Why are American houses so flimsy and poorly built? | Hacker News Reader

Why are American houses so flimsy and poorly built?

dengarden.com

71 pointsneverminder162 comments

"In the United States a 50-year-old house is considered old and is torn down to make room for another flimsy yet expensive structure."

This is terribly written.

Go to a city like San Francisco where there are thousands of houses over 100 years old who are still holding up well. Go to Boston and you can find ones even older. Hell, even in new cities like LA there are plenty of 1950's built houses that make up most of the housing stock. They aren't build "well" by modern standard (no shit), but they are built very solidly.

There is nothing about a wood frame house that makes it intrinsically "flimsy" or "poorly built".

Go and check out the concrete and brick houses in Asia and tell me that those are intrinsically "well built".

I think he’s referring to houses built post-war till now. Read the article.

post-war housing quality was pretty good in the 50s, and started going downhill (the inverse to rising inflation) in the late 60s - 70s. Again, just like inflation, the quality bottomed out in the 80s and things started getting better. Houses built after the 2000s are not terrible. The US suffers from lack of skilled labor as starting in the post-war period we decimated our trade school system -- everyone wants to go to college and be a professional, and we hate tracking. So we are cranking out lots of people with no skills. That really hurts in construction, civil engineering, electrical engineering, machinists, etc. What helps is mass produced pre-fab components that can at least provide some consistent quality and can be put together by low-skilled workers. That has helped raise quality.

Bigger buildings - condos, etc -- are a different story because modern buildings have a lot of tech that is built to spec. It often doesn't work out. Think of it like a big software project -- there are disasters and marvels.

But the idea that homes only last 50 years and are then torn down is absurd. Not sure whether the author has never been to the US or they are intentionally trolling. Half of all US houses were built before 1980 (40 years old). 40% were built before 1970.

> Half of all US houses were built before 1980 (70 years old). 40% were built before 1970.

Some typos there, might want to fix

thanks (fixed!)

If you look at the airplanes that are coming back, you can see clearly that the enemy is targeting our wings

Nice.

It’s not survivorship bias when there are vast swaths of US cities with century old wood housing.

If I had said “SF has a few examples of 100+ old homes” then sure.

You seem to be suggesting that the US has vast swathes of well-built old houses, and agreeing that what's currently built is flimsy. Is that a correct reading? If so, do you have any opinion about why what's currently built is so flimsy? The flimsiness is even more puzzling if almost everyone (among both builders and buyers) has experience with solidly built houses.

The swaths of well built, wood frame, old homes is just evidence that the author’s premise that wooden houses are intrinsically flimsy (defined as “dont last long”) is wrong.

Wood houses can be well built or not well built.

And I would argue that flimsy houses aren’t a recent phenomenon. As others pointed out, the crappy houses built 100 years ago were likely torn down.

And why are flimsy houses built? My guess is mostly cost savings either intentionally (that’s all the buyer can afford) or surreptitiously (builder cuts corners to increase profit).

And as I mentioned in another article you can have poorly built concrete buildings as well.

It’s not that one is superior to the other overall, it’s all trade offs.

I think maybe you're bar is a bit low for your comparison. I just recently moved into a old house in Sweden(ca 1845) and apart from some things being a bit dated, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the house!

That's not too say I haven't got a lot of work to do, I'm adding some extra insulation to keep heating costs down, redoing the kitchen cause I don't like the way it was done previously(from the looks of it, someone redid the kitchen probably in the 1980s or so, and with poor taste at that!), And of course, those negligent builders back in the 19th century didn't think to install fiber, so I have to fix that situation...

But hey, I've got 3 layers of brick that's been standing for nearly 180 years! The foundation is made from natural stone(is that the correct term in English?) and there isn't a crack in it!

Your comparison with cheap Asian houses is unfair since they probably don't have the money to do a better job, but Americans can't very well use that excuse!

San Francisco does not have buildings over 100 years old because the city was destroyed by an earthquake 100 years ago. Your brick house also would have been destroyed by that earthquake.

Plenty of homes survived the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, the destruction was not absolute.

The whole west coast is full of old brick houses; which were either knocked down, or have been retrofitted and reinforced. Because brick structures are inherently unstable in earthquakes.

I live in a ~150 year old wood house that has no deeper issues and in the city nearby there are houses way over 500 years old standing strong.

By our standard the sentence above doesn't sound to wrong.

Intrinsically, concrete makes for a far better sound barrier. I'd rather not hear my neighbors, and it turns out using materials that aren't tissue paper really helps! If good fences make good neighbors, sound proofed walls makes it not suck to live on top of someone else.

Ironically, you can make a better sound isolation barrier using modern building materials than you can with concrete. Mass-Air-Mass. Basically, with a normal “stick built” wall with two layers of sheetrock on both sides, you can get upwards of 60Db of reduction. Make it two decoupled walls (no sheetrock between, mind you), and you can get 80Db. That’s enough to play the drums without waking a baby in the next room.

Oh, and normal concrete walls are outright dangerous in an earthquake of any magnitude. They’re too stiff.

Fill those voids with closed-cell spray foam, and you get even better sound (and heat) insulation.

Except the cells are formed with rigid members which transmit sound (and heat) quite efficiently. Sound isolation can't just be done with mass. There has to be a decoupling you can't get with a brick wall alone.

Even advanced heating/cooling efficiency techniques with wood framed houses involve some form of isolation - no single material will exist all the way through the wall. They're decoupled with several inches of foam. Even modern studs are being built in a way to minimize the ability for them to transfer heat (Tstuds).

Having lived in concrete buildings in Asia, they do an amazing job of transmitting construction noise.

