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Comment by YATA0 | Hacker News Reader

This Twitter thread hits the nail on the head. Imagine this process in California, where just working with PG&E to get utilities to the site may be a six figure adventure, then another $40-60k for an electrician to wire the house. That could be close to $200k for electrical alone. This could be for a 1,000 square foot shed in Oakland, not somewhere around Malibu.

Add on the planning costs that the Twitter author goes on about, and your "affordable housing" is now near a million dollars. Is that really affordable?

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I can build the entire house with everything included. And not from those pesky woodsticks, but from a real concrete and bricks. For around $40k. Something in US is seriously wrong. I understand that labour cost difference is huge, but it can’t be the only factor.

Can you elaborate what kind of house this is for 40k?

What is your location?

Kazakhstan

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30804120

Very nice

https://m.krisha.kz/a/show/669973674

This is an example that I just found. It’s almost ready and without internal decoration. Cost is $50k but keep in mind that it includes 1800 sq.m. of land. Electricity, water seems to be done. Internal decoration with good materials I’d estimate to $10-20k. House is 160 sq.m.

Building code regulations are expensive.

Where do you live? $40k in concrete will get you your concrete driveway in California.

$4000 for the concrete and $36000 for everything else.

Kazakhstan

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30804120

A cinder block in the US is almost $2 - let’s assume on discount you can get it for $1.

Still expensive.

Here’s the cheapest kit at Menards if you’d like to compare:

29551 - Tahoe Cabin Material List at Menards https://www.menards.com/main/p-1569392867885.htm

And that’s materials only. And would be considered quite small by US standards.

But hey 11% rebate.

And that's why you pour the concrete directly into walls with rebars inside. Much stronger than cinder blocks and 10 times cheaper. But hey, nobody wants to actually do quality work, let's just fuck around with lego.

Around here poured concrete is usually more expensive than cinderblock, though it is also usually better.

It’s even cheaper if you do the laying yourself of course.

Don't know where "here" is in your case but do you have skyscrapers? Because if you look at any documentary how a skyscraper is build, it's with pouring cement over rebars, not with stacking cinder blocks. Do you think those guys would not rather prefer stacking cinder blocks over rebars instead of pouring if would've been cheaper?

Do you think they build skyscrapers and two-story houses the same? That's like saying Honda Civics and Abrahams tanks are built the same because they're both vehicles.

Both have engines, and both have crankshafts. So, yeah, at least partially, they are built the same. Now, translating that to our comparison of 2-story house vs. skyscraper, both have floors. Do you see on skyscrapers, when doing said floors, using concrete pouring or cinder blocks? Because if cinder blocks are cheaper, they would've been used for decking/ceiling a floor, but they always use concrete pouring.

So yeah, concrete pouring is way cheaper.

Skyscrapers have to hold the weight of the skyscraper, cinder blocks wouldn't work. Cinder blocks probably max out at two or three stories unless you do brick on concrete frame like you see in some countries.

Wood also maxes out at some point, and even poured concrete - which is why the tallest skyscrapers are glass on steel.

Wood was used to build this 18 story building recently - it definitely is less strong than glass/steel though

https://reasonstobecheerful.world/the-age-of-the-wood-skyscr...

In Kazakhstan they live in mud houses. Cinder blocks are sort of irrelevant.

Mud houses and yurts should be more common in the USA, especially as many places have perfect climates for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I32sMNktmKo

Unfortunately for most Americans who are building a house, a primary concern is the eventual sale, and anything that is not the standard house is a harder sell.

Which means that if you're willing to stray from the beaten path you can find some deals, and some disasters.

My brother built a 1300 sq ft house in upstate NY for about $90k in 2005.

California is a whole other level of insanity for everything. NYC/DC prices and bureaucracy along with the busybody veto power of suburbia.

Affordable units in SF cost $700-800k.

What's wrong with wood homes? I associate concrete with getting killed in Earthquakes and shantytowns to be honest.

The old world associates US construction with 'houses made of paper', where anyone can break into your house just by kicking in a hollow wooden door.

