
|
| Anyone bitching about home aesthetics is at or near the top of
| Maslow's hierarchy and really needs to shut up.
| trgn wrote:
| > Anyone bitching about home aesthetics
|
| How does it have to be one or the other though?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How does it have to be one or the other though?_
|
| Economies of scale. It's cheaper to build lots of identical
| things.
|
| On the secondary market, relative demand: an ugly house
| will be cheaper.
| trgn wrote:
| > It's cheaper to build lots of identical things.
|
| Yeah, just have them build lots of nice-looking identical
| things.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _just have them by lots of nice-looking identical
| things_
|
| If it doesn't make them more expensive, sure. Even then,
| the fact that it's repeated will make it ugly to many.
| trgn wrote:
| > the fact that it's repeated will make it ugly to many.
|
| That's fair actually, a lot of people find novelty
| attractive.
| michaelt wrote:
| In my country, almost anyone producing lots of very
| similar homes builds chooses a reasonably attractive
| design for the simple reason that attractive buildings
| can command higher prices.
|
| Of course, as they want to be attractive to as many
| potential buyers as possible, the results do turn out
| kinda neutral.
| bluGill wrote:
| More than that, most of what makes a design attractive
| doesn't cost any more than unattractive and so there is
| no cost. Often attractive is cheaper because a factory
| knowing attractive features are in demand will setup
| jigs/machine to automatically cut the profile into a
| board while if you wanted a something plane it has to be
| cut but hand.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Economies of scale. It's cheaper to build lots of
| identical things.
|
| It is important to note what parts the identical is
| important and what you can vary. You can buy cars in many
| colors because it turns out black is no longer an
| advantage, manufactures can change paint quickly. (the
| reason you only get about 6 choices is sales wants to
| keep each color in stock so you can drive it home, there
| is no savings in manufacturing to have 6 colors choices
| as opposed to 60,000)
|
| In the case of houses the identical thing is 8 or 9 foot
| tall walls with mostly 90 degree angles. You have a lot
| of options to make walls longer or shorter as you desire
| and so houses get great scale factors despite not being
| very identical.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _black is no longer an advantage, manufactures can
| change paint quickly_
|
| Those systems and inventory still add to cost. Most
| consumers just don't care about that marginal cost when
| buying a car.
|
| > _have a lot of options to make walls longer or shorter
| as you desire and so houses get great scale factors
| despite not being very identical_
|
| This is still more expensive than having them be
| identical. Fundamentally, uniqueness and cost are related
| due to economies of scale.
| bluGill wrote:
| No it isn't - while you could make a jig for a specific
| wall, even if all houses used that same size wall,
| transport fees would more than the cost of building the
| wall manually as we do now.
|
| The above is why pre-fab never took off. Sure you can
| build a house in a factory, but transport costs are much
| harder than bringing the materials and factory to the
| house site. The wall height matters because most of the
| boards in the wall are pre-cut in a factory already and
| that is something your factory built house cannot improve
| on (unless you want a weird wall height)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _while you could make a jig for a specific wall, even
| if all houses used that same size wall, transport fees
| would more than the cost of building the wall manually as
| we do now_
|
| But one is still cheaper!
|
| > _why pre-fab never took off_
|
| Same reason we have more car colors. It's more expensive.
| But we value variety more than that marginal cost. That
| doesn't change that producing one costs more than the
| other.
|
| (There is also a massive difference between consolidating
| fabrication and consolidating construction. Developments
| work because you have one team doing a similar set of
| tasks at the same location repeatedly.)
| toast0 wrote:
| It's all about small changes. Getting a whole prefabbed
| house is a thing, but not the nicest. But pre-fabbed roof
| trusses are very common now. It's more work to ship those
| than the pieces, but on-site labor savings and
| consistency make it valuable. Pre-hung doors with
| doorframes are also the norm.
|
| I'm not in the industry, but I could imagine there's some
| possibility for pre-fabbed wall panels, but I don't know
| how much that really saves, because I wouldn't think you
| want to pre-hang the drywall, it'll get damaged in
| shipping. Maybe you could prehang exterior sheathing. But
| it's a big increasing in shipping volume to save only a
| little bit of time and have a much less flexible layout.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > there is no savings in manufacturing to have 6 colors
| choices as opposed to 60,000
|
| This isn't really true. At the peak of car
| customizability an OEM had an astronomic number
| (something like 10^180) of possible configuration
| combinations for a single model, with very few cars
| having actually identical configurations and like 80%
| being unique configurations. Adds a huge amount of
| complexity to the supply chain and shop floor management.
| There's a reason why OEMs have been greatly reducing the
| number of individual options since then.
| bluGill wrote:
| The reason is mostly that sales wants to someone who
| walks in the door the first time to walk out. If someone
| wants to custom order a car the 10^180 possible
| combinations isn't that big a deal, but there is no way
| to have that many cars on every lot and so sales demands
| it.
|
| Yes less different models does save a little but of cost,
| but it isn't that much overall.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| There is actually a huge savings to have fewer colors
| because it reduces the complexity of skus and the horror
| of color matching defects.
| cryptonector wrote:
| My neighborhood is cookie-cutter houses, but with ~8
| different plans, and all of them varying in color of
| siding, roof, and color/type of facade. The result is
| that it doesn't look like it's cookie-cutter.
| kiliantics wrote:
| I've spent the last couple of years researching and
| building my own timber frame structures and I have come to
| be of the opinion that aesthetics exist for a reason. A
| functionally sound structure will have pleasing aesthetics.
