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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

I suspect the causality is reversed:

Housing is not considered a long-term investment because demolition and new construction is easy.

My instinct is that the causal arrow begins with earthquakes and disposable (timber-based) building practices, which keep housing/structures from being viewed as stable long-term vehicles

So why didnt California end up in that state, concidering it has nearly the same conditions?

That's a very good question. Probably because modern California was settled by European colonizers, who brought their traditional construction and property practices with them?

I'd love to see a sociologist's analysis of the ring of fire, though. If anyone knows of someone who isn't just talking out their butt (like me), please drop a rec

>That's a very good question. Probably because modern California was settled by European colonizers, who brought their traditional construction and property practices with them?

Like lawns! Like California is the completely wrong state for lawns.

California is a massive state with 16 different climate zones. The vast majority of California is not a desert. Lawns are fine in most of the state.

But most Californians do live in the desert. Lawns may be fine in most of the state, but not many people live in those parts.

No, most Californians do not live in the desert, not even close.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/K%C3%B6p...

Ok, you discovered my colloquial use of a technical word. I know most Californians live in what is technically a "Mediterranean" climate. But relevant to the topic at hand: most Californians get well under 20 inches of rain per year. It isn't a "desert" biome, but "Desert" at least gets you in the right mindset.

http://ponce.sdsu.edu/california_average_annual_precipitatio...

https://gisgeography.com/us-precipitation-map/

A cursory google search suggests that grass lawns need the equivalent of 1" of rain per week. Very few people live in the parts of California that get 50+ inches per year, which was the original point. Grass lawns are entirely unsuited to the parts of California where almost everyone lives.

All the sibling posts here have made their point. But just anecdatally, as a lifelong resident, lawns make zero water-economic sense.

California is seismically active, but not like Japan: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/EQs_1900...

One factor is that large parts of Tokyo were leveled in WW2 bombings.

Starting your housing stock from near zero must mean you favor getting something simple done quick.

Japanese houses are low quality (they have single pane windows, no insulation at all, and no central heat because they think it builds character). But they’re no more timber based than US houses are, and there’s nothing overly temporary about building a house out of wood, especially new forms like CLT.

This may have been true in the past, but it is definitely not true at this time. I'm currently shopping for homes in Tokyo, and the current generation of homes being built are high quality, insulated, with double pane windows, heated wood floors, incredible bathrooms (fully floodable, giant tubs, air conditioning/heating/24 hour ventilation), separated toilets with heated seats and bidets, and generally at least one nice balcony.

There's no central heat, but that's because it's wasteful. Each room has one or more air conditioners (which are heat pumps). I heat (or cool) whichever room I'm currently in, and don't need to waste energy on the entire residence.

For what it's worth, central heating as I understand it can usually also be controlled separately for each room. In Central Europe I too heat mainly the rooms I use (say, living room during daytime and bedroom at nights).

It definitely is. I live in the US, and my house has 3 separate "zones" for heating and cooling. Programmable thermostats turn things off and on automatically based on a pre-set schedule, and the schedules can also be overridden. The result is that we're generally only heating or cooling the parts of the house that we're using.

It can be, but it's not the norm. I've personally never lived somewhere that has programmable central heating/cooling.

Really good article on zoning in Japan: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

I think it's a bit of both, it's not viewed as as much of an investment therefore zoning laws are lax, which mean that housing can't become an investment because anyone can build (up to) anything on a lot.

I think the tax code even incentivizes demolition in that the taxes for sales of bare land versus land with a structure on it are less.

In constraint, California tax policy incentivizes keeping around crappy old buildings. If keep the old building, Proposition 13 limits how much your tax can go up. If you build a nice new building, the state punishes you but reassessing the value of your property. This can greatly increase your property tax if you have owned the property for a while.

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