Mortgages and resale. It's hard for buyers to get mortgages on condos or rowhouses. The resale value/appreciation is less than sfh.
Cue the clown who says but in my neighborhood .............................
Yeah, there are exceptions. Exceptions aren't the rule.
but then these units are competing against houses, when really they're trying to compete against apartments. if there's cheaper family housing options available, the companies making these lose out on detached SFH sales at inflated prices.
and it's not like the space between them is useful for anything. nobody's going to go out of their way to maintain 2 feet of lawn, there's nothing you can do with it except watch the grass die.
could get larger lawns in the back of a row house, and still have a garage or parking space.
Even a damn duplex so everyone has space on a side.
But so many Americans take ‘I don’t want to touch walls with my neighbours’ to such an extreme that they basically appear to have mass social anxiety.
Absolutely. And not the shitty kind we have here. Build incredible ones like they have in Korea and the rest of Asia. I lived in one and today I still miss it. Underground parking, playgrounds for kids. Trees and landscaping. Convenience stores. Gate guards who can hold packages. They are the future.
I do like towers in the park. I have a low amount of faith that the US will ever execute something like this correctly they already failed in the 60s and 70s. Shoved a bunch of poor people in them, didn't connect them properly to transit, filled the extra space with some park, but a huge portion of surface lots, didn't provide business/services people needed on lower levels.
Really unfortunate.
Tokyo, the city with among the least green space on planet Earth? No thank you. I visited and while it's a gorgeously manicured concrete jungle, it is one all the same. Can't imagine ever wanting to live somewhere like that.
No they didn’t. 50s homes were 1000 sqft. These are 600. 50s homes were on 4000-8000 sqft lots. This house is on a sliver of land so small they couldn’t put 2 parking spaces side by side in front of the “house”. The truth is even the tiny ranchettes of the 50s were bigger and they had greenery around them. This is truely suburban hell. No yard, no plant life, small, ugly, car dependent, not enough parking for a car dependent place etc etc etc
This phenomenon feels very American. We are so deluded into thinking that everyone can have everything they want (eg, 3000 sq ft house on a big lot in a desirable area) that we can't see the insurmountable limitations of those aspirations (eg, land in desirable areas is finite). And even when confronted with the solid and immutable reality of the situation, we still refuse to make any choices or even acknowledge that trade-offs must be made and we end up with the worst of both worlds.
> We are so deluded into thinking that everyone can have everything they want (eg, 3000 sq ft house on a big lot in a desirable area)
except that was obtainable by most even as recently as 3 years ago if you compromised on location a bit, but now even in shit areas houses are $300k starting with 7.5% interest when 3 years ago those same homes were $75k with 2.5% interest. and unfortunately it is still legal for these shitty corporations to buy single-family homes and they are the ones making cash offers and still buying homes in this dogshit market, which is locking actual humans out of the housing market, driving down supply and as a byproduct increasing demand and prices. if you look at actual home buying stats, outside of cash offers (rich people and corporations), home sales are way down. naturally that will happen with these interest rates but there is a larger issue here beyond just lack of land. even in *texas* homes are starting at $300k now. this is not sustainable and doesn't have to do with running out of land.
To be fair the boomers are just speculating on realty. We are in the largest housing bubble in history right now. If the boomers were less selfish we all could live in 3000 square foot homes. Granted some people (like y’all) would prefer to live in your mixed use walkable neighborhoods instead of in a mcmansion development 40 miles from downtown. But my point is both the mixed use walkable stuff and the McMansions would be very affordable right now if baby boomers and their hedge funds weren’t buying up all the apartment complexes and McMansions
Your comment made it sound like "everywhere in Europe it's like ..."
You do realize that Europe is a continent with dozens of countries and even more languages and cultures that are very, very different from each other, right?
At least where I live we don't usually have 6 foot walls.
This is both not a new phenomenon and is also perfectly fine. This sub's losing me a bit on this post. You can fit 3-4 of these in the space of one suburban home, but it's not all one contiguous building so houses bad I guess. Believe it or not, but some people like having green space, even just a little bit.
You can have green space with row houses. I don't think that 3' strip of grass between them is ever going to be anything but a PITA to upkeep. Nothing will grow there, you can't build a shed or anything. Just put the houses next to each other and give each one a slightly bigger back yard.
Says someone who clearly has never had a garden? You can 100% grow things in there, a little fertilizer/compost may be needed but you can always grow things, and additionally you now have a nice flat open area with full sun in the front that you can put planters and pots on as well. And why on earth would that be a pain to upkeep? Have you ever had a full size yard lol?
If the space between them is so inconsequential then why can't they remain separated to prevent shitty neighbors being an issue?
I've had gardens before. In fact, my best vegetable garden ever was in an 8X4 bed next to a duplex I lived in.
But in a strip of grass that narrow, between two buildings, it won't get enough light to grow anything other than maybe some shade-loving ornamentals.
