Token reduction in labor costs are not going to solve housing to start with. It doesn't cost a 2 million dollars to build a house in California because we pay framers $1,000 an hour, it is property costs and a shitty political class blocking competition to their and their buddy's current investments.
usnelson 14 minutes ago [-]
What surprised me the most was the fees that just piled on. I knew the land, labor and materials costs.
Just the sewer (the capacity only, no work done) was $11k. Then add on the park and school fees which both were over $10k. No wonder it a builder has to build something over 2000 SQFT to make it pencil out.
newsclues 5 minutes ago [-]
It shouldn’t be a surprise.
Buying property should have the same transparency (into costs and fees) as breakfast cereal with nutritional labels.
tylerflick 24 minutes ago [-]
It’s wild to hear people scape goat REIT funds and campaign for rent control when the real problem happens to be “average people” owning investment properties. Step 1 of fixing the problem is the immediate repeal of Prop 13.
crooked-v 7 minutes ago [-]
Repealing Prop 13 would be good, but wouldn't fix the core problem, which is that CA (and most of the US) is literally decades behind on building sufficient housing units for population growth because of self-inflicted zoning and permitting problems. California isn't unique in this, Prop 13 just makes it even more painful because old people hang onto houses that are too big for them and so constrain the already-limited supply more.
usnelson 57 minutes ago [-]
I completed our modular home/factory built [Honomobo] single family home last year in CA. Over all it was worth it. The whole process took a year. It only took four hours to land and install on-site with a crane. The uphill battle was convincing my local city that it was viable, up to code and possible.
sowbug 9 minutes ago [-]
I bought a prefab backyard office after the pandemic for about $30K. I love it, even after the final price came to about $80K.
We figured out that overhead power lines prevented it from being lifted in by a crane, so we decided to have it assembled onsite. Then the county decided -- after full approvals -- it needed a concrete foundation. We asked how to do that when the backyard already had a concrete foundation. Building department said pour it on top of the existing foundation. I've mentally blocked my memory of the other ways the county came up with to make it hard to place this cuboid shape in my yard, but each time added another $10K. And the end result, other than being a foot off the ground because of the duplicate foundation, was nothing more than the $30K structure I originally bought.
usnelson 2 minutes ago [-]
Was the office considered an ADU?
jsdalton 17 minutes ago [-]
Which model did you get, and how much did it end up costing per square foot (if you don't mind me asking)? Just curious how much the real costs end up comparing with the sticker pricess on their website.
usnelson 4 minutes ago [-]
We went with the HO3 (2b/2b 960 SQFT) due to the site. Cost per SQFT is tricky as it depends on what you include in the calculation. Overall less than a stick build.
Overall the price you see on the website is the price for the unit. You need to factor in delivery, upgrades, installation and site design).
As mentioned, it wasn't a cheaper option, but rather a better investment with the quick build and quality control. Our total for the build (with land) was still a savings compare to what is available in our local market.
ilamont 42 minutes ago [-]
A developer in my hometown tried to build a manufactured/modular housing development. He got the approvals, demolished most of the existing structure that was on the parcel, purchased the modules from a supplier in Quebec and began to assemble them. Everyone was on board.
It was a complete disaster. The developer hired contractors who didn't know what they were doing and ignored stop work orders when the city learned of the problems, which included setting the modular units on their foundations without the proper permits and in violation of state building code. A separate fire department inspection deemed the structure "unsafe for interior firefighting or for interior response by first responders." The site has been abandoned for about 5 years, and the development company filed for bankruptcy.
sowbug 26 minutes ago [-]
Sounds like a sad story, but hard to know what went wrong. Did a safe design collide with regulations that weren't written with modular housing in mind? Did the modularity cause normal approval processes to happen out of order, allowing construction to mistakenly start before fire approval? Or was this simply the often Kafkaesque permitting process actually correctly identifying serious issues?
k310 1 hours ago [-]
I live in a double-wide 3-bedroom manufactured home in the Sierra Foothills.
It cost me less than half the median CA home price, with 7 acres, most of which I made walkable. I just had a nice morning walk through my "arboretum" of mostly manzanita plants. Real pretty ones, and I took some nice photos.
I could't move the home, nor place a new one in most locations, including the vicinity of my local downtown area. I checked, just for jollies.
