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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

I can't fathom the logic behind the idea that we'll get people to build brand new housing to a high spec and sell it for less than existing, very expensive housing. Every time anyone builds stuff near me there's cries of "BUT IT'S NOT AFFORDABLE!!!" and I just think... duh? New cars are expensive too, which is why you buy a used one....

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But older houses are better (nicer architecture, better materials, more space, more mature trees) than newer houses.

With asbestos, lead, I couldn’t just pick a piece of land and go to a showroom and get exactly what we wanted. Choose to get cat 6 prewired throughout the house. Some really old ones don’t have central air (even my parents house they had built in 1978 did).

I’ve bought five properties over the years. The two I bought to live in I had built and never had the maintenance costs people complain about (2002-2012 and 2016 - present).

At least in the UK I don't think most people care about the tech of their house (air conditioning, certainly not network cabling) like this.

Air conditioning is going to hugely increase in popularity here in the UK. I think people like the tech, including better heating and sound and heat insulation and FTTP, but it's balanced out by the poor reputation of new builds in terms of quality issues.

Expectations have also just shifted with respect to things like air conditioning. I live in a very old house and, while I do put a window unit in my office, my brother could never understand me not having central air in Massachusetts.

He did just rebuild a house after a fire and put all the latest gadgetry and controls in. The heat pump seems nice but mostly I find there's a lot of complexity and not a lot that offers significant advantages relative to my house.

The increased popularity of heat pumps should mean more aircon, but bafflingly houses in the UK and Ireland are still going with radiators instead of wall split units.

Nicer architecture: Only sometimes. Sometimes, old is just old and plain. Not to mention that things change over the years: I'm guessing by 'old house' you refer to something built pre-1940 and not the ranch style house built in the 60's: Those houses from the 60's are over 50 years old, though.

Better materials? I'm not convinced. Drafty doors and windows, little insulation, lead paint, outdated plumbing parts, and old wires are a few things that were used. Any serious look at windows used during building booms during the 50's dispels the materials, honestly - at least in the US.

More space? Again, only if you get the right house. Plenty of old houses are small. You also have a bit of survivor bias here: Old, large houses that were expensive were more likely to be maintained and preserved later. I'll also point out that a good deal of old houses are now apartments, and also point out that the space you get in an old house costs more to heat. On top of that, this was a space designed for a different time period. That means that space can be a much less efficient space than you get in a new house that is wired for modern times.

Maybe using more mature trees really isn't something we should be doing right now? At least some of those mature trees contributed to deforestation and it seems better to get trees not from old growth, but from new growth from a well-managed forest area, where swaths of trees are replanted.

Old houses are just full of downfalls, even if you happen to be getting more space and possibly a better looking house.

> Maybe using more mature trees really isn't something we should be doing right now?

The trees are more mature because they were planted longer ago. Planting trees in suburbia is the opposite of deforestation.

I do understand both of these, and I advocate using managed forest areas with newer growth - perhaps you misunderstood? We simply don't have as many old growth forests that our ancestors have had due to deforestation. The trees being planted in suburbia aren't offsetting what we are using to build the houses either, and definitely aren't replacing them where they were harvested (the forest, in general). We also aren't planting the same varieties of trees that we use to build the houses, as trees in housing development are generally chosen for looks, speed of growth, and size.

I don't really understand what you're on about.

I'm saying that houses in areas built in the 1920s have beautiful hundred-year old trees along the roads. Houses built in the 2020s have tiny saplings. I'm saying the former is nicer than the latter.

Not talking about building materials. Talking about the environment around the houses.

He's talking about trees, not lumber. A nice healthy mature oak in the backyard is a thousand times nicer than a scrawny sapling that might give you shade in 20 years if it survives that long.

The flipside is that sometimes the mature tree isn't healthy, and remediation of a large and dying tree can be tricky and expensive.

Every a healthy mature tree is expensive to trim and will eventually fall on your house.

As is often the case, preventative maintenance is a lot cheaper than remediation. It's easier to safely dismantle a tree that is dying but not yet rotting. If you ignore the problem for too long, that's when things fall on your house and fixing your roof will cost a lot more than getting the tree removed properly a few years ago would have cost.

I meant of equivalent quality - and older houses are, somewhat ironically, often nicer because we've made it illegal to build those nice houses with short setbacks in pleasant little walkable neighbourhoods because of things like parking minimums, density maximums, minimum setbacks, etc.

Also lead and asbestos are no fun. Or thatched roofs, but I admit that's my own very particular concern having bought a 200+ year old house.

> I meant of equivalent quality

But they aren't of equivalent quality. That's the point.

At some point that can't keep being true.

And houses generally have gotten far larger over time.

> At some point that can't keep being true.

I can't really see us ever going back to solid-stone construction and the kind of intricate architecture we used to have in our culture.

> And houses generally have gotten far larger over time.

Rooms used to be 3m tall - they've shrunk over time to 2.4m tall. New-builds have zero storage.

Just did a self build and apparently ceilings have been rising again - 9, or 10 feet (which brings you back to 3m). Lower-volume rooms do mean less volume to heat or cool though.

> Just did a self build

Well yeah if you build it bespoke you can have ceilings as high as you want. But we're talking about houses that normal people buy from developers.

Toyota makes a new camry as well as a new lexus.

The point he's trying to make is that a new house often costs less than a used house, which is the opposite in the car market.

No, the point he is making is not that they are actually less expensive than existing comparable homes, but that people complain that they do not meet affordability standards that would require them to be less expensive.

Sure but the new economy sedan is more expensive than the used economy sedan.

According to this interpretation therefore, if you build a new house, and it is broadly similar to houses in the neighborhood in which you build it… it’s going to be expensive relative to its neighbors. It will perhaps be perceived as “luxury” despite just being new.

> If the land is valuable, and all you can build on it is a single-family home, why not build a very expensive single-family home?

The article suggests changing zoning so triplex/fourplexes can be built. Even if they have marble countertops, they'd still be more affordable than a house.

Currently, I can't build the housing version of a Camry.

I live in a townhouse. Its land efficient, i have a garage w/ storage its relatively affordable to houses. What i dont like are HOA fees and useless common expenses (the pool) and forced rules (only white curtains). The space 3 units take up is about one house in same neighborhood.

Right... and new camrys are more expensive than used Camrys...

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