Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It is popular these days to say that cars cost more than a small house. My view is they should cost even more. Just think what goes into making cars today and compare it with a bunch of 2x4s and a box of nails that anybody can hammer together. You can’t pile on a bunch of day workers in the back of a truck to build you a jewel like this. The engine is the most visible part. Every piece that goes into a modern car is a marvel of engineering that requires unique skills and expensive equipment to make. What goes into a house? Wood, concrete, asphalt shingles, doors and windows, drywall, paint... you get the point.
It is popular these days to say that cars cost more than a small house. My view is they should cost even more. Just think what goes into making cars today and compare it with a bunch of 2x4s and a box of nails that anybody can hammer together. You can’t pile on a bunch of day workers in the back of a truck to build you a jewel like this. The engine is the most visible part. Every piece that goes into a modern car is a marvel of engineering that requires unique skills and expensive equipment to make. What goes into a house? Wood, concrete, asphalt shingles, doors and windows, drywall, paint... you get the point.
First it requires an architect to design the home within regional and national building standards. Multiple teams of contractors and subcontractors are employed to build the home. Materials used include concrete, wood, nails, wiring, copper plumbing, and other materials. The central air must be built into the home and the home insulated to meet regional efficiency standards. The electricians and plumbers must properly install their materials and pass code inspections. Roofers, painters, and carpenters perform the finishing work once the home is built. It must then pass more code inspections (all at a cost to the builder). But before any of the work can even start they must get building permits (plural) from the city, county, and or state at a cost to the builder before breaking ground on the project. Some builders/developers are going to be required to pay for an environmental impact study to even get the approval from the government. Some regions require extra work for local natural disaster events like hurricanes, tornados, snow, hail, and earthquakes. All these things add to the cost. If building in a region that may flood the builder may be required to truck in many loads of dirt to raise the land the home is to be built upon to get it above a certain floor elevation. If the home isn’t connected to a city sewage system then a septic system must be installed, inspected, and certified. If not on a city water supply system then a well pump system will have to be installed and certified.
I've purchased 5 houses that cost less than my last 2 cars. 7 if you add on the sales tax. The difference is the cars did not need maintenance/repairs right away and the houses did. That and inflation over a 20-40 yr time span.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyRider
Come back when you have more than three posts to your name. Oh, have a chat with @creeksitter when you get a chance. You may learn a thing or two.
Come back when you know the value of the houses and cars creeksitter purchased. And try not to ignore the fact that creeksitter says the houses needed repairs and the cars didn't. No matter how rude you are, no matter how insistent you are, this is a stupid thread that should have died on April 24th, 2015.
I agree but then again there are always people who help keep stupid threads alive while complaining why they didn't die. Keep on posting.
Just to be clear, you called your own thread stupid, right?
And the conclusion after 3 years is that the notion "shouldn't cars cost more than houses" is quite stupid and ridiculous, correct?
And when you cite the ONLY person on this over-9000 views thread who agrees with you like creeksitter, they probably paid an enormous amount for their luxury/exotic carS (plural), and probably live in extremely cheap housing. That is a rarity in today's world.
I agree but then again there are always people who help keep stupid threads alive while complaining why they didn't die. Keep on posting.
I will. It serves to show how stupid (thank you for agreeing with me) this thread is. The longer it's alive the more people will see it and wonder how such a posit was ever made. Spread the cheer!
The OP’s question sounds naïve and puerile, but it’s actually quite profound. To be sure, we have to distinguish between the house itself, and the land on which it sits.
So many objects in daily life contain tremendous engineering and technical wizardry, and yet they’re cheap to buy, and become ever cheaper soon after purchase. An example would be a laptop or a smart-phone. But most of the things that go into a residential single-family house, other than the appliances and the wiring, were already mature technology by the late 19th century. Well, one reason for this, is that the building of a smart-phone is so thoroughly automated. It requires so little human labor. But the construction of an American-style mainstream residential house still requires considerable human labor.
This begs another question: why is the construction industry so slow to innovate, still using stick-built methods on-site, instead of building large pieces of the house in a factory, using robots, and only doing the final-assembly on-site?
And…
Consider, that to buy a used-car is considered to be flinty-thrifty, sacrificing comfort and prestige for narrowly practical ends; but buying a used-house carries no demerit or tinge of parsimony, and indeed, it is often said that new-construction is flimsy and gauche, so that wise buyers will buy a used house. Why is this so?
Consider again, a new pickup truck costing $80K, parked in the driveway of a modest Midwestern house, also costing $80K. Ten years later, the truck will have depreciated to perhaps $10K, and the house – minding, that this is the Midwest – is still $80K, or perhaps $70K, if it’s in a smaller town ravaged by de-industrialization. Why is this so?
And one more thing: land, obviously, varies greatly in price, depending on location. But the county auditor’s web page reveals assessed value of both land and the “improvements”, which is to say, the house itself. Compare a suburb in Northern Virginia with a suburb of Dayton, Ohio. Take a comparable house of 1500 square feet, built in the 1960s, and ignore the price of the land… so, consider just the houses themselves. Well, the Virginia house will cost 3-4 times more than the Ohio house. Why is this so?
And when you cite the ONLY person on this over-9000 views thread who agrees with you like creeksitter, they probably paid an enormous amount for their luxury/exotic carS (plural), and probably live in extremely cheap housing. That is a rarity in today's world.
Ha ha luxury cars, not hardly. And the price was per each of the current 2. My post was mostly about inflation and repairs. It is interesting to note that only my current non-remarkable vehicles are still on the road, the houses are still standing and inhabited.
I did think back of one house that cost a little less than a car I'd bought about the same time, which was a nearly new 4 door civic. The house was an undervalued hud repo, so it happens. The house I bought a couple years ago was equal in cost to a well equipped camry or accord fresh off the lot - again, the difference is repairs.
Quote:
Consider again, a new pickup truck costing $80K, parked in the driveway of a modest Midwestern house, also costing $80K.
This scenario is very easy to imagine. Especially in a rust belt town with older housing stock with some union jobs left. It's likely the low housing costs that allows the worker to buy the luxury truck.
I get the impression the west coast posters have a very hard time imagining the cost of houses in the heartland.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
