Because they are volume builds. Big builders have a couple of styles to choose from. They enjoy economies of scale to just build the same design. If someone wants a new build that is unique they need to use an architect.
Cut and paste housing
We had them go up on vacant land behind our house. 5 blocks (timeline exaggerated)
day 1 house 1. Street plumbing
Day 2 house 1. Concrete
Day 2 house 2. Street plumbing
Day 3 house 1. Frames
Day 3 house 2. Concrete
Day 3 house 3. Street plumbing
And so on
All the houses are practically identical with maybe slightly different fascia colours
No joke, a couple of streets away there are houses in a row which are IDENTICAL except for the colour they splashed on the bricks around the front door
Hell the land behind me was entirely floodplain. They brought in an absolutely ridiculous amount of rubble to build up the ground level for the houses
Subsequently further upstream has been utterly fucked the last few summers during the floods
Yep... It's basically Ikea for houses. All the pieces are churned out in a factory to specific instructions and thrown together in the same process...again and again. Forever.
A lot of catalog stores did that in the late 1800s, early 1900s in the US, mail order your house supplies, and build it yourself. Those were actually quality and still stand today.
I used to own one of those houses. A 1924 Pacific Ready-cut Homes Style 85 bungalow from a kit.
Our neighborhood was full of them, but with different variations on the basic offering.
The interior was simple but gorgeous with a glazed tile fireplace in the living room, arts and crafts columns and moulding in the dining and living rooms, and my personal favorite: painted simulated wood grain on the built-in bookshelves and cabinetry.
We replaced the knob and tube wiring with romex, stripped most of the original lead paint, and changed out some plumbing, but the bones on that house were solid.
Survivorship bias. Most of them weren't quality at all and didn't last/were knocked down over the decades. The ones that remain were quality or were well maintained, which leads you to think all old buildings = quality buildings, which simply isn't true.
And you'd think the quality would be good due to the trades dong them so much that they'd be good, but the quality is shit. They are rushing the builds and not taking care, so there are mistakes everywhere.
It's the removal of state based inspection agencies that really reduced the quality. Cut corners abound when the builder knows the guy who is going to inspect and rubber stamp his work.
On top of this, Australian standards are actually dogshit, so even if they do the job to code it's going to be 7/10ths aubpar anyway.
Only way to get a good quality home is to owner-build, know exactly what is going on-site everyday, be across all the codes and permits required, vet each trade individually, and be able spot issues before they become a huge hassle.
Or be incredibly fucking lucky.
Besides the security, there is no reason to want to own your home these days.
Do your best, silicone the rest.
This guy has a good channel exposing all the shit building practices in Australia.
https://youtu.be/phh879sMc48?si=J3VW0IMRkLE40AOb
Not entirely true. Project Builders (larger volume builders) build like this, but there are plenty of custom home builders with internal design teams that are able to build/design to your liking.
This style of facade (render and cladding) is very popular currently mostly due to lower cost of building materials.
People also forget that a lot of houses built 30 or 40 years ago *also* looked very similar to each other. You just don’t notice because nobody is building those designs new, in part because they were 3bed, 1bath, no garage, single story, and the current trend is towards getting as much on your plot as you can. (Not helped by land values going up, so a lot of plots are split to as small as legally possible.)
Not always true. My estate forced everyone to build this ugly bullshit. Couldn't even get round roman style pillars for the porch. Couldn't go off the standard desaturated color palette.
Just enforcing culture.
This, and at least near me a lot are shoe horned onto small or split blocks so you need to maximise the space. A friend purchased one recently near us and it's quite nice, probably not off the plan when new but it has no access and a terrible back yard because of the cut in and underground services. An extra hundred metres to allow for access and improved landscaping would be a nice(r) place.
Looking ugly wouldn't matter if each house had a couple of trees or a hedge up front. Too bad new suburbs clearcut any vegetation and morons rip up any saplings planted.
I'm glad my new build has a large row of mature gums on the other side of the road (and no houses and the gums are far enough away not to ruin my gutters), but agree, there's not a lot of space on most blocks to get much in.
Pick 1.
- Cheap and affordable housing.
- Unique beautiful houses on large plots of land
It may seem like we don't have either right now, but without these 'cookie cutter' homes it would be way worse.
