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VideoTapir posted:I remember people fixating on the age of apartments and houses last time I was in Japan, but I didn't realize it went THAT far. Well, anything built before some point in the 1980s is liable to come down in any sizable earthquake, and also older stuff is liable to be poorly insulated at best, so there is that. Tearing down perfectly good houses is pretty wacky, though.
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Jul 29, 2014 03:19
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Mr. Fix It posted:Well, anything built before some point in the 1980s is liable to come down in any sizable earthquake, and also older stuff is liable to be poorly insulated at best, so there is that. Tearing down perfectly good houses is pretty wacky, though. I wonder if this practice will still occur for modern homes, when they hit the 40 year mark.
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Jul 29, 2014 04:26
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.Z. posted:I wonder if this practice will still occur for modern homes, when they hit the 40 year mark. Japan regularly tears down and rebuilds historic temples, so my money's on "yes"
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Jul 29, 2014 04:32
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They tear down perfectly good multi-storey buildings and stadiums too, for crying out loud. The construction industry has the country's testicles firmly in hand and is not above giving them a good squeeze About the land price: The population has tipped over into a decline, the countryside (i.e. basically anywhere outside of the Tokyo and Kansai Megapaloozas) is emptying out faster than a salaryman's beer glass on Friday night, and even the cities have something like a 20% vacancy rate (though that might be in commercial property, I think). All the land in areas that people want to live has already been bought, so if you're not paying top dollar to get something there, you're going to be paying less to be somewhere that's not in demand and therefore will not be in demand in 20 years' time when the population has fallen by 10% and half the people left are over 65 years old. Even people who inherit parcels of land and houses, if the land is located outside the city (or even if it's just in a less-desirable part of the city or an area that's zoned weirdly*), will often just abandon them entirely and let them go to waste. If you already have your spouse and * Some really, really old areas have entire neighbourhoods that are zoned "bulldoze and redistrict only", because they were built during times when you only needed an alleyway between houses, and there's no room to get an ambulance or fire engine down or anything. People who own this land have two choices: Live in the house until it literally becomes unlivable, or sell the land to a developer who's trying to buy out everyone and put a shiny new skyscraper in its place. Weatherman fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Jul 29, 2014 |
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Jul 29, 2014 05:05
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Freakonomics has an episode about the housing in Japan, pretty interesting. One thing I remember them mentioning as well is that Japan doesn't have a big DIY culture, people just aren't interested in fixing up houses. Apparently hardware stores like Lowe's and Home Depot don't really exist over there.
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Jul 29, 2014 07:08
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HoogieChooChoo posted:Freakonomics has an episode about the housing in Japan, pretty interesting. One thing I remember them mentioning as well is that Japan doesn't have a big DIY culture, people just aren't interested in fixing up houses. Apparently hardware stores like Lowe's and Home Depot don't really exist over there. Yeah they do. http://www.cainz.co.jp/shop/ Not as much as the US does, though. But they do have them, especially in the suburbs.
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Jul 29, 2014 07:26
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That's crazy. Meanwhile in the UK we have houses that are hundreds of years old and falling apart but they still cost as much as a brand new building if not more.
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Jul 29, 2014 08:38
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Aaaah very illuminating answers. Thanks to everybody.
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Jul 29, 2014 09:12
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HoogieChooChoo posted:Freakonomics has an episode about the housing in Japan, pretty interesting. One thing I remember them mentioning as well is that Japan doesn't have a big DIY culture, people just aren't interested in fixing up houses. Apparently hardware stores like Lowe's and Home Depot don't really exist over there. I was going to mention the episode. Lots of interesting factoids in that episode. They also suggest that a culture of "tear down and rebuild" started up in part because of the crappy housing boom of houses built in the immediate post-WWII era.
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Jul 29, 2014 11:13
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Would the US benefit or suffer from such a culture of "tear down and rebuild", particularly in urban centers?
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Jul 29, 2014 15:35
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Jastiger posted:Would the US benefit or suffer from such a culture of "tear down and rebuild", particularly in urban centers? It'd be pretty bad from a sustainability perspective. Keep a lot of people employed, I suppose, but they wouldn't be producing a whole lot of value in the long term Since it's all gonna get torn down) I mean sure, newer houses are more energy efficient, but how long does it take for the energy savings to absorb the energy expanded tearing down the old house, preparing the materials and building a new one?
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Jul 29, 2014 15:41
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I think we'll see a good amount of the 2006 era pickup truck contractor buildings come down (there are some reallllll turds out there) but I doubt it will by systemic.