Someone drilling into concrete 2 floors above can easily be heard while in a wood frame building you wouldn’t hear it.

Two things.

One, houses are built out of the most abundant/cheap materials. In some places this is literally concrete. In North America it is lumber.

Two. The construction cost of the house follows that of the land. Cheap land, cheap construction (relatively).

An anecdote. This has happened twice now with different visitors from my old country (Germany). I tour them around and show them exactly how houses are built here. In one case, the construction was so shoddy that there were holes in the exterior sheathing where they had slipped when cutting something with a chainsaw. In the other case, the construction was, by North American standards, quite good and solid, and the people building the house were happy to let us tour inside (two of my visitors in this case were construction carpenters).

In both cases, after showing them how houses are built, I then took them to a model home. And in both cases they were absolutely floored by the luxury and wished they could have a house like that in Germany. Houses there may be solidly built, but they don't have, say, a huge basement with only minimal support columns and 8+ foot ceiling. Or a master bedroom with luxurious ensuite, walk-in closets and nearby laundry room. Or a family room with 12 foot high windows. When everything is tradition bound, flights of fancy like this don't happen at this price point.

> One, houses are built out of the most abundant/cheap materials. In some places this is literally concrete. In North America it is lumber.

By that standard all Austrian houses should be made mostly from lumber but they are not. While lumber plays a huge role in the _design_ of buildings here, they are still built rigidly with a lot of concrete etc.

Even the lowest standard house in Austria overranks even well built American houses for reasons that make little sense to me. I can only assume it's a fact of hitting a local economic maximum of what people are willing to pay for.

Two things struck me when watching documentaries about US big houses: the very narrow corridors (as a rule, two people could barely cross) and the minimalist bathrooms (rarely a bathtub and when yes then a tiny one for one single small person). And I was watching villas with at least 6 rooms, pools... Could you comment on why those particularities?

> The construction cost of the house follows that of the land. Cheap land, cheap construction (relatively).

Japan would be the counterexample to this theory. Very expensive land, yet houses are built ultra-cheaply

> One, houses are built out of the most abundant/cheap materials. In some places this is literally concrete. In North America it is lumber.

Material doesn’t necessarily dictate whether something is cheap or flimsy. Lumber is the cheapest material in lots of places. A wooden frame house built by 2x4” timber with plywood + timber cladding outside and simple drywall inside is cheap and flimsy. A wooden frame wall with 10” timber is neither cheap or flimsy.

How long something lasts is also a matter of construction standards and attention to detail e.g whether the plastic moisture barriers are perfectly sealed preventing condensation in the construction, or if it’s allowed to be punctured e.g by electrical wiring.

I only noticed the difference while traveling abroad. I assume like most things the builders are customer driven and clearly there is no market for it in many places??? Or that we are relatively peripatetic and mobile compared to other parts of the world.

Another weird observation is the flush performance of European toilets. They don't clog up:

https://www.hunker.com/13400906/what-is-the-difference-betwe...

Flush Performance Most American toilets use siphoning or sucking action to forcibly draw the used toilet water through toilet trap and into the attached sewer plumbing. The neck of the toilet hole is small enough to facilitate suction, a design choice that often necessitates the use of a plunger in the case of a clog. European toilets typically utilize a washdown flushing system in which water inside the toilet is forced out through water flowing from the rim of the bowl. The neck of the toilet hole tends to be larger so there is less of a chance of clogs, but the bowls may require more frequent cleaning from any leftover residue.

Its one of those weird reddit comments that the bots always make in default subs "Always have a plunger", "always buy a plunger"

I always wondered about this... I'm 31 and have never needed to use one, i assumed it must be super common in another English speaking country but never knew why.

That was something that confused me long time when growing up.

First I saw it mentioned in passing some American sitcoms, maybe in some movie, then in Usenet discussions etc. Combined with the "American style portions" in some restaurants, I developed a sense of awe when thinking Americans routinely taking shits that clog the toilet. So many, so big shits that their toilets have plungers.

> Another weird observation is the flush performance of European toilets. They don't clog up:

They also don't flush. It's one of the most frustrating things of living in the UK as an expat. 2-3 flushes for solid waste is almost mandatory, and the issue always crops up at someone else's house.

I have never found this even with heavy workloads. There are usually two buttons, one for narrow bandwidth, and another for full-spectrum flushing.

Gotta press the right button, not the water-saving button.

An aspect of this is also that the build quality of UK homes is worse (IMO) than mainland europe. Doubly so if you buy a period house - expect everything to be "that'll do". Door is not entirely flush with the frame? That'll do.

In the capital, even homes above 2mln pounds will have questionable quality. They seem American in this sense. You really need to shell out for proper attention to detail.

Our new home build quality is definitely worse, but on period houses.... what would you expect?

1800s building materials aren't as stable as modern ones and things tend to shift over time, and indeed many old buildings are poorly built - especially by modern standards. Even the foundations don't run very deep, and London has a clay rich soil, meaning that some minor foundation movement is not uncommon in older houses. Damp is usually more of an issue, so anything wood can potentially swell a bit during a wet period, leading to things becoming slightly out of alignment over time.

Often the only way to fix stuff like that would be extensive renovations which isn't really worth it for very minor visible problems. You can tighten stuff up, rehang etc. but it will usually slowly move again over time.

Also a £2 million house in London can be just for a shell in need of renovation in some areas - you're just paying for the land and location.

It's frustrating because even if you were willing to pay more for better quality the market doesn't provide what you want.

Never happens to me, even when suffering from major gut issues.

Three possibilities to consider...

