Granted I only skimmed the article, but it seemed rather myopic to me. Why is the "dream home" assumed to be in an urban/suburban area? Why not in a small town or rural area?
In January 2018, we moved back from Charlottesville, VA (which itself isn't even "urban") to Harrison, AR. I was able to buy a five bedroom, two bath home on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood for under $125k.
My wife and I are beginning to put together our requirements for our next home, which will likely be a bit further from other people, outside city limits, and likely be on 5-10 acres. The cost will till be far less than even a three bedroom townhome would have been in Charlottesville.
Almost by definition, people prefer to live in dense areas.
In terms of prescriptive advice, high-density housing reduces urban sprawl. If you can convince a third of suburbia to change to denser housing, commute times for everyone would be cut in half. Vast swaths of land could also return to farmland or nature preserves.
So even people who personally prefer to live "just outside the city" should advocate for denser housing. When the city builds up, everything moves towards the center.
I just measured the distance from city centre to the countryside for two cities of about equal size:
Hamburg (Pop 1.5 mil): 8mi
Houston (Pop 1.8 mil): 22mi
(I chose these because LA and Chicago have coastal layouts which aren't comparable. They also connect directly to other urban areas which for the purposes of this exercise should be considered as "farmland". Or you could add their respective populations which would further amplify the difference)
I'm with ya on preferring rural living, but I much prefer that everyone else's "dream home" be in the city.
Now if we could only get a better political separation between urban and rural; right now, since the urban areas have higher population density, they effectively set the policy for those in rural areas, generally without caring much about the fallout.
The article was focusing on the environmental impact of different living situations, and rural living is horrifically environmentally unfriendly. It would also be financially untenable if rural areas weren’t massively subsidized by urban economic centers. If you had to pay for the true cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure you use (which would be amortized over very few people due to the low population density) you wouldn’t be bragging about how cheap rural living is.
The rural lifestyle you're describing has a much higher ecological impact than an urban lifestyle. And many people now, myself included, prefer a lively city where I meet and see lots of people, rather than the isolation of rural life.
I love the more rural areas, and I found a decent fit. I'm within 50 miles of an international airport, within 15 miles of a significant hub for my field, and there are fields just 5-10 min bike ride from my house. I'd consider my area to be suburban/semirural, and my main complaint is that it's starting to get crowded (there are 3 cities in my area > 100k people, though mine has 30k or so).
I started working remote, and my mind went immediately to moving to a less populated area.
I really don't understand the appeal of living in a city. There's a ton of traffic and noise, and it seems that people are way more busy in larger cities. But different strokes for different folks I suppose.
Not many people outside of HN have opportunities for remote work. Most people don't want to be trapped into a situation where there's only one dominant employer in their area.
>Every year, the National Association of Home Builders presents its vision for the New American Home,
> This is the New American
Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling
monstrosity of more than
10,690 feet
Wait a minute, you mean the trade association for residential homebuilders thinks we should build absurdly large, expensive houses? Well, I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Personally I'm a fan of tightly packed townhomes (or, SFH packed with just a few inches between them, as seen in some places), but I think an important step towards the walkable urbanism the authors want is simply to remove unnecessary restrictions on housing.
Like, I get that some people want big lawns and backyards but I don't get why this needs to be the only housing that's legal in the majority of all suburbs in the country (even many inner suburbs just a few miles from major urban centers). Why can't I do what I want with my property? Is there really that much of a public interest in forcing an entire neighborhood to be grass farmers?
The big problem with townhomes and apartments is shoddy construction making neighbors a noise nuisance.
Also, economics is weird. Townhomes cost almost the same as nearby houses, perhaps because they are relatively limited supply and more cost-efficient to maintain, so people look at the sticker price and think "oh, I can get a lot more footage for a little more price".
Also, townhomes tend to get built as sound buffers alongside highways, making them unpleasant to live in.
There's more to zoning than just wanting nice looking grass. For areas not originally built to house 3-4x the density, there's likely issues with capacity for: utilities (sewage/water), roads/traffic, stormwater runoff, school enrollment, and local services. That's not even considering veiled NIMBYism manifested as environmental concerns: tree removal, disruption of ecosystem, natural/green spaces, etc.
