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ideabath t1_j8gt3qn wrote

No it fucking won't.

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ADhomin_em t1_j8h4fj1 wrote

Housing currently sitting empty and people sleeping on the street. Our housing crisis is not about housing

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heyItsDubbleA t1_j8hwqyu wrote

We have a housing investment crisis not a housing crisis

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RatzMand0 t1_j8i43j0 wrote

No one wants to build affordable housing that can be sold and used instead the profitability and bragging rights of making luxury housing that sits empty except when it is rented by air bnb is the future..... and it is killing this country.

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hath0r t1_j8icfxa wrote

the problem lies in the R-1 zoning

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Scizmz t1_j8ji5b0 wrote

That's too simplistic. As long as housing is a commodity, you'll always have an artificial shortage. 2 things need to be revisited to fix it. Zoning, and ownership rights. Prevent ownership of single family homes from companies and trusts and your housing shortage will get fixed real fast.

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hath0r t1_j8kbnmo wrote

the problem lies in the massive R-1 zoning where you can't build small apartments , business/apartments. we have too many single family homes and not enough medium density housing, technically anyone can build up to a quadplex with a standard mortgage.

the biggest problem is that you can ONLY build single family homes

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Scizmz t1_j8kqt4e wrote

That still won't fix the underlying issues of commoditization. That just improves population density. You've watched some videos talking about suburban sprawl problems. Now get to the ones that talk about price-fixing for apartments and investment firms buying up entire developments en-masse.

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hath0r t1_j8lbnx9 wrote

the banks own this country, the corporations own this country. aint shit we gonna be able to do about them buying up the housing

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doogiejonez t1_j9fddqg wrote

No one is building affordable starter homes that a mortgage would be the same cost as rent if not cheaper.

A mortgage on a home is supposed to work great as long has you have affordable, modest homes to build up equity as the average home as a equity rate of +$7,000 per year. Money that is basically thrown away if renting.

Also, housing prices are inflated and wages are under inflated from corporate greed.

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roundearthervaxxer t1_j8hxwbm wrote

If it significantly lowers the cost of manufacture, which it has the potential to do dramatically, it puts more people in homes. It doesn’t solve anything, but it has potential to ease the pressure and improve accessibility to ownership.

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Scizmz t1_j8jic4o wrote

>which it has the potential to do dramatically, it puts more people in homes.

Except it doesn't. Because any reduction in costs gets offset by an increase in fees.

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roundearthervaxxer t1_j8kmz4y wrote

wut

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Scizmz t1_j8krg4l wrote

The amount that you can reduce costs on modern builds is limited. Mostly by the combination of what materials and methods are approved for building by municipal codes, but also based on several other factors. Realistically you wind up with a lot more fees for inspections and permits, mello-roos or the local equivalent, and lots of other cost structures municipalities throw up. New building is a huge revenue generator for municipalities. So they do their damnedest to make sure that the property taxes are as high as they can get them on new construction.

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roundearthervaxxer t1_j8lelai wrote

I can imagine that finishing, plumbing, electrical is a bulk of the cost. What percentage is pouring foundation m, framing and exterior?

Ultimately plumbing and electrical could be printed too, perhaps interiors as well.

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Scizmz t1_j8ljpkh wrote

That's the thing, the foundation's cost is digging, reinforcement and framing for it. The actual concrete is a small fraction of the cost.

The bigger issue is that you'll never get materials approved to build out as things stand with current materials technology. Concrete is great for compression, so stacking things on top of it, it's great for holding them up. But when it comes to sheer stress, it will crack and shatter like crazy. 3d printed homes just wouldn't stand up to weather and conditions that they'd need to in order to be cost effective and meet building codes. Then there's the reinforcement and need to run all kids of stuff through the walls.

After you get over all of those hurdles, you still have to deal with the fact that in various places weather can be very sporadic. And as such the drying and curing of a house would not be even or consistent.

You're better off building a house modularly or even building panels in a factory, then shipping them to site. You get the materials that are optimized for the climate, the conduits and piping needed, and it can be built to the point of exterior weather proofing before a 3d printed house can cure.

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roundearthervaxxer t1_j8lluw1 wrote

Awesome. Thx for the detailed explanation. High-end prefab houses always seemed like a good idea to me. My grandparents had a Sears house that was shipped via rail.

It seems like things could have gone more in that direction. With modern tech could you ship perfectly interlocking wall units? If so, why isn’t that standard.

With cad it seems like you create some really cool designs.

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TheQuarantinian t1_j8p2q1q wrote

If you can build a house for $80,000 and sell it fot $100,000 you will be happy.

If you can build the same house for $40,000 and still sell it for $100,000 you are not going to lower the price.

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roundearthervaxxer t1_j8pi28s wrote

No but the competition will. Farther down in this thread someone who is knowledgable explained this to me. Finishing costs, plumbing, electrical, these things are a large portion of the cost. It is better to prefab wall units and transport them onsite

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TheQuarantinian t1_j8pmrwp wrote

The competition still won't. They'd be dumb not to.

You receive two job offers, both paying 100,000/yr. You like both equally, benefits are the same, everything is identical except one requires you to spend $10,000/yr on transportation and parking and the other $1,000. Do I need to ask if you will accept the one with lower costs and tell them your labor is worth $9,000/year less?

Unless the motivation and goal is to sell cheaper houses the developer won't. And there isn't really any competition - it isn't like a restaurant or a shirt,there is one lot for sale just as there is only one year of your time for sale.

If the builder can sell the house for a million he will sell it for a million if he has to pay a plumber or not. And why wouldn't he?

Now if there are two identical units side by side and one needed a number and the other not and only one buyer then that's different. But when there is only one developer building every house in a 50 acre subdivision or condo highrise then they will minimize expense but maximize sale value wherever possible.

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roundearthervaxxer t1_j8qji03 wrote

Developers never undercut each other?

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TheQuarantinian t1_j8r4tvn wrote

Not like airlines or gas stations - you generally don't see price wars for a couple of reasons:

  1. You can't make more. You have only one shot to sell that specific lot
  2. Real estate opportunities are drying up: you'll probably never get another chance to build another sub in that division again unless you can do a lot of demolition
  3. If demand falls you just stop building and wait. Land doesn't expire or go out of style
  4. If you sell a unit for 100,000 then sell the one next door for 80,000 you affect the value of the first one and establish a trend that affects the value of the third one as fewer people want to buy in a neighborhood where prices are falling. Again, the best option is to just stop building rather than cutting prices. There are some exceptions here, mainly multi unit buildings where you have to pay for ongoing maintenance if the unit is occupied or not, but the are a bunch of other differences there.
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not-on-a-boat t1_j8ppfku wrote

The problem with housing access isn't buildings. It's land.

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roundearthervaxxer t1_j8qje77 wrote

Isn’t it both?

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not-on-a-boat t1_j8qlb0u wrote

No, it's mostly land.

You can't put more people into San Francisco. It's not because SF can't get building materials or construction costs are too much. It's because there's no land where you can build more housing, so people live further and further from the city center to find affordable housing.

You can make land more efficient by increasing the number of housing units built on the land. That's a great solution. But it has nothing to do with the labor cost of home construction.

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doogiejonez t1_j9fer15 wrote

As the need to commute to work on a daily basis falls and universal basic income becomes a thing I think less and less people will want to live in the bigger cities.

High speed rails will help this tremendously.

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not-on-a-boat t1_j9fmp70 wrote

The economics of high speed rail rely on density, though.

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