Land costs drive CA housing. Look at charts or ask ... you know who.
thechao 19 minutes ago [-]
I'm pretty sure we've had a collapse in trade hours available per capita at a rate that's far exceeded productivity gains. If a GC has a fixed labor pool that can build at either 200$/ft or 600$/ft, then labor constraints basically makes the housing market an open auction. Housing costs have gone up because you're bidding on the final cost overhead per foot. The result is the trades aren't paid more: just the house does. (Nicer finishes, etc.)
mjevans 1 hours ago [-]
Were the market functioning, there would be sufficient additional housing near jobs that investors could not sit on and rent-seek reselling property near those jobs as a source of profit.
The market is not free. It is heavily regulated by what can be built where when. There is a distinct lack of planning and regulation to protect consumers in this market.
JuniperMesos 35 minutes ago [-]
It's true that there are heavy regulations on what housing can be built where, but I don't think this is primarily driven by "investors" (in the sense of people who make their money by being commercial or residential landlords). I think it's primarily driven by homeowner-occupiers - people who own the homes that they themselves live in, who are not professional investors trying to maximize their rental profit, and who care a lot about the ways in which new construction or the ability of more people to live near them might negatively effect their quality of life in the place they live.
thrance 56 minutes ago [-]
The free market consolidated into this on its own. Some actors became too powerful for it to remain "free".
somethoughts 1 hours ago [-]
My hot take as some one who follows the space is that traditionally a big blocker of factory built housing has been unionized trades people who lived in the area of the housing developments. These trades people had purchased their homes prior to housing costs skyrocketing in California.
For them, blocking factory built housing meant they had a monopoly on the local housing development projects and easy commutes from their homes (which are protected from property tax increases by Prop 13) to the local job sites.
As these original local trades people have aged out of the workforce they are replaced by younger trades people who can't actually afford housing in the area face 1-2 hour commutes, I think there will be less resistance..
The thought of living in a huge home in Riverside or Fresno with a 10-20 minute commute and building in houses in a climate controlled, OSHA inspected building will start looking more attractive.
ponkaloop 1 hours ago [-]
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sdkfjhdsjk 1 hours ago [-]
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bluGill 1 hours ago [-]
The modern construcion site is a factory. They move the entire factor to the job, but that doesn't mean it isn't a factory.
SoftTalker 38 minutes ago [-]
It's sort of a blend. For many houses, the walls and roof trusses are delivered pre-built. Possibly even pre-wired, insulated, and drywalled. They are then stood up on site, and a moderate amount of connecting framing and finish work done by hand.
Labor and materials isn't the problem with housing costs. It's onerous permitting and zoning and code requirements.
zdragnar 1 hours ago [-]
The nice thing about a factory built house compared to an independent contractor is you don't have to wait weeks between job types, your plumbers are on hand as soon as it's ready for them to get started.
With that said, the advantage disappears compared to national builders- the guys who buy up big farm fields and build entire subdivisions all in one go before they even have buyers. They can keep crews rotated between jobs in a fairly predictable schedule, so the only thing holding anyone back compared to the factory is bad weather preventing digging out room for foundations.
bluGill 25 minutes ago [-]
Even you little homebuilder can do that. the planning is standard and predictable so they line it up as needed.
you as a one off can't because the plumber isn't going to give you the priority needed.
yunnpp 48 minutes ago [-]
Isn't land use and zoning the real problem? (Interesting that there is no occurrence of "land" in the article.) Who cares how the houses are built when you have nowhere to put them anyway. The most recent housing developments are in the literal fucking middle of a hill where you have to drive for 30 minutes for any signs of human life.
jmyeet 33 minutes ago [-]
What we're witnessing isn't just an issue of localizing policy failure or even state policy failure but systemic failure. And we just need to look at China for how to do this correctly.
China treats housing primarily as providing a place for people to live, not a speculative asset. In the West, housing is largely a speculative asset where everyone from investor companies to individual homeowners become incentivized to make housing scarcer and more expensive at every level. China, on the other hand, makes it more expensive and more difficult to own second and third homes.
Now you might be tempted to object and point to things like the Evergrande bubble. And that's actually evidence of success not failure. Xi Jinping quietly changed China's policy, starting around 2014 to focus on living not investment, and Evergrande was essentially allowed to default because housing access is a priority over investors.
You really see this plays out with trains.
Chengdu has the 5th largest (by rail length) metro system in the world. It didn't exist before 2010. China standardized rolling stock so there's no time-consuming and expensive procurement process and there are economies of scale.