Even in UK it was shocking to find out that walls between apartments are just plaster, that's totally unacceptable in continental europe, When i tell my folks that I could break through to the neighboirs with a kitchen knife, their brain implodes (It would take a while)

That's weird. Living in Ireland I found the houses to be crap, with blown bricks, no insulation, terrible draughts, and no eaves (encouraging water ingress). I was delighted to build myself a proper stud frame home insulated with 200mm rockwool throughout.

Ireland is not continental Europe.

I was just thinking the same thing. I was involved with a development project in Colombia, a three-story tract of 3b/2b apartments. The total construction cost was about $40k each. Permits and fees was maybe $1000 plus a year of waiting and a few bottles of gift-wrapped tequila. Selling prices were $50–70k, some rented at $250/month.

Why is it absurdly expensive to build in the USA?

There are a lot of articles out there covering the basics on everything from environmental review to open space requirements to labor, but they can be summed up by just saying that local government in most American cities has never not been somewhat corrupt all through the past and going on to this day, and politically connected people stand to make a lot of money from this status quo that doesn't take an expert to see hurts the average working person. I think the FBI has indicted three sitting LA city councilmembers within the last couple of years now? It's amazing how the headlines don't seem to stick though, uncanny really.

> $40-60k for an electrician to wire the house.

Think I'm in the wrong profession, what on earth does a Californian electrician make per year? At that rate I'd guess 500K+

Many of the trades can make good money. Especially in areas that forbid owners to work on their own homes, even to replace an existing water heater (like NYC).

How would they know?

They don't, but the moment you need real permits or need to refi etc they might ask for and enforce permits.

Try buying or selling a house with unlicensed "modifications". It's an interesting exercise.

Very true. Depending on the modifications (like electrical), insurance could deny claims if they find unapproved/unpermitted work, even if it wasn't the cause, or the cause was unknown (depends on the policy).

Around here, if you don’t want to buy a house with un-permitted work, it’s no problem; there’s another buyer standing right behind you (often literally) who will.

This is true but like i said when you need real permit etc this becomes tricky.

Well, I think NYC made it law that hardware stores can only sell hot water heaters to licensed contractors. Not sure what other restrictions there are.

It takes an absurd number of hours to wire a house in California because the code is insane. That multiplies with high labor costs.

Wiring a simple / small home, it takes well over four electrician months, minimum.

Also, they have to pay licensing fees to the state, insurance premiums, etc, etc.

Of course, the $40-60K also includes materials, which are a small percentage of the cost, but non-zero.

I’m a slow as hell perfectionist DIYer and I can’t see any way I could take even 2 months of full-time work to wire a small, simple new construction house. How can it take a pro 4 months? (Or 2 months solo and 1 month with a journeyman electrician?)

My parents place was new, custom construction (not small, but only 3BR/3Ba) and there were 2 sparkies there for 1 day to set the temporary power, 4 or 5 days to rough the house in and, after drywall, they were back for 3 or 4 days to trim everything out.

I watched my house being built. We'd visit the site pretty much once a week or every other week.

One day we showed up, and all of the electrical had been done. Power, internet, pre-wired home alarm, panels, the whole kit. Plumbing was the same way. One day, plumbing. (It uses that flexible plastic tubing internally, that has to go up fast.)

Did I see it being done? No. For all I know 50 folks showed up and wired it in a day. "2 man months". But, I'm guessing that's not what happened.

The most interesting anecdote from this is that I actually met one of the guys that did the work. He did, at least part of, the internet wiring.

Know how I met him? He was driving a dump truck delivering landscaping material. He liked the work better, I guess his family owned the hauling business.

I don't know what he was getting paid to route CAT 6 cable, but, apparently, all told, driving a dump truck is better.

You pay $300/hr for electrical work, and by the time it trickles down to the actual apprentices doing the grunt work it’s $20-40/hr. Even the electrician officially in charge is $100/hr at best unless he owns the company (and then it’s often lower due to bad accounting).

Where in California was your parents’ house built?