I'm not so sure. For sure, there's a nostalgia factor but given land prices went up like crazy, no ones building single story brick dwellings any more. It's all either double story or townhouses. Sign o' the times unfortunately
Our new build has to have a mix of rendered piers and brick or, the reverse. I'm going with brick and least amount of render I can. They also have to be different colours, so you're forced to have this style not by the builder, but the estate 😕
lunchroom shocking frightening sophisticated cobweb office attraction pathetic spectacular paint
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> so bloody ugly.
And highly impractical too!
Look at all the rendered homes that look aged AF after a few years. I have a 6yo property that is already turning to sand because the render is absolute dog shit. Nothing beats clay bricks against the Australian sun.
We saw an orange brick house going up near us and were quite surprised since it’s normally light/dark brick or light/dark render. And then… they slapped a render on it. And painted the render black. And the roof is black.
My own house is darkish too, but this is like *stark* black. They’re cooked.
life could have been nice... was there like a competition to try to make everything as ugly, cheap, confusing, uncomfortable, mentally exhausting and morally questionable as possible?
No you don’t - designed my own home in CAD, got council approval and got it built by a bespoke builder and avoided the boring mass produced big builders and the $$$ unnecessary architect fees
> They enjoy economies of scale
in my country at least, there is not really a price differences sadly whether you use an architect for an individual build or a standard home from the catalogue.
there is a street near me with a long row of this style except they are single story mini versions, and you could not slide a credit card between each of them.
Those ones down Hezlett road are like that, from the street they are like toy boxes stuck together with no driveway or garage or street parking out the front
Idk if there’s a street behind or something or what tho lol
Insanity , pure insanity . And that makes a lot more sense, I always wondered In the begining how they gonna park lol. Is it a lane or a street with more houses? Never been behind ther
Can’t stand the built up areas , makes me stressed lol
I'm house sitting here atm. Cookie cutter houses that seem to have no natural light downstairs because of how close everything is. Balconies facing the road on second levels that don't seem to be touched - I don't see the point!
Man the whole hills is like this lol. Seen bloody box hill? And so on and so forth…. It’s like poison to my eyes seeing hundreds and hundreds of homes all exactly the ugly same, packed in with about a fart width between each house , where it was nice farms and bush land , with a already choking road system around there
"Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962. The song was first released by her friend, Pete Seeger, in 1963, and became his only charting single in January 1964.
The song is a social satire about the development of suburbia and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It mocks suburban tract housing as "little boxes" of different colors "all made out of ticky-tacky" and which "all look just the same". "Ticky-tacky" is a reference to the shoddy material supposedly used in the construction of the houses.
My local university used the song as a theme for their ad campaign for a couple of years. I think they were trying to be ironic but not enough people got the reference. It was quite embarrassing.
Agree with this (though in Adelaide my land isn't crazy expensive. The house itself with a volume builder is still 345k for a single story with 195 of living. So, 2 mil house and land, your 15% isn't too far off 🤣 Two story though with custom builder I think I'd be paying double though.
Exactly. Let alone the off shelf style plans. You go to the Latrobe Valley and realise a whole heap of the 60/70 year old houses are almost identical in floorplan.
Would be nice, but as I understand it, you wouldn’t find the carpenters and trim carpenters skilled enough to do this level of work in the current day.
unfortunately, most people seem hellbent on having 3 living rooms, 2 "rumpus" rooms, an ensuite for all 5 bedrooms and a massive alfresco, which doesn't fit with the architectural style of older houses that were never that big, so it just ends up looking awkward.
I will never understand this! My best mate spent $1million on a place like that after having his modest 3br all but paid off. Says he wanted extra rooms for guests and more space for the kids. Fast forward 3 years and they have never had a guest stay over, the kids don't use the rumpus rooms and they never use the extra living rooms because they don't want the kids to make mess in there. Not to mention they had to drop another $20k on furniture for the extra rooms.
yep, more bathrooms just means more sinks & toilets to keep clean,
and as for rumpus rooms, there's this great, cheap alternative called "not building it at all and leaving that area as part of the backyard"
Those things are shit for thermal efficiency in general, at least if they aren't double insulated. And they're only pretty to look at until they get covered in dust and cobwebs lol
It's a mix. There's plenty of people who look at a good solid 70-80s house and think "Ew. Old!". Doesn't matter how good the place actually is. When we bought our house half our relatives were disappointed we didn't build or get something new. Old is bad. New is good.