Even still, in growing suburban areas, you do typically see what you're proposing: conversion of a multi-acre lot to many, high-density homes (e.g. 'carriage' houses.)
I have dealt with more than my fair share of HOAs in such housing (townhomes organized as condos, high-rise, etc.) Some of the stories of dysfunctional HOAs are right on the money unfortunately. Also, state laws give HOAs more power than they typically deserve: until about 2012, Texas allowed HOAs the following: place liens on shareholders' properties without explicitly informing them, deny them xeriscapy options, and define where they may or may not place flags. It is horrifying what trouble a bunch of tinpot bullies can cause when they manage to infest an HOA board.
Transparency is another problem area: it is often difficult, without going though the expense of making a purchase offer, to get HOA terms, details of board meetings, and budgets; this makes it tough to go in with informed consent when making one of the biggest purchases that you will make. I had to withdraw a purchase offer (and lose my option fee; I since learned that a good realtor would get the information before going through the process of making an offer) once after reading the 60+ page HOA terms, which appeared to mandate that the buyer must leave a key with the central office and that the latter may visit properties as they needed with unacknowledged prior notice.
I wish HOAs had to be treated as public concerns so that the light would shine brightly on pathological boards and buyers would have the best available information possible.
I'm remembering how weird of a place (Boston) I'm living in.
> This is the New American Home
for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity
of more than 10,690 feet (the lot
encompasses 65,340 square feet).
Even properties that Red Sox players are living in west of the city are rarely over 6,000sq/ft. When I see a listing for a home over 3,000sq/ft here it's a rarity.
~1200-2400 sq/ft homes are pretty average in the Boston/Cambridge area. Many condos are more in the 800-1600 sq/ft range, and it's also not uncommon to find 1200sq/ft houses.
I guess that being said, almost everything here is 100 years old. I'm personally against a condo for myself because I'm just too damn loud (drums and guitar), and I'm sure to piss off most neighbors with that. If it wasn't for that hobby, I'd be totally happy with a condo.
I just checked, and there is one property for sale in Boston-proper (which includes JP and Dorchester) over 9,000 sq/ft for sale right now, and it's a 15k sq/ft estate for nearly 4mm.
In my experience houses greater than 6k sq ft are useful for one of a couple scenarios: either you have >5 residents (parents, grandparents, kids, live-in help) and need lots of bedrooms/extra space, or you're throwing frequent social events and need your home to function as an event venue.
I briefly lived in an 8.5k sq ft house with two other people and on many mornings I felt like Jack Nicholson in the Shining. Never again.
Exactly. People living in urban areas are used to the noise or the requirement for silence but when I moved to an apartment from my parents' house I hated every second of it.
a major point people dont consider is the HOA. Speaking from experience of a friend who was a plumber for one of these condo complexes:
In a condo, if an HOA is required to fix plumbing or landscaping, paint, or roofing, then it comes out of the CAM fees paid by the residents. However, if the HOA does NOT pay for that work, or tries to stiff the construction firm they hire, the construction company can take out a lien on the property until their bill is paid.
That lien means you cannot sell your condo until the HOA pays their debt. In my friends case, the HOA had blown all their CAM money on lavish vacations and dinners for key members of the HOA board. They had no money to pay for a sewage repair job, and left 54 members of the housing compex stuck with a $20,000USD repair bill. After a grisly court battle the HOA was disbanded, CAM fees were agreed to be paid directly to the plumbing company for the year, and the complex went into foreclosure after the debt had been paid as most tenants had sold.
Are condo HOAs typically run by insane petty dictators who will demand absolute perfection in lawns, house trim, and the shapes your car leaves in your driveway?
HOAs are not restricted to condos. Many newer SFHs are governed by
neighborhood HOAs also, and they are famous for putting onerous restrictions on residents.
Also, not all condo HOAs are a mess like you describe. I'm part of a 3 unit HOA on subdivided infill lot. It's dense, but no shared walls or structures. The low HOA fee covers the shared insurance policy and nothing more. Within my exclusive use area I'm free to do anything reasonable with landscaping, etc. Only structural changes to my unit require HOA approval
The dysfunction of some HOAs is more a function of the misplaced priorities of the members, as in the example you gave, not with the idea of shared ownership itself.