1. You're pressing the water saving button (piss flush)

2. You're not holding it down for long enough for it to catch - it can take even a second in some poorly maintained toilets for it to flush properly.

3. Your diet could do with some _serious_ improvement...

That being said, I'd rather having to double flush than deal with clogs as when visiting the US.

I suspect American-style sucking toilets work well when your shit floats. When the bowl empties then refills, anything floating left with the water.

The European-style flush relies on buoyant waste getting carried away by the mass of water - which isn't the most reliable strategy.

This is merely the European-style toilets helpfully reminding you that a visit to your GP might be in order :)

It depends on the actual toilet bowl (the brand). Some are much better then others at flushing.

This is probably operator error. Assuming it's a modern pushbutton style one, make sure you're pressing the right button. Depending on the brokenness of the mechanism, you may have to hold for a second, or even the whole flush.

> I assume like most things the builders are customer driven and clearly there is no market for it in many places?

I'm no expert but I understand it's regulation-driven. The building codes for European houses are much stricter and specify materials, etc.

Story 1: And it's weird in so many movies when the villain forces a victim's face into the toilet for drowning. It's disgusting, of course, but over here, this would result in a bump in the head from the ceramic, but not in a wet face. Unless you flush, of course.

Story 2: On my first stay in the US, I clogged up the toilet by one normal usage. I flushed twice to force it down, but instead, it overflowed. Totally different mechanism, that!

Weird cultural differences.

The American diet, thicker toilet paper, and tendency to use half a roll at a time contributes as well.

I had exactly the same experience. First visit to US clogged a toilet. Never seen a toilet overflowing before in my life till that day.

Thanks for the article. Some parts are funny and not very representative... About European toilets in villages or residential areas: "Though some modern squat toilets feature a flushing mechanism, others require you to pour water down the hole using a provided bucket." I have more than 40 years using toilets in many European countries - France, Belgium, Albania, Germany, Italy, Netherlands... - and I have never used a bucket to flush :-) US tourists find very exotic stuff when travelling in Europe :-)

> Another weird observation is the flush performance of European toilets. They don't clog up

Oh, they do. I have them clogged up weekly.

US ones are funny because there is so much water there and you always end up wet :)

In Sweden we often build ‘stick frame’ as is common in the US and shown in the pictures in the article. But we somehow manage to do it much more ruggedly than in the US, and finish with better materials and triple glazing and so on. We usually use vertical plank on the outside (vinyl is unheard of).

I’m very interested in building, have done major renovations and am embarking on a self build project so I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos showing American construction. And it’s like the same as we use nowadays in the Nordics, but flimsier. And this is my subjective opinion, but uglier.

Of course some parts of the US have to contend with heat and termites and things, but there is plenty of the US that is equiv climate to Sweden.

Same in Finland. Wooden stick frames are most common but I wouldn't describe them as "flimsy". There is heavy regulation for energy efficiency etc.

Judging purely from stereotypical perspective[1], the houses in US seem to emphasize (big) size and fancy look. You can't build that cheaply unless you give up in quality, thus the flimsyness, I guess.

[1] https://mcmansionhell.com

In Canada there are a couple of communities in Northern Ontario that have Nordic roots, you can recognize them by the houses, they are so much prettier than the rest.

The single-story house I grew up in in south San Jose, CA had a stucco exterior. This is essentially a concrete-like material spread over chicken wire (hexagonal poultry netting) that is tacked onto the structure. An artistic texturing of the surface is applied as a final step. After drying, it is primed and painted.

The structure was about 30 years old when it became infested with subterranean and flying termites, and required fumigation and major repairs to sill joists and pilings. It took a lot of time, money, and effort to repair it. The land was formerly a cherry orchard.

Sigh. This trope again?

Light frame wood construction (the technical term for this) is a robust, strong, and energy and environmentally friendly way to build when done right.

You can do anything poorly, but you can build very, very good structures with wood. Wood buildings failing during storms, seismic events, and over time because of water intrusion are construction quality issues--not fundamental problems with the material.

Masonry buildings are not necessarily superior. They use much more concrete (huge producer of CO2), are often trickier to air seal (energy penalty), and trickier to insulate (energy penalty).

The other thing is maintenance. Any building will eventually collapse if not properly maintained. Second law of thermodynamics is that entropy always increases. The only way to decrease entropy in a closed system is to open the system and extract the entropy by some means.

For a house that means cleaning, replacing broken and damaged parts, painting and general maintenance. Without releasing the entropy from time to time even a home made of solid stone will eventually weather away to ash and dust.

Many countries all over the world does light frame wood construction. The question is perhaps why that’s done flimsier in the US then. Or isn’t it? An 8-10” stud framed house is a reasonably well built and insulated construction. A building framed with 2x4” studs is an uninsulated bike shed.

When I visited family in Canada, I found that the floor plans of the houses there were much more attractive than most found in Germany, but what I also said is: The quality even of the door to the house is less than the quality of the door to my toilet.

My dream would be: North American floor plans with German/Swiss build quality. Those would be the best houses in the world.

"Nothing but gyp rock, chip board and vinyl siding. The cheapest materials you can buy!", my grandpa would lament whenever we would drive past freshly erected sprawl.

He was getting a little senile at that time, so he would say it a lot.

Exactly! Gosh, I never understood why placing a bathroom next to the bedroom - the first and last room you visit everyday - is such a foreign idea to german architects...

This could be a space-saving measure. A bathroom also needs to be used by other occupants of the house/apartment (children, guests staying over etc.) and if it's only available by passing through the master bedroom, it becomes a privacy issue.

As a consequence, you need to add more bathrooms (which requires additional space and money) or make the primary one accessible in a more public way (from the hallway).