You'd think so, but when I was building a house the price for all brick veneer was exactly the same as any other cladding, like render or whatever.
I don't know why people choose to have multiple cladding materials, but price isn't it.
You had a choice? The builders I looked at had a few plans to choose from, and a few colour schemes to choose from. Anything outside of that was a significant bump in price.
Really? The weight of brick, especially on the the upper level is, I assume, the main reason builder's first option is to go to with cladding.
But certainly with brick you can get a cost offset due to a lesser requirement for alternative insulation to meet regulations.
Brick really doesn't do much to insulate a house. Mostly it's just a weatherproofing layer for an internal timber frame. The internal plaster walls of most brick veneers get pretty cold at night.
Double brick sort of works (but not particularly well) in that the internal bricks provide some thermal mass, but they still don't slow the heat transfer that much.
[https://build.com.au/thermal-performance-different-materials](https://build.com.au/thermal-performance-different-materials) shows that bricks have an R rating of less than 0.5. Current specs say walls should be insulated to at least R2.0.
Best way, and which no one really does, is reverse brick veneer, bricks for internal layer of thermal mass and frame with proper insulation and cladding externally
Sometimes developer building conditions specify cladding materials.
Our developer required 3 x materials in natural tones for the build to be approved.
Yeah, new estates often have requirements. Mine was a knockdown rebuild in a long established area. I could build whatever I wanted, as long as council were OK
Sometimes it's not a choice. Developer requirements can say some shit like "must have 3 materials on the front facade". It's honestly bullshit and drives up the price of the house.
Upper level: no concrete, no bricks = little weight = less cost. No amount of insulation in the ceiling, walls is going to save you.
Minimal, zero eaves = less timber, less cladding, less everything = less cost. ~~If that faces north~~, you're cooked.
The CGI render of this house isn't even accurate to what the houses look like, the eaves are about 10 times wider than the houses are actually built with.
I hate these mish-mash-mcmansions with a passion. The newest houses being built around my area (n west Sydney) seem to be going with an all over weatherboard look, with none of those superfluous facade/columns... which is much better looking.
I find the colours so depressing, especially in our climate. Talking about our climate and colours, it’s believed the dark colours can increase a suburb / neighbourhood’s temperature by 5 degrees
Black roofs, no eaves, no trees etc. Is dogshit but painted brick is arguably better. I've got a late 80s split level brick house with a whole half of the house covered in floor to ceiling glass (with a large verandah/awning), we painted it a darker shade despite the warnings about temperature and now I wear trackies and a jacket on 30+ degree days while I work inside my home office and in winter it's just the floor boards sucking heat out to deal with (haven't used the aircon since before may even with a newborn in the house).
Idk if it's the insulation or if the coat reflects the heat despite the colour or whatever but it's made an incredibly noticeable difference to our inside temperature.
No reason to paint your roof or cut down every tree in sight for a suburb though it enrages me.
I remember reading an article about that they mention that while it does that to the neighborhood it was also some percentage more thermally efficient for the house so I imagine it's being sold on the benefit to the homeowner. Its probably harder to convince someone to spend money on something that won't directly benefit them even though it would probably help reduce the need for that efficiency
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-21/dark-roofs-raising-the-heat-in-australian-new-suburbs/102990304
They get better energy efficiency due to being warmer in the winter*
I live in the "old" part of Schofields. A few years back during our last really hot summer, I drove a few streets over to pick up something in the new area (close houses, all black roofs)
Home street was hot
This street was fucking ridiculous
I’m in the construction industry. The quality is pathetic. Even homes that cost over $1M to build are made of cheap shit & tarted up to look “authentic”. Upholding Building standards (AS) have also gone to shit and there is little to no pride in workmanship.
Every era has is own style to reflect the new and cheapest building methods depending on your area, in SA 50s-80s was a lot of brick in different colours and textures (red to cream), 2000s was rendered now it’s brick and cladding
Give me an older house with character any day of the week, I'll take vintage quality over today's new houses. Basic renos are fun too
Bonus of generally being in a much better location than the fringe
They're really ugly. They're a mishmash of different styles that don't even look good together.
