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I have no clue, but it’s true. It’s not more expensive to build with insulated concrete form, it’s maybe - maybe - up to 15% more expensive but energy savings alone would offset that in a few years. It’s a joke that even luxury homes are built out of wood. I’ve realized though until you get into custom builds you have to take what the market offers. One day I want to build a custom home with the 3 best building blocks of quality construction - concrete, steel, and glass. There’s a reason high rises are built that way. They’re built to last because they have long term value. Houses are built for a shorter duration without massive overhauls.
There are slate and ceramic tiles on roofs in Europe that have lasted hundreds of years, yet we have 10-year-old houses with shingles falling off. I’m usually very rah rah America is the best, but with home construction this country simply hasn’t figured it out. It’s not the builders’ fault though I think, it’s the buyer. People have rock bottom low standards for housing in this country and it’s obvious they don’t appreciate anything having to do with real quality. Notice the questions are idiotic like does it come with stainless steel appliances (who cares?!? You can buy those!!) rather than, “What’s the rating of the insulation? How far above code is it? Is there even insulation in interior walls?” By the way the answer to the last question is suddenly always no, because at some idiotic point in the recent past these morons forgot that interior insulation has nothing at all to do with energy and is necessary for soundproofing. There’s no point even bothering with walls if you’re not going to make sure sound doesn’t easily penetrate them. In a correctly built house (spoiler alert: you won’t find this), the drywall should be specially selected soundproof drywall and there should be layers protecting one room from another. An acoustic engineer should be hired for tract housing to make sure the way you build the house doesn’t mean everyone inside is subjected to noise pollution.
Instead sadly it’s the domain of both the very smart, well researched home owner AND wealthy to custom design and build a quality home for millions of dollars to get these features. It doesn’t have to be that way, but until home buyers stop acting like the house is a McDonalds happy meal you won’t see any better quality.
If you’ve ever tried to sell an upgraded home, you’ll see what I mean. Did you install state of the art HVAC? Hahaha nobody cares, they won’t pay for it. Upgraded fixtures? Nope. Doesn’t matter what you put in a house basically you won’t get anything back for it or very little. It’s a race to the bottom. Yet the buyers are so dumb they’ll complain about the wall paint color because they seem unaware that’s an easy fix. Multiple real estate agents have told me most buyers are so stupid they can’t even picture rooms without furniture in them as their homes, so that’s why staging companies make so much money. I’m the opposite, I want to see empty rooms because usually whatever the staging company does is a terrible misuse of space and I have trouble imagining all their garbage not in the room and using it the way I want. It’s so “by the book” that it’s distracting. Like the loft is always poorly laid out or a kids play room when I want to use it as a gym, or the living room has a TV blocked by a flower vase and with all of the chairs and couches facing the wrong way opposite the TV.
I can’t believe people are so dumb they can’t imagine an empty room with whatever they want in it, but that’s the reality the same as it’s the reality they’ll pay $10,000 extra for appliances in the kitchen but doubtful they’d even pay $500 extra for top notch exterior insulation or $5,000-10,000 extra for far better quality HVAC that’ll save them money every month for the next 10+ years and lead to a much better quality of life.
Why does the richest nation in the world build such shoddy houses? The poor quality of American housing is quite frankly disgraceful. OSB, really? Fine for a shed or temporary dwelling, not a house. Asphalt roof shingles? Again, not acceptable for a human dwelling- a bird/doghouse sure. European nations would never allow their homes to be built like this. They build their homes from concrete/masonry. We build our homes, not even out of solid wood, but OSB which seems to be basically compressed wood chips. Even so-called third world countries build their homes far more solidly and durably than we do. The architecture of many of these suburban tract housing is also HIDEOUS, with the garage displayed prominently on the front as if it were the most important room in the house. I'm sure someone in the construction industry or someone more knowledgeable than me could point out a thousand other way in which American houses are crappily built.
Older American houses seem to be far better constructed. In the old Mid-western and Northeast cities, it's not hard to find homes from the late Victorian era that are still in good condition. Will these 'modern' homes last even 30-40 years before they're ready for the bulldozer?
I wouldn't touch a house from the Victorian era unless someone with a lot of money put a LOT of money into upgrading it before I would look at it or buy it.
On the outside, they might look like they are holding up if they are brick. A lot of them have basements that leak, are poorly insulated, have oil furnaces or electric heat and are cold and drafty.