This is very surprising, in Australia I understand we have strict codes and I have never heard of it taking this long

What exactly does the electrician spend all that time doing in California?

Some state codes require use of galvanized steel piping (called EMT) for electrical conduit.

On an unclad, sanely sized house that's still like two days for the apprentice to install and pull cable, tops. $200 for the poor sod doing the work, $80p for his boss, and $2k for the company is still nowhere near 2 electrician months of labour.

Every state requires pipe in many places, industrial, most commercial, large multi-unit buldings. The only place in the USA that I know requires pipe in resi is Chicago.

Personally I think they are exaggerating how long the actual work takes. However trades are in high demand due to significant remodels and commercial construction so it might long time to find someone.

I’m a little skeptical. California code is not that dissimilar to the national code in terms of labor and materials. I’ve had extensive work done to my California house by electricians for a (fully-permitted) remodel and it’s been pricey but not that slow or pricey.

In California it Cost me 3k to upgrade an electric panel from 120 to 200amp service. Was a one day job with a single electrician.

That's probably the cheapest upgrade in the history of the state. PG&E claims the average service upgrade in California is costing somewhere between $8k to $25k.

I had panel upgrade in the bay area back in 2019 which cost $3200. Changed the service panel, weatherhead and ground rods.

Overhead service is definitely the cheapest upgrade. No trenching and underground conduit required.

Probably depends on if you have to pay PG&E for their side or if it’s just a panel swap.

It was just a panel swap. But I did have PGE come out to disconnect and re-connect service. It also required a permit and inspection from the city.

Ah. Yes that's about right for a panel swap. Upgrading the service conductors is what costs $$$.

You also have situations like my friend - his current 100 amp service is arial, but if he wants to upgrade to 200 amp service he will have to pay for buried line.

Amusingly enough you can add a separate 100 amp service arial if you convert to a duplex even if just on paper ...

Wiring a simple / small home, it takes well over four electrician months, minimum.

It’s hard to take these numbers seriously - they don’t pass the sniff test for anyone who has had it done. Wiring a 1000sq ft home is a job that is measured in days, not months. While I only have experience of the UK, it is difficult to see any possible regulation which would mean installation being quite literally an order of magnitude slower.

But let’s use some Fermi estimation. California builds around 100,000 new houses a year, give or take. This suggests we’d need an absolute minimum of 400,000 electrician-months a year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics thinks there are 70,000 electricians in California in total. Assuming they have an availability of 90%, then we could say that California has about 750,000 available electrician-months a year in total.

This would mean that over half of all available electrician time in California would be spent wiring new-build houses, if we assumed they were all small properties. It seems clear this can’t be a credible result.

I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong, but it’s hard to swallow without some idea of what possible thing could cause this betone vague hints about “code being insane“

He may just have gotten bad contractors. A friend of mine lives in a council run appartment in the UK and some simple jobs that have been carried out on his building have run into years, with multiple people on site every day (mostly doing nothing or doing stuff so badly that it needs another team to come in and rectify).

Recent example, upgrade to fire doors in corridors on 3 floors. Halfway into the job they realise each corridor is a different height and the doors they have already bought are the wrong size. Some levels of incompetance are hard to imagine until you see it happening in real time.

Materials are not a "small percentage of the cost". Wire and switchgear are painfully expensive these days. On the other hand, two guys with hustle can rough in a typical house in 2-3 days.

That seems... not true? The wiring in my 12-year-old home in CA does not seem to be particularly complicated, and I doubt code has changed much in the past decade. With all the drywall off, I can't imagine it taking more than a few days (for 2-3 people) to completely wire my (~1900 sqft) home.

I worked some construction. It was 15 years ago, but I, me, nobody else, wired up the whole small house in a couple days. The walls were open. It was fast, easy work. The only thing I didn't touch was the service panel and the connection to the pole.

This was in Southern California.

Not the electrician. The company owner.

Around here they make about $150 an hour if they are contractors and work for themselves. So I would guess 80-100 for an electrician with 5+ years experience. About the same as most other semi-specialized trades.