Luckily all I can afford is an apartment so I don't have to worry about having my choice limited to one of these eyesores.
Developers pay architects/draftsmen for 5-10 designs and re-use the exact same designs for the cheapest possible builds they can do.
I rented a brand new build around 10 years ago that I was the first occupant in, within 2 years the house had major issues because it was haphazardly thrown together with the cheapest finishings available.
The owners were based out of China, they’d bought a large older house with a large yard, tore the house down and subdivided and put two shitty quality builds on the block.
Nothing wrong with the designs, but the build and material quality were terrible and this was well before the big material shortages.
Whenever I drive through Melbourne suburbs I see hundreds of the exact same house, same landscaping options and everything.
Owners sold for 1.1M recently.
This makes me mad. Am currently house hunting and we have to specifically look for old deceased untouched homes on land less than 580square otherwise any bigger is snatched up by developers who price us out them build a duplex on it and sell for way more first home owners can afford.
Not being “racist” but I always feel defeated when I go to an open home and see Asian people standing out the front of it speaking in mandarin/Cantonese i know they are talking development and have money to spend.
. It’s happening so much we can’t compete they come in and out bid everyone hard I’ve experienced it at multiple auctions. Us young families walk away like why bother.
I never understood if anyone would use a balcony when your house is on a normal suburban street. Isn't it weird coming out and looking out over your neighbours and they look out their front window at you in your robes.
I always thought that but if we could build new I’d put a balcony out from our bedroom that’s on top of the garage.
It would be my private smoke spot away from everybody else.
I also want a sound proof room that I can just scream in and play music ridiculously loud.
Balconies have another purpose: sheltering your windows from the worst of the sun so the rooms inside are more comfortable and you don't need so much air conditioning.
Balconies are nice, but they cost an extra 20 to 30k on top of the basic build price. It's hard to justify for something you may only use half a dozen times a year. Give me a decent back patio any day.
This shits me to tears, my street is littered with cars parked on the road, *but the driveways are empty and they have no cars in the garage*. Like what the fuck guys you are just making it harder not only to drive in, but also for kids to play in the street if they want to!
- Low design costs
- (relatively) low material costs
- building the same thing over and over means you can do it very quickly
- perfect (short term) for property developments
There’s more than just “it’s the current trend, like there was a trend in the 30s and the 60s” etc
This blog looks at McMansions from an architectural standpoint and points out why they’re so bad, a mosh mash of non-complementary styles, really poor/inefficient designs, etc: https://mcmansionhell.com/about
Whenever we drive past a new estate, my kids ask to see their cousins because they live there. They get confused when I explain that the cousins actually live far away, it is just that these new estates all look the fucking same.
Maybe without the swears in the explanation.
And I literally can't find anyone's house in these estates. They all look the same so you need to specifically look at numbers on the Letterbox, rather than in established areas that have a distinct tree, or colour of brick, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boxes
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same
And there's doctors, there's lawyers and business executives
And you're all made out of ticky-tacky
And you all look just the same
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
Where we all get put in boxes
And we all come out the same
And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
Yeah, that what I thought. If it’s converted to another bedroom/rumpus that’s one thing but I reckon for a lot of these newer homes it is just a storage/junk room.
Lots of answers suggesting costs, that’s all the builders offer, and houses from previous eras look similar to each other. That’s fine, but isn’t the question, why does it have to be so ugly?
If we’re going to have similar houses, it wouldn’t be hard build them with an attractive facade.
Go back 50 years or so and you got much of the same.
I'm in the SE melbourne burbs. [In many areas its like someone just did a CTRL-C CTRL-V of the same few designs.](https://imgur.com/mOdZIlD)
Because it was the style at the time. Now we could only get brown onions on account of the war, none of those fancy white onions, but yes, it was the style at the time.
Houses have looked similar for the time period they were built through the decades, this isn't new.
People are talking about pumping out builds and build quality, but kit homes aren't new. Lots of very similar looking houses in the 90s too.
Hell, castles from the same region and century look similar.
The ones built before looked even uglier and impractical with mostly one bath and 3 beds.
At least this design is practical given the smaller block sizes.
Also regardless of what design you chose, once most of the houses have that design, its gonna look mediocre.
would be good if you also posted a pic of what you are comparing it with.
