Is America's Housing Too Durable?

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Over in that other skyscrper site where the Euros congregate they are always making fun of Americans because we build homes of wood and they hardly last a couple hundred years. Of course that's nonsense too because a well made wooden home can last vrtually forever if it's properly built and maintained but a home should. Homes are about the only thing the typical person buys that increases in value over decades because it has an unlimited life span and should. Houses are too expensive for most people to buy if they depreciated rapidly like cars.

This isn't right. It's true that in the US houses typically appreciate, but only because we've made a political effort to redistribute wealth away from renters/first time buyers towards incumbent owners. It's not an immutable fact of housing markets.

And whats appreciating isn't the actual value of the structure, but the the land it sits on.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by tech12

Yeah I know, but i was expecting it to be more in the 20%-30% range, similar to LA, Portland, Seattle, New Orleans, etc.

A few more Bay Area cities with a high-ish percentage of pre-1940 housing:

Berkeley: 49.5%
Albany: 39.8%
Alameda: 33.7%
Burlingame: 29.4%

Oakland has smaller city limits, so not surprising. Places like LA and Portland (and especially New Orleans) have lots of newer, postwar sections.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

This is the dumbest part. They both cost money to tear down, I doubt the difference in tear down cost is that big too since its measured in man hours and equipment rental costs and the same methods are used whether its a brick veneer balloon frame or a timber frame. Crunch with a Komatsu excavator and load it into a dump truck.

A non durable house does not magically evaporate leaving a reusable lot behind. A durable house is not necessarily more resilient to the conditions of being left vacant, durability implies upkeep. Both will fall to mother nature and become blight at the same rate if moisture gets in through broken windows or a hobo makes his campfire in the living room.

The real difference is a durable house is not costly to maintain while occupied and can be resold whereas the nondurable home gets condemned and the family loses value.

You're totally correct but I'd go even further than you: in many cases durable housing can be boarded up safely and will endure the economic downturn well enough to be rehabbed at a quality/cost ratio beating new construction, helping jumpstart the rebirth of the blighted neighborhood, while that wouldn't be an option for the shoddy housing he advocates.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

here are the percentages of pre-1940 housing in some of america's major cities.

the midwest/northeast dominate the top of the list, with the lone exception of the always exceptional san francisco.

st. louis: 55.2%
cleveland: 53.7%
boston: 53.1%
pittsburgh: 52.3%
san francisco: 48.2%
minneapolis: 46.9%
chicago: 44.7%
cincinnati: 41.7%
new york city: 40.8%
philly: 39.9%
D.C.: 36%
detroit: 33.2%
new orleans: 31.8%
portland: 31.0%
salt lake city: 31.0%
milwaukee: 30.8%
seattle: 27.8%
kansas city: 21.5%
los angeles: 20.8%
denver: 20.3%
indianapolis: 16.4%
atlanta: 13.2%
columbus: 12.4%
tampa: 8.8%
san diego: 7.0%
houston: 6.9%
nashville: 6.5%
dallas: 5.8%
miami: 3.9%
charlotte: 3.2%
austin: 2.9%
orlando: 2.9%
phoenix: 2.0%
las vegas: 0.4%

Better stats would be the ratio pre-1940 housing still existing/all housing sites available in the part of the city that was built in 1940.

Compare a Boston neighborhood where 80% of the houses are pre-1940 and 20% are newer infill (therefore, 80% pre-1940) to a Detroit neighborhood where 50% of the houses are pre-1940 and the other 50% became urban prairie (so, on paper, 100% pre-1940) and you see that these stats don't give an accurate heritage conservation picture.

(And obviously, the Rust Belt will perform well... on paper. Among the top of your list, Boston and San Francisco however actually do perform well in reality too.)

[10023]

No.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by lio45

Better stats would be the ratio pre-1940 housing still existing/all housing sites available in the part of the city that was built in 1940.

good luck finding the requisite data to make those calculations.

Originally Posted by lio45

you see that these stats don't give an accurate heritage conservation picture.

i said absolutely nothing about providing an "accurate heritage conservation picture". the list that i (quite easily) compiled was simply the percentage of housing units in major US cities that were built prior to 1940. nothing more, nothing less.

doing something more involved to get the results you want would require data that i'm not sure readily exists on an apples to apples basis.

Originally Posted by lio45

Compare ... to a Detroit neighborhood where 50% of the houses are pre-1940 and the other 50% became urban prairie (so, on paper, 100% pre-1940) ...

you're assuming the data hasn't been updated in decades. did you bother to check?

[mhays]

You're not getting his point IWant2BeInSTL. The point, which is correct, is that the % by age category is only part of the picture about preservation.

Likewise, a city with 70% pre-1940 housing might have torn down nothing at all (hypothetically).

[10023]

I still don't understand how any of this supports an argument that housing should be less durable.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by mhays

You're not getting his point IWant2BeInSTL. The point, which is correct, is that the % by age category is only part of the picture about preservation.

Likewise, a city with 70% pre-1940 housing might have torn down nothing at all (hypothetically).

It also goes by total unit count rather than building count so for an extreme example if a city had a 50 old buildings then put up a single condo tower with 450 units it would show up as only 10% pre-1940. Cities that put up tons of newer condo units get artificially schewed lower in the counts.

Originally Posted by mhays

You're not getting his point IWant2BeInSTL. The point, which is correct, is that the % by age category is only part of the picture about preservation.

Likewise, a city with 70% pre-1940 housing might have torn down nothing at all (hypothetically).

point taken. obviously demo and new construction are going to change the statistic so it's not useful as a measure of preservation. but i don't think it's meant to be a measure of preservation. it's relevant when considering things like market trends, maintenance in light of household incomes, etc.