Some of them have multiple fireplaces and what a time to upgrade the chimneys that are deteriorating. A fire hazard!
The older windows don't open because they are usually painted shut with many layers of various shades of paint, plus you have to deal with putting on storm windows in preparation for the winter.
Stair banisters can be very dangerous because they aren't spaced according to today's safety standards with children falling through, etc, etc.
Could not agree more. I think most homes continued to b well built for the first 10 to 15 years following WWII. The eighties were really the downfall of American popular home building.
I've only bought houses pre-1975, no later than that!
I've traveled widely throughout Mexico/South & Central America and it's virtually impossible to see a house down there not built out of concrete, roof and all. CEMEX would throw a fit if someone decided to build a house with wood in Mexico.
I don't buy that line for one single second (it's too expensive to build with concrete) as the lumber companies are powerful lobbyists on a city/county/state level. If they had their way, we'd be walking on wooden sidewalks, driving on woodplank roads, even driving wooden cars! It scares me to death to see all these 5-6 story wooden apartment buildings going up across the country! Yeah, yeah, yeah! They have myriad water sprinklers in these buildings, but, in an earthquake, the water my get shut off, and? These buildings are tragedy's waiting to happen!
I've only bought houses pre-1975, no later than that!
I've traveled widely throughout Mexico/South & Central America and it's virtually impossible to see a house down there not built out of concrete, roof and all. CEMEX would throw a fit if someone decided to build a house with wood in Mexico.
I don't buy that line for one single second (it's too expensive to build with concrete) as the lumber companies are powerful lobbyists on a city/county/state level. If they had their way, we'd be walking on wooden sidewalks, driving on woodplank roads, even driving wooden cars! It scares me to death to see all these 5-6 story wooden apartment buildings going up across the country! Yeah, yeah, yeah! They have myriad water sprinklers in these buildings, but, in an earthquake, the water my get shut off, and? These buildings are tragedy's waiting to happen!
And yet, when there IS an earthquake, where do all the houses come crumbling down? The US or Mexico? Suggest you read up on that a little bit.
And yet, when there IS an earthquake, where do all the houses come crumbling down? The US or Mexico? Suggest you read up on that a little bit.
You can make concrete houses to withstand any earthquake. The ones you see crumble, like in the Haiti quake, were built with bricks. I had a house designed for me in Rosarito Beach 10 years ago, by Aquimex, and every stitch of that house was concrete and made to withstand any quake. Pylons 20 feet deep into the hillside.
Toll Brothers has essentially bought my entire township, and much of the county for homes, townhomes, etc. They are built in the most shoddy, cheapest fashion available with builder grade crap, yet cost $500K and up. In five to ten years major exterior and interior work is needed due to the build quality so buyer beware. These homes shake when you slam the front door shut as they are built largely with Tyvek and a cheap façade. Horrible.
Let's take two people, let's say two mechanical engineers 40 years old, one living in a large Italian city, let's say Torino - and the other living in a comparable large American city - let's say Houston.
Mr. Italy probably lives in a flat (albeit owned, not rented) sharing walls if not walls floor and ceiling. Mr. Houston probably lives in a 3000 square foot 4 bedroom 3 bath house on a 1/4 acre lot.
I'm sure Mr. Italy's boss' house is better constructed than Mr. Houston's house. But even the boss' house is probably smaller - maybe even only semi-detached than Mr. Houston's house. Heck, Mr. Italy's flat is probably better constructed than Mr. Houston's house, it's probably a very nice flat. But he's still sharing walls; if the association decides to spend a bunch of money on something he deems unnecessary, he's on the hook for his part, and so on (I'm making some assumptions about how what we call "condo associations" in the US work over there).
So, it's not really a surprise that Americans are choosing, mostly, to go the Mr. Houston route.
Toll Brothers has essentially bought my entire township, and much of the county for homes, townhomes, etc. They are built in the most shoddy, cheapest fashion available with builder grade crap, yet cost $500K and up. In five to ten years major exterior and interior work is needed due to the build quality so buyer beware. These homes shake when you slam the front door shut as they are built largely with Tyvek and a cheap façade. Horrible.
This seems to be the plan of property developers. These guys want to throw up housing in the cheapest and quickest way possible, then flip it and it becomes someone else's problem.... and then they're laughing their way to the bank at the expense of the suckers who bought those crappy cardboard cutout houses.
Greed and hubris will the downfall of this 'society.'
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These buildings are tragedy's waiting to happen!