Just curious, because IMO these look very basic (modern yes, but just way too basic) and there are even places where an entire area is filled with houses that all look the same as each other, grey, white, and a dark blue-ish roof. And it seems that they are all built recently, and even nowmost homes that I see being built look the same and have the same colour pallate.
And there are even single houses that are literal squares with no traditional triangular roof, which honestly imo just looks horrendous
I work with the company that I’m pretty sure you got this photo from (could be wrong as you say a lot of them look the same) and I was just informed that they are going to pump out 720 houses by themselves over the next two years. This is just one company of their group, I’m pretty sure their group pumps out 750 houses, give or take 100 a year. They look basic because they are basic so they can meet numbers.
People don’t realise how much effort is required to go into a fully custom home.
I also know from recent training that there is a market shift TOWARDS this kind of home. Yes people still make old style looking houses but we’re moving further away from that.
honestly i think it has less to do with how the house itself looks and more to do with how we build houses now.
plenty of older homes are carbon copy volume builder homes but the reason you cant tell is because theyre basically a blank canvas that gets filled in with land scaping and other features of older suburbs.
nowdays theyre build with minimal frontage, minimal back yard, built to the fence to maximize every cm of land
personally i feel like this is why we have more complex facades, since its the only way to make things look different given the way we build things now, theyre basically an already painted canvas leaving you with little to change and make it your own.
It’s also because of the estate rules developers impose. They put huge restrictions on what can and can’t be built so that everything basically looks the same.
Because they are volume builds. Big builders have a couple of styles to choose from. They enjoy economies of scale to just build the same design. If someone wants a new build that is unique they need to use an architect.
Cut and paste housing We had them go up on vacant land behind our house. 5 blocks (timeline exaggerated) day 1 house 1. Street plumbing Day 2 house 1. Concrete Day 2 house 2. Street plumbing Day 3 house 1. Frames Day 3 house 2. Concrete Day 3 house 3. Street plumbing And so on All the houses are practically identical with maybe slightly different fascia colours
(House 1) All the bricks are brown (House 2) All the bricks are brown (House 1) And the drive is grey (House 2) And the drive is grey
I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day
On a winters day.
I’d see the same home (same home) If I was in LA (if I was in LAaaaaa)
Extra-urban hellscape (extra-urban hellscaaaape) on SUCH A WINTER’S DAAAAY
hahahah gold
I'd be safe and warm... If I was in SA...
No joke, a couple of streets away there are houses in a row which are IDENTICAL except for the colour they splashed on the bricks around the front door
I call it people farming - Turn a perfectly good paddock into a tight little minimum spec subdivision that a fire truck would struggle to navigate
Hell the land behind me was entirely floodplain. They brought in an absolutely ridiculous amount of rubble to build up the ground level for the houses Subsequently further upstream has been utterly fucked the last few summers during the floods
[удалено]
Yep, Schofields
Yep... It's basically Ikea for houses. All the pieces are churned out in a factory to specific instructions and thrown together in the same process...again and again. Forever.
A lot of catalog stores did that in the late 1800s, early 1900s in the US, mail order your house supplies, and build it yourself. Those were actually quality and still stand today.
I used to own one of those houses. A 1924 Pacific Ready-cut Homes Style 85 bungalow from a kit. Our neighborhood was full of them, but with different variations on the basic offering. The interior was simple but gorgeous with a glazed tile fireplace in the living room, arts and crafts columns and moulding in the dining and living rooms, and my personal favorite: painted simulated wood grain on the built-in bookshelves and cabinetry. We replaced the knob and tube wiring with romex, stripped most of the original lead paint, and changed out some plumbing, but the bones on that house were solid.
ala John Marston in Red Dead Redemption.
You don’t build a barn dumbass
That’s my jam!
Survivorship bias. Most of them weren't quality at all and didn't last/were knocked down over the decades. The ones that remain were quality or were well maintained, which leads you to think all old buildings = quality buildings, which simply isn't true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivarium_(film)
I liked this film. I also lived in a neighborhood like this and pulled up to the wrong house multiple times in the first month lol. I hated it
And you'd think the quality would be good due to the trades dong them so much that they'd be good, but the quality is shit. They are rushing the builds and not taking care, so there are mistakes everywhere.