China has spent less than $1 trillion building ~50,000km of high speed rail. They initially bought high speed trains from Germany and Japan (IIRC) but now they make their own. To compare, the California HSR, if it ever happens, is estimated to cost in excess of $130B.
The point I'm getting to is that in the West every aspect and level of this is treated as a profit opportunity, which ultimately is a wealth transfer from the government to some company. Procurement, maintenance, track building, land acquisition, track maintenance, station building and so on. These are all state enterprises.
Back to housing, IMHO nothing will solve this problem so long as housing remains a speculative asset. There'll simply bee too much resistance to change.
seanmcdirmid 6 minutes ago [-]
> China treats housing primarily as providing a place for people to live, not a speculative asset.
Where and who did you get this idea from? Speculation in China makes speculation in the USA look like child’s play. Speculation is such a huge part of China’s housing economy that the government has to constantly fight against it, or for it when they fight too hard and the economy starts to teeter, and then fight hard against it again when normal people can’t compete in a market full if Wenzhou housewives. I mean, that even Wenzhou housewife is still a meme for property speculator should give you a clue. The government only ever tolerated speculation in the first place because it used housing as a jobs program for a huge under employed rural population.
Whatever the USA does to fix its problem, copying China’s problems isn’t going to help, and will actually make things worse.
HSR isn’t used for commuting in China like the Shinkansen is used for commuting in Japan. It just isn’t very viable to transit from an HSR station to your job, HSR stations aren’t very central even in tier one cities. Example: you work in Beijing chaoyang and want to live in cheaper hebei, let’s say right on the HSR line so let’s not count commute times on your home end. But just getting from Beijing South to…anywhere let alone chaoyang (and chaoyang is huge, let’s say the CBD just for kicks), is going to take an hour or two even with the subway in place.
What we need to copy from China is there ability to get projects done on time and on budget. But everything else…china has its own problems that it’s still working on.
Herring 21 minutes ago [-]
Half right. I’d use Singapore or Vienna as the ideal housing model instead. China started off using housing as a financial instrument. People were pouring their life savings into 2nd and 3rd apartments because the stock market was unreliable & capital controls prevented investing abroad. Prices skyrocketed. Now the bubble has burst, and the state is desperately trying to pivot to the Singapore/Vienna model, where local governments buy and own unsold inventory. It’s not going so well.
Of course none of this matters to the US or to this thread. Half this country won’t even wear a simple mask to save their neighbors lives. Forget about coordinating public housing.
themafia 11 minutes ago [-]
> have been pining for a better, faster and cheaper way to build homes.
And they've gotten it. Build quality and durability is the poorest it's been in decades. Do you really think I want to live in a 200 unit timber framed apartment building with the thinnest walls legally allowed by code?
> Henry Ford, but for housing
Do these people not live in houses? Or do they just assume that the lack of luxury is something people /want/?
> Will the state step in?
Haven't they done enough damage already?
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ponkaloop 1 hours ago [-]
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sdkfjhdsjk 1 hours ago [-]
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Rendered at 21:16:59 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Just the sewer (the capacity only, no work done) was $11k. Then add on the park and school fees which both were over $10k. No wonder it a builder has to build something over 2000 SQFT to make it pencil out.
Buying property should have the same transparency (into costs and fees) as breakfast cereal with nutritional labels.
We figured out that overhead power lines prevented it from being lifted in by a crane, so we decided to have it assembled onsite. Then the county decided -- after full approvals -- it needed a concrete foundation. We asked how to do that when the backyard already had a concrete foundation. Building department said pour it on top of the existing foundation. I've mentally blocked my memory of the other ways the county came up with to make it hard to place this cuboid shape in my yard, but each time added another $10K. And the end result, other than being a foot off the ground because of the duplicate foundation, was nothing more than the $30K structure I originally bought.
Overall the price you see on the website is the price for the unit. You need to factor in delivery, upgrades, installation and site design).
As mentioned, it wasn't a cheaper option, but rather a better investment with the quick build and quality control. Our total for the build (with land) was still a savings compare to what is available in our local market.
It was a complete disaster. The developer hired contractors who didn't know what they were doing and ignored stop work orders when the city learned of the problems, which included setting the modular units on their foundations without the proper permits and in violation of state building code. A separate fire department inspection deemed the structure "unsafe for interior firefighting or for interior response by first responders." The site has been abandoned for about 5 years, and the development company filed for bankruptcy.
