Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

I just want to have a small house with a little yard. Do they still get built?

Yep, at least around the DC Metro area. With Cyber Command and all the associated cyber stuff bringing in tons of people, most new housing developments I've seen are almost as dense as town homes in Baltimore, there's just a little more space between the sides of the houses, and there is usually a small front yard instead of being right up against the sidewalk.

Essentially no. Luckily tons were built in the last century so they still exist.

No, and they typically aren't allowed by modern zoning restrictions. I'm in a house from the mid-1910s and my lot is a third of what is required for new construction in other parts of the city.

That's just nuts. We should go for more density, not less.

Would you enjoy picking somewhere nice to live, then it becomes crowded with a bunch of denser living structures, with all the extra noise, congestion, crime (simply by virtue of more people being present), etc. completely changing the character of the location?

I prefer that over endless sprawl. From a practical point of view it would also allow more people to own a house.

We can't just turn every single locality into a Manhattan. Nice areas with sparse, bigger houses should be able to elect to stay that way.

The "sprawl" everyone complains about in SF is (from the last article I saw) a bunch of super tiny square houses with tiny lawns packed into a giant grid. Honestly seems like an alright compromise to me between huge apartment buildings and big lawns for a city-like area, compromised too far in the direction of density even.

I honestly don't see the big deal about some areas like SF being able to exist where you can live in a city and actually have a nice-ish single family house in commute distance of your city-job, even if it prices some people out. It's one city in a country of 300 million.

> We can't just turn every single locality into a Manhattan. Nice areas with sparse, bigger houses should be able to elect to stay that way.

Only if property owners want that. If a property owner wants to built a 4-story condo on their property, they should be allowed to do so. If their neighbors want the property to remain a single family home, they should buy out the property owner.

I mean if you try to build a condo on single family house zone, you will generate too much waste, and water usage for the land if it is not connected to city water and sewage. You simply wouldnt have enough land to naturally draw water from a well, or put sewage water back into the ground.

And if it is, the infrastructre may still not be developed for allowing 10x the number of people as live in a typical family house.

I’m in an area zoned in the 1930s, and my lot is 1/5 the minimum required for this zoning elsewhere in the county. It’s fantastic.

Depends in location. Most builders want bigger jobs: it's better to build 5 big houses than 10 little ones. We were looking at building a smallish house and the builder thought we were crazy for wanting a 1300sqft cottage. Ended up being only slightly cheaper than a 2000sqft place. What builders in the us don't get that some in europe do is some people prefer quality over quantity.

It seems less and less prevalent. Most of the modest 1-story homes in my hometown have been steadily replaced over the past 10-15 years with obnoxious McMansions with very little space in between them. Square footage is the cheapest thing you can add to a house's up-front cost (key emphasis on "up-front") and fetches large premiums on home value. Just the reality of the market I guess.

Yeah, they’re all over Palo Alto. One can be yours for the modest sum of ~$2.5M.

yes they do. in Dallas i’m next to a 900 home development. many of the homes are 1 story with a yard only big enough for maybe keeping a dog

They do not. In fact, in my city, one-story houses with less than 2000 sq. ft. sometimes sell at a premium.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com