There Are No Dream Homes
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My wife and I considered building a large 6,000 sqft dream home on acreage but at the end of the day we realized that space wasn’t what made a home a “dream home” but instead utility of the space and the ability for it to support our lifestyle and kids.
Having toured many multi-million dollar homes and having interviewed several architects we now view the opulance and oversized rooms as a liability in the “upkeep” column of our family’s time balance sheet.
We decided to stay in our upper-middle class home and renovate it with things that require less upkeep so we can do more living in the house and less maintaining.
This house was built in 1981 and basically had zero renovations. I can't imagine trying to remodel a 5000 sqft house after this! I think a lot of these giant McMansion neighborhoods will fall into disrepair after a few decades unless they're in a place where the property values and wages are constantly going up.
I probably have more of an epicurean outlook than most, but surplus stuff just feels like more stuff for me to worry about.
Plus it takes ages to even get around in really big houses and you're always shouting down the hallway to find where someone is.
In fact:
> Once you've got enough rooms to cover everyone's needs (kids don't have to share a room etc)
This would have been considered opulence 40 years ago.
Although I know it’s hard to even find newer homes without the stupid 2 story foyer and high ceilings, so can’t put all the blames on homeowners who can’t afford to custom build.
I'd love to see the user personas that went into the development process. I don't see my needs in there.
A local builder sells a two story model with ZERO bedrooms on the ground floor. If someone is elderly or disabled, or just breaks their leg and needs to be in a wheelchair for two months, the house is basically unlivable.
The number of designs I've seen which devote hundreds of square feet to seperate formal and informal dining areas, and near room-sized alcoves (not isolated enough to make into an office, too big to be a hallway), while still having 10x10 bedrooms, miniscule closets, and claustrophobic bathrooms baffles me.
For better or worse, that has been typical of multi-story houses for over a century.
The idea of a separate formal and informal dining room was wasteful. We turned one into an office.
Here’s an article about McMansion depreciation: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/mcmansions-define-ugly-in-a-new-...
What’s interesting is that the valuations mentioned for McMansions are... like an order of magnitude cheaper then the multimillion dollar estates mentioned in this piece.
So... I looked for the WSJ article this was really a response to: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-growing-problem-in-real-estat...
What is actually concerning was this statement:
> Boomers currently own 32 million homes and account for two out of five homeowners in the country.
So... given that boomers are less than 10% of the population but are 40% of the homeowners, I suspect there will be a strong downward pressure long term, since, well, all these boomers are probably in their home before “the home”.
The average Greek person is not wealthy, but the value of these homes is not insignificant either. Mostly, Greek people live like they're poor, even though -- in theory -- their real estate holdings are worth a small fortune.
I met a Greek lady with 4 houses, one of which was on a super desirable island now -- worth well over $2.5M. She can only afford to visit the island once a year for a week, but she refuses to sell the house. Not because she's speculating on the value continuing to increase. Just purely for sentiment.
People are strangely attached to homes. And also (most) people see homes as good investments. Recent history is really working as confirmation biases for that. But long-term, objectively, housing has been an okay investment.
I just can't see all that collapsing because of a little downward pressure. Especially when it DEFINITELY hasn't happened in most aging countries.
One could argue that it has happened in Japan. But Japan's real estate boom in the 90s was truly unbelievable.
So it's really hard to say if house prices have gone down in real terms -- or if they were just so ridiculously insane in the 90s that it had a long-lasting anchor effect on prices ever since.
You mean the 80s. The 90s saw a real estate price collapse in Japan.
Or the kids realise this, sell the homes, and you still have the downward pressure on prices. (probably more so, as they'll want a quick sale)
The kids generally have houses, they don't need/want an extra house. Usually there are multiple kids involved, so unless it is distinctly given to one child, it becomes problematic to do anything other than just turn it into a liquid asset and split the proceeds.
This may vary by region, but at least in the Northeast, property taxes are very expensive. Keeping a house around as a spare is just too big of a burden. In the age of AirBnb, there may be some other options.
In all cases I have seen thus far amongst family/friends, the house gets sold.
I just looked up home ownership rates by age group: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf
The only group that doesn't seem to have declined in the last 15 years is 65 and over.
This is where I think the large size of the US and the tons of domestic migration won't really make inheriting a home as common as you would find in most of the world.
Anecdotally, I know nobody that I went to high school with that is remotely close to our home town - we all left. This is roughly 50 people, and I'm sure that all of them, like me, would not think twice about selling any property inherited from parents.
Citation needed... I think they gotta be more than 20%.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/millennials...