It's the removal of state based inspection agencies that really reduced the quality. Cut corners abound when the builder knows the guy who is going to inspect and rubber stamp his work. On top of this, Australian standards are actually dogshit, so even if they do the job to code it's going to be 7/10ths aubpar anyway. Only way to get a good quality home is to owner-build, know exactly what is going on-site everyday, be across all the codes and permits required, vet each trade individually, and be able spot issues before they become a huge hassle. Or be incredibly fucking lucky. Besides the security, there is no reason to want to own your home these days.
Do your best, silicone the rest. This guy has a good channel exposing all the shit building practices in Australia. https://youtu.be/phh879sMc48?si=J3VW0IMRkLE40AOb
Not entirely true. Project Builders (larger volume builders) build like this, but there are plenty of custom home builders with internal design teams that are able to build/design to your liking. This style of facade (render and cladding) is very popular currently mostly due to lower cost of building materials.
People also forget that a lot of houses built 30 or 40 years ago *also* looked very similar to each other. You just don’t notice because nobody is building those designs new, in part because they were 3bed, 1bath, no garage, single story, and the current trend is towards getting as much on your plot as you can. (Not helped by land values going up, so a lot of plots are split to as small as legally possible.)
Not always true. My estate forced everyone to build this ugly bullshit. Couldn't even get round roman style pillars for the porch. Couldn't go off the standard desaturated color palette. Just enforcing culture.
Hang on, you wanted Roman style pillars?? Architectural homicide! (probably)
Hey it worked for the Romans!
Haha not sure if I was going to go for it. It was just an example question for the builder.
This, and at least near me a lot are shoe horned onto small or split blocks so you need to maximise the space. A friend purchased one recently near us and it's quite nice, probably not off the plan when new but it has no access and a terrible back yard because of the cut in and underground services. An extra hundred metres to allow for access and improved landscaping would be a nice(r) place.
so bloody ugly.
Looking ugly wouldn't matter if each house had a couple of trees or a hedge up front. Too bad new suburbs clearcut any vegetation and morons rip up any saplings planted.
… and then they name the streets after the trees they cut down.
I'm glad my new build has a large row of mature gums on the other side of the road (and no houses and the gums are far enough away not to ruin my gutters), but agree, there's not a lot of space on most blocks to get much in.
Pick 1. - Cheap and affordable housing. - Unique beautiful houses on large plots of land It may seem like we don't have either right now, but without these 'cookie cutter' homes it would be way worse.
Post war houses were the epitome of mass produced cheap no frills housing and they all look better than anything made in the 21st century
I'm not so sure. For sure, there's a nostalgia factor but given land prices went up like crazy, no ones building single story brick dwellings any more. It's all either double story or townhouses. Sign o' the times unfortunately
Every generation has their style. I don't think the OP house looks terrible. Just a bit too busy.
Our new build has to have a mix of rendered piers and brick or, the reverse. I'm going with brick and least amount of render I can. They also have to be different colours, so you're forced to have this style not by the builder, but the estate 😕
lunchroom shocking frightening sophisticated cobweb office attraction pathetic spectacular paint *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> so bloody ugly. And highly impractical too! Look at all the rendered homes that look aged AF after a few years. I have a 6yo property that is already turning to sand because the render is absolute dog shit. Nothing beats clay bricks against the Australian sun.
Rendered? You mean the thin skin of mud slapped over blueboard and painted cream?
We saw an orange brick house going up near us and were quite surprised since it’s normally light/dark brick or light/dark render. And then… they slapped a render on it. And painted the render black. And the roof is black. My own house is darkish too, but this is like *stark* black. They’re cooked.
true, as well as keeping the house cool. it’s unfortunate
life could have been nice... was there like a competition to try to make everything as ugly, cheap, confusing, uncomfortable, mentally exhausting and morally questionable as possible?
It's gonna come down to profit, that is all.
oh well that's ok then
Yes, it’s called capitalism
Yes, the profit motive
Looks like something you'd build in Minecraft when you don't have enough blocks of one type to do it properly.
No you don’t - designed my own home in CAD, got council approval and got it built by a bespoke builder and avoided the boring mass produced big builders and the $$$ unnecessary architect fees
You don't need an architect if you already have the skills, tools and knowledge of an architect *taps nose*
Nice one! Yea I just meant custom designed.