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Jul 29, 2014 15:51
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Yeah I'm not sure. I know it would employ more people, and I know from looking at a lot of places in my line of work that rebuilds would probably be welcome in a lot of places as far as making them more sustainable and attractive to residents. I see a lot of homes that are from the 30s that are done, redone, and redone again, and can't help but think with the pace of technology and energy needs it may be easier to just knock em down and put up something more modern with a longer time frame in mind.
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Jul 29, 2014 15:55
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FrozenVent posted:It'd be pretty bad from a sustainability perspective. Keep a lot of people employed, I suppose, but they wouldn't be producing a whole lot of value in the long term Since it's all gonna get torn down) I think there's probably some relation between Japan's infrastructure compared to the US's, and the level of churn in construction compared between the two.
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Jul 29, 2014 16:10
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If we were doing mass rebuilds the costs would be a lot lower than anything you can estimate now with the scale involved. Also, future buildings would be designed with eventual demolition in mind, and better techniques/technologies would emerge on both ends of the contracting process. It's pretty tough to say. Obviously right now if you just flipped a switch the cost would be enormous and almost certainly outweigh the benefits. There are also issues with building in certain areas - lots of stuff is grandfathered in (especially in cities) but would never be allowed now. fake edit: The highest cost would probably be de-leading, again especially in cities. It's a nightmare here in Boston, most places just illegally refuse to rent to people with children rather than deal with it.
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Jul 29, 2014 16:41
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It would be sort of architecturally depressing to do that, I think. You could have policies to mitigate that, but then you're increasing cost a lot as well. In Boston, most new development is sort of unpleasant.
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Jul 29, 2014 16:46
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Jastiger posted:Yeah I'm not sure. I know it would employ more people Broken window fallacy!
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Jul 29, 2014 16:58
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xie posted:If we were doing mass rebuilds the costs would be a lot lower than anything you can estimate now with the scale involved. Also, future buildings would be designed with eventual demolition in mind, and better techniques/technologies would emerge on both ends of the contracting process. It's pretty tough to say. Obviously right now if you just flipped a switch the cost would be enormous and almost certainly outweigh the benefits. Yeah the leading thing and old materials is where I'm seeing the biggest change. I live in the midwest where there isn't a ton of the really old and dangerous stuff, but out East it sounds like its super common. Why not just get rid of the old crap and rebuild it, excluding historical buildings of course. I see those row homes in Pennsylvania and cringe at how terrible the infrastructure on them must be.
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Jul 29, 2014 18:32
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It really depends. Old homes sometimes have the advantage of having the kinks all worked out. If the homes have been maintained and updated they could potentially be more solid than something built in the last 20-30 years. Additionally there are often a lot of historical details like woodwork or decorative masonry that would cost a fortune to recreate today. Even if the home is in poor condition it can be worth fixing it up given the right homeowner.
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Jul 29, 2014 20:41
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LogisticEarth posted:It really depends. Old homes sometimes have the advantage of having the kinks all worked out. If the homes have been maintained and updated they could potentially be more solid than something built in the last 20-30 years. Additionally there are often a lot of historical details like woodwork or decorative masonry that would cost a fortune to recreate today. Even if the home is in poor condition it can be worth fixing it up given the right homeowner. For what it's worth, there have also been experiments with producing prefab houses using CNC routers and even 3D printers. Once the kinks are worked out, that sort of thing could make it possible to produce decent quality houses for not a lot of money.
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Jul 30, 2014 02:09
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Bone structure houses seem like a step in that direction but IIRC they start at like $200-300/square foot, making them pretty pricey at the moment. But one day... e. actually I just checked out their website and according to the FAQ it looks like that price is for a ready-to-live-in home, if you just want the shell it's about $45/square foot. So not quite as bad. Guest2553 fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 02:22
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I haven't done all the math, but offs the cuff it seems like Trenton would benefit from being torn down. Definitely not rebuilt, just torn down.
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Jul 30, 2014 03:09
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LogisticEarth posted:It really depends. Old homes sometimes have the advantage of having the kinks all worked out. If the homes have been maintained and updated they could potentially be more solid than something built in the last 20-30 years. Additionally there are often a lot of historical details like woodwork or decorative masonry that would cost a fortune to recreate today. Even if the home is in poor condition it can be worth fixing it up given the right homeowner. You also have significant survivorship bias working for you when evaluating homes- i.e. the old homes that we see now are usually the best examples of their type. They were the houses that were well built and well maintained, while all of the poorly constructed or poorly kept-up buildings that were their contemporaries have long-since been torn down and replaced with something else. So if you just look at what is out there now you get the impression that old houses built during X period were all built to a high standard, and last in a way that modern construction doesn't. It's entirely possible (and even likely) that this is in fact completely untrue, and people have been living in slap-dash shitpiles all throughout human history.