Still, less than 10% of the US population owns 40% of the homes.
And the reply on McMansion Hell[0]:
> we did it folks #i didnt mean to crash the boomer economy
[0]: http://mcmansionhell.com/post/183614671911/we-did-it-folks
And yes, some people guess wrong.
But that article thinks everyone guesses wrong.
I think this goes doubly so online, where the loudest voices dominate.
My personal experience is people are most likely to enjoy a home that’s easy for them to afford as it never feels like a burden.
People "guess wrong" about the perception vs. reality of their self all the time over plenty of things, and a lot of it results in them buying junk they rarely or never use. ("I'm totally going to learn how to shred on that ukulele.") Houses are just special given how royally screwed you are when you're trying to get some liquidity out of a several-million dollar asset you stupidly bought because you thought it matched your fantasy lifestyle and realized how wrong you were after it was too late. That said, I don't feel too sorry for these people, but I think it's definitely worth trying to teach others not to make the same mistake.
An example of an alternative approach championed by a lot of people who want to build houses situated deeply into nature is that they'll live for the first 12 months out of a tent, shifting it to various places on their property. By doing this, they get a feel for how the sun behaves, where the wind moves, where animals like to roam etc. and make a much more informed decision of where to site the house. This is much more akin to the MVP/sprint model of building houses.
It is not as far as I can tell arguing that every possible “dream house” falls into that category.
Personally I can’t imagine ever wanting a house of >2000 square feet, which would already comfortably fit a large family. But I have several friends with giant mansions full of rooms they never use.
HBL makes the argument that all buildings will intrinsically change in need and purpose over time and “great” buildings are those who have adaptability built in. He points to Building 20 at MIT as an example of a building that was accidentally built to be adaptable and generally ignored within architecture circles but beloved by the building inhabitants.
Our (me plus wife and kid) previous apartment was 900sqft, and our house is now 800sqft, and while a bit tight, this works pretty well for our family.
I like the aesthetics of big homes, but practically, I just don’t need all that space. We spend pretty much 80% of the time in the same 250sqft (living).
I would love me a garage/workspace though.
Nothing needs to be huge, but I think a door is a pretty big deal.
Personally, have the extra space is nice up to a point. I'd say 1200 sq ft is good for a family of 3. Can you make it work with less? Of course, but the extra space has a lot of utility.
Sigh.
And then your daughter becomes a teenager. (I'm in 1100 sq ft. But that was intentional, so we just have to deal with it now. She'll be in college next year, so there's light at the end of the tunnel.)
I’m not sure it would work with 2 of them, but it will probably be fine with one.
I want some land so I can plant fruit and nut trees, and build a couple raised garden beds.
> Our (me plus wife and kid) previous apartment was 900sqft, and our house is now 800sqft, and while a bit tight, this works pretty well for our family.
I couldn't do that. I lived alone in 980sf, and that felt tight. Granted, I turned my second bedroom into an electronics/computer lab and own a lot of books, but on top of that the kitchen was tiny and storage for clothes, linens, and household items seriously lacking.
We had a purpose for each room of the house.
- the formal dining room was closed off and turned into an office.
- guest bedroom downstairs with a full attached bath. Our parents are getting older and it’s just nice to have a separate bedroom downstairs for even “temporary” disabilities.
- of course the master bedroom for my wife
- bedroom for our teenage son
- bedroom turned into a home gym with weights, a weight bench, treadmill, elliptical, and soon stationary bike
- bedroom for my wife to have as a personal study and a game room when my son’s friends come over.
We stayed well under budget, and chose to move about 10 miles out and bought a house for half the price with still good schools.
Finally, we had each room wired for gigabit Ethernet.
It's somewhat insane that houses are automatically assumed to appreciate. They have lived in the house for a decade, and it's no longer brand new. Why should the purchase price now be half a million more than the construction costs were?
There’s always significant uncertainty in construction: timelines, permits, cost overruns, contractor vetting, etc. In addition, two years you spend building are two years of rents that you don’t collect. As a result, there’s usually a premium, sometimes a significant one, for having something already built.
The amount of the premium varies depending on how those factors interrelate in a given market, and of course speculative appetite in that market also comes into play.
Hell, lots of times newer homes are more shoddily built then older ones.
I can guarantee you that electric wiring from 1970 is something different than that from 2010 (personal experience, sockets slowly failing).
Old apartment/house is definitely an additional maintenance cost and possibly tons of other inconveniences, and should be priced accordingly.
Places that don’t have many high income people competing don’t see this kind of appreciation.
