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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

It's all about consumer preference. It seems this article largely misses this.

People want to live in specific locations, or have to in order to find work. This drives land values up as demand increases. Policies can make this worse, but the problem will still manifest itself to some degree. (Potentially as affluent people, especially in suburban areas, buying up more land to create setbacks, or simply buying because they can afford it now, or HOAs setting limits, none of which help density, demand, and cost).

"reduce the costs of construction, particularly residential construction (ie: housing)"

Changing preferences are the best way to address this, yet is likely the most difficult to sucessfully influence. Houses being built today are mostly larger homes, and definitely much larger than the majority homes built generations ago. This means more materials, more labor, more regulation, etc. Now we might be using cheaper materials, or less per sqft, or using tools that increase speed of laborers. But I think this is mostly canceled out by just increasing the size of the house (ie we're growing into our fish bowl).

For a personal example, my wife complains that an 1800 sqft house is too small.

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>People want to live in specific locations, or have to in order to find work. This drives land values up as demand increases.

This ignores the world's giant pool of floating capital ravenous for returns that jumps on trends and amplifies demand by buying up what it thinks will have good resale or rental value.

I saw this happen in the area I grew up in recently. Some people I know who were struggling to gather a deposit saw their dreams of homeownership go up in smoke as they got consistently outbid on a series of properties by investors.

This would be a pretty harmless outlet of an for a glut of capital if A) land werent finite or B) land had not been slowly untaxed for decades.

Of the two, B is a more prudent way of making property prices sane again.

How do you implement B) without causing a disproportionately negative impact on existing homeowners?

For example, would you just tax "new" purchases more heavily? Or scale it into existing homes? Give caveats for fixed-income (elderly and disabled)?

Politically, this seems like a tough road, even if it's the best choice. You have to essentially convince people to vote against their own economic self-interest. I think current tax policy around homes is curious because it's one of the few areas that there is a rather clear consensus around economists that it's bad policy that incentivizes the wrong actions, yet we can't seem to change them.

Land value tax.

It could be made palatable to regular people by making a high tax free threshold. Most homeowners could be left unaffected.

That leaves 50% of land owned by the 1%. A fair chunk.

Additionally the money could be funneled initially into pensions for the impoverished elderly.

Capital/billionaires would fight back by arguing that it would hit the elderly the hardest just as the howard jarvis taxpayers foundation did with prop 13 but if it was very obvious how many elderly people were helped, crying about grandmothers having to sell multimillion dollar mansions would probably backfire.

They would throw immense resources at trying to discredit and kill this, though. They would use every character assassination trick in the book to stop those pushing it. Some would probably also resort to violence if that failed. It would be an uphill battle the whole way.

"That leaves 50% of land owned by the 1%."

Is a lot of that farm land, like with Gates?

I thought a lot of the investors are involved with apartments, which don't take up much land?

Maybe somebody can clarify, but wouldn't that land also be much less taxable per acre because the value is lower?

That's part of what I'm missing here. How is that value calculated?

LVT is generally conceptualised as proportional to the value of the land, not it's area.

And how do you set that if excluding the type of property that's on it?

I fail to see the relevance, land is zoned for farming or reaidential, that sets it value

You could reform zoning, but its not a requirement

Without reforming zoning, it is largely useless. Sure it might cause some improvements in places underutilizing their land but I think most places are using their land for the highest value thing it is zoned for.

If I have a SFH zoned for SFH in the heart of manhattan next to skyscrapers, the value of the land isn't based on the skyscrapers, it is based on what you can put on it and you can prove that by selling it for which nobody is going to pay as if you could put a skyscraper there.

"underutilizing their land but I think most places are using their land for the highest value thing it is zoned for."

In urban or higher density suburban areas, I think you're mostly right. But in lower density areas, a lot of the land is multi purpose or has few restrictions. So technically, you could build apartments or homes on land that is used as agriculture. However, there might not be demand for it in that area. Essentially, the tax-by-zoning works well in the situations where zoning is restrictive and demand is high. But in low density areas where the actual use is not well defined with a single zoning use, the value would be potentially arbitrary or inaccurate (making property tax a better measure of value).

So I could build a mansion or a small house and pay the same, just because I'm paying for the zoning. And of course zoning could change and much of it can also have dual use. This complicates the calculation and can lead to surprises.

It seems current actual land usage through property tax better accounts for the way the land is being used, is more stable, less arbitrary, and implicitly complies with the existing zoning.

