I honestly don’t understand the houses going up in my neighborhood - it’s getting gentrified and what is being built is so ugly. Who is buying these ugly ass houses for 1.5 MILLION dollars? If that was my budget I’d build something beautiful with a big porch like this picture, but all the “luxury” homes are boxes with big garages in front. I look at them on Zillow and they aren’t even pretty on the inside.
Vinyl siding never looks good. Use any other material. And the insides are all sterile tones of grey. All the “luxury” apartments in my area are all grey. The floors this grey vinyl pho wood. Grey cabits and counters. Bleh
Yeah ours has the vinyl and it does cheapen the look. It’s on the list. The boxes though - they are just blocks made with concrete blocks and stucco-ed.
I like some gray but gray fake wood floors are among the worst, who thought that would look good for more than 5 minutes? I don’t like marble floors either. Wood in a wood color is #1, terrazzo is fine, nice tile is fine.
I do know people have different taste but don’t think that this exterior or interior could be pleasing to anyone, and again the house was well over a million $. Though to be fair they had to drop it from 1.5 to 1.2 to sell it, that is still too much and nobody is building anything reasonable except people who are hiring their own builders. All the speculative ones are either straight up boxes or something like this, going into a neighborhood that was just little houses, frame or block. For that $$ I would want much more kitchen too.
I work for a city that’s an enclave for the mega-rich and is going through hyper-gentrification. People are buying 3 million dollar houses, tearing them down, and building 15 million-dollar houses.
It’s the 1%ers being pushed out by the .01%ers. It’s a whole different planet.
But the contractors still suck and cut every corner they can, so it really is the same anywhere you go.
And they all look alike in some developments. One cheap house after another, all exactly alike. Crap materials, horrible construction. Seriously, who wants to live in that kind of neighborhood?
…that’s essentially already liminal horror; it’s been a thing my entire life but most folks don’t recognise its modern incarnation since pop culture associates the genre with period affections of liminal horror from a century ago…
While this house is beautiful and magnificent, it probably also needs to be gutted, insulated, rewired/replumbed, and lacks common hidey holes for central air. All those shingles are custom now, and the whole thing needs repainting regularly. The doorways and stairs are narrow, and most of the rooms are small by today’s standards. The windows aren’t low-e, and even with all that, it’ll still probably leak air like a sieve.
It is a magnificent house, but it’s also an absolute money pit to maintain, heat, and cool.
Agreed. I have never lived in a house younger than 70. While there are upsides beyond style (old growth forest framing, solid wood floors) there are downsides - have always been able to get central air, even in the 1925 house, but so very many things have to be changed and fixed. I wouldn’t even try with a 200 year old house unless I was so rich. But if I was, I might. Or might build a reproduction with some reclaimed materials and some modern touches.
Even in our house, half 1940 half 1990, new metal roof, roof attachments, hurricane windows, and we are not yet close to the current building standards. An endless work in progress, I would enjoy that if it wasn’t financially stressful, but the house I love and it’s not as stressful as a mortgage and taxes on a 1.5M ugly house.
New builds really bug me too. They’re so pricey and big, yet the developers keep putting them on postage stamp lots. Like, who wants to spend that much money on a freestanding house while being so crammed together that you might as well be sharing walls?
…it’s driven by developer business models, the same reason lots grow narrow-and-deep: they’re trying to maximise the market value of plattable land (square area) per infrastructure cost (linear streets + utilities), and narrow houses built right up to setback line means developers can squeeze the most 2500 ft2 mcmansions possible on their subdivided parcel…
Yeah that happens here because they are knocking down one house and building two. I don’t really disagree with that, honestly. But they don’t need to be that big.
What other choice do people have? My options around here are 100 year old failing cardboard houses, or overpriced stupid Zillow Grey boxes. It’s that or just abandon my family.
If you have the budget to buy the ugly box, you have the budget to buy the cardboard house, knock it down and build something you like that isn’t so enormous. We didn’t have the budget for either so are just slowly renovating and hardening the house we bought.
My point isn’t that houses are too expensive - that is beyond question at this point. Even your cardboard box would cost too much now for most anybody. What I do not understand is rich people buying ugly prefabricated stuff in general. I would use that budget for something bespoke.