What about the big house is owning you? Mortgage and maintenance?
So looking out from that position, people interested in another 1000sqft are usually thinking of hobbies, exercise equipment, shop space, media room, etc.
But it’s just the feeling of freedom that I like about it. My wife can cook things without us worrying about the mess. I can spend my free time as actual free time, instead of worrying about household chores.
That’s nothing in any higher cost of living city, which is where most high income people want to be. That kind of labor will probably easily run you $200/day or more.
Otherwise they would know better :D
1600 sqft sounds relativly big to me and would double the space we have. But size is less important than: - Having light! Srsly like natural brightness - Good connection to work / city live - nice garden with a view - smart building design like having a extra room for washing cloth, power sockets which are well positioned etc.
That there are some who have regrets doesn’t invalidate that fact.
It was 68,000 Euro and is near the train, on a few acres of loamy land, and has a few outbuildings I can use for woodworking, etc.
At that price I can treat it as a thing I use, and not some stupid investment. It's cheap enough that if I want to move I don't have to chain together mortgages, etc.
That's all I ever wanted in a home, really. Nobody seems to be building that now, aside from the tiny homes movement, and those are maybe a bit _too_ small (I have a kid).
It's interesting to think of the future scenarios that would cause each outcome to play out:
1. Housing continues to skyrocket beyond any reasonable consumer inflation expectation. The only way to "get in" is to go in with one or more other families.
2. Housing prices begin to fall like so many prices throughout the rest of the economy. Nobody wants to take the risk of being stuck with an overly expensive thing they can't unload.
Never underestimate the ability of people to ignore everything else, when property price increases are at the forefront of their minds.
The idea of them going back to nature is not that far fetched. A lot of well off Detroit residents built large homes a long time ago. Most of them are in the loving embrace of Mother Nature right now.
But it's also possible that someone comes in, bulldozes the whole thing, and then builds something else entirely.
Anything could happen.
A 4+ story vertical structure with 1-2 rooms per level, leaving more ground space for a garden/hedge maze etc.
I wonder if more of us introverted techy types would prefer that too.
Would it be impractical?
At least it does for me.
You slowly age. Climbing stairs is not as easy as it used to be. Whenever you want to talk to your spouse, they're guaranteed to be 2 floors away.
It's a dream home, but I'm not sure it'll survive reality.
it it a proper concern for elderly/disabled, but for young what you describe sounds more like an advantage
> https://thetinylife.com/what-is-the-tiny-house-movement/
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_house_movement
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tiny+house+movement&t=ffab&atb=v15...
I cannot possibly imagine how much useless crap you can accumulate in a 2,000 ft home, let alone 7,000 or larger! Why in the world would you want all that space?
The Bay Area's finest example of outliving it is Filoli. It's a estate off 280 near 92. More than one square mile, in Silicon Valley. At the end, it was occupied by one woman in her 90s, along with a large staff.
(It's now open to the public. There are tours and a cafe. The house is big, but not monumental, like San Simeon. Mostly the place is gardens and pastures.)
I was momentarily outraged, until I found it on a map. The San Andreas fault runs _right_ through the center of the property. Makes me glad it's basically a garden now and not a housing development =)
Also a thing I've thought about, which is echoed in the opening bits of the article, is that many people will buy or build a starter home, and then over time build it up into something much fancier or larger. At which point, it isn't really a starter home anymore, and who is going to want to buy such a thing when they could just do the same over time except in the style they actually wanted?
There is little more I hate in the world than articles that have a full sentence as some header text and then repeat that exact sentence almost immediately in the paragraph following the header text.
> A house is an investment, except it’s also a necessity, and it’s also an expression of status, which together make the investment wildly expensive and illiquid.
This sentence exists twice. Why include it as a header? The sentence is long enough and this isn't poetry, so it is fair to assume the repetition wasn't for any sort of artistic effect. Just leave that sentence within the context of the paragraph where it's written. Maybe even bold it, but the reader shouldn't have to look at those words twice.
I can maybe understand it when it's a quote from another person, under some arbitrarily small word count, like ten. I assume there are some rules in journalistic writing that allows for that style, such that it's normalized to the reader.
I agree that as someone who is passively looking and going to the occasional open house, my "dream home" is one that is 1) in an urban center 2) does not require a car to get to/from 3) is priced so that the mortgage payment is comfortably below what I expect to earn 4) has a good amount of natural light 5) small enough to easily maintain and 6) the small space is functional.
Basically, I just want a small, functional, well-designed space in an urban center within budget.