Homestead exemption. If it's your primary residence you get a tax exemption on the first $[geographically_appropriate_median_goes_here].

They did that with the casino money in PA. It's a joke, like a couple hundred bucks, if that.

Homestead exemptions for older folks already exist. Perhaps a higher tax rate for those not living in a property?

I would love to see no tax on primary home property at all. Just for commercial/investment properties. Unfortunately, a lot of that would be passed on to renters unless income taxes were assessed differently. But that would also mean drastically changing school funding, which could be a good opportunity but would likely turn this into every more of an impossible shitshow.

I think one argument is this incentivizes in the wrong way regarding home buying. It seems similar to the mortgage interest rate deduction argument: it incentivizes larger homes, it's regressive because it benefits those with more wealth in property than those with less, increases the likelihood of defaults due to people being incentivized towards more expensive homes, and potentially distorts housing prices, related to excessive borrowing.

Maybe. My idea is to shift property tax to income/capital gains tax. In theory (depending on the structure) that should provide less net income because the number of working years should be lower than the number of years living in any property, and it should impact the higher earners more. This lower net income should lower the amount one is approved for (and hopefully stay the same towards the lower income range). This should reduce the burden on people who are on a fixed income while keeping houses a similar size. Maybe even smaller since the tax is taken off the top rather than perpetually taken off the back end - people tend to notice a smaller paycheck more.

This is an interesting perspective, thanks for clarifying. I think it would also be interesting if it leads to a more equitable method of funding schools.

I think it would be a mix in my view. Most of that should be income taxes at the state level, but still allow for some smaller percentage income tax to be collected at the local level. This should provide a higher base level of per student funding across the state, but still allow local municipalities to collect a smaller amount of funds that wouldn't have state restrictions on them. Maybe something like 95% fed and state funding with 5% local.

It sounds plausible if we could get around the PR issue of any raise in state income taxes being viewed as an evil. (I do think this would cause the need for higher state taxes, considering how many state and local municipalities struggle to fund education programs through general funds).

It reminds me a bit of the universal healthcare push. It seems very hard to convince people that, yes, their income tax levels may go up, but their overall costs will go down.

If you are referencing property taxes funding schools, you should know that it actually only funds about half of total school funding. The other half comes from federal and state governments and the way they give out funding is to selectively counteract that misallocation such that 47 states actually allocate more per-student funding to poor areas than to wealthier ones and according to this article [0], it has been this way since at least 1995.

So if you actually informed people that the wealthy areas don't get more funding, I don't see why it would be an issue.

[0]: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...

I thought it says they are relatively neutral? And that 35 states have policies to counter local discrepancies?

Maybe I'm just missing stuff - that page is a design/user nightmare. But I do agree that the pet student funding tends to be pretty fairly distributed.

"So if you actually informed people that the wealthy areas don't get more funding, I don't see why it would be an issue."

I generally agree. I think the main point that the rich areas would not like, is that often the state money has restrictions on what it can be used for, or comes with policy requirements attached. If I remember correctly, PA schools could lose state funding if they didn't implement and enforce the state's masking policy. This caused a bit of friction in many districts.

I was including that under "or simply buying because they can afford it now".

"Of the two, B is a more prudent way of making property prices sane again."

Maybe if you taxed unused land. Otherwise that tax will end up increasing a resident's rent/mortgage substantially (as it's a perpetual annual expense). So really, you'd have to tax way above what a normal person can afford (average US household about $75k, so $7500 is 10% gross), and that still wouldn't be much of a disincentive to the wealthy (ignoring the fact the the market would collapse because normal people can't afford to buy it from them nor pay the rent).

Now if we did tax unused land, then we are reducing conservation and incentivize development. This is a major concern for some areas, especially around loss of agriculture land, riparian buffers for water quality, etc.

If we had work that was more distributed, like remote is for IT, then it's possible the effects of all the capital flooding a handful of markets would be diluted by spreading it across numerous others. A generation or two ago we had many small cities with industrial or manufacturing jobs. Now it seems many of those cities have shrunk while the national population has grown, mostly concentrating in specific metro areas.

>Otherwise that tax will end up increasing a resident's rent/mortgage

It would do nothing to rents or mortgages intrinsically but it would cause property prices to fall and it could add to the tax burden of regular property owners depending on how it were implemented (i.e. if the tax free threshold were set too low).

>that still wouldn't be much of a disincentive to the wealthy

It would be a massive disincentive to the wealthy, since they own the most property and are used to it being an asset not a liability.

