How luxury housing becomes affordable

cityobservatory.org

21 points·oftenwrong··3 comments

After living in Edinburgh in one of the very nice & ubiquitous 100 y.o. plus tenement flats, I've often wondered about the long-term impact of housing durability on affordability.

Lately a lot of the new student "luxury" housing near in my former college town have atrocious quality. Super-thin spitboard doors that one can break with one kick, little noise dampening, leather couches that are cracked/brittle after a year of use.

Like with car brands, you can get a Rolls Royce i.e. "real" luxury, or the simulation of luxury i.e. an Infiniti or Buick. Not to say those other types of luxury aren't bad, however it's important to make the distinction.

I wonder if using wood (2x4's, OSB) as a structural material has a negative impact on long-term durability. In North America, virtually all residential single-family construction is wood-frame, which is unusual compared to most other countries.

Masonry, insulating concrete forms (ICF), and poured concrete have superior fire-resistance, insulating properties (thermal and acoustic), and strength--and no need to worry about termites.

I don't fully understand why wood-frame construction still dominates, even in the "luxury" segment, but I think it's related to strong consumer preference for large homes. Given a fixed budget, you can build a larger house using wood compared to almost any other material (factoring in labor, e.g. 'compressed earth' construction uses cheap material and more labor). But the preference for larger homes doesn't explain why wood-framing is so popular in areas where construction costs are very low relative to land-value.

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