Unfortunately I disagree with such a simple explanation of such a complicated subject.
For example, if the cost of labor goes down because we have more automated machinery (Saws, nail guns, bigger forklifts/etc) to help us build houses, than you could build more for the same price of labor.
Also, the cost of labor keeps going down relative to inflation, because we are paying immigrants with no other job opportunities very little to build these houses (This is NOT a good thing, but it does mean labor is getting cheaper, as these jobs pay rise slower than inflation).
The cost of materials might be going up too, but in reality that fluctuates a lot, and overall is a reasonably small portion of the pie for a house (more for cheaper houses, less for more expensive houses).
The cost of land goes up, oh boy does it. Most of a houses price is in the land, theoretically, especially for smaller houses. So that’s a higher price for the same thing 60 years ago.
So what if you built a 2400 sq ft home on the same land as the old 1000 sq ft homes go for? With cheaper labor but more material, it shouldn’t be that much more in theory. But because of land cost, taxes, and much bigger profit margins, it costs so much more.
But all of this is really a digression anyway because ultimately you can’t find a home with a thousand square feet new. Also, if a home isn’t renovated, a 60’s house is going to need a lot of repairs, bringing up the price. At least in my area this is true. I presume the house you bought needed repairs, was in a “blighted” neighborhood, or for some other reason the neighborhood is considered less desirable. And even then, cheaper houses in poorer neighborhoods tend to get hit with taxes harder because the poor people can’t threaten to pay a lawyer to renegotiate their taxes.
I haven’t even covered the beginning of how complex this issue really is and how rising home sizes are just one aspect to the very many factors that play into housing prices.
But just to give you a taste of some more nuance from my perspective. I bought a big house in a new neighborhood because I could afford it, and we wanted to have a family. Buuuuut, it was only after doing this that I learned about socialism, and I want to change my habits. Also, I feel we have too much space and I don’t want to be so far out from town, so we started looking at smaller homes & cheaper places for the future. In my area, it’s not pretty. Houses going back to the 60s have been renovated so they are just as expensive (So, we could afford it as dual professionals, but not a single income union job), but the houses are still smaller, but sometimes on bigger lots, but also the lots haven’t been taken care of like the houses so there’s still a ton of work to do… And some of the older, cheaper houses that aren’t renovated need 50k+ in work to keep from falling apart (Or just feeling like you are living in filth), meaning they aren’t actually cheaper if you were to fix them up. Aaaaaand since I’m in “suburbia” everyone watches fear-filled news and think that those neighborhoods are filled with crime, and every time we talk about moving to one of those neighborhoods our family is like “Whoa you don’t wanna live there, poor people just roam around the place” as if their material conditions mean nothing, and they are just terrible people that are lost causes and need to be avoided. This is a social/cultural issue as much as it is an inflated lifestyle issue. I didn’t even mention the public school system, there’s so much involved in this decision!
Ugh, there’s so much more too it than just sq footage. People should live within their means, people shouldn’t inflate their lifestyle. But right now, the only way to live kinda cheaply is through renting a tiny place, which means no wealth growth, no chance for generational wealth, bad schools, the perpetuation of poor families, the continued stigma of “living in an apartment means you are poor and worthless so you better buy a house but they are expensive so you better just feel bad and pick yourself up by your bootstraps”.
You can’t just say that we are living too inflated lives, that might be true, but there’s so much more too it, especially for those that aren’t living an inflated life. One persons story (Yours or mine, or whoever) is just one story. We know that on average, people are having a harder time living even the most modest lives. And all of this is still in the context of living in an imperial core, where your stuff is cheap and made by children in the other hemisphere, so you are still advantaged.
I just don’t like when a simple explanation is used for such a complex situation.
It really is true that you can lie 20x before someone can prove your first lie wrong. And quipy responses are usually seen as “correct” because of how short simple answers feel so “enlightening”.
I won’t deny it’s a complex situation, the home size was just one example of how much differently we live than people in the 1970s. If we live differently, than we can expect to compare lives so directly and and say things were better back then (like the original post was trying to do). Your comment just backs up the point I was trying to make about things not being the same these comparisons are overly simplistic and being looked at through rose colored glasses. For example, that cheap car in the 70s sucked. It was slow, it was unsafe, it would rust, it would break down more often… yes, cars are more expensive, but they are also so much better it’s crazy.
Why does your first house need to be a new house? Most people go their entire life without ever buying a new house. There are a lot of added expenses with new homes vs used ones. It makes way more sense to build a home once you’re established, and there is an actual need, not on your first go around with ownership because a person thinks old houses are gross. Even a 10 year old home is still pretty new.