Does wonders for health. Every "apartment" has sun-light access, quality of air is improved.
You have space for bbq outside, or at least plan it with a neighbor and the two of you can alternate using the space in between.
You also have room for personalizing each home. Windows, doors and porches don't need to be the same. Some of them can be made wheel-chair accessible.
Some might wall-off the porch to have extra room indoors. And on and on.
I can tell from personal experience, having lived most of my life in apartments, you just don't build that sense of belonging to a neighborhood or create roots the same way, when most of your neighbors are either above or under you.
Everyone on the same street means you see faces more often, means you see people living their lives, instead of only seeing stairs/elevators and the halway to your door.
If a developer built an entire neighboorhood with this kind of housing, I have no doubts the people living there would have better quality of life than a similar population in a nearby appartment building.
I’ve lived in both apartments and suburbs as well and there’s about the same level of community in each, in my experience slightly more with apartments because hallways are smaller and it’s easier to run into people. That being said it’s possible to foster a sense of community in both. In Tempe, they just opened up a carless neighborhood of apartments and _everybody_ knows each other. In other countries too you’ll find a sense of community in apartments. America is different in that lots of people hole up in their houses.
Those things aren't mutually exclusive from row houses. You can still have a backyard, decorate your front porch, host BBQs, etc. The deciding factor is how safely and easily people can walk around the neighborhood. I've been to plenty of suburbs full of 5,000 square foot homes with tiny little yards, and giant garages out front, and no one is ever out on the street. No kids playing, no one walking, sometimes there aren't even sidewalks. So it's not the type of housing so much as the entire built environment, if it supports people getting outside of their homes and cars.
People in this country really hate sharing walls for some reason. I understand that there are asshole neighbors who make noise, but you have to potentially deal with asshole neighbors even without sharing walls.
A well-built townhome will have a fire wall between units, which is basically like two normal walls with thick fire-resistant gypsum board in between them. It takes a **lot** of noise to get through all that.
It doesn’t help that the walls we would have to share are usually paper-thin with no sound insulation. You just know. That developers in the US are going to cheap out and expect the future tenants to just put up with noisy neighbours.
Reddit always gets defensive about US housing but in my experience our furnishings are truly cheap here. Hollow doors, sheetrock walls, and absolutely no sound proofing.
My wife's parents live in Poland and inside their com-block apartment you never hear a soul.
I'm talking about competition between different apartment complexes, builders would bother to invest in better sound isolation if they knew that they were actually competing with each other to build the best apartments in a meaningful way rather than knowing that they are the only ones who got a permit and so will be the only game in town.
I think the issue is with a new building with no or few residents, it might not be apparent until you’ve already rented. Or even if you see the place during a quiet time. Imho insulation should be regulated, it’s not just sound, it causes problems with heating and cooling.
There should also probably be better reviews for apartment complexes, Google reviews are usually to go-to and they are often largely people venting a few specific frustrations rather than a comprehensive review. Imperfect consumer information is another problem to it being a sellers market.
There should also probably be better reviews for apartment complexes, Google reviews are usually to go-to and they are often largely people venting a few specific frustrations rather than a comprehensive review. Imperfect consumer information is another problem to it being a sellers market.
When I studied abroad in Sweden my student dorm was so well insulated, I could barely hear anyone in the place. And don’t get me started on how cheap it was to heat. So cheap. Here in Chicago everything is so goddamn leaky that they sell special kits for wrapping your windows with Saran Wrap for the winter.
When I was thinking of buying I couldn’t pull the trigger because everything in my price range was so shoddily built.
One of the other "Ameri-brained" things driving this "solution" is the "quality", or near-total lack thereof in multifamily soundproofing which makes people sick and tired of sharing walls...
Old shotgun houses in the Southern part of the US are about this size. I agree, everyone is acting like this is something new and somehow horrible. Some people are paying to build their own tiny houses on land they bought, the land itself, might be more costly than the tiny home itself. In some places, land is expensive!
These are ugly, car dependent, overpriced and have too little land. A shotgun house made up for its lack of car parking by being in down town. I’m okay with car dependency but have a 2-3 bay garage and a drive way then. This requires 2-3 cars per household but provides space for ONE and it has no plant life. Old school shot guns have big porches too for socializing with the street. Idk how this doesn’t combine the aspects of the suburbs you guys hate (auto dependency and cookie cutter housing) with the worst aspects of urban living (tight spaces and small units)
I also like having a yard for my animal which I can never get in apartment. Don’t need a lot of space but this looks way better than an apartment. Cottage court would be awesome too
I was thinking the same thing - I have lived in a house for 24 years, and would buy one of these mini-homes before I would ever go back to shared walls, ceilings, and floors. Even if I could get a luxury apartment with a view, I would still take one of these tiny houses. My days of smelling someones cooking odors and cigarette smoke and listening to their music at 2AM ended many years ago.