|
| Understanding more about home-building now, when I look at
| what's available in new builds and renovations these days I
| see a lot of suspect aesthetics and they are usually
| accompanied by (if not directly representing) poor design
| decisions.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| sounds like you probably live in croyden
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| > Maybe housing policy is the great filter.
|
| Declining birth rates are often blamed on many things, but the
| negative birth rates in the western world are probably most
| caused by housing policy. Housing affects everything. Have to
| have two incomes to buy a home for kids. Probably 50+ hour week
| jobs, so no time to care for kids. But child care is too
| expensive... because rent is so high it's driven labor cost up.
| Have to own two cars because the sort of family friendly
| density to live car free is illegal in most places. That's
| another 10-30% of a families income. People who didn't buy an
| home when interest rates were low and homes cheap own homes are
| essentially locked out; both of home ownership and having
| families.
|
| We know the richest Americans and (Swedes according to a recent
| study) are more fertile than the middle class. So maybe it's
| not a filter for the earth, but it probably will ultimately
| destroy the western world as we know it. Ultimately, the
| childless middle of the fertility U will disappear with
| immigration being used to replace the gaps in the workforce.
| It's not a conspiracy. It's just the outcome of generations of
| people voting (at the municipal level) in their best interests
| without care for future generations.
| philwelch wrote:
| Unfortunately this isn't the case. Places that have good
| housing policy, like Texas or Japan, still have below-
| replacement TFR.
|
| There _might_ be a correlation with urbanization in general
| rather than housing policy specifically. Ever since
| antiquity, cities have been demographic black holes while
| most population growth occurred in rural areas.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irony_of_Fate#Plot
| osigurdson wrote:
| The article could use a lot more pictures.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| The Wikipedia has more.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown
|
| But then I read this and it trashed everything I thought of
| him-
|
| "William J. Levitt refused to sell Levittown houses to non-
| Caucasians."
|
| I feel much less bad about him dying penniless now.
| shrubble wrote:
| seems odd that you didn't include the next sentence:
|
| "The FHA, upon authorizing loans for the construction of
| Levittown, included racial covenants in each deed, making
| each Levittown a segregated community."
|
| That is, the FHA included the covenants, not Levitt.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Levitt was absolutely a racist, the FHA eventually found
| the covenants to be illegal discrimination and Levitt sued
| the government and attempted to maintain them all the way
| to the US Supreme Court. Defending William Levitt in 2024
| is a real choice.
| shrubble wrote:
| This might give some background; the FHA is mentioned
| quite often : https://www.history.com/news/housing-
| segregation-new-deal-pr...
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > "arduous, long, and expensive process" of approvals, as well as
| being forced to meet higher (and more expensive) standards for
| things like sidewalks,
|
| I now live in a neighborhood with about 200 homes all built right
| after WWII, all 3 bed/1 bath 1,200 sq. ft. with minor
| variations[0]. No sidewalks! Pedestrian-friendly access is not
| cheap.
|
| [0]by now, many have been modified to add a bath/bedroom
| underlipton wrote:
| You actually don't need sidewalks to be pedestrian-friendly.
| You need some combination of vehicle control measures (slow
| cars down), low density (fewer cars) or high density (shorter
| walk times), and something to walk to (a corner store, a
| transit stop/station, a park). Voila, people walk.
|
| Is it common to mention _why_ certain codes and policies were
| implemented (documentation, essentially)? Because that would
| make it a lot easier to understand if planning dogma was
| reasonable ( "When we didn't have this, people died a lot") or
| not ("We now have mitigation strategies for the reasons people
| died a lot that allow us to step back rigor in this area.").
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| This is true even without somewhere to walk to. Most hilly
| neighborhoods in california lack sidewalks, and tons of
| people are out walking. Dog still needs walked. Its a nice
| day practically every day in california. People get out of
| the house and walk plenty, and the drivers assume there's
| probably going to be something to slow them down around every
| blind turn and act accordingly. People won't be inclined to
| walk if its raining often, snowing, or too humid, moreso than
| the quality of the built environment outside their door I
| imagine.
| jandrese wrote:
| One side effect of not having sidewalks and not being
| connected to public transit is it segregates the neighborhood
| from the poor and especially the homeless. People were
| fleeing cities and were putting up walls around their
| neighborhoods via zoning and car centric design.
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| Not everything is a conspiracy, sidewalks cost a lot of
| money to build and maintain, they cause problems with water
| runoff from roads often necessitating storm drains which
| cost even more money. Car centric design is an obvious
| necessity of being a bedroom community built on inexpensive
| rural land some distance outside of city boundaries.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Having moved from an area _without_ sidewalks to one _with_
| them, I would vote for them to be pretty much everywhere of
| medium population density. It's a lot safer for everyone that
| way.
| aworks wrote:
| I now live in a neighborhood with about 200 homes all built
| right after WWII, all 2 bed/1 bath 1,200 sq. ft. with minor
| variations[0]. Sidewalks!
|
| Next to me is a rich town with no sidewalks and a more country
| ambience except for the even bigger McMansions.
|
| [0]by now, many have been torn down and replaced with two story
| McMansions, to the extent they can fit on the lot.
|
| It's all tradeoffs, I guess...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Doesn't seem like this production method was particularly
| advantageous:
|
| > But even at its early-50s heyday, while Levitt was an efficient
| builder, he wasn't unrivaled. Levitt and Sons sold its early
| Levittown homes for around $10 per square foot, but many other
| builders (none of whom operated at Levitt's scale) sold their
| homes at similar prices.
|
| As property prices have increased, I doubt that the cost of
| building the house is even the major cost factor - it's probably
| mostly property value for the lot.