The house I bought had a previous owner do a lot of updates, and many more previous owners before them did the same. I have a door in the side of my house where the used to shovel coal into the basement. At some point the coal burning stuff was removed, central heat/air was installed. New plumbing was put in… maintenance was done. When I bought it I had a furnace and AC unit that were only a few years old, new insulation, etc. I need new windows, they’re 20+ years old. I’ll get to that when I get to it. It’s not in a blighted neighborhood. Homes that need too much work are being torn down and people are building homes that are worth $500k-$900k typically. Those new houses are going to price people out of this area in the future. The lot sizes are the same, but they are bigger, newer, and have fancy/trendy finishes. Ultimately, that’s all good for my property values. Taxes in my state are capped at a certain percentage per year to prevent long-term residents from being taxed out of their homes, so I’m not really worried about that. The taxes are re-adjusted when a home is sold.
I realize more goes into the the price of a home than the size. But several of those other factors are also a result of rising expectations from buyers. In the 70s a kitchen may have had laminate flooring and Formica counters. Now everyone wants granite counters throughout the whole house, hardwood floors or some fancy tile… all that HGTV influence. Those things can lead to a dramatic increase on materials and labor costs if building, and impact the resale price of existing houses, as people are willing to pay more for it. My kitchen and bathrooms were updated to have granite.
If you moved from a big nice house to a smaller house, but also moved closer to a desirable city, it makes sense that it could have been a wash. As they say, location, location, location. My house in the middle of America is fairly reasonable priced. But this same house in Silicon Valley or New Jersey and and it might be $1m+. That’s just supply and demand. People make the choice to live in those places, they can make different choices. You made the choice to go from a big new house to something older and smaller because you discovered socialism. I don’t think socialism needs to be the driver of that. A capitalist should be able to see the value in minimizing the cost of housing, as it’s likely the largest monthly expense for most people. A bigger home also means more expensive maintenance, more rooms to fill with expensive furniture, higher utility costs, more space to fill with "stuff"before they start to question if they really need all that shit… A small living space has a pretty dramatic impact on overall expenses.
I spent a few years living in a studio apartment that was about 300-350sqft. While it was half or a third of the size of what I was used to, it was more expensive, which I was worried about. But I ended up saving a ton of money, because any time I thought about buying something I’d look around, see I had nowhere to put it, and not buy that thing. If someone is in a 2,600sqft home, the opposite things happens. Got an empty room… better fill it up. I had a home that size as well. I hated it, and I never did end up filling it up. Every time someone came over they would ask if I just moved it, because the house was basically empty, but I refused to spend $10k (probably more) on furniture just to fill up rooms I had no use for. The consumerism today is much different than 50 years ago. The big homes are symbol of that, and a result, but also part of the cause. Zoning laws that basically mandate these big ass homes don’t help either… that’s something that needs to change.
Unfortunately I disagree with such a simple explanation of such a complicated subject.
For example, if the cost of labor goes down because we have more automated machinery (Saws, nail guns, bigger forklifts/etc) to help us build houses, than you could build more for the same price of labor.
Also, the cost of labor keeps going down relative to inflation, because we are paying immigrants with no other job opportunities very little to build these houses (This is NOT a good thing, but it does mean labor is getting cheaper, as these jobs pay rise slower than inflation).
The cost of materials might be going up too, but in reality that fluctuates a lot, and overall is a reasonably small portion of the pie for a house (more for cheaper houses, less for more expensive houses).
The cost of land goes up, oh boy does it. Most of a houses price is in the land, theoretically, especially for smaller houses. So that’s a higher price for the same thing 60 years ago.
So what if you built a 2400 sq ft home on the same land as the old 1000 sq ft homes go for? With cheaper labor but more material, it shouldn’t be that much more in theory. But because of land cost, taxes, and much bigger profit margins, it costs so much more.
But all of this is really a digression anyway because ultimately you can’t find a home with a thousand square feet new. Also, if a home isn’t renovated, a 60’s house is going to need a lot of repairs, bringing up the price. At least in my area this is true. I presume the house you bought needed repairs, was in a “blighted” neighborhood, or for some other reason the neighborhood is considered less desirable. And even then, cheaper houses in poorer neighborhoods tend to get hit with taxes harder because the poor people can’t threaten to pay a lawyer to renegotiate their taxes.
I haven’t even covered the beginning of how complex this issue really is and how rising home sizes are just one aspect to the very many factors that play into housing prices.
But just to give you a taste of some more nuance from my perspective. I bought a big house in a new neighborhood because I could afford it, and we wanted to have a family. Buuuuut, it was only after doing this that I learned about socialism, and I want to change my habits. Also, I feel we have too much space and I don’t want to be so far out from town, so we started looking at smaller homes & cheaper places for the future. In my area, it’s not pretty. Houses going back to the 60s have been renovated so they are just as expensive (So, we could afford it as dual professionals, but not a single income union job), but the houses are still smaller, but sometimes on bigger lots, but also the lots haven’t been taken care of like the houses so there’s still a ton of work to do… And some of the older, cheaper houses that aren’t renovated need 50k+ in work to keep from falling apart (Or just feeling like you are living in filth), meaning they aren’t actually cheaper if you were to fix them up. Aaaaaand since I’m in “suburbia” everyone watches fear-filled news and think that those neighborhoods are filled with crime, and every time we talk about moving to one of those neighborhoods our family is like “Whoa you don’t wanna live there, poor people just roam around the place” as if their material conditions mean nothing, and they are just terrible people that are lost causes and need to be avoided. This is a social/cultural issue as much as it is an inflated lifestyle issue. I didn’t even mention the public school system, there’s so much involved in this decision!