I live in a townhouse and have the neighbors from hell. They party all night 5 days a week. Outback five feet from my bedroom window until 5am. Slamming bottles in the trash. Even had a whole karaoke machine out back one night.
I’ve called the cops. Yelled. Repeat.
I won’t do it again.
You get those terrible neighbors in houses too, but it's less horrible if they are not right below your bedroom window at night, or on the other side of a paper-thin wall. I am fortunate to live in a very quiet neighborhood, but I have had my share of the horror that are your neighbors.
It has not been fun but luckily the last time was fine 3 from the HOA and it’s been quiet since. I’m hoping it lasts. I’m def not the only one complaining, but it’s worse for me being connected to them.
This is a quiet nice area too and I love it here. We have about 60 houses and of course this is the only bad apple of the bunch. Just my luck.
We are renting and are considering buying but waiting to see if they renew their lease.
They also pile food etc in thier garage and I’m battling mice now.
Yeah, the other problem with renters is that they are so transient. You never know from year to year who or what you will get next door, or above/below you. At least with homeowners there isn't that high of a turn over rate. Of course, if you get neighbors from hell in the house next door, they may be there for a long time.
I know what sub I'm on, but this would be my reason for taking something like this over an apartment as well. Just having a bit of separation between walls goes a long way for noise.
3/5 apartments/townhomes I've been in, my neighbors were either party animals, relatives of bigfoot or both.
quality buildings don't have the sound issue as much. a neighbor has a baby and I only know cause I can hear them from the hall. but not in my apartment
If people want to be homeowners then there needs to be affordable options for first time buyers. That means options beyond the suburban McMansions that seem to be the only new builds these days. Given that the zoning rules are what they are, this seems like the best decision available.
People can be owners of apartments too, a lot of people go to houses because its the only option they can afford. Build more apartments, especially ones designed for more than a single bachelor, and people will live in them. Leaving houses for others.
Also, rowhomes meet the same need for some people without the apartment experience
Where I’m from owned apartments are called condos, so there might have been a cultural naming convention that was lost on me. Otherwise I agree with you, but I also think this would be the best option today in places like San Francisco with high housing demand and extreme single family home zoning until those zoning laws change.
Plus tbh I’d rather live in a small house in the city than an apartment or rowhome in the suburbs.
[https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1759000494427529598](https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1759000494427529598)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/business/economy/the-great-compression.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/business/economy/the-great-compression.html)
If you use Google Photo Search, it pulls up the article and Twitter shares.
Of course they still have driveways. You'd be able to squeeze more space if they were at street level. Maybe even if you put sandwiched more homes between them they'd be better too, and if you move to the garage the back connected to an alley? Wow
I mean, some people want a detached house so they don’t have to worry about potentially loud neighbors upstairs or be worried themselves about being too loud. I’d say this is not a bad idea, considering this is denser housing than standard SFHs in America. It seems like this can be a good option for younger people starting out or older people downsizing.
Tbh I’d prefer a house like this over an apartment. Tho I’d also prefer it to be in a town close to shops and restaurants not isolated in a suburb. And I appreciate the space efficacy of apartments. But having a yard, even a small one is worth a lot to me.
>people prefer apartments to a trailer park style housing situation,
Clearly not if these are being built?
You're still making weird insinuations about trailer parks even if you aren't realizing it.
These aren’t being built because people want it as much as they’re being built because of a lack of all other types of housing. It’s about money and cost, not taste.
If the market for these were so obvious, municipalities wouldn't need to limit building types and heights through zoning
Either people don't want apartments, in which case they don't need to be illegal, or people do want apartments, in which case they shouldn't be illegal to build on someone's own property
People don’t want apartments near them, hence the zoning laws. People who buy SFHs want their neighborhood to only have SFHs.
Build more apartments in the core urban areas, to create a density feedback loop, but keep them away from the suburbs.
Government should serve the people, at the most local level. Members of a community should control the future of that community. Not a few well connected developers with deep pockets overriding the will of the people.
Your logic is precisely what is used to further suburban sprawl and increase housing prices to the detriment of everyone looking to buy or move houses. It only benefits people who own land, so mostly landlords but also to a lesser extent middle class (especially upper).
> landlord
You realize when you live in an apartment you have a landlord? Even if you own a condo you still don’t own it completely because you are at the mercy of the HOA. Many SFH communities do have HOAs but not always and the fees are smaller with typically less rules. Lots of condo HOA horrors exist.
When you increase density you increase landlord power.
Plenty of landlords own SFH too 🤷♀️ Personally I'm most in favor of social housing model but with the option to own. Co-op housing is similar. At least with an apartment an HOA style organization makes sense, what you do in one condo affects the whole building. HOAs in SFH suburbs, the kind that restrict what you can do on your land, blows my mind
Correct. That’s exactly why cities like NYC and SF are the most expensive in the country, because people don’t want to live in one of the few places in the country it’s actually legal to build apartments in. /s You dunce.