I know two people who were dead set on building a house who then gave up on it because it was too expensive. Just massively overpriced. Better to just buy an existing home
I honestly don’t understand the houses going up in my neighborhood - it’s getting gentrified and what is being built is so ugly. Who is buying these ugly ass houses for 1.5 MILLION dollars? If that was my budget I’d build something beautiful with a big porch like this picture, but all the “luxury” homes are boxes with big garages in front. I look at them on Zillow and they aren’t even pretty on the inside.
Vinyl siding never looks good. Use any other material. And the insides are all sterile tones of grey. All the “luxury” apartments in my area are all grey. The floors this grey vinyl pho wood. Grey cabits and counters. Bleh
Faux. Pho would imply they are made of soup.
Yeah ours has the vinyl and it does cheapen the look. It’s on the list. The boxes though - they are just blocks made with concrete blocks and stucco-ed.
I like some gray but gray fake wood floors are among the worst, who thought that would look good for more than 5 minutes? I don’t like marble floors either. Wood in a wood color is #1, terrazzo is fine, nice tile is fine.
I do know people have different taste but don’t think that this exterior or interior could be pleasing to anyone, and again the house was well over a million $. Though to be fair they had to drop it from 1.5 to 1.2 to sell it, that is still too much and nobody is building anything reasonable except people who are hiring their own builders. All the speculative ones are either straight up boxes or something like this, going into a neighborhood that was just little houses, frame or block. For that $$ I would want much more kitchen too.
I work for a city that’s an enclave for the mega-rich and is going through hyper-gentrification. People are buying 3 million dollar houses, tearing them down, and building 15 million-dollar houses.
It’s the 1%ers being pushed out by the .01%ers. It’s a whole different planet.
But the contractors still suck and cut every corner they can, so it really is the same anywhere you go.
And they all look alike in some developments. One cheap house after another, all exactly alike. Crap materials, horrible construction. Seriously, who wants to live in that kind of neighborhood?
100 years from now haunted house stories will be about boxes with big garages in front.
…that’s essentially already liminal horror; it’s been a thing my entire life but most folks don’t recognise its modern incarnation since pop culture associates the genre with period affections of liminal horror from a century ago…
While this house is beautiful and magnificent, it probably also needs to be gutted, insulated, rewired/replumbed, and lacks common hidey holes for central air. All those shingles are custom now, and the whole thing needs repainting regularly. The doorways and stairs are narrow, and most of the rooms are small by today’s standards. The windows aren’t low-e, and even with all that, it’ll still probably leak air like a sieve.
It is a magnificent house, but it’s also an absolute money pit to maintain, heat, and cool.
Agreed. I have never lived in a house younger than 70. While there are upsides beyond style (old growth forest framing, solid wood floors) there are downsides - have always been able to get central air, even in the 1925 house, but so very many things have to be changed and fixed. I wouldn’t even try with a 200 year old house unless I was so rich. But if I was, I might. Or might build a reproduction with some reclaimed materials and some modern touches.
Even in our house, half 1940 half 1990, new metal roof, roof attachments, hurricane windows, and we are not yet close to the current building standards. An endless work in progress, I would enjoy that if it wasn’t financially stressful, but the house I love and it’s not as stressful as a mortgage and taxes on a 1.5M ugly house.
New builds really bug me too. They’re so pricey and big, yet the developers keep putting them on postage stamp lots. Like, who wants to spend that much money on a freestanding house while being so crammed together that you might as well be sharing walls?
…it’s driven by developer business models, the same reason lots grow narrow-and-deep: they’re trying to maximise the market value of plattable land (square area) per infrastructure cost (linear streets + utilities), and narrow houses built right up to setback line means developers can squeeze the most 2500 ft2 mcmansions possible on their subdivided parcel…
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Yeah that happens here because they are knocking down one house and building two. I don’t really disagree with that, honestly. But they don’t need to be that big.
What other choice do people have? My options around here are 100 year old failing cardboard houses, or overpriced stupid Zillow Grey boxes. It’s that or just abandon my family.
If you have the budget to buy the ugly box, you have the budget to buy the cardboard house, knock it down and build something you like that isn’t so enormous. We didn’t have the budget for either so are just slowly renovating and hardening the house we bought.
My point isn’t that houses are too expensive - that is beyond question at this point. Even your cardboard box would cost too much now for most anybody. What I do not understand is rich people buying ugly prefabricated stuff in general. I would use that budget for something bespoke.
I know two people who were dead set on building a house who then gave up on it because it was too expensive. Just massively overpriced. Better to just buy an existing home
1.5 didn’t get you much of you are spending 1 on the land alone.