That's a valid concern, I wouldn't want guests to have to move through my bedroom to access the toilet either. However I've seen lots of American apartments with a two door bathroom - one to the master bedroom, the other to the hallway. That definitely does make the most sense in my opinion. Aside from this, even in spacious and expensive German flats or houses, this isn't common.

The point is, that they usually plan one bathroom per floor, not per bedroom. The primary reasons for that are prices and available space. At the moment it is quite hard to buy land on which you can build a large house in Germany. It is not only expensive, but there is often almost nothing available.

Maybe to not disturb your SO with flushing/shower etc? If I will ever building a house toilet & bathroom will have to be as far from sleeping parts as possible.

Quality of deep sleep is far more important than walking 5m extra from time to time

The house in Germany we finally bought features an almost perfect solution: the master bedroom is alone on the top floor and the only other room on this floor, separated by a 2sqm corridor, is a large bathroom. So you actually have 2 doors available to separate sounds from the bathroom from the bedroom and still have the privacy of an ensuite-bathroom only for the owners (as none of our frequent guests would "by accident" get to our floor.

Is it common to put where you defecate in the same room as where you clean? I've seen many "half baths" which are just toilets and sinks, but bathrooms that also contain toilets not even separated by a door.

If it's about space utility, then dividing the rooms in two allows twice as many occupants, unless it's customary for people not to wait to use the toilet until others are out of the shower.

Yes, that is very common around here, and no, I suspect this is not primarily about space utility but simply a cultural difference. Although I strongly agree with your points.

Every time someone flushes the toilet everyone in the bedroom wakes up. Especially if your walls are simply cardboard.

Well, that is an advantage of german houses: They are built from cinder blocks or concrete and have proper, thick, hardwood doors - so if the bathroom door is closed, you usually don't hear anything.

Those would cost an absolute fortune (and I’m sure they exist on the ultra high end in the US). Typical American home construction seems to be ~100usd/sqft; Germany appears to be 2-3000eur/sqm.

And very (IMO pointlessly) big houses are currently in vogue in the US; there’d probably be limited market for moderate sized houses of high quality construction vs 3000sqft houses of cheap construction.

> Germany appears to be 2-3000eur/sqm.

Most of this, especially in urban areas, is "thanks" to explosion in construction ground prices - up to 70% and more of the price of flats is the share of the underlying plot (https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-grundstueckspr...).

Net of land costs in both cases. Though to be clear they’re just the first figures I found, and the German figures in particular are all over the place.

Converting the US price to eur/sqm yields 925 eur/sqm.

Making US prices 2-3 times cheaper than EU prices.

You’ve swapped all the units in your comparison, making it a little tricky to actually do a comparison.

So make it a little easier for everyone:

$100/sqft ≈ 925€/sqm

2-3000€/sqm ≈ $216-324/sqft

Or double to tripped per unit area.

I did a little arithmetic, at 1.16 dollars per euro and 11.11 sqft per sqm, and reulted in 1228 eur/sqm in the US, compared with 2-3000 eur/sqm in Germany. So half or a third the cost. That is significant. [Edited: I see others have had the same idea to regularize the units, now we can check each other's work ;)].

> Typical American home construction seems to be ~100usd/sqft

US building costs are highly variable by region. If you're going to compare to anywhere in the EU it'd be better to control for COL.

Here in Seattle our builds start at $300/sq.ft.

There are a few companies that build such houses, like bostonhaus.de and whitehouse.de .

The reason is simple: Americans build what is attractive in the short term, big floor plans, lots of features, the latest technology. The long term durability, beyond say 50-60 years, isn't a concern. They plan to rebuild or rennovate (upgrade) with the latest technology by that time anyway.

For commercial buildings this makes even more sense, because Americans expect their needs to grow by orders of magnitude.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course. But having spent a lot of time in both Europe and the US, I've noticed that many buildings in Europe are built with brick and stone and are hundreds of years old. In the US, everything is built with wood and metal, and it's rare to find a building that stays around for more than 100 years, or was even intended to.

For me the best illustration of this difference is European cathedrals which are built to last centuries or maybe even millennia, compared to American megachurches which are essentially temporary warehouse structures, decorated with fancy lights and smoke, that will be replaced in less than 50 years. There are advantages to each approach.

> For me the best illustration of this difference is European cathedrals which are built to last centuries or maybe even millennia

Not just last centuries, they took centuries to build. Notre-Dame de Paris started construction in 1163 and was completed in 1345.

Construction on the Sagrada Familia started in 1882. Current estimate is that it'll be finished around 2030-2032.

Noticed how badly built hotels were in Alaska. How it is living in with one-glass windows in midwinter? I have 3 layers in Helsinki, and it was little bit chilly when it was -35°C in 1985.

Same here. 3 layer glass in Norway, with AC and ventilation system. 250mm isolation in the walls and 350mm under the roof. Because of this I have almost no energy bill. It was expensive, though.

In comparison when i lived in Russia we had double glazing but the gap between the panes was about 9 inches wide.

We used to use the space as a make-shift freezer, worked great, 10/10.

> In comparison when i lived in Russia we had double glazing but the gap between the panes was about 9 inches wide.

That's the older way of doing insulation. Here in Germany houses from around 60 years ago are likely to feature the same.

It was quite a shock as i'd never seen it before growing up.

In the UK we had a bit of a double glazing boom in the late 70s, highlighted well in the TV show "White Gold"

This generic PVC stuff became so common place i'd never seen anything else and just assumed the rest of the world was the same.

And that's the kind of window which makes ice flowers in freezing times! Oh, childhood memories...