They would dispose of properties that were nonperforming because taxes > capital appreciation + rent and this would spiral as falling prices leads to more hoarded properties being given up.

They would also scramble to rent out previously unrented properties where capital appreciation wasnt covering taxes. More rentals on the market means even lower rents which makes their properties worth even less to them.

"It would do nothing to rents or mortgages intrinsically"

Most people have their property taxes escrowed with their mortgage payments. Taxes can easily account for 25% of one's monthly payments. As for rent, the property owners just pass the cost on to the tenants by increasing rent. So property taxes are related to rent and mortgage payments. Even if not included directly in the mortgage payment, it affects how much of a mortgage one can afford.

"It would be a massive disincentive to the wealthy, since they own the most property and are used to it being an asset not a liability."

I'm not sure about this. Just because they own more property doesn't mean they would be the most affected. The tax would likely be a larger percentage of a "normal" person's income for their own home and thus more impactful to them. Plus, if the wealthy are renting out the majority of the properties, then they can make up for tax increases by raising rents (because property tax increase priced more people out of homes (because the price drop was a drop in demand), increasing demand for rentals). I do agree that it should incentivize full utilization of rental properties. But I don't think there are enough vacant rentals to affect supply/pricing, but I don't have the numbers. I would think that most owners are already utilizing residential rentals pretty much at full capacity in the markets that are the tightest.

>As for rent, the property owners just pass the cost on to the tenants by increasing rent

Rents would either remain unchanged or go down.

I dont magic myself a raise because income tax goes up. It works the same for landlords. If supply and demand remains unchanged, prices remain unchanged.

The only change I could forsee to affect either is previously empty properties being put up for rent in order to cover tax payments to turn property liabilities back into property assets. This would increase supply.

>Plus, if the wealthy are renting out the majority of the properties, then they can make up for tax increases by raising rents

They'd really love for that to be how it works and sometimes they pretend it is.

"I dont magic myself a raise because income tax goes up. It works the same for landlords. If supply and demand remains unchanged, prices remain unchanged."

What you're missing is that the market floor get universally pushed up. There's no competition from cheaper places because they all increased their rent to cover the new coat so they can still make their same margin. The demand is still there because people still need a place to live.

"The only change I could forsee to affect either is previously empty properties being put up for rent"

Any numbers on that, or are you just going to keep claiming it's a big enough vacant supply to significantly affect prices?

"They'd really love for that to be how it works and sometimes they pretend it is."

This is still tied to the previous comment. If the number of vacancies are not sufficient, then supply is adequately constrained to just increase the prices to cover costs. Because, again, this increase moves the market floor.

> they all increased their rent

Why would they not have done this before, if they could? Landlords aren't trying to maintain some fixed margin, they want as much as possible, always.

Because of competition. They can't all conspire together to price fix (or if they do they could be arrested).

Writing in context of preceding comment, which seemed to be predicated on them having a special capacity to raise prices in response to land taxes.

I did wonder briefly if a land tax might decrease competition => higher prices, but then I recalled that the supply of land is fixed.

If it's s limited resource which people require (shelters), the price (rent) will be quite elastic. There will still be competition if the taxes go up. Competition is what prevents the price from rising unnecessary. The floor for all the competitors went up because taxes went up and they all want to stay profitable. They aren't going to take loss, so they raise rent to cover it. Buying won't look very attractive either because the tax increase raises those costs, and if it's as significant as they other poster wanted (to affect rich people) then it will likely exceed the $10k SALT deduction limit.

This SALT deduction is part of how they penalize landlords already, which is just passed on in the rent payments. This is part of the reason renting is more expensive than buying (comparing just monthly payments), in addition to management fees, profit, and repair/renovation reserves.

The last few cities I've lived in have seen 10+ straight years of rent increases (with a brief drop then rapid spike again from COVID) so... they do already do this?

Writing in the context of preceding comment. Landlords increase prices as much as they're able, they don't decline to increase when they could to maintain some fixed margin. I'm not saying they're generally unable to rise prices in general, but that they have no special additional capacity to raise prices in response to land taxes.

"but that they have no special additional capacity to raise prices in response to land taxes."

How so? If all landlords now have a significant new cost, why would they not raise rent to cover it?

This seems to say they cover 80-90% of tax increases through rent increases. And commercial properties should be more competitive.

https://mitcre.mit.edu/news/blog/can-landlords-really-pass-h...

