this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
145 points (96.2% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35919 readers
1559 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
145
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by TheGiantKorean to c/nostupidquestions
 

I see a lot of expensive houses being built in my area. A LOT. And the weird thing is that they're being bought pretty quickly. Are these people just making more money than me? If so, what are they doing for a living? Or are they just living house poor? How exactly are they affording these places?

Edit: For reference, my neighborhood is starting to become popular (because the other popular neighborhoods have priced most people out of affording places there). The normal price of newer homes here is $700k. My home, built in 1965, which is 2500sq ft on a quarter acre of land, is $500k.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] marcos 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The profit margin per square foot on a large “luxury” housing unit is a lot higher than on a smaller, cheaper unit.

This is the weird part. It's not normal by any means, and there must be something causing it to happen.

The normal situation is that cheaper homes are more profitable by area.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

From what I've seen this has been turned upside down by... well essentially automation, just not the kind everyone is afraid of.

Between better techniques and tools, a lot of construction is significantly faster than it used to be, to the point that a job that's smaller has enough... I guess "opportunity" cost that it can be significantly less profitable.

Let's say I'm a plumber. In the 80s, I would use copper pipe and have to solder all the connections - even a small job would take a long time - on the order of days. If I do a small house it takes way less time than a big house.

But now instead I would put in long lines of PEX with crimp on connectors. It's like 4x as fast so it should be 4x cheaper right? Except now I have to drive to 4 different jobs to work all day, set up and tear down 4 times, deal with 4 different customers and invoices, etc. OR I can do 1 big house and make essentially the same money since I cut out all the extra work.

Add to that that most people are going to use more expensive finishes on larger houses that I basically just take a percentage of, and they might request something specialty and working on small affordable houses seems like a terrible business plan.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

It’s pretty simple: The cost to make the structure of a house is pretty much the same for luxury or basic models: Framing, electrical, foundation, etc.

But if you throw in some cheap granite countertops, a fancy tub, and up-market flooring suddenly it’s a luxury house and you can charge twice as much, despite it not costing nearly twice as much to build.

Same thing goes for cars: A luxury car just has different fabric and some badges, but they charge way more than a comparable econobox because it’s “luxury.”