It cost me less than half the median CA home price, with 7 acres, most of which I made walkable. I just had a nice morning walk through my "arboretum" of mostly manzanita plants. Real pretty ones, and I took some nice photos.
I could't move the home, nor place a new one in most locations, including the vicinity of my local downtown area. I checked, just for jollies.
Land costs drive CA housing. Look at charts or ask ... you know who.
The market is not free. It is heavily regulated by what can be built where when. There is a distinct lack of planning and regulation to protect consumers in this market.
For them, blocking factory built housing meant they had a monopoly on the local housing development projects and easy commutes from their homes (which are protected from property tax increases by Prop 13) to the local job sites.
As these original local trades people have aged out of the workforce they are replaced by younger trades people who can't actually afford housing in the area face 1-2 hour commutes, I think there will be less resistance..
The thought of living in a huge home in Riverside or Fresno with a 10-20 minute commute and building in houses in a climate controlled, OSHA inspected building will start looking more attractive.
Labor and materials isn't the problem with housing costs. It's onerous permitting and zoning and code requirements.
With that said, the advantage disappears compared to national builders- the guys who buy up big farm fields and build entire subdivisions all in one go before they even have buyers. They can keep crews rotated between jobs in a fairly predictable schedule, so the only thing holding anyone back compared to the factory is bad weather preventing digging out room for foundations.
you as a one off can't because the plumber isn't going to give you the priority needed.
China treats housing primarily as providing a place for people to live, not a speculative asset. In the West, housing is largely a speculative asset where everyone from investor companies to individual homeowners become incentivized to make housing scarcer and more expensive at every level. China, on the other hand, makes it more expensive and more difficult to own second and third homes.
Now you might be tempted to object and point to things like the Evergrande bubble. And that's actually evidence of success not failure. Xi Jinping quietly changed China's policy, starting around 2014 to focus on living not investment, and Evergrande was essentially allowed to default because housing access is a priority over investors.
You really see this plays out with trains.
Chengdu has the 5th largest (by rail length) metro system in the world. It didn't exist before 2010. China standardized rolling stock so there's no time-consuming and expensive procurement process and there are economies of scale.
China has spent less than $1 trillion building ~50,000km of high speed rail. They initially bought high speed trains from Germany and Japan (IIRC) but now they make their own. To compare, the California HSR, if it ever happens, is estimated to cost in excess of $130B.
The point I'm getting to is that in the West every aspect and level of this is treated as a profit opportunity, which ultimately is a wealth transfer from the government to some company. Procurement, maintenance, track building, land acquisition, track maintenance, station building and so on. These are all state enterprises.
Back to housing, IMHO nothing will solve this problem so long as housing remains a speculative asset. There'll simply bee too much resistance to change.
Where and who did you get this idea from? Speculation in China makes speculation in the USA look like child’s play. Speculation is such a huge part of China’s housing economy that the government has to constantly fight against it, or for it when they fight too hard and the economy starts to teeter, and then fight hard against it again when normal people can’t compete in a market full if Wenzhou housewives. I mean, that even Wenzhou housewife is still a meme for property speculator should give you a clue. The government only ever tolerated speculation in the first place because it used housing as a jobs program for a huge under employed rural population.
Whatever the USA does to fix its problem, copying China’s problems isn’t going to help, and will actually make things worse.
HSR isn’t used for commuting in China like the Shinkansen is used for commuting in Japan. It just isn’t very viable to transit from an HSR station to your job, HSR stations aren’t very central even in tier one cities. Example: you work in Beijing chaoyang and want to live in cheaper hebei, let’s say right on the HSR line so let’s not count commute times on your home end. But just getting from Beijing South to…anywhere let alone chaoyang (and chaoyang is huge, let’s say the CBD just for kicks), is going to take an hour or two even with the subway in place.
What we need to copy from China is there ability to get projects done on time and on budget. But everything else…china has its own problems that it’s still working on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_property_sector_crisis...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Vienna
Of course none of this matters to the US or to this thread. Half this country won’t even wear a simple mask to save their neighbors lives. Forget about coordinating public housing.
And they've gotten it. Build quality and durability is the poorest it's been in decades. Do you really think I want to live in a 200 unit timber framed apartment building with the thinnest walls legally allowed by code?
> Henry Ford, but for housing
Do these people not live in houses? Or do they just assume that the lack of luxury is something people /want/?
> Will the state step in?
Haven't they done enough damage already?