>What you're missing is that the market floor get universally pushed up. There's no competition from cheaper places because they all increased their rent to cover the new coat so they can still make their same margin.

You're saying that it doesnt matter if supply and demand remains unchanged, rent goes up coz every landlord independently decided that it does?

Not that they decided it does, but generally that they all had to in order to stay profitable. Part of this is due to the othwr commenter's suggested goal that the rise in rates be significant enough to demotivate rich people.

Here is some research on commercial properties, which would in theory be more competitive than residential. It shows that 80-90% of any tax increase is covered by an increase in rent. https://mitcre.mit.edu/news/blog/can-landlords-really-pass-h...

And of course many landlord resources say to just build it in.

"The best way to protect yourself from taking a hit is to plan ahead. Plan for a tax increase every single year and adjust your rents accordingly. Build the tax increase into your rent and allow for future rent increases. A planned annual rent increase will allow you to stay ahead of tax increases instead of being caught off guard and behind."

https://commonsenselandlording.com/property-taxes-rental-pro...

> >As for rent, the property owners just pass the cost on to the tenants by increasing rent

> Rents would either remain unchanged or go down.

The rent must cover all the costs of the property (+ some profit). If any cost goes up, the rent will go up by at least that much. Anything else is wishful thinking.

If the costs go up so much that it's no longer possible to rent because nobody can afford it, that still won't make the rent go down because the owner isn't going to start taking a loss on it for fun. Instead, they'll sell the property and now it is off the rental market for good.

"If the costs go up so much that it's no longer possible to rent because nobody can afford it, that still won't make the rent go down because the owner isn't going to start taking a loss on it for fun. Instead, they'll sell the property and now it is off the rental market for good."

What do you mean it's off the rental market? The house doesn't dissapear. Either the next owner rents the house out, so nothing has changed, or they live in the house which means that someone who previously had to rent is now a homeowner. Either nothing changed or it's an improvement.

What is this weired attitude anyway, laws and markets change all the time and sometimes I have to eat a loss, are landlord some kind of divine nobility that never does?

> What do you mean it's off the rental market? The house doesn't dissapear.

I mean it's no longer available to renters. If it's no longer affordable to rent out, the alternative is to sell it off to someone who wants to live in it themselves. Of course the house itelf doesn't disappear, but the number of units in the rental market for that town now went down.

That's fine if those who were considering renting that unit are just as happy buying it as a homeowner. But I see many people saying they only want to rent, so for that audience, the rental supply went down.

> What is this weired attitude anyway, laws and markets change all the time and sometimes I have to eat a loss, are landlord some kind of divine nobility that never does?

I don't understand this comment. What I'm saying is that if the landlord find that renting out becomes unprofitable, they'll simply get out of that situation by selling it off.

"I don't understand this comment. What I'm saying is that if the landlord find that renting out becomes unprofitable, they'll simply get out of that situation by selling it off."

So if previously the buyers consisted of 50% landlords, and 50% would-be residents, presumably now there will be fewer landlords buyers and the price will go down. Is the landlord selling at a loss?

>The rent must cover all the costs of the property (+ some profit). If any cost goes up, the rent will go up by at least that much. Anything else is wishful thinking.

When businesses that can't raise prices get taxed more than their profits they go out of business.

Anything else is wishful thinking.

>Instead, they'll sell the property and now it is off the rental market for good.

It's almost as if there were an army of renters complaining vociferously that prices are to high for them to get on the housing ladder.

Basically every city in the world is growing and thus demand is increasing. If you increase costs and make it unprofitable to build, nobody is going to build until the rising demand increases rent to make it profitable.

I wish I was at 25%, mines at 38%!

> ignoring the fact the the market would collapse

I think that is the point. The market doesn't make sense already for people who actually use the homes because of the investors. If there were property policies that targeted investors and forced their money elsewhere, prices would drop dramatically, making housing affordable again.

"The market doesn't make sense already for people who actually use the homes because of the investors."

I think that depends on the area.

A true crash, if it were to happen, would affect all though. You'd have people underwater on their mortgages, unable to move by selling or renting out the home and instead being foreclosed. People in some sectors my lose their job because people have less discretionary money (if they'd be smart and save more for retirement to offset the loss on their property). If anything, I would think more people would be looking for cheaper apartments to rent because they were foreclosed, leading them to rent from the rich who have a large share of that type of housing.

If it was just investors why would rent be as close to mortgage payment amounts as it is? The vacancy rate is low. Demand is high. Demand is high even among people with more money than me so there are a lot of places that both sell for more than I can afford, and rent for more than I can afford.

