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Comment by ziddoap | Hacker News Reader

I definitely agree that there's much more to housing prices than most simple analyses present.

Some food for thought in the other direction, though:

- Tools (e.g. nail guns, paint guns, concrete finishers, horizontal drilling for utilities, etc.) and materials (e.g. pre-engineered trusses) are significantly more efficient, so labor costs can be reduced which should drive pricing down. At least enough to offset changes in building codes, but likely more.

- Triple house size does not equal triple building costs.

- I would definitely debate on quality of finishes. Some might be better, but plenty is worse. For example, crown moulding is not as common (in my experience), and skirting is typically much cheaper, and I rarely see chair rails anymore. More often than not I see vinyl floors replicating wood instead of real hardwood floors.

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The use of pneumatic nailers has substantially reduced the time required to frame a house.

Regarding labor costs and productivity, there is vastly more specialization in building a house now than there was in 1950. I suspect that in 1950 you only had a few types of skilled labor involved: carpenter, electrician, plumber, and maybe a flooring person (the flooring may have also been done by carpenter at that time). Now, there are additional specialties that need to be involved - roofer, concrete, HVAC, tile, countertop, appliance, etc.

They didn’t have roofers in 1950?

I don't know. I suspect that a good percentage of the roofing was probably done by carpenters at that time.

Efficiency gains only lead to lower prices if they are bigger than wage increases. And those are driven by efficiency gains of the rest of the economy. Sure you can gain here and there some wins, but in the end construction is still a very labor-intensive job.

The percent efficiency gain in labor when we moved from hammer & nail framing to nail gun framing significantly outpaced the percent wage increase framers experienced.

But yes, absolutely, you are right that there are many variables at play. Which is what my original post, and the person I replied to, were trying to convey.

Productivity in building construction has not improved much, according to data, even if tools have improved.

Even if tripling house size doesn’t literally triple costs, that is a straw man. It certainly must account for some of the cost increase.

>Productivity in building construction has not improved much, according to data, even if tools have improved.

What data are you looking at? I worked in construction (to be fair, industrial and commercial sector) for over a decade. Productivity rates changed quite a bit during the decade I was an estimator. I will dig up my productivity books from when I first graduated and compare to the last one I purchased (a few years ago) when I get home.

>Even if tripling house size doesn’t literally triple costs, that is a straw man.

A straw man? Even if labor only accounted for 10% of the cost of building a house (it is much more), changes to labor productivity absolutely affect the cost to build. Productivity rates are different for a new build of 1000sqft and 2000sqft. Not sure how that's a straw man?

Also, just to clarify, I'm not really presenting an argument. I agree with the parent comment that these maps/analyses aren't able to capture all of the variables. They gave some variables to consider when looking at the article data. I'm giving some others.

>It certainly must account for some of the cost increase.

I said it's not a 1:1 relationship, not that size didn't account for costs at all.

Also while houses are generally larger, lots are generally smaller, and often comprise the majority of the value.

Crown molding only it isn't common anymore because it isn't very desirable.

I wonder if we could do housing the Chinese way and just give people a concrete box to renovate (houses aren't sold new renovated in China, and you are expected to do your own re-renovation after you buy a house second hand), but that really hasn't helped housing prices over there very much.

>Crown molding only it isn't common anymore because it isn't very desirable.

Why it's not there doesn't really matter when we're talking about costs. If it's not there, you don't have to pay for it, end of story.

It doesn't mean it wasn't desired. It could have been replaced with something else even more expensive.

...What would you replace crown molding with that is more expensive?

The things you are pointing out are largely styling choices. The difference in quality of finishes are, like mentioned, solid surface quartz counters which are basically stain proof, large porcelain tiles, toilets that flush more effectively, low voc paints, engineered wood flooring that doesn’t warp and creak, etc.

I'm not quite sure I understand the distinction you're making. In construction terminology, at least, pretty much everything you can see or use is considered a "finishing material".

All of the things that I pointed out, as well as all of the things you point out, would be considered a "finishing material". Some are generally more high quality (e.g. counter, toilet) some are lower (e.g. vinyl flooring), some are no longer really bothered with at all (e.g. crown moulding).

My budget was around a million, idk if I saw a single home (sfh, Townhomes, condos) that had wood floors

How about two of the most cost impacting elements in home building, cost of labor and land?

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