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Before I start, I wanted to say that I've lived in many different countries (brick/concrete buildings) & I never experienced so many problems as I have with US homes. The use of cheap plywood and wood chip, poor or no insulation, flimsy siding and roofing that either blows off in high winds or just rots away after a few year, in addition to high prices have made life a living miserable hell for the average American.
I've lived in US for the past 20 years, mainly in the west coast. I owned a nice peaceful house in Seattle area back in the 90s, things were not this expensive & I had a great mortgage rate until the collapse of housing market happened in 2008, and my mortgage rate went up from 3.25% to 6%, although I paid my mortgage onetime & didn't do anything wrong. Around the same time, my utilities, and taxes went up drastically. The house was built in the 80s and the constant rain & termite damage had made the wood rot underneath the house, not to mention the leaky roof & many other issues with plumbing, mainly to do with wood-structured houses.
Long story short, my house was peaceful, but because of high taxation, crime, constant rain & cold, & other problems like high utility & mortgage rate, I made a decision to sell the house and move to California.
I rented a two bedroom luxury apartment unit in Orange County around 2015 for $2500/months, but everyday there was an issue with the management, constant noise of performance cars revving their engine, garbage trucks, leaf blowers & landscapers, you name it ....
After a year, I finally got sick & tired of high rent & high taxation in Cali & moved to Nevada, Las Vegas. The apartment I moved in was ok for a few months until a loud motorcyclist moved next door to me. The guy worked all odd hours and he used to love revving his bike at nights, like 12 am, 3 am, 5 am, multiple times, when he commuted back & forth to work every day ... Calling the police, talking to Management or leaving nice notes on his bike, none of them worked, until I was forced to move out.
Everybody said rent a house, apartments are crap. oh how little I knew
So I ended up renting a home (paying $2100) to have more privacy & peace of mind. The house was fine for a few years (except the loud neighbors kids screaming & swearing, dogs barking all day & night, neighbors doing landscaping at 8am Sunday morning, etc etc), but I still put up with it, at least I had few hours of quiet at nights & I used white noise machine to drown out some of the noise. Until one day, out of the blue, the house started making weird noises, mainly coming from the ceiling/attic. It started with one loud knock/snap every morning at 8:30 am, and over a week period, the knocks went from one loud one to 20 knocks a day. Within a month, things became so bad that every time the sun would come up or go down, the roof would pop like 200 times. At nights, I would hear a lot of loud banging/popping noises coming from chimney and the attic. I let the landlord know right away (which they didn't believe me at first), I even paid for pest control (we thought it maybe rats or some other animal in the attic), which no trace of any animal was found in the attic. We brought roofers, inspectors, you name it, no one had any clue what was going on. Things got so bad that I couldn't sleep more than couple of hours every night, waking up with a very loud knock or bang, sometimes every 30 min. I lived in that house for 3.5 years, and didn't hear a beep from the structure of the place, so I have no clue how a building that quiet could go suddenly crazy & it was so frustrating that no one had any clue what was going on . Haunted house?
I was forced to move out of the lease & find another place. I ended up living in another house (1,900/mo) that had severe zapping issues (the floors were made out of cheap laminate & they wouldn't let you ground), so every time I touch a door knob or kitchen appliances or doors or windows, I would get zapped like crazy. I also would hear loud banging from pipes when I took a shower & once every two weeks I would hear loud banging from the roof/siding of the house. But at least the structural noise of this house wasn't constant, like the other property. But a few months to my lease, I discovered that the house is foreclosed and the owner has no intention to fix anything, so I moved to another single family home in a very nice area & gated community (paying $2,300/mo).
Oh boy, renting this new place was probably one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. I moved there around December last year & the first night I slept there I realized that I have made a giant mistake. There were LOUD snaps/pops once every 30 min all over the house, I mean snaps as loud as gutshots that could be heard overheard all over the house, even in the closet or bathroom, day & night. It wouldn't go away. When the heater ran, the snaps & knocks would become so loud, as if wood is splitting in half on top of your head. No amount of white noise or ear plug could block that noise. I work from home & my clients could hear the loud snaps over the phone & often asked me what is that loud noise in the background is someone shooting
Because I had moved twice in less than 3 month I ended up putting up with it & staying there for 7 month, I have a background in structural/civil engineering, so I thought I could bring inspectors & could figure out a way to minimize the constant loud popping & snapping noises. I talked to PM & they send people who had no idea what was going on, charging the owner thousands of dollars in roof & pest control. I paid out of pocket myself, bringing contractors to screw the ceiling drywall, in case the nails holding the ceiling boards were moving in & out of 2x4s. We tried re-screwing the ceiling in one room & to my surprise it made the popping noises a lot worse & even more often. By then I knew the property has serious foundation & possibly truss uplift issue. I even got covid during this whole mess around January & not sleeping, constant stress & loud noises made my illness prolong for 4 months Dry coughs, severe diarrhea, shortness if breathe, severe joint & muscle pain & high fever. At that time I was so devastated & all I wanted was to sleep & I couldn't I couldn't even go rent a hotel room for a few days, since around March the Gov had shut everything down, so I was stuck inside a big house that I couldn't sleep in any of the rooms.