|
| Edit: It also strikes me that we have something even better today
| - pre-fab or "mobile" homes that can be delivered by truck to a
| suitable plot of land. These haven't solved the housing crisis
| either.
| nimbius wrote:
| home prices also dont scale linearly across their
| subcomponents. the most expensive part of a home is often the
| kitchen and bathroom. once youre on the hook for those costs,
| the tendency is to increase square footage overall in order to
| justify the price at all to the market. the nadier of
| homebuilding during the bush era was the McMansion at around
| 5000-6000 sqft, with a triple garage. not that you had three
| cars, just that the Hummer H2 took most of that real estate.
| most of these either got demolished after 2008 or sit in a
| capital management firms investment portfolio, about as
| attractive as a barrel of radioactive waste.
|
| the other issue is a lot of municipalities (United States in
| particular) mandate and encourage large single family homes
| with outmoded energy and environmental requirements. suburbs
| work by siphoning resources from larger cities, sort of like a
| parasite. in turn they produce and encourage among the worst
| trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns and uninsulated
| attics and windows arent a concern but a feature of their
| housing code malaise as the cities subsidize this largesse.
| bluGill wrote:
| > suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities,
| sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage
| among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns
| and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a
| feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize
| this largesse.
|
| That is the narrative, but it doesn't stand up. Suburbs have
| existed for over 100 years now, and those older ones have
| managed to tear out the streetcars (on hindsight a mistake),
| put in sewer, water, phone, electric, cable tv - most of the
| above list has been replaced several times. They seem like
| they must be siphoning from the larger city until you realize
| that they are not replacing all of that every 20 years and so
| depreciation is not a clue as to the real long term costs.
|
| There are exurbs where you get acres of land, those are
| generally surrounded by farms (at least for the first 30
| years until the suburbs expand out that far - but then a
| developer will buy those acres and divide it for more houses)
| In the suburbs you are looking at more like 10 houses per
| acre - which is not very dense, but still much denser.
|
| The US has good building codes. There is no place where you
| can get by with an uninsulated attic - except in the bad
| parts of big cities where houses from 1880 are still around
| and not upgraded.
|
| edit: uninsulated attic
| telotortium wrote:
| > There is no place where you can get by with an insulated
| attic
|
| Surely you mean "uninsulated attic" here?
| jandrese wrote:
| I admittedly don't tour a lot of homes, but I'm pretty
| sure insulating between the attic space and the living
| space is close to universal in my area. Maybe if you live
| in Southern California or Hawaii and your home doesn't
| have A/C you could get away without it. Especially if you
| have a whole house fan that vents into the attic. But
| even then it is so cheap to blow in insulation that it
| seems foolish to not do it.
| robohoe wrote:
| Yep, it's pretty universal in the US. You insulate the
| attic floor (ceiling of your rooms). This also means that
| you need to keep your attic cold. You do that by letting
| air in from your soffit vents to either ridge or gable
| vent. Ridge vent is arguably better because it runs along
| the right of your roof allowing the air to travel between
| the trusses that holds your roof up.
| bombela wrote:
| Uninsulated attic: do you mean the attic is not part of the
| conditioned space? Or that there is no insulation at all?
|
| Because attics don't appear to be insulated in the bay
| area. There is usually insulation for the ceiling below
| though.
| bluGill wrote:
| there is no insulation between the ceiling. Having the
| attic not part of the conditioned space is normal in the
| us. I wonder if that is what OP meant, if so it is a
| stupid requirement to add.
| philwelch wrote:
| I've seen some convincing arguments (e.g. from Matt
| Risinger on YouTube) that the attic should be inside the
| conditioned space, even though this isn't the normal
| standard. Particularly if you have a slab foundation and
| your HVAC and ducting in the attic. Main reason is that
| if your HVAC ducts are up there, your attic is going to
| get really hot during the summer so you lose a lot of
| energy efficiency in your AC.
| gumby wrote:
| > ... managed to tear out the streetcars (on hindsight a
| mistake)
|
| Having lived in places with OK (SF) or good streetcar
| service (Berlin, which is a nice A/B test case with
| East/West Berlin) I am a huge fan of streetcars.
|
| But my understanding is that in general the streetcars
| _never_ made money in suburban developments. What I
| remember reading (on HN first!) was that they were deployed
| in early (post WWII) suburbs to entice urban people to move
| to a suburbs, but were operated at a loss. When the town
| eventually had to take them over they shut them down.
|
| Does the economics really work out when you don't have
| urban density?
| mantas wrote:
| Pretty much any public transit is operated at a loss very
| few exceptions usually make money off real estate, namely
| stations in prime locations.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| To be fair, I think a lot of the benefits of public
| transit go to people who aren't even using it. When you
| make it easier to go somewhere, more people will go there
| which is good for business at that somewhere. There are
| also the benefits of reduced traffic for those who do end
| up driving.
| stonogo wrote:
| I will never understand why mass transit is held to
| profit-making standards but roads are not.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| roads often were until the Eisenhower administration
| pushed for free national highways, since he was part of a
| military test convoy that only made it across the country
| after 62 days on poor, or nonexistent roads.
| https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-
| documents/...
|
| The highways that are present from before that time in
| the US are tolled, like the turnpikes found in the
| Northeast.