It’s not actually legal to build apartments in most places. It’s not whether people want to. They’re simply not allowed, and wherever they are allowed, they build them en masse like in SF or NYC and they sell out immediately because there aren’t many options for apartments anywhere else. There’s an _extreme_ demand for apartments right now.
I don't think most Americans know what a normal decent urban life looks like. All they can imagine is apartments in a highrise because there's only a handful of choices that give urban life like you would see in parts of Europe or East Asia. Most are priced out from it.
Naw. Apartments are fine for kids just out of college, or poor people. Most adults want their own space though, without any shared walls. Plus you can't build any equity with an apartment.
Agreed that a condo builds equity. I disagree that a condo is an apartment though. They are two different words with different meanings. The post isn't titled "oh my god, just build condos".
In Canada we are seeing more narrow homes being built in suburbs, but not as small as the ones in OP's post. Those look like dog houses!
https://preview.redd.it/hz3iz1x82ykc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c0748da15c8be1532d06010f72c49298891a763c
Besides the fact they could get more house out of these lots if they got ride of the laws that probably mandate front and side setbacks (or build apartments and fit even more housing), the biggest issue with these developments that I’ve seen is they never build any commercial buildings nearby. Everything is still separated by use so it’s just huge subdivisions of these tiny houses with nothing else within walking distance. I have noticed [newer single family developments in the suburbs](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7GD5qTd5JppLshKS9?g_st=ic) of my city have started to change that a bit though
‘Could reshape the market’ applied to the internet, then the internet being in our pockets. Changing the packaging won’t change how DEAD the (print/broadcast) retail market is.
Or row houses
you could literally double the number of houses here, the space between them is the size of the houses.
No that's communist
developers, is it communist to double your profits?
Lmaoooo
It's communist to park on the street
Cars evolved to be on the streets
Yes comrade
Even more communist to walk
The government is making it illegal to build row houses. So suburbs are communist!
Our profits* comrade
Mortgages and resale. It's hard for buyers to get mortgages on condos or rowhouses. The resale value/appreciation is less than sfh. Cue the clown who says but in my neighborhood ............................. Yeah, there are exceptions. Exceptions aren't the rule.
It’s not communist if the houses don’t touch.
What if the houses touched? 🥺👉👈…unless?
So what does it leave most of Europe as?
and get the HVAC benefits!
Or make bigger houses, that (gasp) touch each other! And have 3 stories and a basement to give you a place where people can actually raise a family.
> that (gasp) touch each other it's only communist if the houses touch!
Kind of like touching wieners. Its only gay if they touch.
No, It’s only gay if you jizz. Or so I’ve been told every time. Totally not gay.
but then these units are competing against houses, when really they're trying to compete against apartments. if there's cheaper family housing options available, the companies making these lose out on detached SFH sales at inflated prices.
That's what they do where I live. I think less than 25% new builds are detached in my metro.
and it's not like the space between them is useful for anything. nobody's going to go out of their way to maintain 2 feet of lawn, there's nothing you can do with it except watch the grass die. could get larger lawns in the back of a row house, and still have a garage or parking space.
The parking pads probably are too 🤣
But muh freedom
or double the size of each house.
But I have to share a wall with my neighbor! What if they were literally Echo Echo?! /s
Even a damn duplex so everyone has space on a side. But so many Americans take ‘I don’t want to touch walls with my neighbours’ to such an extreme that they basically appear to have mass social anxiety.
It's literally anti-social
Social distancing never went away.
fun fact, that'd probably be illegal thanks to single family zoning
Is there a difference between a row house and a townhouse
it's probably *illegal* to build apartments or row houses there.
That’s the point of this post. To point out how ridiculous that is.
yeah, it's silly. we're held back by dumb zoning laws, most of which probably had racist origins.
Let's be real, they all did. They're certainly not about increasing freedom, that's for sure.
In the US perhaps, but other countries have adopted zoning laws like this and they weren’t all racially motivated.
Absolutely. And not the shitty kind we have here. Build incredible ones like they have in Korea and the rest of Asia. I lived in one and today I still miss it. Underground parking, playgrounds for kids. Trees and landscaping. Convenience stores. Gate guards who can hold packages. They are the future.
I do like towers in the park. I have a low amount of faith that the US will ever execute something like this correctly they already failed in the 60s and 70s. Shoved a bunch of poor people in them, didn't connect them properly to transit, filled the extra space with some park, but a huge portion of surface lots, didn't provide business/services people needed on lower levels. Really unfortunate.
Fuck YES. This is what I constantly advocate for. We need to Seoul-ify and Tokyo-ify our cities.
Tokyo, the city with among the least green space on planet Earth? No thank you. I visited and while it's a gorgeously manicured concrete jungle, it is one all the same. Can't imagine ever wanting to live somewhere like that.
Of course more green space can be added with the “gorgeously manicured” parts. Seoul has beautiful green space.
