Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?
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Clickbait listing was clickbait...
'I'm not a bad person' | Fairfax 'squatter' tells her side in exclusive interview with WUSA9
The woman says she helped rescue the house from a mess and cheer up an older man who was lonely while he gave her and her daughter a place to live after her divorce.
But she says she has no plans to stay there.
"No," she said. "That's not my house...he's not there. What is the reason to stay there if he's not there?"
Nelly says the man's family gave her little notice of their intent to sell and she had no idea of the attention the listing was getting until friends pointed it out.
She says she and her daughter and their dog will be out by this coming Saturday and says she has a place to go.
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@Dragoon said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
a normal wood framed house
WTF builds a house around a wooden frame in the first place? Oh, wait …
Why So Many American Homes Are Flimsy - Cheddar Explains – 08:40
— Cheddar
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Okay video, but a few comments:
- The US Department of energy also provides the appropriate insulation amounts to achieve the same level of insulation as other materials. In colder climates 2"x6" is the norm, with 2"x8" not being uncommon to allow for a lot more insulation. Poor insulation and inflated heating/cooling costs are usually the fault of either older houses or public housing. Most modern houses are well insulated.
- Most of the houses build in the post-war boom are still standing today. They are not quite as flimsy as presented.
- The ultra flimsy houses that fall apart in a decade? almost universally public housing paid for by the government using the lowest bidder.
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@Gurth said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
WTF builds a house around a wooden frame in the first place? Oh, wait …
Without watching the video, someone who has easy access to a lot of wood.
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@Dragoon said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
Most of the houses build in the post-war boom are still standing today. They are not quite as flimsy as presented.
Mine was built in 1941. There's a couple things I'm behind on, but the house is still really solid.
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@Gurth said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
WTF builds a house around a wooden frame in the first place?
It seems from personal experience that most new houses in England are wooden frames (and brick exterior, but the brick isn't structural). Though English houses aren't really renowned for sturdiness and the like, so maybe it's not the best example (somehow Brits are surprised when they learn that they have some of the smallest average room size in Europe, but you don't need to have visited many countries to instinctively know it!). But it's definitely a thing in Europe as well.
There are a few houses being built in my street, and two that were finished a couple of years ago are timber frame, I think, whereas two that are still being built are block-work. So even here, it's not that uncommon (though that's only true for individual houses, I don't think I've ever seen a newly built 3-or-more stories building in wood frame in France).
Oh, wait …
Why So Many American Homes Are Flimsy - Cheddar Explains – 08:40
— CheddarParts of that argument don't seem very convincing. In particular, I don't see why you'd need extra-long wood to build a house -- excluding the roof, which has a wooden frame about everywhere, the wall panels don't need timber more than 4-5 m long, which doesn't require particularly tall trees. Unless they're thinking about the cladding, not the frame, but even there I'm not sure, and in any case the cladding is independent of the frame.
Also, I'm not sure to which point wood is really that much more expensive than in the US. I mean, sure, England (and the UK in general) has relatively few commercial forests, and e.g. the Netherlands is going to struggle there as well. But France, Germany, or the whole of Scandinavia has tons of it -- and if you're comparing with the US, importing wood from Finland to the Netherlands isn't much different than importing wood from Oregon to New Mexico.
That's even less convincing when she brings in Japan -- they behave like the US and as for their wood... well, they just import it. OK then, so if wood availability truly was the limiting factor for Europe, why wouldn't they also import it? Clearly that's not the main reason.
I find the mentality argument (houses seen as more disposable, moving home more often...) more convincing than the raw-material-availability one.
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@remi said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
It seems from personal experience that most new houses in England are wooden frames (and brick exterior, but the brick isn't structural). Though English houses aren't really renowned for sturdiness and the like, so maybe it's not the best example (somehow Brits are surprised when they learn that they have some of the smallest average room size in Europe, but you don't need to have visited many countries to instinctively know it!). But it's definitely a thing in Europe as well.
A lot of English houses are pretty sturdy (especially as you go more to the north and west), as we get quite a lot of storms and nobody really wants their house to blow down. Blown down houses are expensive to fix.
The big problems we have are the slow rate of building (relative to demand) and the common lack of insulation.
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@remi said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
In particular, I don't see why you'd need extra-long wood to build a house
I forget the names for the construction techniques, and
to look it, but much older construction tended to build wall frames as a single unit, so you needed lumber as long as the wall was high. More modern practice is to build walls in one-story increments, so for most construction you need at most 92 5/8" lumber (assuming standard 96" ceilings; higher ceilings will need longer), rather than full house height.Historically, much of the US used to be covered in forests, which needed to be cleared anyway to build anything, so wood was an almost-free byproduct of clearing the land. Also, the West Coast is known for earthquakes. Low-rise wood frame construction tends to survive earthquakes fairly well, whereas masonry construction tends to turn into a pile of bricks/stones, often with smears of red pulp underneath.