The laws regarding exactly what plays out when an HOA(condo board) doesn't pay its bills likely changes drastically by jurisdiction, but higher level you are highlighting an important point - "The Tragedy of the Commons" is a very significant issue with condos, only takes a few bad actors to make things really bad for everyone.
You're talking about the HOA as if they are a third party. Isn't the HOA just the group of condo owners? Who were the two parties in the grisly court battle?
It's also just the cost. A condo is appealing to me because they're cheaper and I don't need a big place, but when you add in the HOA fees (SFH don't have HOAs around here), they start to look pretty close in price.
NO. Condos are actually really crappy places to live, like being in an apartment complex but you have to pay a (generally) overly burdensome HOA, deal with politics and power play issues, not to mention the noise and nuisance of being in an apartment. Townhomes are better, but truly the "dream home" is still your own house, no HOA, with space between you and your neighbors, a dedicated place to park your car, and the freedom to say "get off my lawn."
Ideally I never want to encounter any other person that I don't actually live with at my residence. Condos are terrible, as are townhouses, and indeed normal houses built on tiny lots squished up next to each other ruled over by an HOA. L'enfer, c'est les autres.
Yes, condos have a place, and are necessary sometimes, but they're an unfortunate compromise, not even remotely a "dream home".
There's something super amusing about some of the stuff they describe in the article, along with the diagram of the public transportation options. What they don't mention is that everyone who lives in that building almost certainly would drive to work- Because, Los Angeles. Those units will be near a new subway line that will be completed in the next five years (but they'd still have to bank on their office being on that line).
I also don't tend to find a lot of new condo developments in this area that are for sale. They all seem to be rented by the builder. My presumption being that credit continues to be so cheap, they can afford the slow burn down from rents, since thye're not getting crushed by the interest payment. But, I'm not a landlord, so I don't know for sure.
You're not wrong and this isn't just a throwaway sentiment. Yours is an actual realistic criticism of the ideas of the article despite what the urbanites think.
Reading the article and these comments is somewhat entertaining.
1. The size of the show home is dictated in part by the desire of the associations to incorporate and show off the different products of the sponsors. More sponsors means more revenue for the show.
2. Roads are needed to transport goods from urban center to urban center in addition for rural to urban. Years ago the livestock industry changed their slaughtering and processing from urban center to rural (or small town).
3. This author is based in San Francisco. By the standards of my part of the world, SF is now a third world country, people shooting up in the street, taking a dp where hey like (in the road, etc. If she can't fix where she lives what right does she have telling me how to live?
After owning a few different place, single family home and two condos, I've decided that I will never own a condo again, only a SFH. Too much crap to put up with.
>This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet (the lot encompasses 65,340 square feet).
No, this is an exaggeration for the sake of a highly slanted opinion piece. The average size of a new house in the US is about 2500 sq ft if I remember correctly.
>Does anyone need 10,000 square feet to live in?
Does anyone want to put up with petulant condo associations/HOA squabbles? Besides, if someone wants to pay housekeeping to clean it or spend half their week cleaning that's their business.
>Enter the Green New Deal
oh so this is just a thinly disguised anti-rich opinion piece
No, this is an exaggeration for the sake of a highly slanted opinion piece. The average size of a new house in the US is about 2500 sq ft if I remember correctly.
No, the NAHB titles their test home "The New American Home".
What is the point of these opinion pieces? Why should we care about what someone at New York Times says over any other person? These kind of articles must be made simply to drive traffic and stimulate rage. It will be interpreted as just another coastal elite telling Americans they should aspire to live and die in a cold steel and concrete box partitioned out in a shared building with neighbors on all sides pestering them and a condo HOA breathing down their backs. I guess it worked.
Well, as you say, it's an opinion piece. It's raison d'être is to allow people to make informed decisions. To that purpose, it is helpful for a society to have reasoned analyses that go beyond the low-value collection of stereotypes and bad-faith of sentences like:
> just another coastal elite telling Americans they should aspire to live and die in a cold steel and concrete box partitioned out in a shared building with neighbors on all sides pestering them
[+] [-] LyndsySimon|7 years ago|reply
In January 2018, we moved back from Charlottesville, VA (which itself isn't even "urban") to Harrison, AR. I was able to buy a five bedroom, two bath home on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood for under $125k.
