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Comment by YATA0 | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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>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).

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