> Because of this I have almost no energy bill. It was expensive, though.

Pay now or pay later. TANSTAAFL:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as...

Given how low energy costs (in the US?) were historically, it wasn't a priority.

Historically the UK has been bad for insulation/glazing/energy performance of our homes. In fact, there are ongoing protests at the moment by a group called "Insulate Britain" who want the government to mandate better standards to force older buildings to be upgraded.

Anywhere built and most places upgraded since the 90s should have at least double-glazing, but there are lots of older homes which still have single-pane windows and poor insulation in the roof and walls. Sometimes this is because the building is considered historic or in a "conservation area" (neighbourhood which is considered historic) and there are restrictions on what changes can be made, but often it's just because "that's how it is" here.

I now own a place with triple-glazed windows and doors, and this week when it's been around 12 degrees, I've had the doors open to let air in as it's too warm inside (up to 26 degrees), while my colleague who owns a Victorian-era house which has not been renovated since the 1960s has complained that he needs his heating on already.

One of my pet theories is that flimsy homes reflect an economics signaling problem: it is hard to prove to a buyer the value of quality. Whereas size is easier. As a suburban home owner, I would have preferred the quality-square footage point to lean a bit more towards quality.

I don't agree with the article at all. New materials and houses in Europe are built using wood and other derived products from wood, plastics and so on. Only a tiny fraction of the house is built on concrete. Having said so, some of the arguments to me are fit on Survivorship bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias. I'm a big follower of builers in Youtube and the amount of things that are done today in USA when building houses is quite impressive.

> New materials and houses in Europe are built using wood and other derived products from wood, plastics and so on.

Definite minority of those houses where I am.

Reporting from Sweden, almost all our stand alone houses (small houses) are built the same except with better insulation in walls, roof and windows (because of the climate).

I've never considered our houses rickety, although I do think wood now days is worse than 50 years ago, less growth rings in construction lumber.

In Poland majority of houses are built using some kind of hollow bricks + concrete for foundations/basements (basements in newer house are rare)/ floors and beams to support floors.

Houses that are built using wood are so rare that most people would stop by and to some photos.

Same in USA. Basement is concrete or brick-concrete mix. Then they built up all using aluminium or treated wood. Last time i've checked a review about new techniques and material the builder said the house could last over 200 years and easily repareable in any part compared to brick houses.

I follow an Instagram account which features houses from all over Europe. Only Norway/Sweden/very northern countries have mostly wooden houses. The rest of Europe has mostly stone/brick houses.

It might also be climate related, wooden houses are warmer and stone houses are cooler.

Stone houses, if they're not properly insulated, they aren't energy efficient at all.

Yep, now we have better insulation techniques, here in Spain i am living a newly built house and only 3 walls are bricks and concrete. The rest is a frame with insulated walls. Feels like a concrete house.

In Poland, concrete blocks of some form are definitely most common. Not that many people build with wood.

I dunno, the only thing not made out of concrete and brick in the Netherlands is sheds.

I hadn’t seen wooden construction at all until I emigrated to Japan.

What a garbage hit piece, this comment said it well:

>Hey bud next time talk to engineers and architects before writing on a subject. Research the subject and subject area. Or at the top just note that this article is an unresearched, uninformed opinion post. A bit of Google-fu would save some face.

Are they? I live in a house built in 1927, converted from a multi-family to condos in 2009, and it seems fine. I don't live in an earthquake, fire-, or flood-prone area. I'm not aware of any major structural issues.

As far as I know, it's a stick-built structure. I'm not sure what type of sheathing we have, if any. Plywood was certainly in use in 1927.

I do agree about the quality, but in this case, that's more due to the insanity of the local real estate market than anything else. A house flipper can do a piss-poor job renovating and then sell for a substantial sum, leaving the owners with the choice of whether to re-do a bunch of work or just live with it. (So far we just live with it).

There are some builders in the area who do a really great job. I've seen some very nicely finished houses with great energy efficiency, and they do command a premium, but not enough to encourage the flippers to build to the same standard.

Regarding the comments about bulldozing and rebuilding, almost every American city I know of has a historical buildings commission. Good luck getting approvals through to demolish buildings that are under their purview! Lots of renovations happening in the urban cores.

If anything, a bit more demolishing and rebuilding should be happening in America's cities. There's a lot of low-rise light industrial and retail in high demand areas that really ought to be at least 3-4 stories with housing above instead. Lots of light rail stops with parking and low-density building around them.

What I always wonder about is the energy efficiency of these houses. Increasingly, government policy in European countries is that houses must be highly energy efficient, but this requires good insulation and air tightness. That seems like it’d be hard to achieve with American style construction, particularly in the long term.

I don't think so, because there are companies in Germany that build American-style houses that adhere to German energy efficiency rules, like https://www.bostonhaus.de . They use different windows and doors to achieve this, and it's certainly more expensive than a house built to American standards, but it's not fundamental issue with American style construction.

Oh, yeah, I doubt it's a fundamental issue, but given the apparent cheapness of most American construction, I can't imagine the energy efficiency is great.

I always envied American Houses because they are so cheap and you get so much house for your money. Yes, they do feel flimsy to a German, especially the doors and windows, but that's something that would be easy to change (and I guess there must be some manufacturer that produces more sturdy doors in the US??). On the other hands, there are lots of brick&mortar single-family homes here in Germany, built in the 1970s or 80s, that no one wants to live in anymore. Poorly isolated, old-fashioned room size without open kitchen, often wet basement... quite a few are getting torn down already, or at least remodelled. Why put so much effort in a house that won't last 50 years anyway?