| philwelch wrote:
| A streetcar is just a bus that can't be rerouted or go
| around a road obstruction.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Except it usually also has a dedicated lane. Businesses
| and people also know that the bus line is fixed, so it
| makes all development along it significantly more
| attractive. A bus route can come and go per financial
| quarter.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _A streetcar is just a bus that can 't be rerouted or
| go around a road obstruction._
|
| A single-lane BRT can carry 9000 people, while a single-
| lane streetcar/tram/LRT can carry 18000:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_o
| f_dif...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity
|
| Rail gives you more capacity. Of course if you don't need
| that capacity then the value proposition is questionable:
| perhaps better to start with a BRT and try to get things
| to grow.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Besides the sibling replies, it can also be powered
| better, from direct connection to the electrical grid.
| More efficient than lossy conversions from battery
| storage or combustion fuel, and also saves the weight and
| complexity of those components.
| jewayne wrote:
| > _they were deployed in early (post WWII) suburbs to
| entice urban people to move to a suburbs_
|
| No, the streetcar suburbs were ALL pre-war. Pre-WWI,
| mostly. (See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb ) And the
| streetcar companies were generally private companies that
| operated at a profit -- until they had to compete with
| cars for both riders and space. And this is key, _nobody
| loved the streetcar companies_ , because they had a
| history of gouging commuters. So when those companies got
| in trouble, there was no political will for any kind of
| bailout.
| gumby wrote:
| Thanks, I did angolia HN search while writing my comment
| but couldn't find my reference. Looks like my memory was
| faulty.
| ben_w wrote:
| > the most expensive part of a home is often the kitchen and
| bathroom
|
| Absolutely this.
|
| Back in 2018, mum got dementia and her old home was not one
| the rest of us could really move back into due to commutes,
| so we sold it and bought a new one in a better location. The
| new one wasn't quite big enough, so we converted the existing
| garage into a granny annex with its own mini-kitchen and
| shower.
|
| That took about 6 months.
|
| -
|
| I've also recently had one kitchen installed (4m^2 for an
| apartment I let out), and ordered a second (6 m^2, for a
| house I'm about to move into), and despite both being _tiny_
| and already having the water and electrical connections, they
| were both in the PSEUR 10k range.
| whycome wrote:
| What about it makes it so expensive? Appliances? Storage?
| jandrese wrote:
| Plumbing, cabinets, countertops, appliances, and even the
| flooring. Everything adds up, and quickly.
|
| To be fair there are lots of ways to save money when
| doing a kitchen or bath remodel, but if you're doing the
| remodel in the first place you aren't opting for the
| linoleum floors, plastic countertops, and "builder grade"
| appliances.
| danans wrote:
| > you aren't opting for the linoleum floors
|
| Linoleum floors are amazingly durable and water resistant
| (some were recovered intact from the Titanic), made from
| a renewable source (linseed oil), and quite attractive
| these days.
|
| Perhaps you are thinking of vinyl flooring, which is
| petroleum derived, and the among cheapest types of
| flooring.
| jandrese wrote:
| > and quite attractive these days.
|
| [citation needed]
|
| Kitchen remodels that I've seen pretty much always opt
| for some form of tile, which adds considerably to the
| cost.
| danans wrote:
| > > and quite attractive these days. > [citation needed]
|
| "Attractive" is my opinion, not a fact to be cited, but
| by all means, please form your own:
|
| https://www.forbo.com/flooring/en-
| us/products/marmoleum/marm...
|
| > Kitchen remodels that I've seen pretty much always opt
| for some form of tile, which adds considerably to the
| cost.
|
| Not sure what you are answering on my comment. My point
| is that linoleum isn't a cheap, builder grade material,
| whether in tile or sheet form. So I think we agree?
| throw0101c wrote:
| _Vox_ had a video from a few years ago:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIWKjBMYfBw
| telotortium wrote:
| > suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities,
| sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage
| among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns
| and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a
| feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize
| this largesse.
|
| There's a reason that this narrative, the Strong Towns
| narrative, comes from an organization with "Towns" in the
| name. It was originally noticed in small rural American
| cities (county seats in the rural US and the like), and
| applies fairly well there, since the trend is to build
| suburbs in unincorporated land surrounding the main city to
| avoid city taxes. Suburbs surrounding large American cities
| tend to be incorporated cities of their own, so they raise
| their own taxes and don't steal from the main city.
|
| One major advantage cities used to have in the US but no
| longer do is that it used to be necessary to be annexed to a
| city to get access to things like their water system. That
| was a major driver of cities growing pre-WWII. However, as
| the US got richer and governmental structures became more
| sophisticated, things like water districts not coterminous
| with a city became common. Now there was little reason to
| become annexed to the city in most cases, unless your city or
| county ran into budget troubles, in which case the central
| city probably doesn't want to pay for you either. Lots of
| suburbs remain separate specifically to avoid being subject
| to the city school system as well.
| kiliantics wrote:
| While this might be true on the technical level you
| mention, I don't know the details, I think the general
| pattern holds true even for larger cities. Think of NYC,
| where many suburbanite "bridge and tunnel folks" choose to
| live in Jersey, Long Island, etc. to avoid the higher city
| taxes but have no problem availing of all the city-funded
| infrastructure. They even caused the state governor to
| backtrack on congestion pricing so they could keep driving
| their vehicles in at the expense of NYC residents.
| telotortium wrote:
| Ah, but NYC benefits from suburbanites and other
| outsiders visiting the city for work, deliveries,
| government services, culture and everything else. Sure,
| they have to build infrastructure (very much including
| trains) to service them, but the return is that NYC gets
| to accrue a larger metro area and the associated wealth.
| Also, it's easy to forget that much of NYC's
| infrastructure needs to live in suburban areas due to
| NYC's density. All the warehouses needed to keep NYC fed
| and supplied can't fit inside the city, to name one
| prominent example. Even to bring all the residential
| housing in the metro area into the city itself would make
| the city have to spend an ungodly amount on
| infrastructure to support them inside the city limits.