$150/hour for a reliable and qualified electrician is a hell of a deal.

for single family detached, no

but that was never actually an economically viable product, so it makes sense to simply not expect it to work.

for four to sixteen units that seems like it could be fine?

>but that was never actually an economically viable product

It is the most economically viable product, which is why they dominate.

>for four to sixteen units that seems like it could be fine?

Those costs have also skyrocketed because now you have additional requirements like fire, egress, additional structural when going over two stories, etc.

It's why most new apartments are "luxury" apartments. The costs have grown so out of control that the only way to break even is to make them outrageously priced.

>It is the most economically viable product, which is why they dominate.

Only because they are the only thing that most zoning codes in the U.S permit to build. With U.S zoning being what it is, there's literally no honest discussion to be made on what type of housing is most economically viable.

I think it’s quite viable if we look back to when it started. Back then hones we’re 800sq feet. Even 100 years ago an average home was about there. Today they are 2400 so feet on average.

So if we go back to smaller places it’s viable. The only reason it’s not viable in places like Europe is because there are so many people in a small space. In the USA we could get adequate population density with 1200 sq foot homes and 1/8 acre plots.

The land has gotten so expensive that the kind of people who can afford a SFH lot for their personal use, not to become a duplex or quadplex or whatever, can also afford to build a 2400 sqft house without it really mattering. Now a quadplex in the same spot could split that lot cost across 4 families.

Depends where you are. In most places land is quite cheap.

In places where land is cheap, infrastructure is expensive. Roads, electricity, water, sewers, internet. Higher commute cost is also a cost in productivity.

This is often touted, but I just doubt that electricity, water, and sewers are more expensive outside of the city.

My father managed several factories in the LA area. Upgrading the electrical for new equipment in the close to downtown factory was going to cost something like a 6 to 7 figure sum. The factory in the boondocks upgrade was a quarter of the price.

Factories are themselves dense in resource usage, so it's different. It's a matter of scale.

A suburban neighborhood that hosts a few dozens of families requires more infrastructure, but can be replaced by a single 10 to 20-story building. An large apartment complex can serve hundreds of families.

Now, it doesn't have to be a dichotomy. It should be even more cost effective to build tall apartment buildings in the suburbs near the city. City-nations tend to expand capacity by creating new towns in suburban areas and extensive planning. That's much more efficient than US-style suburban sprawl.

> It is the most economically viable product, which is why they dominate.

It's the only legal product.

Very different.

If you ban shoes that aren't made of gold, everyone is going to have terrible, expensive shoes. This would not be evidence that gold shoes were economically viable. Especially if every locale that adopted this rule was deeply in debt.

> It's the only legal product.

Where’d this nonsense that the only thing you can build in the US is SFH come from? All over the US, in the same areas where there are SFH, there are apartment complexes, condos, and townhouses. The reason there’s so much SFH in the US is because, believe it or not, many people prefer living in a detached home with some semblance of a yard.

It’s also the single easiest thing to get loans on, subsidized by the government.

I walk into the bank and permit office for a loan to build a single family, and they barely even wake up before shoving the money at me.

If I dare to go above a duplex, all hell breaks loose.

>Where’d this nonsense that the only thing you can build in the US is SFH come from? All over the US, in the same areas where there are SFH, there are apartment complexes, condos, and townhouses.

Because it's very often true. Many neighborhoods that have apartments and townhomes mixed with SFH are full of grandfathered-in buildings that would be illegal to build under current zoning codes, due to setback/lot-fill/height/unit-count requirements etc. In fact, one reform idea I'm particularly fond of is allowing (e.g. at state level) any property to be rebuilt to the existing use (so that people aren't living in decaying, unhealthy buildings).

> but that was never actually an economically viable product

There are clearly lots of these buildings. And have been for decades. It may not work "forever" but it has worked.

Your argument reminds me of the economist who steps over the $100 bill on the ground since it couldn't possibly be there because if it was, someone would have picked it up by now.

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