There definitely are nicer windows. I’ve found that more solid/hardwood doors jam during humidity changes. The flimsy ones don’t get stuck when hung well. But you can punch a hole through them if you are angry!

> old-fashioned room size without open kitchen,

If by that you mean a kitchen where there is no door between it and the living room then I really dislike that! I live in a 1950s wooden house in Norway with a separate kitchen and like it that way.

Yes. I don't have any experience with that because I never lived in a house like that, but practically all newer houses and apartments in Germany have an open floor plan.

It looks great on the photos, but YMMV as far as the comfort of actually living there. I for one hate unnecessary noises, which you get plenty of from the fridge (even the quieter ones) and dishwasher.

> Yes, they do feel flimsy to a German, especially the doors and windows, but that's something that would be easy to change (and I guess there must be some manufacturer that produces more sturdy doors in the US??).

Not really that easy. You have to special order all of it from Europe. That requires knowing a special dealer and getting a container shipped over. The nice stuff just isn’t really carried in the US - even the nicest stuff is still pretty weak in comparison.

> The American mindset of bulldozing the old and building something new instead every few decades keeps us from having a sense of history, at least where architecture and physical structures are concerned.

A very interesting point, raising a question from a sociological perspective: when most durable structures in a country are in the hand of the government (e.g. the Congress buildings), companies (corporate campuses) and rich individuals and the lower 99% are relegated to cheap housing they either don't own or have to tear down/rebuild once a generation because it fell apart or got destroyed in a natural disaster, what effects does this have on societal stability and cohesion?

The house I grew up in, in the UK, was never re-sided, re-roofed or required its exterior re-painted in at least 200 years and parts of it 600 years

These cheap houses built in the US create a lot of maintenance and waste. Siding/roofing seems to need to be replaced every 15 years or so

Some friends are just going through the process of re-roofing. I asked them about going with a metal roof, or some other kind that might last longer. Their attitude was they don't plan on being in the house that long. In 15 years it'll be the next owners problem

A lot of false dichotomy in this article. Somehow brick is better than lumber in all cases? (No mention of the expense and cost, and environmental impact of making and shipping bricks).

Population density is also a big factor in establishing the stringency of building codes. Codes set market standards.

Ability to remodel a home is also a key piece of it's ability to maintain value, this is much more difficult with brick interior walls.

I spent a few years living in a concrete apartment in Asia. No central air, just window AC units. Single-ply glass windows. Nothing sealed. No heat in the winter. Stuff breaks whenever it hits the concrete floor. Doors made of solid wood jam up during temperature and humidity changes. Concrete/plaster always chipping off the walls. You don’t hear people talking but you hear everything they drag on the floor quite clearly.

I’ve experienced the opposite of American construction quality abroad and if anything missed the stick and plywood comforts I spent most of my life in. Central air with ducting is incredible. Dropping gadgets on wooden flooring doesn’t break them. The insulation in the walls keeps the power bills lower. And wooden construction can be quite hardy during earthquakes. There’s a tradeoff - houses in USA might not last centuries but they can provide a lot of comfort with limited structural maintenance for decades.

I’m a US expat and have been living in France for ~9 years. This topic always comes to my mind when looking for a new place. In terms of costs, that’s a hard one to really compare. In my region, Île-de-France, the cost per sqm is very very high. Land is also a luxury which applies to most of Europe. Prices are just generally higher here.

Having lived in multiple homes in the US, quality is also subject to whoever builds your home and what materials you invest in. I would say that the standard is generally higher in Europe, but that does come at a cost. I’ve rented multiple homes here in France. The apartment I am in now is simply amazing, I’m friends with my landlord and he explained to me the process he went through when developing the complex. One of the homes I rented was built in the 50s/60s, very solid but lacked a lot of modern amenities. It was also very damp and cold on the inside. The heating bill was horrible in the winters due to the high ceilings and outdated heating system. I upgraded to a more modern home after that, which was built in ’98 and was simply amazing. Layout was very practical, you could have a party on the main floor and the noise heard from the second floor was fairly minimal.

There are pros and cons to both approaches. A few that come to mind:

+ sturdy construction that lasts longer than a standard US home

+ better sound isolation

+ more resilient to the elements

- more expensive

- home layouts are very odd due to age/changing standards

- renovating is more involved and difficult/costly

+ cheaper (in most places compared to EU)

+ renovating is much easier

+ better home layouts

+ easier to find something on a piece of land (if that's a criteria)

- less sound isolation

- needs repairs more frequently

- much less noise isolation

I think my biggest gripe is just the costs here in France. Being American, I like my space and having a little bit of land to play on. For what I am accustomed to having in the states would cost something north of a million in this region. Sure, you could find something in the center of France for dirt cheap, but you'll go stir crazy there...

I guess the moral of the story is that your problems go away if you have enough money /s

It’s also a difference in belief of quality. From what I’ve heard, some places in Germany (and I presume other parts of the EU) just don’t carry the cheap home construction goods that are abundant in the US. This is primarily because the cheap ones require more fixing, replacing, and don’t last as long. It’s only perceived to be better for cost of the good itself (which really gets into if it’s better when you still have to pay for labor somehow!).

I think Europe is just more of a build once cry once type of region whereas the US is the polar opposite.

I’ll also say that if you bring up your construction standards to European levels, the costs rise substantially. Somewhat due to the goods needing to be shipped in, somewhat due to just more expensive goods overall, somewhat due to more niche labor required, and somewhat due to builders knowing they can charge more. (Cause if you can afford European construction - you’re probably loaded)

50 year old houses aren’t regularly torn down. Neither are wooden skyscrapers. They lost me with those statements.

This article is unfair.