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Jul 30, 2014 03:11
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LGD posted:You also have significant survivorship bias working for you when evaluating homes- i.e. the old homes that we see now are usually the best examples of their type. They were the houses that were well built and well maintained, while all of the poorly constructed or poorly kept-up buildings that were their contemporaries have long-since been torn down and replaced with something else. So if you just look at what is out there now you get the impression that old houses built during X period were all built to a high standard, and last in a way that modern construction doesn't. It's entirely possible (and even likely) that this is in fact completely untrue, and people have been living in slap-dash shitpiles all throughout human history. I bought one of those slap dash shitpiles built in 1915, and I always have a chuckle when people complain about houses not being built like they used to be. It's a minor miracle that this place has not burned to ground in a hundred years. It's coming.
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Jul 30, 2014 04:33
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Then again it varies quite a lot between countries. Over in the UK most of our housing stock is old compared to American standards. The house I bought recently is 60-70 years old and will easily last longer than me with nothing more than the usual maintenance. While renting over the last few years I've lived in a houses that were hundreds of years old and, yeah they have their problems (god drat are they hard\expensive to heat in winter) but they are solid as a rock and not going anywhere. Not to say we don't have some total poo poo holes from various time periods kicking around but I do have a feeling we've enforced much stricter building standards for a long period of time and that pays off in terms of lasting housing. [Edit thinking about it we also don't have to deal with earthquakes\hurricanes\tidal waves. Nor did we have the whole wild west do what you want thing anytime in the last couple of millennia so that might have something to do with it too.] Cast_No_Shadow fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 08:03
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Butt Wizard posted:Auckland is the same way - so many retirement nest-eggs are tied up in property that even if the market did correct itself, we'd still end up with a huge social cost. It's us, our countries are the people who are bad with money in the long run. Yep, NZ is hosed price wise. Minimum payments on my mortgage are $2400/month, we choose to pay $3200 and will hopefully up that to $4000 soon. I will still have 10 years on my mortgage at that rate. This is for an 80 year old 3 bedroom single storey house with no insulation, which we bought with a 20% deposit. But at least we have a small yard, and it is in one of the few areas of Wellington that gets decent sun so my clothes have not dissolved into a stewy bogheap of damp sadness.
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Jul 30, 2014 09:22
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I lived in wellington for three years and its not great but its certainly not Auckland levels of awful. If you want to see a hosed up housing market take a look at SF or London hooooly poo poo: For content: Tell me about the worst way to get a car and why it is leasing. quote:If I were to turn in my Acura lease today (13 months @ 358 w/ tax) I would write a $4656 check and walk away with out a car. However, I would also avoid having to pay $500 in personal property tax (Thank you CT!) as well as their insane insurance policy requirements (~140/month). If I did my math right, I could save about 2K by paying all the payments upfront (which I would have to make at some point anyway). quote:Consider that a person has racked up 100K debt over 7 years, of which 50K is credit card/unsecured loans, 25K student loan, 25K car loan. This person is now unemployed, all savings have been exhausted with no real estate property. The only property which is a car that's financed is underwater, would have to pay 5000 out of pocket just to get rid of it. This person also has family of 4 to take care of, two teenagers and a spouse who can't work. Payments are 3 months delinquent. Any realistic immediate employment would at best make enough to cover a part of rent + food after tax. This person does not believe in seeking government aids unless unavoidable...Is there a way out?
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Jul 30, 2014 18:12
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The quality of older houses really depends on the region. Seattle and Portland are full of well-built, well-maintained homes from 1900-1940. In other towns in the Pacific Northwest, houses from that era were only built to last until the local timber supply ran out. Anything built before 1900 is either long gone or owned by someone interested in doing serious maintenance. A stealth advantage of older houses is that they tend to be built on better land by virtue of being there first. A good way to be bad with money around here is to buy a house built after 1960 without checking for flood, landslide and earthquake risk. There is usually a good reason nobody wanted to live there when the rest of the area was built up.
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Jul 30, 2014 18:25
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I don't know that that's such a reliable indicator - the new house might have been built on the plot of a house that was torn down.
