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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

I agree that they are clearly different houses.

That said, I think the difference is overstated. I have lots of friends who live in craftsmen homes. They resell at basically the same price as similar sized houses built 25 years ago (even with single pane windows ect) . If somehow you got one that wasn't upgraded since 1920, you are looking at a few tens of thousands to put in electrical, plumbing, and appliances.

Still, you are right that that they are not the same. But a lot of people today would kill to own a beautiful new craftsman home for 40k! I wouldn't trade out my car for a horse, but I would trade 40k a year rent for a craftsman home!

The point is that even you wanted to replicate an original craftsman home today, you wouldn't be able to do it for that price, even ignoring regulations. Labor costs have gone up, wood has gone up, minimum cost of every material used has gone up.

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The average craftsman home built 100 years ago isn’t going for the same price as a 25 year old house.

The craftsman homes that have survived for 100 years in good condition are. That’s a very different thing.

Old houses also have tons of problems even when upgraded, and they just aren’t anywhere near equivalent to a modern home unless you essentially gut them and rebuild.

Insulation isn’t nearly as good. Bathrooms aren’t nearly the same size. The floor plans aren’t nearly as open. This last one in particular is a big cost difference because creating large open spans is expensive.

Those things might not matter as much to you, but they are big differences.

>The point is that even you wanted to replicate an original craftsman home today, you wouldn't be able to do it for that price, even ignoring regulations. Labor costs have gone up, wood has gone up, minimum cost of every material used has gone up.

Depends on the part of the country and whether or not you can use modern equivalent materials.

Where I live, assuming pre pandemic prices, I could probably build a 900 sq ft, single story house with a wooden pier foundation, no plumbing, no electrical, no insulation (or maybe old newspapers like my great grandmothers house used for insulation), no driveway, no sod, and no inspections for $40-$50k.

That would be roughly equivalent to your average house built 100 years ago.

> The floor plans aren’t nearly as open. This last one in particular is a big cost difference because creating large open spans is expensive.

That especially is just fashion, I'd be really careful with that sort of conversion. Or, if the only 'problem' with a property is that it has too many segregated rooms, and that's depressing the price.. snap it up, fashion's bound to come around. (Unless it's for you to live in and you particularly care of course, live where you want!)

There’s probably some an element of fashion to it, but there’s also a technical element. Engineered lumber allows for cheaper, larger unsupported spans.

Cooking is also less frequent, extraction fans are better/cheaper, we don’t use wood burning stoves. When people do cook it’s less likely to be an all day process, and less likely to involve methods like deep frying in bacon grease. It’s also less likely that a middle class family has a servant to do the cooking for them.

All this leads to less need to segregate the kitchen from the rest of the house.

If you look at Victorian houses, kitchens were placed as far away from living spaces as possible. Going forward from the 19th century there has been an overall trend towards integrating the kitchen with living spaces. Culminating in the modern trend of combining the kitchen and living room into one large space.

Families are also smaller than they used to be, so there’s less need for as many rooms. Plus furniture is larger on average.

The point is there are factors pushing houses towards larger open spaces, and larger open rooms in general that are likely durable.

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