Eventually when I recovered from covid, I thought I've had enough of homes with severe structural/roof issues & it's time to go back to condo/apartment living. St least, they wouldn't have serious foundation/roof issues, right? I moved to this condo a few months ago & of course it's another wood-structure multi-family home made with flimsy roof & floors back. What I didn't know about this building is the fact that there is absolutely NO insulation in between the units, over the floor & walls that I share with other neighbors, NON, whatsoever, so I could hear normal conversation, dogs barking, constant door slamming, banging noises from other units. Also because of covid, some neighbors work from home, sometimes repairing heavy machinery & auto parts! Imagine , only sharing a thin plywood with the unit underneath and the loud obnoxious neighbor next door! Another issue with this condo is the shaky floor, when I walk around my unit or neighbors walk around their own unit, my floor shakes violently & ends up shaking my heavy coach as well as the bed. If I'm sleep & the noise doesn't wake me up right away, the shaking of the floor definitely would. Apparently, the condo had a flooding incident I was never told. I never thought I could hear this much from units downstairs or on the side, because I had lived in other apartments before, and I had never experienced this level of noise traveling up from downstairs neighbors or the hellish neighbors on the side.
My neighbor on the side works night-shift, I hear her coming home, all odd hours (like 1am or 4am, every day- it's Vegas so people work odd hours at the casino), I hear everything, when she is taking a shower, slamming the hell out of her bathroom door, her dogs barking, walking around her unit, I've tried to reason with them & talk to them to at least not slam doors 10 times an hour day & night, but had no luck. Unreasonable people can't be reasoned with. As a matter of fact, I think they are doubling down on their door slamming & banging noises. My neighbor downstairs also has a habit of slamming every door & drawer & leaves the house at 7 am (every morning) & my floor shakes violently every time she goes in & out of her building, which is 5 or 6 times a day
I have moved 4 times, in less than a year. I lived in single family homes as well as condos that were uninhabitable, because of poor construction & use of cheap plywood, if these structures were built with concrete/brick, none of these issues would have happened. Trust me, I have lived in many concrete/brick structures before, my first apartment in Seattle was an old building made out of brick & you still may hear loud trucks or bikes, but there is no way you would hear your neighbors talking in normal voice, taking a shower, or closing their door.
This is so depressing that we pay so much in mortgages or rent in America, yet we have to live in such horrible living spaces that are uninhabitable. American houses often have the appearance of having brick walls, however these are just stuck onto the outside of the plywood walls giving a false sense of quality and strength. I understand that using flimsy wood is much cheaper than using stone, brick or concrete, but this is not really evidenced by the prices of houses. Even multi-million dollar new houses in the States are being built from the same cheap plywood, poor insulation, shabby roofing material as cheaper houses. The fact that walls are paper thin and conversations can be heard a room away is nothing strange in American houses. I'm not even gonna mention horrible loud structural problems/noises that no one has any clue how to fix (god help you if something goes wrong inside the attic), rotting walls, water getting into insulation, pest issues, termite damage or leaking roofs.
You will be surprised that the average material cost (cost of wood chip) for a cheap flimsy American home is around $5,000, but since we live in a mafia state, by the time the city, the contractors, & the utility companies are all done with you, you will end up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some case millions of dollars for a home that's gonna end up having too many problems, in just 10 years or less.
Sorry for the long rant, i know this has been a tough year for many with people dying alone of covid, but I'm penniless, sleepless, stressed & exhausted & I can't bare the idea that I have to move again soon , to another wood chip rental, I wonder what kind of a horror is gonna be waiting for me there? costing me thousands of dollars in rent & moving cost.
Jesus....can you give us the abbreviated version....cliff notes?
I’m assuming you’re not happy with the construction and materials used on US homes. It really depends on who builds your house.
Most houses especially tract or apartment high-rise type housing is built shoddy because of the rate they are building and the quality of the workers doing the building. The schedules are ever tightening to turn out profits and the workers are less and less experienced. It takes about 3-5 years to truly master a craft. IF you stick with it. Lots of flakes in the trade industry these days.
Lots of solid experienced contractors and craftsmen left the trades in the 2009-2013 housing fiasco. They never came back. I have seen some horrible workmanship. I hate to even call it that.
I have maybe 5/7 more years before I have no interest in being in the field and most likely gonna retire. Guys my age may hang in there another 10/12 years but that’s about it. Less and less people want to be a tradesman. Everyone wants to be a influencer or YouTube star.
Before I start, I wanted to say that I've lived in many different countries (brick/concrete buildings) & I never experienced so many problems as I have with US homes. The use of cheap plywood and wood chip, poor or no insulation, flimsy siding and roofing that either blows off in high winds or just rots away after a few year, in addition to high prices have made life a living miserable hell for the average American.