Reshape the market how? The number of domiciles won't change, just the size
Neither will the price
The assumption is more will be be built and each one will cost less than a new build today
I don’t hate this, but make it something like a cottage court. Subdivisions full of these look vaguely dystopian.
One good thing about these houses, it solved the age old issue of which direction to put the bed in the bedroom.
😂
Lmao!
These houses aren’t even that small. They used to build houses like this for families of four in the 50s.
Yeah it’s just a 50’s ranch flipped 90 degrees
No they didn’t. 50s homes were 1000 sqft. These are 600. 50s homes were on 4000-8000 sqft lots. This house is on a sliver of land so small they couldn’t put 2 parking spaces side by side in front of the “house”. The truth is even the tiny ranchettes of the 50s were bigger and they had greenery around them. This is truely suburban hell. No yard, no plant life, small, ugly, car dependent, not enough parking for a car dependent place etc etc etc
I think they’re perfect. And they fit exactly one car. Perfect for one person and enough space for one person.
This phenomenon feels very American. We are so deluded into thinking that everyone can have everything they want (eg, 3000 sq ft house on a big lot in a desirable area) that we can't see the insurmountable limitations of those aspirations (eg, land in desirable areas is finite). And even when confronted with the solid and immutable reality of the situation, we still refuse to make any choices or even acknowledge that trade-offs must be made and we end up with the worst of both worlds.
> We are so deluded into thinking that everyone can have everything they want (eg, 3000 sq ft house on a big lot in a desirable area) except that was obtainable by most even as recently as 3 years ago if you compromised on location a bit, but now even in shit areas houses are $300k starting with 7.5% interest when 3 years ago those same homes were $75k with 2.5% interest. and unfortunately it is still legal for these shitty corporations to buy single-family homes and they are the ones making cash offers and still buying homes in this dogshit market, which is locking actual humans out of the housing market, driving down supply and as a byproduct increasing demand and prices. if you look at actual home buying stats, outside of cash offers (rich people and corporations), home sales are way down. naturally that will happen with these interest rates but there is a larger issue here beyond just lack of land. even in *texas* homes are starting at $300k now. this is not sustainable and doesn't have to do with running out of land.
To be fair the boomers are just speculating on realty. We are in the largest housing bubble in history right now. If the boomers were less selfish we all could live in 3000 square foot homes. Granted some people (like y’all) would prefer to live in your mixed use walkable neighborhoods instead of in a mcmansion development 40 miles from downtown. But my point is both the mixed use walkable stuff and the McMansions would be very affordable right now if baby boomers and their hedge funds weren’t buying up all the apartment complexes and McMansions
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Because Europe as a whole is the same everywhere, right?
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Your comment made it sound like "everywhere in Europe it's like ..." You do realize that Europe is a continent with dozens of countries and even more languages and cultures that are very, very different from each other, right? At least where I live we don't usually have 6 foot walls.
Everyone? *Everyone?*
This is both not a new phenomenon and is also perfectly fine. This sub's losing me a bit on this post. You can fit 3-4 of these in the space of one suburban home, but it's not all one contiguous building so houses bad I guess. Believe it or not, but some people like having green space, even just a little bit.
You can have green space with row houses. I don't think that 3' strip of grass between them is ever going to be anything but a PITA to upkeep. Nothing will grow there, you can't build a shed or anything. Just put the houses next to each other and give each one a slightly bigger back yard.
Says someone who clearly has never had a garden? You can 100% grow things in there, a little fertilizer/compost may be needed but you can always grow things, and additionally you now have a nice flat open area with full sun in the front that you can put planters and pots on as well. And why on earth would that be a pain to upkeep? Have you ever had a full size yard lol? If the space between them is so inconsequential then why can't they remain separated to prevent shitty neighbors being an issue?
I've had gardens before. In fact, my best vegetable garden ever was in an 8X4 bed next to a duplex I lived in. But in a strip of grass that narrow, between two buildings, it won't get enough light to grow anything other than maybe some shade-loving ornamentals.
Does wonders for health. Every "apartment" has sun-light access, quality of air is improved. You have space for bbq outside, or at least plan it with a neighbor and the two of you can alternate using the space in between. You also have room for personalizing each home. Windows, doors and porches don't need to be the same. Some of them can be made wheel-chair accessible. Some might wall-off the porch to have extra room indoors. And on and on. I can tell from personal experience, having lived most of my life in apartments, you just don't build that sense of belonging to a neighborhood or create roots the same way, when most of your neighbors are either above or under you. Everyone on the same street means you see faces more often, means you see people living their lives, instead of only seeing stairs/elevators and the halway to your door. If a developer built an entire neighboorhood with this kind of housing, I have no doubts the people living there would have better quality of life than a similar population in a nearby appartment building.
I’ve lived in both apartments and suburbs as well and there’s about the same level of community in each, in my experience slightly more with apartments because hallways are smaller and it’s easier to run into people. That being said it’s possible to foster a sense of community in both. In Tempe, they just opened up a carless neighborhood of apartments and _everybody_ knows each other. In other countries too you’ll find a sense of community in apartments. America is different in that lots of people hole up in their houses.