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@HardwareGeek Historically houses were built of wood everywhere (that has forests) because it's hugely cheaper than any sort of bricks, stones etc.
There's a huge survivor bias when looking at old houses in Europe. Most of old buildings you can see nowadays are brick/stone houses from the 18th/19th century, but that's just because anything that wasn't brick/stone has mostly gone away since. Though by, say, 1900, I think most places in Europe had switched to bricks and stones.
Anyway, still not convinced on the pure wood availability argument. Large-scale deforestation only really happened in the 19th century (a bit earlier in the UK IIRC), before that there was a steady loss of forests (since... the Roman times, with a lull during the Black Plague I think?) but not to the point of preventing house building.
I think the human mobility argument is much stronger. By 1900 a lot of the US was still in very youthful growth and when you get to a new place the easiest is to build in wood -- again, regardless of the country, but in Europe there were no "new" places at that time! I suspect given a bit more time of "natural growth" the US would have switched to stone, but the changes in the 20th century broke any previous pattern in so many ways, including artificially freezing building techniques through large-scale building companies (if you've invested millions in building wooden frame houses, you're not going to change your business plan easily!) or regulation, both things that mostly didn't exist before.
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@remi said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
the Netherlands is going to struggle there as well
It does now.
The name "Holland" (western part of the Netherlands) comes from "holt-land", meaning wood-land, as it was totally covered in forests.
But by the 18th century, most forests had disappeared after centuries of building houses, ships,tulips,windmills and - of course - wooden shoes.
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@remi said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
somehow Brits are surprised when they learn that they have some of the smallest average room size in Europe, but you don't need to have visited many countries to instinctively know it!
Looking at the outside of the houses will generally do already. From watching a good deal of British shows about houses on TV, this seems fairly typical for low-cost housing in the UK:
If your front door is a quarter or even a third of the width of your house, I doubt you’re going to have big rooms inside. Which probably explains why I would be willing to bet that most of the houses in this photo have rear extensions added at some point.
Ah, OK, found them — looks like I was right.
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@Gurth Those seem smaller houses than the one that are the most common, I think, though the rooms themselves aren't any larger (there are just more of them). As much as there is one, I think the "standard" house in the UK is 3 bedrooms (these ones are probably 1 or 2?), but of those at least 1 would be about the size of a single bed and not much more. OK for a small child, or to use as e.g. a home office or a storage cupboard, but not really a bedroom otherwise.
When we were looking for a house, estate agents called the third bedroom a "good size" when you could actually fit a (single) bed and squeeze in a wardrobe...
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@remi said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
I don't see why you'd need extra-long wood to build a house
This refers to "balloon construction" that went out of use almost a hundred years ago. Using this argument along side of "Americans replace their houses regularly" is just silly.
I think what they were getting at is that during the era of balloon construction, Americans adopted wood framing. We have since improved framing techniques by introducing platform framing, but availability of long wood was instrumental in getting the trend kicked off.
They also mention that brick faced American houses are sturdier... but almost all American brick houses simply have a brick veneer standing in front of a standard wood framed wall. The brick is literally tied to the wall with a bunch of construction grade twist ties with one end nailed to the wood and the other jammed in the mortar.
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@Jaime said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
They also mention that brick faced American houses are sturdier... but almost all American brick houses simply have a brick veneer standing in front of a standard wood framed wall. The brick is literally tied to the wall with a bunch of construction grade twist ties with one end nailed to the wood and the other jammed in the mortar.
It's pretty common in the UK to have an inner wall of breeze blocks (light concrete in the shape of a block) and an outer wall of stone or brick (depending on what is common in the area), with construction ties between them. It makes for a very strong building.
Older properties will have either a single layer or a double heavy layer (my house is like that, including for some of the internal structures too, which is why wifi doesn't penetrate walls and I use powerline networking). Timber frame building is rare unless you go a very long way back.
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@remi said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
A quick search shows some
nice flats in Paris of less than 5 m^2 (50 sq.ft), going for up to 20k EUR/m^2. 
Just slightly smaller than your average prison cell. Cool.
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@PotatoEngineer said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
Ugh. Sounds horrible. I agree with France's law: if you can't stand up in a room, it's not really a room. And if almost the entire apartment has a low ceiling, then it's just a recipe for misery.
I had a school buddy who lived in a house where I literally couldn't stand up straight. He was pretty short, like 1.60, and he said it was fine as long as he didn't try to jump (and even he had to duck under some of the doors) but for me it was just claustrophobic.
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@LaoC said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
short, like 1.60
That's tall, for a hobbit. Assuming this was not marked Shire housing, tho.