| The city actually benefits by having other jurisdictions
| be responsible for housing much of the metro area
| population.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| although there the financial argument does apply. Nassau
| County has eye-wateringly high property taxes and the
| highest median income of any county in NY state, and has
| been under state fiscal supervision since the year 2000.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassau_Interim_Finance_Auth
| ori...
| philwelch wrote:
| > with a triple garage. not that you had three cars
|
| There are so many things you can do with garage space other
| than park cars in it though.
| adolph wrote:
| > home prices also dont scale linearly across their
| subcomponents
|
| See also why small cars aren't proportionately less
| expensive.
| tzs wrote:
| > As property prices have increased, I doubt that the cost of
| building the house is even the major cost factor - it's
| probably mostly property value for the lot.
|
| I'm not so sure. Looking at my property tax assessment my 1/5th
| my 1400 sq ft house + 400 sq ft detached garage has an accessed
| value of about 3.5 times that of my 1/5th acre lot.
|
| Accessed values here are based on market values and are
| reasonably close to what I see when I compare to recent sales
| on Redfin or Zillow, so it looks like the total is close. And
| the accessed value of the building is reasonably close to what
| my insurance company says it would cost to rebuild them.
|
| Checking Zillow for lots for sale, it looks like my assessed
| value is reasonable.
|
| I'm in a relatively low density area though. As a check I
| looked at a nearby significant city, Seattle. Comparing lots
| for sale there to nearby similar lots that have houses on them
| it looks like it is similar to where I am in some places and
| very different in others.
|
| It looks like if the lot is zoned for commercial use or for
| tall buildings the price if very high. I saw one that was
| something like 0.38 acres for nearly $7 million. But for lots
| in single family house areas it looked pretty similar to what
| I'm seeing at my place. The lot is around 1/4th or 1/5th the
| value of the property.
| asielen wrote:
| Counter example in coastal California (in basically the West
| Coast version of levitt Town),my tax and insurance assessment
| has my physical house only representing a third of the total
| value. So the lot is with double the structure.
|
| But I'm guessing that is not a common situation across the
| country.
| treis wrote:
| >As property prices have increased, I doubt that the cost of
| building the house is even the major cost factor - it's
| probably mostly property value for the lot.
|
| More like 10-20% depending on a lot of different factors like
| location, cost of house, and size of lot.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah home prices are mainly based on location and sqare
| footage. Condition, age, and amenities factor in but pretty
| much all the houses in a neighborhood sell for similar prices.
| It's definitely possible to over-improve a house and find
| yourself upside down in it at least for a while, which is OK if
| you want to live there and enjoy it but can backfire if you're
| planning to sell soon.
| KevinGlass wrote:
| Keep in mind this is not true in the Northeast. It's very
| common to have multi million dollar homes within spitting
| distance of dilapidated buildings worth only land value. My
| parent's house, while nothing special, sold for a couple
| hundred thousand when they sold in 2019. A few months before
| hand our neighbor sold theirs for over 2 million.
| neutronicus wrote:
| Not sure whether the original contention is _untrue_ in the
| Northeast or just much more rapidly-varying in space.
|
| Where I live (Baltimore) your second sentence is certainly
| true. There are boundaries across which the vacancy rate is
| basically discontinuous. In connected regions surrounded by
| such boundaries I think the original contention pretty much
| holds, though. There are a couple variables (nbeds, nbaths,
| sqft, parking space) that pretty much determine the value
| of the home and going HAM on any improvements they don't
| capture is probably negative ROI.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I doubt that the cost of building the house is even the
| major cost factor - it 's probably mostly property value for
| the lot._
|
| This is certainly the case here in the UK - but I suspect it
| depends on your local laws.
|
| I looked into building my own house and essentially when you
| found a plot of land where you could legally construct a house
| - if a high quality house in that location would be worth
| PS400k and cost PS150k to construct, then the landowner would
| want PS250k.
|
| I do sometimes wonder if it could be politically advantageous
| to separate out the business of _physically constructing_
| houses from the business of capital management, land
| investment, risk management and house price speculation.
|
| If a council _knew_ they could construct 20 families worth of
| good quality social housing for PS100k per house, with no risk
| of cost over-runs or late delivery, and they just had to
| provide the land? That could give them the motivation to find
| the land.
| bluGill wrote:
| > separate out the business of physically constructing houses
| from the business of capital management, land investment,
| risk management and house price speculation.
|
| That is how it mostly works in the US. The developer buys a
| large plot of land and puts in roads, utilities then sells
| the lots to several home builders who build houses on it. The
| home builders contract out the foundation, framing,
| plumbing... to separate companies. while it is common to be
| in more than one part of this, only the smallest developments
| are all one builder (and even then plumbing is contracted
| out).
| nayuki wrote:
| I wouldn't discourage speculation on the price of the
| physical dwelling (i.e. the house). But land speculation is
| corrosive to society, and the way to fix that is with a land
| value tax.
| saalweachter wrote:
| > ... if a high quality house in that location would be worth
| PS400k and cost PS150k to construct, then the landowner would
| want PS250k.
|
| Is that wrong?
|
| If the house+location is worth 400, and the house alone is
| 150, why isn't the location worth 250?
| yojo wrote:
| In my market (Portland, OR), the cost for new construction
| seems to be in the range of $250-350/square foot. A buildable
| lot in a decent neighborhood costs $300k-ish (if you can find
| one).
|
| Assuming you're building a family sized building of 2k+ square
| feet, building costs definitely exceed land costs.