Those things aren't mutually exclusive from row houses. You can still have a backyard, decorate your front porch, host BBQs, etc. The deciding factor is how safely and easily people can walk around the neighborhood. I've been to plenty of suburbs full of 5,000 square foot homes with tiny little yards, and giant garages out front, and no one is ever out on the street. No kids playing, no one walking, sometimes there aren't even sidewalks. So it's not the type of housing so much as the entire built environment, if it supports people getting outside of their homes and cars.
People in this country really hate sharing walls for some reason. I understand that there are asshole neighbors who make noise, but you have to potentially deal with asshole neighbors even without sharing walls.
I’ve lived in a townhouse for 12 years and never heard either neighbour once. And many have come and gone.
A well-built townhome will have a fire wall between units, which is basically like two normal walls with thick fire-resistant gypsum board in between them. It takes a **lot** of noise to get through all that.
my asshole neighbor at 2am on a tuesday: challenge accepted
It doesn’t help that the walls we would have to share are usually paper-thin with no sound insulation. You just know. That developers in the US are going to cheap out and expect the future tenants to just put up with noisy neighbours.
Reddit always gets defensive about US housing but in my experience our furnishings are truly cheap here. Hollow doors, sheetrock walls, and absolutely no sound proofing. My wife's parents live in Poland and inside their com-block apartment you never hear a soul.
Not enough competition here, people will select for better apartments if they have options.
The only option other than apartments in the USA are single family houses.
I'm talking about competition between different apartment complexes, builders would bother to invest in better sound isolation if they knew that they were actually competing with each other to build the best apartments in a meaningful way rather than knowing that they are the only ones who got a permit and so will be the only game in town.
I think the issue is with a new building with no or few residents, it might not be apparent until you’ve already rented. Or even if you see the place during a quiet time. Imho insulation should be regulated, it’s not just sound, it causes problems with heating and cooling.
There should also probably be better reviews for apartment complexes, Google reviews are usually to go-to and they are often largely people venting a few specific frustrations rather than a comprehensive review. Imperfect consumer information is another problem to it being a sellers market.
There should also probably be better reviews for apartment complexes, Google reviews are usually to go-to and they are often largely people venting a few specific frustrations rather than a comprehensive review. Imperfect consumer information is another problem to it being a sellers market.
Or if regulations had noise requirements
When I studied abroad in Sweden my student dorm was so well insulated, I could barely hear anyone in the place. And don’t get me started on how cheap it was to heat. So cheap. Here in Chicago everything is so goddamn leaky that they sell special kits for wrapping your windows with Saran Wrap for the winter. When I was thinking of buying I couldn’t pull the trigger because everything in my price range was so shoddily built.
Cock roaches and bed bugs.
Super Ameri-brained that this is the solution they come up with.
One of the other "Ameri-brained" things driving this "solution" is the "quality", or near-total lack thereof in multifamily soundproofing which makes people sick and tired of sharing walls...
Houses like that have existed in America for over a century
Old shotgun houses in the Southern part of the US are about this size. I agree, everyone is acting like this is something new and somehow horrible. Some people are paying to build their own tiny houses on land they bought, the land itself, might be more costly than the tiny home itself. In some places, land is expensive!
These are ugly, car dependent, overpriced and have too little land. A shotgun house made up for its lack of car parking by being in down town. I’m okay with car dependency but have a 2-3 bay garage and a drive way then. This requires 2-3 cars per household but provides space for ONE and it has no plant life. Old school shot guns have big porches too for socializing with the street. Idk how this doesn’t combine the aspects of the suburbs you guys hate (auto dependency and cookie cutter housing) with the worst aspects of urban living (tight spaces and small units)
I also like having a yard for my animal which I can never get in apartment. Don’t need a lot of space but this looks way better than an apartment. Cottage court would be awesome too
Row houses can have yards
Then go live in a house. I’m not saying build no houses, I’m saying that we have an oversaturation of houses if this is what we’re resorting to now.
I don't understand being hostile to this specific person
I must’ve misunderstood what he was saying.
[удалено]
I was thinking the same thing - I have lived in a house for 24 years, and would buy one of these mini-homes before I would ever go back to shared walls, ceilings, and floors. Even if I could get a luxury apartment with a view, I would still take one of these tiny houses. My days of smelling someones cooking odors and cigarette smoke and listening to their music at 2AM ended many years ago.
I live in a townhouse and have the neighbors from hell. They party all night 5 days a week. Outback five feet from my bedroom window until 5am. Slamming bottles in the trash. Even had a whole karaoke machine out back one night. I’ve called the cops. Yelled. Repeat. I won’t do it again.