People are competing for the more desirable neighborhoods, whether renting from an investor or buying outright, that's what makes it an attractive investment in the first place. They'd still be competing, so the prices would still go up until an equilibrium was reached. Maybe just slower?

"If it was just investors why would rent be as close to mortgage payment amounts as it is?"

I am not clear how this is meant to prove anything, an influx of investors increases prices and rent, both. perhaps it's better to call them speculators, because they don't invest in the economy to create new properties, just inflate prices on existing ones.

Indeed. Someone recently discovered that fifteen landlords own about 10% of Edinburgh: https://www.thenational.scot/news/19926004.edinburghs-housin...

> For a personal example, my wife complains that an 1800 sqft house is too small.

A modern blueprint 1800sqft house, yeah, for sure.

But somehow a 1960s split level at 1800sqft is spacious.

We are throwing square footage away on multiple large bathrooms, 2 living rooms, 2 dining rooms, and then wonder why the rooms we actually occupy are so small.

The recent trend towards 4 story narrow houses doesn't help. A literal 1/3rd of the house is taken up by stairs!

I'm in a 2300sqft house that has 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and an office. There is still a bit of wasted space, but not much!

Meanwhile, I've seen new houses, 3000sqft, 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 1.5 million.

"Oh you want 4 bedrooms? Those start at 1.7 million" <-- Said by an actual house developer

>But somehow a 1960s split level at 1800sqft is spacious.

I've actually found the opposite. Modern builds seems to prefer open floor plans and higher ceilings that older homes do not. To me at least, this can make the equivalent square footage seem less cramped. To your point though, it's much more common for newer homes to have more bathrooms than older builds of similar size which obviously erodes living space.

> it's much more common for newer homes to have more bathrooms than older builds of similar size which obviously erodes living space.

Newer homes also seem to be kitchen heavy, and have larger closets (and also bedrooms), all of which reduces shared (and, but for the bedroom part, total) living space with the same square footage.

Yes, although the dining area is often part of a largely open common area that includes the kitchen and living room.

My brother recently rebuilt a house in Maine and largely went with an open floor plan with relatively modestly-sized bedrooms and bathrooms. It makes pretty efficient use of space. The downside is that if someone want to have their own space, they pretty much have to go outside or retreat to their bedroom.

My house is fairly standard 200 year old New England Cape (though some of it isn't original). I've largely opened up the downstairs to be a common space that I use heavily. Upstairs are four fairly small bedrooms and one small bathroom. It's fine for myself and guests. But even with just two people, there's really only one spare room which I tend to use for staging trips and various hobby stuff I don't want to clutter my office.

I'd add that for a lot of people, one small bathroom would be a deal-breaker although shared bathrooms were considered the norm a few decades ago.

Big kitchens with islands and casual dining space add so much value to a home today. People absolutely love making the kitchen a centerpiece room. It can be used for so many things.

I think in older homes the thought at the time was that the kitchen was a utility room meant for cooking, food storage and dishes. And that the living room was the center of it all.

>I think in older homes the thought at the time was that the kitchen was a utility room meant for cooking, food storage and dishes.

And in some cases, it was where the servants dealt with such things out of site of any guests.

The house I grew up in had such an arrangement. And although we didn't have a cook, etc., in the sixties, my parents did a lot of large dinner party entertainment. While my mother did the cooking, it would still have been pretty much unthinkable for guests to be hanging out in the kitchen much less helping to clean up etc.

My ideal/dream/lottery home would be laid out as though I had a decent sized staff, utilitarian rooms out of sight, clear division between things. I won't turn down the staff if you're offering, but note that's not what I'm saying - I'd just like each room to be efficient/appropriate for how I'm spending my time when I'm there. A functional kitchen that's easy to clean but can be left in a mess while I send the food up in the dumbwaiter, and myself through the baize, to a more 'form over function' dining room. (Functional as a dining room of course.. I just mean that's decorated for comfort etc. rather than being a work area.)

Having more rooms and more division between them is part of why older houses feel bigger to me.

Modern ones also do some really stupid stuff with square footage. One house we owned had a massive master suite the size of the entire 2-car garage (it was over it) plus some more carved out for the bathroom, but without any dividing walls or doors (even the [large] bathroom was just an open, wide doorway entry, no closing doors). It was huge, but also not quite big enough to divide into multiple spaces with furniture and rugs or whatever without it looking and feeling weird. A kind of awkward fake-luxury size. And it was a front-back split with a living room in the lower part alongside the entryway, with a fireplace and big window... the layout of which made it almost impossible to set up actual living room furniture in a decent way, so we basically didn't use that entire room and used the basement instead.

