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Comment by dagw | Hacker News Reader

but in North America you have the choice generally to live big or small

How is that different in Europe? For the price of a one room flat in the centre of the nice part of town you can equally get a nice big house with a garden way out of town if that is what you prefer. Sure US houses tend to be bigger on average, but it's not like you can't buy a big house on the cheap if that is what you want. You just have to be willing to live an hour+ drive away from anything in a place with no jobs.

The only real difference is that, on average, Europeans tend to prioritise shorter commutes and living closer to town over large homes.

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> The only real difference is that, on average, Europeans tend to prioritise shorter commutes and living closer to town over large homes.

And afaict Americans /are prohibited from/ prioritising that due to zoning - it is nearly impossible to get an apartment close to shops, work, and functioning public transit.

Homes (and flats) in North America are substantially bigger than those in the US and you generally don't have to go 'way out'.

If you go 'substantially out of town' in North America you can live in quite a seriously large home, a size that generally doesn't have comparison in Europe.

Finally, in North America, in most places just 2 hours from the city you can have 'vast' acreage. Very big plots of land.

So the 'size' comparison from flats, to suburban homes, to extra urban homes, to mini-ranches doesn't really compare.

Of course, that comes with significantly more energy usage.

Indeed - as someone who moved from a (large) flat in central Edinburgh - if you go one hour out of Edinburgh (which is an easy commute if you go somewhere near a train line) then you get an awful lot more for your money.

A nice single bedroom flat in the centre of Edinburgh is about £400K - that'll get you a pretty nice house with a garden somewhere like Fife.

You can have large homes close to work (<20 mins) in much of the USA.

I can count on my hand the number of people I know with a commute longer than 30 mins.

Average US housing has 3x the floor space and land space as a British house. The Brits are very poor by US standards.

Average housing is mediated by where people want to live and preferences around the value of space. I could move elsewhere in the UK and have 5x the space for the same price, or I could buy a castle in France. But while that castle might be tempting for retirement, I value living close to the centre of London more than I value the extra space.

Yes, supply and demand. And there's considerably more 'supply' of land in the US. Homes are considerably less expensive in comparable relative terms.

So is energy. So is food.

So those are some very primary inputs into the cost of living, which means we live 'expansively' in North America.

In Europe people are super concerned about 'cutting back' that mentality hasn't quite hit in North America.

I suggest Americans will be more interested in aggressively increasing energy production, rather than learning how to live with less, except in some circumstances where I'm sure European advances in 'water saving dishwashers' etc. will be welcome.

My point is that supply and demand is heavily affected by priorities, and so you need to account for people's priorities if you want to make assumptions about what the difference in size means.

There is plenty of affordable land in Europe, but instead we're seeing even people who do not need to move to more expensive cities for work still do so because we willingly choose smaller houses.

That is not to say that there aren't plenty of people who would like more space, but I've personally worked with people who "wanted" more space, but only if they didn't have to move even one fare zone on public transport further out, because they liked to be dead centre of a major metropolis.

My example of a French castle was not random - I'm considering retiring to France eventually, and for the cost of my house in London, I can literally buy a castle 10x the size of my house, on huge grounds.

Yet today I would not swap my house for a castle even though I work 100% remote and could do so if it suited my lifestyle, because my location currently matters more to me than more space.

Yes, but the average US house is basically in the middle of the countryside by British standards, that's the difference. We could say Americans are very poor by British standards since they can't live near shops, work, etc.

If you want to live an hour outside the city and drive everywhere, you can rent a 3-bedroom detached house of a similar size as a US house reasonably easily, for about the same price. The difference is that when you give people a choice - which they don't have in much of the US - many apparently choose not to do that.

> If you want to live an hour outside the city and drive everywhere, you can rent a 3-bedroom detached house of a similar size as a US house reasonably easily, for about the same price.

Nonesense. I just checked on rightmove for a three bed in Wallingford (a tiny town in central England a km across that consists entirely of suburbs and is an hour's drive from the edge of London). It's about 30% smaller than the average US residence while costing just under a million dollars.

Heck, Ramsey is in the middle of bloody nowhere and its still >$400k for a three bed half the size of what you can get inside Chicago city for the same price.

Brits struggle to comprehend just how much worse off we are than the Americans. Similar housing (similar type of location etc) costs 3x-6x as much despite Brits earning less.

I recently visited Denver for work - I have never felt so entirely trapped in my life. That's not better off to me - not having the freedom to walk, to take the bus, because you're surrounded by what I would call a "motorway" and they call a "street" is something I don't understand.

Imagine trying to raise your kids to be independent human beings when they can't walk to the shops, can't visit their friends without mummy or daddy driving them, and can't take the bus to the local swimming pool/cinema/library/whatever.

Anyway, try not looking around London, it's not the only city in the UK, believe it or not. And I mentioned rent rather than purchase price. Nobody in my social circle can buy in either the US or the UK.

> Anyway, try not looking around London, it's not the only city in the UK, believe it or not.

Ramsey is in North England.

> Nobody in my social circle can buy in either the US or the UK.

I could afford to buy a decent place in over 90% of the USA. Not here though (budget of £300k).

Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, is most certainly not in Northern England. Anyone who suggests so probably has suspect knowledge.

However you both have points. But I expect that the houses you’re looking at on rightmove are not affordable, new builds, which typically are not clustered around the kinds of places you used as examples.

And a lot of USA houses are built so very cheaply. You don’t get many thatched houses stateside, right?

Not to say that English new-builds in the last 20 years are stellar examples of construction, but you do generally get a lot more house for your money.

And a lot of USA houses are built so very cheaply.

Hopefully things have substantially improved since I last lived in the UK 20 years ago, but all the places I've lived in the UK where pretty bad. Single pane windows that rattle in the frame when it's windy, drafts from everywhere, damp everywhere, people arguing that a bit of mold in the bathroom is normal, no insulation, 150 years old houses with 120 year old plumbing, no central heating...and no one seemed to see any of this as a problem

US homes often look like rather insubstantial temporary structures to me.

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