Sorry for the long rant, i know this has been a tough year for many with people dying alone of covid, but I'm penniless, sleepless, stressed & exhausted & I can't bare the idea that I have to move again soon , to another wood chip rental, I wonder what kind of a horror is gonna be waiting for me there? costing me thousands of dollars in rent & moving cost.
Choose a well-built OLDER HOME Up North that proved it will take the test of time with its age. Built to put up with winters .... so more had to be added. Plenty in cities across the Midwest to the East. Some of these cities had high building quality standards since the early 20th century. Not just anything goes or went that builders could get away with when built even 100 yrs ago.
When I lived in Chicago vast majority were very well built homes. Loved the 1800s homes. the 1920s brick bungalows to the 1950s 60s bungalow-ranch homes (were more like a mid-century style bungalow to me) ALL well built full plaster walls and true brick construction and hardwoods used and true brick exteriors.
People want these Sunbelt regions some of which less regulation means homes supposedly decent new-built as permanent homes .... are no better and even worst then a pre-fab home or trailer home as you found out.
Plenty find decent built newer homes even in the South and West or Northern suburban areas of new-builds. Still depends on the city or suburbs quality requirements of builders etc.
I think a city like Chicago had zoning and building minimums early in the 20th century and its homes proved they lasted 50 or 100 ..... yrs and still look great. I believe they still even require all copper plumbing to be used? Costly for sure for new infill and such to. Not positive if that might have changed or not and inspections and generally Union Labor needed and Codes met means quality is better too. Still you want it to last. Does not mean there are not exceptions. But still you will get what you pay for and if home has age and stood the test of time? It means it has plenty left in it also and can continually be upgraded inside to ones likes and a brick exterior just kept up with the minimum it might need.
No one with that education should be settling for inferior built standards.But many want less winters and locations of these newer fast-growing LESS REGULATION Cities and well..... you might find a home sub-par that looks great at first. Then it proves costly over time and even more costly in repairs that never should have been needed in a few years but many decades perhaps?
Good Luck in finding a better quality built place. Seems harder to find in Sunbelt and booming eras of today. Just demand means you settle to get it built and put-up with damage control afterwards. Many of these Sunbelt Builders give you only a few options and take it or leave it. Multi-residential buildings not even sound-proofed decently etc. Older-stock that has lasted ..... did for a reason also. One can remodel any well built home to new looks.
Yes, modern American single family homes are built cheaply. I've lived through enough hurricanes and windstorms to see that homes built in the 1950's can have an old oak fall on them and the house stops the tree, whereas new homes, a high wind will shear off the brick facade.
The Beauvallon Condos in Denver is a 14 story high rise. It was built so cheaply that the owners sued the builder. For years, the entire building was literally wrapped in plastic while the entire exterior was redone to make it right.
On the other hand, when were building built well? We don't see many homes built in the 1700's around here in VA. Oh, there is a 1796 home near me, but what happened to all the other homes that were in the county back then: mostly gone to scrap.
Its really not possible to build the housing needed today in the craftsmanlike manner that existed in earlier times.
Yes, modern American single family homes are built cheaply. I've lived through enough hurricanes and windstorms to see that homes built in the 1950's can have an old oak fall on them and the house stops the tree, whereas new homes, a high wind will shear off the brick facade.
The Beauvallon Condos in Denver is a 14 story high rise. It was built so cheaply that the owners sued the builder. For years, the entire building was literally wrapped in plastic while the entire exterior was redone to make it right.
On the other hand, when were building built well? We don't see many homes built in the 1700's around here in VA. Oh, there is a 1796 home near me, but what happened to all the other homes that were in the county back then: mostly gone to scrap.
Its really not possible to build the housing needed today in the craftsmanlike manner that existed in earlier times.
I agree with all you said, but there is a reason why we don't see many houses from past centuries.
They, indeed, were built well and solid, but the general trend in the US is that we don't care about history. Countries rich in culture value history and buildings. But here, people want modern, shiny, even kitschy houses. McMansion ugly but new every few years. No style, no character, some weird adds-on, wannabes. Why people build modern houses in mock period styles?
Preserving and renovating is expensive, so tearing unwanted, dated houses is a norm.
Solid, but outdated houses are replaced by new and bigger, mass produced houses that are sadly built fast and cheap. I was surprised to see "nice" fronts and ugly backs. That's not common in other countries.
Lumber is cheap, and cheap is what most Americans want.
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. Haunted house? 
Dry coughs, severe diarrhea, shortness if breathe, severe joint & muscle pain & high fever. At that time I was so devastated & all I wanted was to sleep & I couldn't 
I couldn't even go rent a hotel room for a few days, since around March the Gov had shut everything down, so I was stuck inside a big house that I couldn't sleep in any of the rooms. 