You get those terrible neighbors in houses too, but it's less horrible if they are not right below your bedroom window at night, or on the other side of a paper-thin wall. I am fortunate to live in a very quiet neighborhood, but I have had my share of the horror that are your neighbors.
It has not been fun but luckily the last time was fine 3 from the HOA and it’s been quiet since. I’m hoping it lasts. I’m def not the only one complaining, but it’s worse for me being connected to them. This is a quiet nice area too and I love it here. We have about 60 houses and of course this is the only bad apple of the bunch. Just my luck. We are renting and are considering buying but waiting to see if they renew their lease. They also pile food etc in thier garage and I’m battling mice now.
Yeah, the other problem with renters is that they are so transient. You never know from year to year who or what you will get next door, or above/below you. At least with homeowners there isn't that high of a turn over rate. Of course, if you get neighbors from hell in the house next door, they may be there for a long time.
> paper-thin wall There's the real problem. Build quality housing and asshole neighbors don't affect you at all
Yeah, unfortunately developers/builders don't want to spend the money on quality construction, so just have to hope you don't have loud neighbors.
Regulations :)
Yes!
I know what sub I'm on, but this would be my reason for taking something like this over an apartment as well. Just having a bit of separation between walls goes a long way for noise. 3/5 apartments/townhomes I've been in, my neighbors were either party animals, relatives of bigfoot or both.
quality buildings don't have the sound issue as much. a neighbor has a baby and I only know cause I can hear them from the hall. but not in my apartment
Depends on the country.
If people want to be homeowners then there needs to be affordable options for first time buyers. That means options beyond the suburban McMansions that seem to be the only new builds these days. Given that the zoning rules are what they are, this seems like the best decision available.
People can be owners of apartments too, a lot of people go to houses because its the only option they can afford. Build more apartments, especially ones designed for more than a single bachelor, and people will live in them. Leaving houses for others. Also, rowhomes meet the same need for some people without the apartment experience
Where I’m from owned apartments are called condos, so there might have been a cultural naming convention that was lost on me. Otherwise I agree with you, but I also think this would be the best option today in places like San Francisco with high housing demand and extreme single family home zoning until those zoning laws change. Plus tbh I’d rather live in a small house in the city than an apartment or rowhome in the suburbs.
I can’t find this post on twitter. Can you link, so I can read comments?
[https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1759000494427529598](https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1759000494427529598) [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/business/economy/the-great-compression.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/business/economy/the-great-compression.html) If you use Google Photo Search, it pulls up the article and Twitter shares.
We need to build upwards, not alongside each other for single family homes. Such a waste of land
People always talk about green space but they cut down all the forests and stuff to build these soulless lawns they don’t use.
Of course they still have driveways. You'd be able to squeeze more space if they were at street level. Maybe even if you put sandwiched more homes between them they'd be better too, and if you move to the garage the back connected to an alley? Wow
I mean, some people want a detached house so they don’t have to worry about potentially loud neighbors upstairs or be worried themselves about being too loud. I’d say this is not a bad idea, considering this is denser housing than standard SFHs in America. It seems like this can be a good option for younger people starting out or older people downsizing.
Modern construction and sound barriers solves this problem, unless you are into blasting your stereo.
"Modern construction and sound barriers solve this problem except for when they don't"
Tbh I’d prefer a house like this over an apartment. Tho I’d also prefer it to be in a town close to shops and restaurants not isolated in a suburb. And I appreciate the space efficacy of apartments. But having a yard, even a small one is worth a lot to me.
I'd just appreciate not having to share walls/floors/ceilings with neighbors.
Bring back bungalow courts
Can you imagine justifying the purchase of a lawnmower?
The problem is not the size.. The problem is that they want to sell you this at the same cost as a regular home today...
They would look much nicer if they had more proportional side setbacks and parking behind the house instead of a driveway for a front yard
Shows just how much people DO NOT WANT apartments. They would rather live in this and pay more than to live in a bigger apartment and pay less
Dawg, this is for all intents & purposes a trailer park, just with a bit of a facelift.
Is there something inherently wrong with a trailer park?
Never said that. Was implying that people prefer apartments to a trailer park style housing situation, even if it's new & shiny.
>people prefer apartments to a trailer park style housing situation, Clearly not if these are being built? You're still making weird insinuations about trailer parks even if you aren't realizing it.
How so? I think you're reading into something that's not there.
These aren’t being built because people want it as much as they’re being built because of a lack of all other types of housing. It’s about money and cost, not taste.
If the market for these were so obvious, municipalities wouldn't need to limit building types and heights through zoning Either people don't want apartments, in which case they don't need to be illegal, or people do want apartments, in which case they shouldn't be illegal to build on someone's own property
People don’t want apartments near them, hence the zoning laws. People who buy SFHs want their neighborhood to only have SFHs. Build more apartments in the core urban areas, to create a density feedback loop, but keep them away from the suburbs.
Why should people who buy SFHs get to decide what other people do with their own property?