My wife and I are beginning to put together our requirements for our next home, which will likely be a bit further from other people, outside city limits, and likely be on 5-10 acres. The cost will till be far less than even a three bedroom townhome would have been in Charlottesville.
[+] [-] matt4077|7 years ago|reply
In terms of prescriptive advice, high-density housing reduces urban sprawl. If you can convince a third of suburbia to change to denser housing, commute times for everyone would be cut in half. Vast swaths of land could also return to farmland or nature preserves.
So even people who personally prefer to live "just outside the city" should advocate for denser housing. When the city builds up, everything moves towards the center.
I just measured the distance from city centre to the countryside for two cities of about equal size:
Hamburg (Pop 1.5 mil): 8mi
Houston (Pop 1.8 mil): 22mi
(I chose these because LA and Chicago have coastal layouts which aren't comparable. They also connect directly to other urban areas which for the purposes of this exercise should be considered as "farmland". Or you could add their respective populations which would further amplify the difference)
[+] [-] taborj|7 years ago|reply
Now if we could only get a better political separation between urban and rural; right now, since the urban areas have higher population density, they effectively set the policy for those in rural areas, generally without caring much about the fallout.
[+] [-] esoterica|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notJim|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beatgammit|7 years ago|reply
I started working remote, and my mind went immediately to moving to a less populated area.
I really don't understand the appeal of living in a city. There's a ton of traffic and noise, and it seems that people are way more busy in larger cities. But different strokes for different folks I suppose.
[+] [-] lazyasciiart|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaostheory|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imgabe|7 years ago|reply
> This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet
Wait a minute, you mean the trade association for residential homebuilders thinks we should build absurdly large, expensive houses? Well, I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
[+] [-] helen___keller|7 years ago|reply
Like, I get that some people want big lawns and backyards but I don't get why this needs to be the only housing that's legal in the majority of all suburbs in the country (even many inner suburbs just a few miles from major urban centers). Why can't I do what I want with my property? Is there really that much of a public interest in forcing an entire neighborhood to be grass farmers?
[+] [-] gowld|7 years ago|reply
Also, economics is weird. Townhomes cost almost the same as nearby houses, perhaps because they are relatively limited supply and more cost-efficient to maintain, so people look at the sticker price and think "oh, I can get a lot more footage for a little more price".
Also, townhomes tend to get built as sound buffers alongside highways, making them unpleasant to live in.
[+] [-] briHass|7 years ago|reply
Even still, in growing suburban areas, you do typically see what you're proposing: conversion of a multi-acre lot to many, high-density homes (e.g. 'carriage' houses.)
[+] [-] nachiketkumar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abawany|7 years ago|reply
Transparency is another problem area: it is often difficult, without going though the expense of making a purchase offer, to get HOA terms, details of board meetings, and budgets; this makes it tough to go in with informed consent when making one of the biggest purchases that you will make. I had to withdraw a purchase offer (and lose my option fee; I since learned that a good realtor would get the information before going through the process of making an offer) once after reading the 60+ page HOA terms, which appeared to mandate that the buyer must leave a key with the central office and that the latter may visit properties as they needed with unacknowledged prior notice.
I wish HOAs had to be treated as public concerns so that the light would shine brightly on pathological boards and buyers would have the best available information possible.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tibbon|7 years ago|reply
> This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more than 10,690 feet (the lot encompasses 65,340 square feet).
Even properties that Red Sox players are living in west of the city are rarely over 6,000sq/ft. When I see a listing for a home over 3,000sq/ft here it's a rarity.
~1200-2400 sq/ft homes are pretty average in the Boston/Cambridge area. Many condos are more in the 800-1600 sq/ft range, and it's also not uncommon to find 1200sq/ft houses.
I guess that being said, almost everything here is 100 years old. I'm personally against a condo for myself because I'm just too damn loud (drums and guitar), and I'm sure to piss off most neighbors with that. If it wasn't for that hobby, I'd be totally happy with a condo.