Yes, there is cheap material used in some place, often sunny, and the standard of construction wouldn't cut it in eastern Europe now. Especially in Suburbland (Charleston, Hungtington WV). But most houses are quite solid and can last a long time.

The main issue is carpentry technique/knowledge, and tooling. My genetic grandfather was a construction worker in Ohio for a long time (from his 30s to his 60s i guess), mostly worked with wood, and was baffled when he came to France in late 2000s and my father showed him his woodwork/construction techniques (he is a film carpenter/painter/decorator), which are far from the best. He then started a 3rd cabin in his property (so we could visit him), and you can really tell the difference in quality after merely 2 month and some emails exchanged.

My guess is that the industry has been developed in one way and there is too much history, infrastructure and experience to change.

In Europe builders know how to build brick houses because that is what they have always done. In the US they are built from wood because that is what they have always done.

The USA has plenty of wood to make wood construction feasible, whereas that is more of a constrained resource. Japan has it bad in both ways: they are addicted to wood construction (quality is lower than even the USA) and have to import it all from Canada. But at least Japan is realistic about pricing in structure depreciation.

Having seen quite a few wood frame houses under construction in Japan, at least the framing seems much higher quality than in Canada. Studs are thicker, cut more precisely, and spaced closer together with more cross bracing than I have ever seen in Canada.

The insulation and other fittings are of course not at the same level. But winter is much milder and earthquakes much worse.

The winters aren’t really more mild in Japan. They invented the kotatsu to get around poor insulation (I’ve stayed in low quality housing in Japan in the winter and it wasn’t fun).

Japanese rebuild their structures much more often than in Canada and the USA and so don’t overbuild accordingly. The result is that housing quality appears better simply because the structures are newer. See https://japanpropertycentral.com/2014/02/understanding-the-l...

Fittings are getting there now. We’re not quite at triple paned glass, but the house which I bought 2 years ago (in Japan) is very well isolated, and incredibly easy to keep comfortable with help from the aircon units installed.

The house feels extremely solid, though that’s not an experts opinion.

Winters in Hokkaido and Tohoku are not mild at all. Sure, maybe it won't be as cold as Canada, but still fucking cold, and the poor insulation and heating makes it painful.

Even Nagoya (or in my case Gifu) gets somewhat cold. Cold enough that poor insulation is noticed.

Sure about low-quality housing in Japan? They have a tradition of highly-skilled woodworking over there eg Shoji.

I have been living in Japan and I can confirm that the construction quality of most houses is very low. Shoji is a good example, the may look pretty but they rarely fit properly.

Anyway shoji isn't for insulation, so window frames are also not for insulation.

Most behind thing for building in Japan is that aluminum frame single glass window is still allowed to build new house, and plenty of cheap houses use it.

Brick vs wood is not the issue. You can build high quality solid houses with wood just fine - look to Scandinavia for example.

I think the article touched on some points (construction boom on a budget), but I've always felt that contractor could get away with this level of shabby building because few Americans actually lived in other countries, and knew what standards could be realistically demanded.

I know a construction worker who emigrated to the USA from Europe and built a house for sale with a higher standard (e.g. reinforced concrete construction). He had a hard time selling it, as it was more expensive that other similarly looking houses and it was hard to explain to buyers that it's better.

Shameless plug: one way to show an immidiate benefit of a higher quality house to the buyer is showing that the insurance rate will be better. At Tensorflight.com we extract building attributes using computer vision and other sources. We provide this data to property insurance companies, so more insurance companies can actually factor-in such information.

Most properties need to be gutted and remodeled around once every 50 years or sooner so construction that is easily remodeled, sometimes in dramatic ways, is more optimal. That said may europeans live in old structures that are very suboptimal but they call it "character." Also most of the biggest houses built by european nobility over the centuries are now only usuable as museums, or as commercial conversions as schools or hotels, and again it's mostly about character rather than convenience and capability.

We use technologically hidden costs to make up for a lot of the difference. For instance, European homes seem to be built to self-regulate temperature much more effectively than American homes are. Americans then make up for the difference with air conditioning. The initial costs may be lower, but there's an ongoing (and often massive) recurring cost that isn't readily apparent. My mom's home in Indiana, for instance, has an electric bill in the range of $600/month during peak of the hot months which is just nuts to me. The place just wasn't built to use passive cooling techniques.

Germanmy’s climate is relatively moderate compared to most of the US. In California most people do not have air conditioning. On the east coast you will be miserable in the summer because of the high heat and humidity. No amount of passive cooling will make that better and because of the humidity it remains hot all night.

And $600 is an extreme electricity bill. I have never heard of anyone with a bill that high.

Residential electricity rates in Indiana are about 10.5 cents per kW/h, and the average home uses 1000kW/hr per month, for a bill of about $105/month. $600 is indeed nuts, but it sounds like something else is going on there - perhaps this was a larger bill that included electricity in it?

https://www.electricitylocal.com/states/indiana/

It's a remarkably poorly insulated 5 bedroom home with a purely global temperature control (i.e. she can't just cool / heat her bedroom). I gave her a bunch of money to do renovations so hopefully that goes down significantly.

That makes sense. You can find old homes in SF with the natural gas heaters and it's easy to get a big gas bill if you leave those on with the terrible windows that don't close properly (the windows on those old victorians are awful).

As someone who was pre primed to agree with this article, I still think it is a garbage faux outrage piece. Roofs rot out on average after a few years? Give me a break.

This journalism is flimsier than the houses it is discussing.

> In contrast, houses and most buildings in Europe are much sturdier, being built with stone or cinder blocks or brick for the whole wall and inside walls.