The house could have been a solid 500 sqft smaller and felt just as large, with some tweaks to the design. Nearly every other house we've owned, aside from one very old one (by American standards-1910s construction), had similar issues with large areas being wasted for one reason or another, due to how they were designed.

I think the "open floor plan" trend is mostly to look impressive in photos and to get that "wow" factor when you first walk in. In practice, as commonly realized at least, it's terribly wasteful of space and makes houses feel smaller, because it's harder to get a wall between you and someone else, than it is in older houses. Harder to furnish, and arrange furnishing properly, too (not enough wall space, more backs of things visible)

[EDIT] I'd actually liken the open-floorpan trend to the haphazard McMansion appearance of the outside of houses. One thing I've noticed looking at lots of houses over the years is that nice, big, older houses, or newer ones built with balanced and regular exterior layouts, tend to look smaller on the outside than they actually are—or, put differently, McMansion-style houses look much bigger than they actually are. They're loud, and deceptive. Open floor plans are like that for interior space.

>I think the "open floor plan" trend is mostly to look impressive in photos and to get that "wow" factor when you first walk in. In practice, as commonly realized at least, it's terribly wasteful of space and makes houses feel smaller, because it's harder to get a wall between you and someone else, than it is in older houses.

I don't know. I live in an old house that I've incrementally opened up the first floor of. And I find the largely opened up space much airier and lighter and a generally better use of space than the more closed spaces were. That said, I do mostly live by myself so I don't really run into the issue of not being able to get away from other people unless I retreat to my office or small bedroom.

Yeah those higher ceilings are very popular, andextremely inefficient. We recently saw this in the new constructed homes in Texas, which made their problem with the power grid last year even worse. The few minutes they gave power to those fancy new home regions (during the time they were cycling power steering) basically went to waste, because the ceilings were so insanely high, and everyone has the open and spacious aesthetic. Many of them had 2 story entrance like ceilings, and few doors to close off where the heat should be directed. Older homes in the north tend towards lower ceilings and smaller rooms with doors - so heating one room can be efficient and fast

Sure, I was going to mention the tradeoff with the inefficiency but left it out for brevity.

I will say, though, that the same inefficiency in those geographic areas exist when building multistoried buildings. A ranch is much easier to cool in west texas/new mexico/arizona than a multistory building where the bedrooms and living areas need to be cooled.

I've notice the construction style also mitigates this somewhat. In the west where slab-on-grade is the norm, ducts run through the attic, meaning diffusers are in the ceiling. This makes natural convection of cold air more efficient, especially when coupled with something cheap like a ceiling fan. But at the end of the day, you're right that there's still substantially more air to condition.

I don't know if I'd say that was even a proximate cause of the texas power grid situation though which was largely due to weatherization issues. Can you elaborate?

There are a lot of articles that go through the issues in detail. The main points they list are that in that climate heating is less of a concern and so inefficient resistant heating is common. Then the grid itself didn't winterize, which lead to some plants not staying up and the others not being able to cover the spike in demand with a reduction in generation capacity.

That's kinda what I'm getting at. The root cause of the failure was not winterizing the plants and infrastructure, not really about residential construction design.

The resistance heating failed due to the grid design, not the other way around. Having more electrical demand would have not been much of an issue, I presume, had the grid been more resilient. Conversely, less resistance heating would not have magically made the grid more resilient.

Plus two story or more ceilings a pain to clean and paint.

1960s split levels, knock down a single wall and you have an open floor plan. It is an incredibly common remodel.

They often have vaulted ceilings and front bay windows.

While I do <3 a well done modern floor plan, sadly most new houses have garbage floor plans. Ironically, and IMHO, the smaller houses tend to make better use of space out of pure necessity. Take a 1200sqft 2 bedroom house, tell builders they have another 1000sqft, and they'll shove in a 2nd dining room, 3 closets, another bathroom, but no more useful space.

Related, 2 bedroom 3 bath houses make me want to scream.

"A modern blueprint 1800sqft house, yeah, for sure."

This seems to mostly be a difference in preference. The house is 1.5 baths and not large ones. Some layout parts are less efficient, like a master bedroom bigger than it has to be (so opposite of the numerous small rooms issue you brought up). But overall there is plenty of room, even a room dedicated as a play room. But overall this is a great example of shifting preferences over time since an average size house was 1970 was about 200 sqft less that this, and I grew up in an 1100sqft house.