|
| Anecdotally, all the new construction in my neighborhood is top
| of market - builders are selling large houses at $1.3M+ when a
| typical existing house sells for more like $700k. Smaller homes
| would sell faster, but the economics seem to only pencil out
| for larger/higher end.
| whycome wrote:
| Pre fab and mobile could solve the crisis but they are mired in
| all kinds of stupid rules. A living space for a human being
| doesn't need to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
| nostrademons wrote:
| The author previously did a great blog post breaking down the
| overall costs of building new homes:
|
| https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-makes-housing-so...
|
| tl;dr: For _new_ developments, land is only about 20% of the
| total sale price of the home, and this share has been dropping
| since 2005.
|
| However, he also notes an important selection bias to this
| stat: _new homes do not get constructed in areas where land is
| expensive_ , unless it's a custom build for a specific wealthy
| buyer, because developers cannot make a profit building SFHs if
| they spend a majority of the purchase price just buying the
| land. He notes that in wealthy areas like eg. Silicon Valley,
| 80% of the purchase price is land value, but developers are not
| building homes there, which is part of why the purchase price
| is so high.
|
| And sure enough, if you go out to Mountain House or Discovery
| Bay, prices are like 25% of what they are in Silicon Valley.
| But then you have to commute from Mountain House. America's
| housing problem is as much a commuting or job distribution
| problem as housing, but those problems are even harder to fix
| than housing.
| philwelch wrote:
| > Edit: It also strikes me that we have something even better
| today - pre-fab or "mobile" homes that can be delivered by
| truck to a suitable plot of land.
|
| This author did a series about that as well:
| https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-...
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Why would you sell for less than the market price? If I can
| sell something at $10/sq ft and my costs to produce it are $5
| and my competitors are $9 then there is no reason to cut
| prices. We will both profit, I will just make larger profits.
| golergka wrote:
| Because if you cut prices, you'll get a larger share of the
| market. So even if you make less profit per unit, you make a
| larger profit overall. Also, as you scale, some costs stay
| fixed, so your costs per unit might go down as well.
| m463 wrote:
| I kind of wonder if you cut prices, will land prices go up
| to normalize?
| mannyv wrote:
| The fact is, they did revolutionize homebuilding because they
| made people realize that homes were something the mass market
| could afford - if it was done correctly.
|
| Many time the realization of the idea the important thing. Apple
| didn't win the personal computer market, but its ideas defined
| the personal computer. Levitt may not have become a billionaire,
| but his idea that houses were for everyone won.
| bluGill wrote:
| Sears was selling houses from their catalog for many decades
| before this.
| rob74 wrote:
| There _is_ an area where "mass production of housing" became
| widespread, which the article completely overlooks: multi-storey
| apartment buildings. These are arguably better for a city than
| suburban sprawl, but (due to being affordable) got a bad rep too,
| so the building of these larger buildings also shifted back to
| more artisanal processes.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A lot of buyers want a single-family home though. It kind of
| sucks to have neighbors on the other side of the walls and
| ceiling, especially if the construction didn't include really
| good soundproofing.
| bluGill wrote:
| This is especially true in the US where fire code make it
| practically impossible to build a 4 bedroom unit which
| families will want. (it is legal, but if you try to design
| one you discover the code forces a lot of space that you
| can't do anything useful with and so it isn't possible)
| underlipton wrote:
| I've been wondering why we don't see many 4-bedroom, house-
| sized (~2000sqft+) apartment units. It seems to me that
| many who balk at attached units do so because of space
| concerns more than proximity. Can you give more details on
| this?
| bluGill wrote:
| There have to be two stairways in every apartment
| buileing. That in turn forces a hall down the middle.
| Every bedroom needs to have a window. Both of the above
| are written in the blood of those who died in fires.
|
| the result of the above is four bedroom apartments have
| too much space with no purpose. Try to draw any apartment
| and you will quickly see.
| underlipton wrote:
| Oh, okay. I thought it would be something more esoteric.
| Youtuber About Here has done a few videos mentioning the
| two-stairway rule, but he explains it as being mostly a
| barrier to multi-story multi-family buildings being built
| on SFH-sized lots. In any case, he posits that fire
| mitigation strategies developed since the code came into
| effect (mandated sprinkler systems, fire breaks, etc.)
| make it unnecessary. There's also the notion that fire
| escape infrastructure doesn't need to be a whole other
| stairwell. It's one thing I hope to see change in the
| future.
| yencabulator wrote:
| > There have to be two stairways in every apartment
| buileing.
|
| Since you're talking about this you probably know this
| already, but Europe largely does _not_ follow this rule,
| and doesn 't really suffer from horrible fires.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Much of Europe also does not use Wood in construction,
| unlike the US and Canada.
|
| You can't ctrl-c (Western) European designs and
| regulations into North America because the context is
| fairly different.
|
| A lot of Europeans underestimate the cultural and legal
| differences between North America and Western Europe.
| yencabulator wrote:
| The area I was thinking of builds multistory residential
| with wood...
| galdosdi wrote:
| Townhouses
| underlipton wrote:
| The question is, can we, as a country, afford "a lot of
| buyers" wanting a single-family home, as far as construction
| costs, infrastructure costs, replacements costs,
| transportation costs, etc. go? A lot (most?) of suburban
| sprawl was financed. A lot (most?) of it reaches varying
| degrees of insolvency over time. Maybe it's a luxury we can
| only afford if we cut back in other areas. Maybe a lot of the
| deficiencies we see in society are caused in part by how much
| money we shovel into the expensive version of this basic need
| that was chose.