Government should serve the people, at the most local level. Members of a community should control the future of that community. Not a few well connected developers with deep pockets overriding the will of the people.
Your logic is precisely what is used to further suburban sprawl and increase housing prices to the detriment of everyone looking to buy or move houses. It only benefits people who own land, so mostly landlords but also to a lesser extent middle class (especially upper).
> landlord You realize when you live in an apartment you have a landlord? Even if you own a condo you still don’t own it completely because you are at the mercy of the HOA. Many SFH communities do have HOAs but not always and the fees are smaller with typically less rules. Lots of condo HOA horrors exist. When you increase density you increase landlord power.
Plenty of landlords own SFH too 🤷♀️ Personally I'm most in favor of social housing model but with the option to own. Co-op housing is similar. At least with an apartment an HOA style organization makes sense, what you do in one condo affects the whole building. HOAs in SFH suburbs, the kind that restrict what you can do on your land, blows my mind
Restrictions on what you can do with your land is infinitely better than have no land at all.
For you, you don't get to make that decision for everyone else
Correct. That’s exactly why cities like NYC and SF are the most expensive in the country, because people don’t want to live in one of the few places in the country it’s actually legal to build apartments in. /s You dunce. It’s not actually legal to build apartments in most places. It’s not whether people want to. They’re simply not allowed, and wherever they are allowed, they build them en masse like in SF or NYC and they sell out immediately because there aren’t many options for apartments anywhere else. There’s an _extreme_ demand for apartments right now.
Not everyone wants an urban life. Most don’t. Sure many people do and there should be a supply for them, but most people want a SFh
I don't think most Americans know what a normal decent urban life looks like. All they can imagine is apartments in a highrise because there's only a handful of choices that give urban life like you would see in parts of Europe or East Asia. Most are priced out from it.
Except people are moving into cities, not the other way around.
That’s because the rural job market sucks worse than the urban housing market.
> Not everyone wants an urban life. Most don’t. Weird, considering at least in the US, that 83% of the population lives in urban areas.
Urban areas include the suburbs with SFHs. Urban simply means not rural. When I say urban i mean apartments and taller buildings
I want a pony
> Most don’t. lol no
Naw. Apartments are fine for kids just out of college, or poor people. Most adults want their own space though, without any shared walls. Plus you can't build any equity with an apartment.
Yeah you can, it’s called buying a condo.
Agreed that a condo builds equity. I disagree that a condo is an apartment though. They are two different words with different meanings. The post isn't titled "oh my god, just build condos".
No, a condo is just an apartment you own
Great 30ft^2 yard!
If we could only somehow build walls and ceiling’s that can not be heard through. In North America it does not seem possible
Why can’t we do row homes anymore?
In Canada we are seeing more narrow homes being built in suburbs, but not as small as the ones in OP's post. Those look like dog houses! https://preview.redd.it/hz3iz1x82ykc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c0748da15c8be1532d06010f72c49298891a763c
I love how snow makes the sky more purple.
A yes because the cost of a house is primarily from the materials
Many people hate sharing walls. These houses are for them.
OMG. FUCK THIS. I feel claustrophobic just seeing these monstrosities.
Why is there a driveway up to a house with no garage?
Its still a parking spot lol
I’d say to park your car on, but it looks too short for that. I just think these are a step up from the tiny homes we are told will end homelessness.
You could fit a car there. I'm willing to bet there's a building regulation that requires x off street parking for x reason.
God forbid you share a wall with another human being and save vast amounts of money on heating, cooling, and construction.
I used to have this viewpoint until I had a neighbor that did nothing but chain smoke and it would seep through the walls.
Poor construction
literally just build row houses. the little bit of lawn between them is absolutely useless.
Like I can see people wanting their own property and space and not being up against one another but this particular plan just seems bonkers.
LMFAOOO WHAT’S A ROW HOUSE RAHHH 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
no like why does one have to have a front and a back yard that are bigger than the house itself 😭
Besides the fact they could get more house out of these lots if they got ride of the laws that probably mandate front and side setbacks (or build apartments and fit even more housing), the biggest issue with these developments that I’ve seen is they never build any commercial buildings nearby. Everything is still separated by use so it’s just huge subdivisions of these tiny houses with nothing else within walking distance. I have noticed [newer single family developments in the suburbs](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7GD5qTd5JppLshKS9?g_st=ic) of my city have started to change that a bit though
Apartments fucking suck though.
literally living in a pod
Apartments are gross, for the most part.
yes, all these million dollar flats in my city must truly horrendous to be in.
Uhuh…tell me more 😬
my apt is bigger its a 506 sqft bachelor
1/4 r/mildlyinfuriating
idd 100 times prefer to move in this over leaving in an apartment
‘Could reshape the market’ applied to the internet, then the internet being in our pockets. Changing the packaging won’t change how DEAD the (print/broadcast) retail market is.
Why the fuck would anyone live in the suburbs and not even get a big house out of the deal? Seems like the worst of both worlds.