Prices vary by location. You can have a 4 bed house build for a quarter of that in many areas of the country.

> We are throwing square footage away on multiple large bathrooms, 2 living rooms, 2 dining rooms

Two living rooms (well, “living” and “family”) and two (“formal” and, well, not) dining rooms are pretty common in 1960s homes at the size being discussed.

Bedrooms, bedroom closets, and kitchens are probably smaller than newer homes, though.

> The recent trend towards 4 story narrow houses doesn't help.

Tall, narrow houses have been a feature of urban single-family homes for a while, I don't think they are a new trend.

Modern homes have less room to live and more room to store crap.

I haven't really noticed that. Some older home don't have closets, or only small ones. But then it was common to have a shifero etc, taking up space too.

Areas commonly used for storage, like unfinished attics, basements, and garages aren't generally counted in the assessed sqft.

3 car garages so full of stuff they can't fit a single car!

Modern America in a nutshell.

The number of "parlors" I've seen full of boxes is unreal.

> Two living rooms (well, “living” and “family”) and two (“formal” and, well, not) dining rooms are pretty common in 1960s homes at the size being discussed.

When house buying in 2020/2021 I looked at over 100 homes.

Very few, if any, of the 1960s houses wasted space on two dining rooms, and a fair number had basements converted to family rooms but it obviously wasn't an original part of the floor plan.

The 1960s split level design is obscenely efficient in space usage. There are plenty of variations on it, but the well done ones, vaulted ceilings, visible interior wood trusses, are still nice to live in today. The only modern amenities they are missing are a walk in closet and a full master bath.

Clocking in at ~2000sqft they can do more than a modern 3000+ sqft home does.

> Tall, narrow houses have been a feature of urban single-family homes for a while, I don't think they are a new trend.

Agreed, but the new breed is much narrower than before. I've been in Chicago row houses, and sure they are narrow, but the new ones they are building around Seattle are insane. It is basically one room then a flight of stairs. 3 bedrooms, one in basement, one on 2nd floor, 3rd on top floor. It borders on unlivable for a family, not to mention anyone over the age of 35.

Honestly it'd be much better if they just made regular condos, instead of 4 across narrow homes of 4 stories, do 4 flats.

You're basically describing a Manhattan or Brooklyn townhome/rowhouse/brownstone. There the lot size has traditionally been 25x100 ft.

"The recent trend towards 4 story narrow houses doesn't help. A literal 1/3rd of the house is taken up by stairs"

If you want vertical efficiency, we have apartments for that. You get a single staircase and 20 single-story homes instead of 20 staircases in 20 homes.

Its funny that US/UK/ anglosphere seems to have never figured out apartments, in Uk you can't even be a true owner - first you pay leasehold, then you pay ground rent, then you pay service charge (for which they are not obligated to provide any service), so you paid 3 times for the same thing!

And then when yoy find out that your block was built in breach of fire regulations, it's not the material supplier, not the developer and not the building landlord that get the bill, its the leaseholder that does not even own the house that has to pay for 'waking watch' (pateolls by firemen) and any repairs!

People who bought Shared Ownership apartments (you own 25%, other 75% is owned by investors) are responsible for 100% of the cost of fixing the building because between developer, supplier, fire inspector and landlord someone has commited fraud.

UK likes to think fo itself as free country, but I have never seen laws as tyranical and feudal as housing laws here. It's like they were writted for medieval lords to opress their peasanta and never changed.

If you want to know more about this, google 'cladding scandal, UK'

The US has large apartment buildings, the problem is that there is not a whole lot of anything between 5-20 stories, and there is a construction premium for 20+ story buildings.

(And in the US it would be two staircases and 20 single story homes, specifically because building codes require two staircases to prevent a Grenfell-like disaster.

In all honesty, Grenfell was caused by bad construction choices, materials and political penny-pinching. A second stairway filled with cyanide smoke would have had very limited benefits.

Nobody really wants to live in an apartment.

People really want to live in their own little hut - as we have done for centuries.

"in Uk you can't even be a true owner "

You can never be the 'true owner' of any land in England. All land is technically owned by the Crown. You can only ever hold an interest in land in England - a freehold being the best you can get, and even those are littered with covenants these days.

"Nobody really wants to live in an apartment. People really want to live in their own little hut - as we have done for centuries."