| gist wrote:
| Will note that while not an issue as much today, any 'old
| timer' might remember that you generally couldn't 'blast the
| stereo' (when mom and dad left the house) unless you were in
| a single family home.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Townhouses can be as good as detached or even significantly
| better (due to no windows in between) if built "correctly"
| (good thick brick/concrete party wall in between both houses
| or can be awful just as you fear if they were built shoddily
| all at once with nothing but thin framed drywall. Buyers who
| only insist on detached due to noise would be well served to
| carefully consider rowhouses, but inspecting them closely for
| this.
|
| Rowhouses are a really, really good sweet spot for affordable
| yet private as long as they have the good noise eliminating
| party wall, so I would support the government just mandating
| them being built this way (it doesn't cost that much more,
| but over time by driving out bad rowhouses, it would improve
| their reputation).
|
| Rowhouses enable a density similar to apartment buildings
| while allowing privacy quiet, ownership of a yard and roof
| deck, the ability to tear down and build any way you like,
| and pretty much all the accoutrements of suburban living but
| just a little smaller. It's great to own the land under your
| feet and have no one below or above you.
| throw0101c wrote:
| Production home building does exist (in the US):
|
| * https://www.newhomesource.com/learn/custom-or-production-bui...
|
| * https://www.foxridgehomesbc.com/news-feed/the-differences-be...
|
| * https://www.nahb.org/other/consumer-resources/types-of-home-...
|
| This is in contrast to a "spec" (speculation) home where a
| smaller builder buys land themselves and builds a (single?) house
| and then sells it after (no buyer is lined up before hand).
|
| Someone could also go with a "custom" home, where the eventual
| resident themselves have some land and hire someone (general
| contract (GC)) to build it (or they act a GC themselves and hire
| all the subs (sub-contractors) themselves).
|
| A "production builder" is probably the closest thing to 'factory
| line' assembly/construction. Generally this is what is happening
| when a sub-division is built up; usually a certain percentage of
| the units have a signed purchased agreement and a deposit.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Generally this is what is happening when a sub-division is
| built up; usually a certain percentage of the units have a
| signed purchased agreement and a deposit.
|
| 95% (every developer is different, but this is a good number
| for discussion) of the lots are sold by the developer to a
| builder. They will have a dozen builders and know what each
| wants and so 95% of the lots they know who will buy the lot
| before they can legally talk to the builder who will buy it (if
| the builder is on vacation that week they will wait for them to
| come back). The last 5% is for the few people who think they
| want a custom house with their own builder. The builders will
| sell the majority of houses on their lots as one of their
| designs (often all, but they will custom build on their lot if
| you ask - it costs only a little more), most houses are sold
| before they are completed, but often they are started before
| they have a purchase agreement.
| pmlnr wrote:
| > For decades, people have tried to bring mass production methods
| to housing: to build houses the way we build cars. While no one
| has succeeded
|
| What is this bs? Whoever wrote this has no knowledge of the
| soviet bloc & the "house factories". Come on.
|
| https://www.zupagrafika.com/shop/eastern-blocks
| orbital-decay wrote:
| I was also surprised, but the author clearly had US in mind.
| It's not just former Soviet countries, prefabs for large
| apartment blocks are used all over the world.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| We have a small 4-story condo going into a lot behind us now (and
| for the past 4 months). It's remarkabke how stop and go visible
| progress is, even though the there's people on the site 5 or 6
| days a week.
|
| Two weeks of earth moving. Then prep. Do the foundation in a
| week. Then prep. Framing in a week and a half. Now endless jobs
| of plumbing, electrical, windows, this and that, on and on for
| weeks.
|
| For factory built homes to really be a win, then need a very high
| level of integration. An easy to snap together frame doesn't
| actually save much time or effort. But if there's really finished
| walls with utilities built-in (and also accessible for future
| maintenance) then I can see the effort being potentially useful.
| cloudjanitor wrote:
| > Crews would go to a house, perform their required task (using
| material that had been pre-delivered), then move on to the next
| house. Within the crew, work was further specialized: on the
| washing machine installation crew, William Levitt noted that "one
| man did nothing but fix bolts into the floor, another followed to
| attach the machine," and so on. By breaking down the process into
| repetitive, well-defined steps, workers didn't have to spend time
| figuring out what they should do
|
| Having worked over the years on multiple tract-home projects
| doing labor, framing, stacking (installing the prefab truss
| packages), and layout (snapping lines on slabs marking out where
| everything goes) I can affirm that this IS how its done with
| variance per-project and usually with several floorplans to
| scratch that "novelty" itch for buyers. The homes go up fast with
| each crew sweeping through a few units at a time doing their
| respective parts. It's efficient that way.
|
| > keeping construction on track meant a steady, uninterrupted
| stream of material that arrived at the jobsite exactly when
| needed.
|
| A lot of the materials (especially lumber) are queued up ahead of
| each project starting to ensure that daily flow happens. On jobs
| I worked on as labor my job was to hand deliver any lumber
| resupply requests that were below some efficiency threshold for
| using the heavy off road forklift -- if memory serves me
| correctly, 20 pieces.
|
| The windows and trusses were all pre-fabricated and delivered in
| bundled packages for each floorplan.
| danans wrote:
| > Components like exterior walls and roofs were designed to have
| as simple shapes as possible (no complex hips or wall jogs), and
|
| This is a traditional and eminently sensible approach that has
| been lost in the "McMansion" era.
|
| Simpler roof shapes are not only cheaper to build, but also are
| far easier to deal and insulate, and therefore more energy
| efficient.
|
| Instead, simple energy efficient design is today mostly used in
| some high end custom homes while production homes are often
| overly complex and inefficient, relying on oversized mechanical
| equipment to make up for poor design choices.