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@dkf said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
It's pretty common in the UK to have an inner wall of breeze blocks (light concrete in the shape of a block) and an outer wall of stone or brick (depending on what is common in the area), with construction ties between them. It makes for a very strong building.
This is what happens when American brick veneers see bad weather.
![800px-FEMA_-44312-_Tornado_Damage_in_Oklahoma[1].jpg](/assets/uploads/files/1651503689646-800px-fema_-_44312_-_tornado_damage_in_oklahoma-1.jpg)
Commercial buildings are usually cinder block with the same brick veneer.
![Breedfoto[1].jpg](/assets/uploads/files/1651503900562-breedfoto-1.jpg)
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In hurricane-prone areas (ie Florida), the local building code requires that the ground floor and stairwells/shared walls (if any) have to be block construction (usually with narrow wood framing on the inside so they can be finished normally with drywall and paint and so you can hang things and do electrical). The upper stories are generally wood-framed. The outsides are normally stucco.
The big issues come when contractors don't apply the stucco right--you're supposed to do several thin layers, letting it dry between coats. But that means having the stucco guys out there multiple days. So they just slap on one thick coat. Which inevitably flakes, cracks, and falls off. Or lets moisture get to the underlying material.
Here in the PNW, I'm pretty sure all the cheaper housing is stick-built. But Oregon has large forests, so
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
In hurricane-prone areas the local building code requires that the ground floor and stairwells/shared walls (if any) have to be block construction ... In stupid cheap places
, (ie Florida),The upper stories are generally wood-framed. The outsides are normally stucco.The big issues come when ...the stucco... Which inevitably flakes, cracks, and falls off. Or lets moisture get to the underlying material.
Clarified.
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@remi said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
I think the "standard" house in the UK is 3 bedrooms (these ones are probably 1 or 2?)
These look like what the British call “two up, two down“ houses: a front and a rear room downstairs, probably with the stairs between them, and two bedrooms upstairs.
The downstairs rooms may have been knocked into one, especially if the stairs are at the side of the house, in the hallway, instead of between the rooms — but people even do that with the stairs there, and keep them there …
The extension at the back will house the kitchen downstairs, and above that (if it’s an extension with an upper floor) will have either the bathroom or a third bedroom. If the bathroom isn’t over the kitchen, then that will (in roughly 99.9% of cases) be tacked onto the end of it instead, on the ground floor.
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@Gurth said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
These look like what the British call “two up, two down“ houses: a front and a rear room downstairs, probably with the stairs between them, and two bedrooms upstairs.
I note that bathrooms do not seem to occur in the absence of extensions. Are the extensions of vintage older than indoor plumbing?
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@Gribnit I’ve seen a lot of these houses on TV, and a good deal had (at least originally) an outside toilet, either at the bottom of the garden or at the rear of the extension, but accessed through an external door only.
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@Jaime said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
balloon construction ... platform framing
Those are the terms I couldn't remember last night. Thanks.
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@HardwareGeek said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
@remi said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
In particular, I don't see why you'd need extra-long wood to build a house
I forget the names for the construction techniques, and
to look it, but much older construction tended to build wall frames as a single unit, so you needed lumber as long as the wall was high. More modern practice is to build walls in one-story increments, so for most construction you need at most 92 5/8" lumber (assuming standard 96" ceilings; higher ceilings will need longer), rather than full house height.And if you really need an oversized board, you can make a "gluelam" board where you make plywood out of 2x4s and larger boards. It works fine, though I imagine that a gluelam board is going to be a little bigger than a single-huge-plank of equivalent strength (but with advantages that any cracks in the boards have a limited scope).
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@PotatoEngineer said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
a gluelam board is going to be a little bigger than a single-huge-plank of equivalent strength
Depending on how they're made they can actually be stronger. A glueup on-site probably not, but you can make engineered beams in presses that are terribly strong in their axis of work.
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Stand by...
The Fed's new moves could turn the housing market from boom to bust
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark overnight interest rate by half a percentage point, the biggest jump in 22 years.
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@Gurth said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
@remi said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
I think the "standard" house in the UK is 3 bedrooms (these ones are probably 1 or 2?)
These look like what the British call “two up, two down“ houses: a front and a rear room downstairs, probably with the stairs between them, and two bedrooms upstairs.
The downstairs rooms may have been knocked into one, especially if the stairs are at the side of the house, in the hallway, instead of between the rooms — but people even do that with the stairs there, and keep them there …
The extension at the back will house the kitchen downstairs, and above that (if it’s an extension with an upper floor) will have either the bathroom or a third bedroom. If the bathroom isn’t over the kitchen, then that will (in roughly 99.9% of cases) be tacked onto the end of it instead, on the ground floor.
"Extension" is only downstairs. Two double bedrooms surprisingly.