I keep seeing this tryism repeated, but it seems to be a myth - apartment prices aren't very differr than house prices.

> You can never be the 'true owner' of any land in England. All land is technically owned by the Crown.

Functionally speaking, is that any different to any other comparable country?

I have a family with a teenager and apartment living is great, needs parking and a good location though.

If my previous town home had 1 more bedroom I would have stayed there and not moved.

The shared green space / yard is much larger than the one I have in the house I bought. Having an HOA take care of all maintenance and yard work is amazing.

At their best, condos and townhomes can be better than single family houses, but sadly most development isn't "at its best".

Funnily enough Scotland has figured out apartments - both Edinburgh and Glasgow have some really incredible spacious apartments. I wonder if it's a result of the divergent legal systems.

Living in London, I'd happily live in a generous sized apartment (I grew up in one in Scotland - it was fine), but the system here doesn't allow it. The apartments available are almost all very small (with a few very central and highly priced exceptions) and the leasehold system makes owning them and doing work a bureaucratic nightmare. So along with everyone else, I'm buying a house and bidding up the prices of those.

I'd love a review of legal systems for apartments globally because it does seem to differ between countries.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I have been thinking about what it would take to hypothetically limit the ability for people to buy multiple properties within some geographical boundary, or even put some pressure on low density owners in that geographical boundary while the cost of housing/vacancy rates are within some extremely scarce range. It's a naive thought atm, but I would be curious if everyone basically had only one slot for residential ownership in the metro area of the city, how much could regional demand actually push prices?

For example, is it even remotely reasonable as a society to allow extremely wealthy people to own two or more condos in Toronto, when the minimum cost to get any condo is 3/4 of a million and salaries not remotely keeping pace? Is it unreasonable to settle on a definition of excess being that of the multiple residential property owner? Likewise for consideration towards residential property development companies. Maybe it's possible to own a lot of land specifically designated for development, but not for just holding more than one or a few properties.

I don't think it's possible with all the shell corporations and other gimmicks the rich use. It's just too easy to conceal who owns what. I think simply removing all the market restrictions that make homes such a valuable investment would do it, when demand meets supply suddenly housing markets start to look like any other market. But this seems to be politically unthinkable just about everywhere.

I think there's a difference between completely impossible, and partially very difficult. If reasonably well-off people can pretty easily leverage low-interest rates and take control over property that otherwise wouldn't have as much competition, then that's probably a bad thing. The super rich will always figure out a way if it's lucrative enough, but those actions would stand out more if it was generally unacceptable. As it stands, I don't even know how to track down data on how many people own multiple properties. Likewise, you can't possibly out-pace multiple property ownership with supply in a desirable place unless you exhaust the excess capital available to wealthy people and ban low-density zoning codes and maybe even ban surface-level parking lots.

In my neighbourhood, lots of wealthy homeowners have signs up decrying the construction of a sky-scraper that's sort of vaguely near the edge of their neighbourhood, which is currently occupied by a parking lot. The effect it would theoretically have, is adding to the available housing supply in the area for people currently renting at absurd rates because it's impossible to buy anything. It would take away rental income from people who already leveraged themselves too much, and marginally decrease demand for their scarce commodity known as a place to live.

> I don't think it's possible with all the shell corporations and other gimmicks the rich use.

If there was the political will to do it, it would be very easy.

Just pass a law that every residential property must be owned by real people with their names on the title.

A lot of it is cost of labor. What I suspect is cheap loans to homebuilders has propped up the price of trades and secondarily materials to the point most people can't afford to build their own house in any location.

Then, depending on where you are, you have fixed costs for building in an area like geological or ecological impact statements that can be $20k or more. Too much.

"Changing preferences are the best way to address this, yet is likely the most difficult to sucessfully influence. Houses being built today are mostly larger homes"

Surely people who are currently homeless would rather rent a small house than none at all? I haven't met one demanding '1800sqft or i'd rather live on the street!'

This is why minimum wage, that prohibits low-wage work, and minimum floor size ordinances, that prohibit micro-suites, are so harmful.

Fortunately the former has been mostly neutralized by the statutory minimum wage being reduced by inflation, but the latter is getting worse, with more such laws being implemented and reducing affordable housing.

So yes and no.

One important factor to increasing house size is that localities in the US tend to have fairly large lot sizes. To recoup the cost of building on more expensive land, builders build more house, because the opposite (building 2 or more houses and subdividing the land) is just illegal.

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