Ugh, there’s so much more too it than just sq footage. People should live within their means, people shouldn’t inflate their lifestyle. But right now, the only way to live kinda cheaply is through renting a tiny place, which means no wealth growth, no chance for generational wealth, bad schools, the perpetuation of poor families, the continued stigma of “living in an apartment means you are poor and worthless so you better buy a house but they are expensive so you better just feel bad and pick yourself up by your bootstraps”.
You can’t just say that we are living too inflated lives, that might be true, but there’s so much more too it, especially for those that aren’t living an inflated life. One persons story (Yours or mine, or whoever) is just one story. We know that on average, people are having a harder time living even the most modest lives. And all of this is still in the context of living in an imperial core, where your stuff is cheap and made by children in the other hemisphere, so you are still advantaged.
I just don’t like when a simple explanation is used for such a complex situation.
Shortest marxist answer
I couldn’t help myself on this one.
It really is true that you can lie 20x before someone can prove your first lie wrong. And quipy responses are usually seen as “correct” because of how short simple answers feel so “enlightening”.
I won’t deny it’s a complex situation, the home size was just one example of how much differently we live than people in the 1970s. If we live differently, than we can expect to compare lives so directly and and say things were better back then (like the original post was trying to do). Your comment just backs up the point I was trying to make about things not being the same these comparisons are overly simplistic and being looked at through rose colored glasses. For example, that cheap car in the 70s sucked. It was slow, it was unsafe, it would rust, it would break down more often… yes, cars are more expensive, but they are also so much better it’s crazy.
Why does your first house need to be a new house? Most people go their entire life without ever buying a new house. There are a lot of added expenses with new homes vs used ones. It makes way more sense to build a home once you’re established, and there is an actual need, not on your first go around with ownership because a person thinks old houses are gross. Even a 10 year old home is still pretty new.
The house I bought had a previous owner do a lot of updates, and many more previous owners before them did the same. I have a door in the side of my house where the used to shovel coal into the basement. At some point the coal burning stuff was removed, central heat/air was installed. New plumbing was put in… maintenance was done. When I bought it I had a furnace and AC unit that were only a few years old, new insulation, etc. I need new windows, they’re 20+ years old. I’ll get to that when I get to it. It’s not in a blighted neighborhood. Homes that need too much work are being torn down and people are building homes that are worth $500k-$900k typically. Those new houses are going to price people out of this area in the future. The lot sizes are the same, but they are bigger, newer, and have fancy/trendy finishes. Ultimately, that’s all good for my property values. Taxes in my state are capped at a certain percentage per year to prevent long-term residents from being taxed out of their homes, so I’m not really worried about that. The taxes are re-adjusted when a home is sold.
I realize more goes into the the price of a home than the size. But several of those other factors are also a result of rising expectations from buyers. In the 70s a kitchen may have had laminate flooring and Formica counters. Now everyone wants granite counters throughout the whole house, hardwood floors or some fancy tile… all that HGTV influence. Those things can lead to a dramatic increase on materials and labor costs if building, and impact the resale price of existing houses, as people are willing to pay more for it. My kitchen and bathrooms were updated to have granite.
If you moved from a big nice house to a smaller house, but also moved closer to a desirable city, it makes sense that it could have been a wash. As they say, location, location, location. My house in the middle of America is fairly reasonable priced. But this same house in Silicon Valley or New Jersey and and it might be $1m+. That’s just supply and demand. People make the choice to live in those places, they can make different choices. You made the choice to go from a big new house to something older and smaller because you discovered socialism. I don’t think socialism needs to be the driver of that. A capitalist should be able to see the value in minimizing the cost of housing, as it’s likely the largest monthly expense for most people. A bigger home also means more expensive maintenance, more rooms to fill with expensive furniture, higher utility costs, more space to fill with "stuff"before they start to question if they really need all that shit… A small living space has a pretty dramatic impact on overall expenses.
I spent a few years living in a studio apartment that was about 300-350sqft. While it was half or a third of the size of what I was used to, it was more expensive, which I was worried about. But I ended up saving a ton of money, because any time I thought about buying something I’d look around, see I had nowhere to put it, and not buy that thing. If someone is in a 2,600sqft home, the opposite things happens. Got an empty room… better fill it up. I had a home that size as well. I hated it, and I never did end up filling it up. Every time someone came over they would ask if I just moved it, because the house was basically empty, but I refused to spend $10k (probably more) on furniture just to fill up rooms I had no use for. The consumerism today is much different than 50 years ago. The big homes are symbol of that, and a result, but also part of the cause. Zoning laws that basically mandate these big ass homes don’t help either… that’s something that needs to change.