Looking at the floor plans for the other houses either side, either the exact modifications have been made to them all or that's how they were built.
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@loopback0 that looks right miserable to try to move furniture to or from the upstairs. A sharp, narrow 90 degree turn at either end, with walls to the top and small landings? Do not want.
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We just bought in Oregon about 6 months ago. Spent 480 plus like 15 so far on upgrades. It's dope though. Fairly huge for a middle class home (2700 sqf if we include the garage), on a nice hill where we can see Mt Hood, Mt Saint Helens, and another one I can't remember the name of.
Renting this place would be like 3 a month. We spend like 2.4 on PITI right now.
We really needed an upgrade and can afford it (with some lifestyle changes, but having 2 kids would do that to us anyway). Worth it.
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@Captain said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
Mt Saint Helens, and another one I can't remember the name of
It'll be easier to remember the name of once it blows.
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@Gribnit probably right, it's Mt Jefferson and it's an active volcano.
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@boomzilla said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
Stand by...
The Fed's new moves could turn the housing market from boom to bust
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark overnight interest rate by half a percentage point, the biggest jump in 22 years.
We can only hope! Housing prices made sense 10 years ago; the sooner we get back to a sane level (and stay there this time!) the better.
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@Mason_Wheeler I thought it had already been made quite clear that Millenials would not own houses. This quixosis of yours will only do you harm.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
Housing prices made sense 10 years ago
I'm pretty sure you have to go back farther than that to find sense. Granted, they made relatively more sense then than now, but still not sensible on an absolute scale.
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@loopback0 said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
Looking at the floor plans for the other houses either side, either the exact modifications have been made to them all or that's how they were built.
From the aerial view, I get the impression the kitchen was part of the original structure (or all houses had them added on at the same time) but the bathroom behind was tacked on later. I conclude this from the far end of the roof looking different, and even different sizes, on several of the houses.
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@HardwareGeek said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
@Mason_Wheeler said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
Housing prices made sense 10 years ago
I'm pretty sure you have to go back farther than that to find sense. Granted, they made relatively more sense then than now, but still not sensible on an absolute scale.
Well, technically the introduction of the 30-year mortgage, which allowed housing prices to climb ridiculously high in the first place, was in the late 1950s...
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@Mason_Wheeler Much like cars, houses are a lot better now than they used to be. I lived in a 1950s ranch style built with a 15 year mortgage. It sucked.
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@Captain And yet somehow, cars have improved their quality more than houses have without 30-year mortgages.
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@Gurth said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
@loopback0 said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
Looking at the floor plans for the other houses either side, either the exact modifications have been made to them all or that's how they were built.
From the aerial view, I get the impression the kitchen was part of the original structure (or all houses had them added on at the same time) but the bathroom behind was tacked on later. I conclude this from the far end of the roof looking different, and even different sizes, on several of the houses.
Yeah I think you're right
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@Mason_Wheeler car loan terms have more than doubled...
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@remi said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
But France, Germany, or the whole of Scandinavia has tons of it
All of which is currently being exported to the US and China, from what I've heard. With the current prices of wood you might as well build a house out of printer ink.
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@Captain said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
@Mason_Wheeler car loan terms have more than doubled...
According to https://www.edmunds.com/car-loan/how-long-should-my-car-loan-be.html, loans longer than 5 years have increased by about 33% since 2010, so not double, but definitely increasing. 6 years is now the most common loan, with 7 years almost as popular. I didn't even know you could get loans longer than 5 years, and I'm pretty sure I've paid all my car loans off early. (The used car I bought in January I paid cash. Terribly overpriced for a car that old, but that's the market now.)
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@HardwareGeek We're talking about increases since the 1950s though. You used to be able to buy a ford in 3 years, with a <3% down payment.
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@Captain said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
We're talking about increases since the 1950s though.
My extensive research didn't reveal any data on car loans that long ago.
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@Captain said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
@HardwareGeek We're talking about increases since the 1950s though. You used to be able to buy a ford in 3 years, with a <3% down payment.
That was to finance thousands of nickels, of which with the excess one could use to purchase sundry items of higher quality than today, particularly ergot derivatives and Irishmen.
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You mean you don't remember it firsthand? I'm disappointed.
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@Zerosquare I was not old enough to drive in the 1950s.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Housing Bubbles? Is this a housing bubble?:
Housing prices made sense 10 years ago; the sooner we get back to a sane level (and stay there this time!) the better.
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@topspin U.S. has virtually unlimited amounts of forest, but not production capacity; it grows in all the wrong places, in national parks, mountains and swamplands. China has large amounts, but they'd very much like to keep them. And China's forests tend to be all over the mountain ranges, so they have the same problems as the U.S. but even less roads built there.
Bigger question in my mind is, where's all that wood going in the U.S., that their domestic production can't cover,.