|
| > rooms were arranged so that plumbing lines could be placed near
| each other to simplify pipe routing.
|
| There's a simple method to quantify this known as the "hot water
| rectangle". On the house's overhead view, draw the smallest
| rectangle that includes all the hot water faucets and the water
| heater.
|
| The size of the rectangle affects build cost, efficiency, and hot
| water delivery performance. In many large houses there is no
| consideration for this at the design stage, so they end up using
| (wasteful) hot water recirculation pumps.
|
| 1. https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/the-hot-
| water-r...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There is _a lot_ of overhead when it comes to building out a
| factory supply chain for scalable parts, because factories are
| large sunk capex costs, particularly for large items. And
| manufactured housing often does not make sense because if you
| manufacture whole rooms, unless you get special vehicles and
| delivery permits you are limited to the dimensions of a
| container, and there 's a nonzero chance you show up to the
| site and you have to do some fiddling anyways to get it to
| actually fit. Plus people are not actually looking for
| identical room sizes.
|
| Probably the closest we'll ever get is to standardization of
| parts like the 2x4 or some of the insulation panels that exist
| nowadays, since you can flatpack those into a truck and make
| adjustments on the fly.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _And manufactured housing often does not make sense because
| if you manufacture whole rooms, unless you get special
| vehicles and delivery permits you are limited to the
| dimensions of a container_ [...]
|
| See perhaps this student housing project in Norway:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4N4mVITd5U
|
| Entire bathroom shipped as one unit. The rest is panelized.
|
| > _Probably the closest we 'll ever get is to standardization
| of parts like the 2x4 or some of the insulation panels that
| exist nowadays, since you can flatpack those into a truck and
| make adjustments on the fly._
|
| NS Builders have a couple of videos on panelized buildings:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeHkVeJO6PE
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3QZVG-18E
|
| Matt Ferrell of _Undecided_ made his home that way:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-RTlbv84T8
|
| One can also do (US) traditional stick building with pre-cut
| lumber:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2FdAdxjSpw&list=PLDYh81z-R
| h...
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| There are prefab firms that make a 2 or 3 story structural
| column with the fusebox, water heater, vertical plumbing
| and wiring conduits, drains, sink toilet and shower
| hookups, and spools of wiring to be pulled through walls.
| Almost no electrical and plumbing work needs to be done
| onsite.
| danans wrote:
| Did you reply to the wrong comment? I wasn't discussing
| manufactured homes at all, but rather the benefits of simple
| building geometries.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Ah, perhaps I filled in a context that wasn't there since
| the parent article was about Levittown's particular home
| manufacturing methods.
|
| Simpler is better. Though where I am now every place is a
| flat-ish roof deck which is simple but comes with its own
| problems.
| galdosdi wrote:
| > Plus people are not actually looking for identical room
| sizes.
|
| Times are changing.
|
| Gen Z will happily take it. What they're looking for is just
| any housing they can afford at all. If cheap effeciency can
| make a small detached bungalow with a real yard and a parking
| space affordable, they'll be happy to put up with minor taste
| quibbles like that. The alternative is roommate packed
| apartments, mom's basement, or homes far from any jobs to pay
| for the homes with.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Eh yes and no. The fad of container homes was a quick flash
| in the pan as it turned out they were actually a terrible
| size to actually live in; not quite large enough to put
| furniture in and still have walking space.
|
| Because factories for rooms are actually specialized for
| the actual room, it's not cheap once you consider the
| startup cost of a factory. All the components of a room are
| increasingly panelized and mass manufactured anyways,
| making building large portions of buildings similar to
| building out of Legos or IKEA flatpack, which is good
| enough for labor reduction.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Is there a reason for the rectangle, or is that the idea just
| for simplicity? Like, "smallest convex polygon" might be
| slightly better. I don't see any reason why the borders would
| need to be rectangular. Also for any shape there's no reason it
| would need to be axis-aligned with the exterior perimeter
| (which itself might be far from rectangular.)
| throw0101c wrote:
| It's a very simple rule of thumb that someone can check out
| in drafting software (or even paper blueprints). It's
| applicable in one-story domiciles (apartments, bungalows) and
| multi-story homes.
|
| Gary Klein, the fellow who thought of it, has been consulting
| on (hot) water issues for a few decades now, and so has tried
| to whittle down his advice to the simplest thing that (a)
| people will understand, (b) be actually implementable. That's
| generally is: _make all the hot faucets as close to the hot
| water source as possible_. The rule is a metric for that.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| All furniture, joinery, etc. is designed with right angles in
| mind. Creating non-right angles is a great way to have
| unusable nooks and crannies.
|
| And a rectangle only needs four sides; a triangle has non-
| right angles, and any more complex shape needs more joints.
| snowfield wrote:
| Purpose built furniture looks great regardless though.
| Although expensive
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _This is a traditional and eminently sensible approach that
| has been lost in the "McMansion" era._
|
| Kate Wagner (of McMansionHell blog fame) gives a pretty good
| definition of what a McMansion Is:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68c2M4r9oQg
|
| > _Simpler roof shapes are not only cheaper to build, but also
| are far easier to deal and insulate, and therefore more energy
| efficient._
|
| And most importantly probably deals with water the best: fewer
| valleys mean fewer places where water is concentrated. Also,
| generally speaking, the more that overhangs jut out the better.
| adolph wrote:
| Another homebuilding revolution that didn't happen was Edison's
| concrete homes.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38057265
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/thomas-edisons-concrete-...
| paradox460 wrote:
| Same reason Lustron homes are little more than historical
| novelties
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