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Jul 30, 2014 18:28
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I love how Redditors use the third person to describe their tales of woe. It's like a retarded version of John Stuart Mill. "Consider a person..."
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Jul 30, 2014 18:39
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The best is when they ask for a "friend" and describe in oddly specific detail the "friend's" situation.
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Jul 30, 2014 19:11
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quote:Consider that a person has racked up 100K debt over 7 years, of which 50K is credit card/unsecured loans, 25K student loan, 25K car loan. This person is now unemployed, all savings have been exhausted with no real estate property. The only property which is a car that's financed is underwater, would have to pay 5000 out of pocket just to get rid of it. This person also has family of 4 to take care of, two teenagers and a spouse who can't work. Payments are 3 months delinquent. Any realistic immediate employment would at best make enough to cover a part of rent + food after tax. This person does not believe in seeking government aids unless unavoidable...Is there a way out? Yes there is actually. Suicide.
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Jul 30, 2014 19:26
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My wife was describing to me the stupid facebook uproar over a local woman who drove her less than a year old BMW to apply for benefits. Everyone was shouting about how she shouldn't be allowed to claim benefits, she should sell her car, whatever. The story is that they're a (formerly) high-income household and lost both jobs. They're upsidedown on the car (as every new car owner is in the first year), and are burning through their limited savings fast to keep their heads above water. So, yeah, she could sell the car for $30k if she could come up with the $10k extra she still owes the bank, but then she doesn't have a car and doesn't have a car payment. That's all irrelevant, because they don't have the cash to sell the car anyway. But if they're like most people on government assistance, they'll be off and back to work within the year. Chances are the house is foreclosed on and the car repo'd before then anyway. So bad with money is not having enough contingency savings. Bad with math is not understanding why someone who drives a BMW to get benefits might be back on their feet in 2 months. Being a jerk is being upset about it.
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Jul 30, 2014 19:50
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If that's the story I read, the BMW was actually paid off because it predated the marriage. The couple did get off food stamps before too long, according to the woman's essay on the experience.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:02
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You're not underwater on a new car if you don't buy more car then you can afford.
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Jul 30, 2014 21:17
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blugu64 posted:You're not underwater on a new car if you don't buy more car then you can afford. Or if you put enough money down.
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Jul 30, 2014 21:32
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If you're ever underwater on your car loan you hosed up and didn't put enough money down, which may also mean you bought more car than you could actually afford. Even at ridiculously low interest rates, being underwater is a really lovely position to be in and should be avoided.
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Jul 30, 2014 21:44
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effervescible posted:If that's the story I read, the BMW was actually paid off because it predated the marriage. The couple did get off food stamps before too long, according to the woman's essay on the experience. Ya, I read that one too. The car was 2 or 3 years old and fully paid off at the time they lost their jobs. I remember that there weren't enough actual details, like the model of car or the amount of time between losing their jobs and going on food stamps, to truly analyze their decisions. I do remember that the article never actually said they couldn't get some money back on the car at some point, just that they couldn't by the time they were on food stamps. And I was unimpressed enough with the lady's attitude that I didn't trust her representation of the situation. Any disaster, from a car wreck to a nuclear meltdown to a bankruptcy, usually takes at least 2 failures. In their situation, they seemed to suffer a critical external failure at a moment when their internal safety systems were crucially weakened. And we all go through risky times like that, even when we try to minimize them. Most of the time reasonable success isn't as much about being lucky as it is about not being unlucky at a particularly fragile time. But the exact we HAVE food stamps and similar programs, in their most ideal use, is to cover people for exactly that kind of poorly time disaster. TL;DR: She should have sold the car, because she probably shouldn't have owned it in the first place. She should also have taken the food stamps as soon as they were available, and without shame.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:00
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Guinness posted:If you're ever underwater on your car loan you hosed up and didn't put enough money down, which may also mean you bought more car than you could actually afford. Why? Doesn't the rule apply like anything else, if it's low enough aren't you better off investing your money and paying the minimum? Are there special rules for underwater car loans? (I'm assuming you have enough money to cover the difference should you have to pay it - obviously buying more car than you can afford is a mistake.) If I can buy a $5000 car at 1% with $1000 down I'm going to do it even if I could pay in cash. (My numbers are clearly made up here.) Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 22:03
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I would say that you want to pay enough upfront that you can be reasonably sure you won't be underwater, specifically to avoid a scenario where you had to sell but couldn't. To me it seems like an obvious strategy.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:05
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