I just checked, and there is one property for sale in Boston-proper (which includes JP and Dorchester) over 9,000 sq/ft for sale right now, and it's a 15k sq/ft estate for nearly 4mm.
[+] [-] nugget|7 years ago|reply
I briefly lived in an 8.5k sq ft house with two other people and on many mornings I felt like Jack Nicholson in the Shining. Never again.
[+] [-] blang|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sopooneo|7 years ago|reply
That's actually a steal (unit price wise) in the Boston/Cambridge market right now.
[+] [-] howard941|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HeadsUpHigh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronarduino|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nimbius|7 years ago|reply
In a condo, if an HOA is required to fix plumbing or landscaping, paint, or roofing, then it comes out of the CAM fees paid by the residents. However, if the HOA does NOT pay for that work, or tries to stiff the construction firm they hire, the construction company can take out a lien on the property until their bill is paid.
That lien means you cannot sell your condo until the HOA pays their debt. In my friends case, the HOA had blown all their CAM money on lavish vacations and dinners for key members of the HOA board. They had no money to pay for a sewage repair job, and left 54 members of the housing compex stuck with a $20,000USD repair bill. After a grisly court battle the HOA was disbanded, CAM fees were agreed to be paid directly to the plumbing company for the year, and the complex went into foreclosure after the debt had been paid as most tenants had sold.
[+] [-] msla|7 years ago|reply
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/nation-world/national/ar...
[+] [-] danans|7 years ago|reply
Also, not all condo HOAs are a mess like you describe. I'm part of a 3 unit HOA on subdivided infill lot. It's dense, but no shared walls or structures. The low HOA fee covers the shared insurance policy and nothing more. Within my exclusive use area I'm free to do anything reasonable with landscaping, etc. Only structural changes to my unit require HOA approval
The dysfunction of some HOAs is more a function of the misplaced priorities of the members, as in the example you gave, not with the idea of shared ownership itself.
[+] [-] kitcar|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
[+] [-] criddell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webdood90|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notJim|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Simulacra|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anth_anm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acheron|7 years ago|reply
Yes, condos have a place, and are necessary sometimes, but they're an unfortunate compromise, not even remotely a "dream home".
[+] [-] seanalltogether|7 years ago|reply
But I'm not gonna bet too heavily on builders caring about those features.
[+] [-] Simulacra|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pxeboot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wjossey|7 years ago|reply
I also don't tend to find a lot of new condo developments in this area that are for sale. They all seem to be rented by the builder. My presumption being that credit continues to be so cheap, they can afford the slow burn down from rents, since thye're not getting crushed by the interest payment. But, I'm not a landlord, so I don't know for sure.
[+] [-] madengr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superkuh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnm1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fred3300|7 years ago|reply
2. Roads are needed to transport goods from urban center to urban center in addition for rural to urban. Years ago the livestock industry changed their slaughtering and processing from urban center to rural (or small town).
3. This author is based in San Francisco. By the standards of my part of the world, SF is now a third world country, people shooting up in the street, taking a dp where hey like (in the road, etc. If she can't fix where she lives what right does she have telling me how to live?
[+] [-] refurb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] castlecrasher2|7 years ago|reply
No, this is an exaggeration for the sake of a highly slanted opinion piece. The average size of a new house in the US is about 2500 sq ft if I remember correctly.
>Does anyone need 10,000 square feet to live in?
Does anyone want to put up with petulant condo associations/HOA squabbles? Besides, if someone wants to pay housekeeping to clean it or spend half their week cleaning that's their business.
>Enter the Green New Deal
oh so this is just a thinly disguised anti-rich opinion piece
[+] [-] alistairSH|7 years ago|reply
No, the NAHB titles their test home "The New American Home".
[+] [-] anth_anm|7 years ago|reply
are you rich?
I'm very anti-rich.
[+] [-] supermw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt4077|7 years ago|reply
> just another coastal elite telling Americans they should aspire to live and die in a cold steel and concrete box partitioned out in a shared building with neighbors on all sides pestering them
[+] [-] benj111|7 years ago|reply
Isn't it reasonable to have a conversation about what kind of houses we want to live in, we want builders to build, we want government to encourage?
[+] [-] gowld|7 years ago|reply
Concrete is warmer than wood, it's a much better insulator.