I don't know the stats, but cinder block construction is very common in Florida. The house I grew up in is cinder block, which helps with hurricane protection.

I currently live in California, and one of the big surprises when moving out here was how much of the construction is simple wooden frames. I wouldn't extrapolate that to all of America.

Conversely solid wood construction is common in Scandinavia. Still sturdier than a lot of US housing.

I live in the UK now, in a brick house and I doubt it'd pass building inspection in Norway.

At the risk of repeating the obvious the OP is little more than a poorly researched and reasoned troll/drive-by generalization, but as a residential builder for 20+ years I do wish that a culture of quality was more highly valued in the US market. Unfortunately there are bigger factors in play than how thick your exterior walls are which decide what the value is.

If you leave aside the price of the plot, how do houses of a similar size compare when built US style vs. European style? European seems to require more money up front, but has lower maintenance costs and less wear and tear. But the money you spent up front is no longer available for investments, or you need to pay interests for a larger loan. After how many years is the break-even point reached?

I was in the 8th floor of a brick building during the 2001 Nisqually quake. Very lucky that quake was so deep and that I'm still alive. More earth motion and I would have been buried in a pile of rubble.

I'll be taking flimsy wood structures that bend and twist and don't crumble from now on thanks.

My guess would be that there are enough natural catastrophes which make it cheaper to build a house from scratch than a sturdy house. There was a conference talk roughly ten years ago which talked about houses and joked about people not knowing the tale of the three little pigs.

Even if for the sake of the argument we accept that natural catastrophes incentivise cheaper construction over sturdiness (which is very debatable), surely the entirety of the USA + Canada are not subject to the same risk of natural disasters, nor is Europe as a whole safe from them altogether. As far as I know, construction is not sturdier in the safer regions of North America, nor is it cheaper in the less safe parts of Europe.

In Japan it is common to get rid of the old house when the house is sold. Just 20-30 year old houses are demolished. They really buy only the plot.

I think they have slightly different cultural reasons, but their houses are not build to last either.

The article poses the question but doesn't try to answer it. There are some plausible sounding answers here in the comments. Mostly that it is cheaper to do it that way. But wouldn't that be true elsewhere too?

I suspect a lot of it is down to consumer preference. Americans seem to favour big houses as a kind of absolute priority. If you’ve decided upfront that the house must be 3000sqft, then it will either be really expensive, or cheaply built. And Americans are more okay than most with the style of very low density remote suburban development that makes really big houses feasible.

Most people in China don't believe me when I tell that most Americans are living in wooden houses. More or less the same in Russia.

People keep thinking that what they see in movies is some kind of massive stage set, or something.

Yes, in Russia stick houses are only fitting lowest-price market segment and only in the southern regions of the country. Mostly they are considered to be "not real houses".

in the US I don't like the use of plywood indoors and vinyl outdoors of a house. Solid wood I have no problem with - although it matters a lot what it's treated/painted with. In Europe I have a house made of (a lot of) cement and bricks. To me plywood was only for sheds, but personally I woulnd't use it even for that. Why expose me to the nasty VOC?

Live in New England. The homes are old there so you can sit down and relax without hearing someone breathing two rooms away. You get a home with 10x objectively higher quality for 10x cheaper. Plus the autumn is beautiful. If you must live somewhere like California then consider Bose earbuds.

Missing out on geography, e.g. availability of materials in the surroundings

Ok, if you are a colonist building a house in the Wild West, that's a concern, but in the 21st century?! In the 21st century of course you can say "we always did it this way", same as with the Imperial System, but then you shouldn't be surprised about articles like this.

I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of shipping brick over large distances were actually enormous. This might be one of those things that is just way better off if produced close to where it is consumed.

also USA have multiple regions in risk of earthquakes, flooding and hurricanes,

maybe cheaper/wood based constructions is more suited to the local conditions

and even if today moving material around is cheaper than colonial times, regulations move very slowly and could be another factor

Main reason is that in many countries there isn't much in the way of stock market so there is no other way to indefinitely keep money but by building big, permanent stone or brick buildings that can survive centuries with minimal maintenance.

If that reason were true, you'd see new buildings now being built american style, now that we have wide access to the stock market, but it isn't happening. Even single-family houses are built with bricks.

Because people won't buy anything else - and why should they?! I mean (at least in Europe), the cost of the actual building materials is dwarfed by the cost of the plot on which the house is built, the interior fittings and above all the labor costs of building the house. So going cheap on the building materials is simply not worth it...

We don’t build flimsy houses in the Netherlands, and we invented the stock market.

There are economists who argue that it dates to the Romans:

Economist Ulrike Malmendier of the University of California at Berkeley argues that a share market existed as far back as ancient Rome, that derives from Etruscan "Argentari". In the Roman Republic, which existed for centuries before the Empire was founded, there were societates publicanorum, organizations of contractors or leaseholders who performed temple-building and other services for the government. One such service was the feeding of geese on the Capitoline Hill as a reward to the birds after their honking warned of a Gallic invasion in 390 B.C. Participants in such organizations had partes or shares, a concept mentioned various times by the statesman and orator Cicero. In one speech, Cicero mentions "shares that had a very high price at the time". Such evidence, in Malmendier's view, suggests the instruments were tradable, with fluctuating values based on an organization's success. The societas declined into obscurity in the time of the emperors, as most of their services were taken over by direct agents of the state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_exchange

We do however build our houses very poorly. But yes they are sturdy crap houses.

>big stone or brick buildings

You must not live in a place where earthquakes are common. Stone and brick tends to crack and crumble in earthquakes. For earthquakes you want wooden houses that can flex and sway when the ground underneath starts moving.

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