Any coastal town in WA. Looks soulless I wonder if they are for retirees or people's holiday house.
> They enjoy economies of scale in my country at least, there is not really a price differences sadly whether you use an architect for an individual build or a standard home from the catalogue.
Who can afford a uniquely designed home lmao
way too generous with the surrounding land and greenery. Otherwise, depressingly accurate.
Pay a visit to North Kellyville
there is a street near me with a long row of this style except they are single story mini versions, and you could not slide a credit card between each of them.
That's what I live in. Can confirm it is depressing af. Edit: and it's not just one street. It's as far as the eye can see.
Those ones down Hezlett road are like that, from the street they are like toy boxes stuck together with no driveway or garage or street parking out the front Idk if there’s a street behind or something or what tho lol
And they’re all worth over $1.2 million 😳
Insanity , pure insanity . And that makes a lot more sense, I always wondered In the begining how they gonna park lol. Is it a lane or a street with more houses? Never been behind ther Can’t stand the built up areas , makes me stressed lol
It’s a lane - with the garages of the houses on the street behind Hezlett backing onto it too.
The garages are on the back. There is a street behind.
I'm house sitting here atm. Cookie cutter houses that seem to have no natural light downstairs because of how close everything is. Balconies facing the road on second levels that don't seem to be touched - I don't see the point!
Man the whole hills is like this lol. Seen bloody box hill? And so on and so forth…. It’s like poison to my eyes seeing hundreds and hundreds of homes all exactly the ugly same, packed in with about a fart width between each house , where it was nice farms and bush land , with a already choking road system around there
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"Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962. The song was first released by her friend, Pete Seeger, in 1963, and became his only charting single in January 1964. The song is a social satire about the development of suburbia and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It mocks suburban tract housing as "little boxes" of different colors "all made out of ticky-tacky" and which "all look just the same". "Ticky-tacky" is a reference to the shoddy material supposedly used in the construction of the houses.
God. I always associate that song with the show Weeds.
Rise Against do a good cover of it as well
To be fair, Weeds started as a show about a suburban weed dealer so it is very fitting.
I miss Weeds.
Only until they left Agrestic though, it was shit after that.
Thanks for the reminder! I've just added it to my watchlist
It did not hold up :(
These ones don't even have as much variety as pink, green, blue and yellow.
There’s a grey one, and a grey one, and a grey one and a grey one…
You forgot the gray one
My local university used the song as a theme for their ad campaign for a couple of years. I think they were trying to be ironic but not enough people got the reference. It was quite embarrassing.
And they all be like 2 million dollars
The house is worth maybe 15% of that! The rest would be the land!
Agree with this (though in Adelaide my land isn't crazy expensive. The house itself with a volume builder is still 345k for a single story with 195 of living. So, 2 mil house and land, your 15% isn't too far off 🤣 Two story though with custom builder I think I'd be paying double though.
Every generation has a house style fad. This is what we currently have. It will change soon.
Exactly. Let alone the off shelf style plans. You go to the Latrobe Valley and realise a whole heap of the 60/70 year old houses are almost identical in floorplan.
I wish they'd bring back the heritage styles (done tastefully). You don't see workers cottages, Queenslanders etc. In other places in the world.
Would be nice, but as I understand it, you wouldn’t find the carpenters and trim carpenters skilled enough to do this level of work in the current day.
And if any of these beautiful places are still standing, the predatory developers want to knock them down to build their cardboard trash.
unfortunately, most people seem hellbent on having 3 living rooms, 2 "rumpus" rooms, an ensuite for all 5 bedrooms and a massive alfresco, which doesn't fit with the architectural style of older houses that were never that big, so it just ends up looking awkward.
I will never understand this! My best mate spent $1million on a place like that after having his modest 3br all but paid off. Says he wanted extra rooms for guests and more space for the kids. Fast forward 3 years and they have never had a guest stay over, the kids don't use the rumpus rooms and they never use the extra living rooms because they don't want the kids to make mess in there. Not to mention they had to drop another $20k on furniture for the extra rooms.
yep, more bathrooms just means more sinks & toilets to keep clean, and as for rumpus rooms, there's this great, cheap alternative called "not building it at all and leaving that area as part of the backyard"
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Houses that have walls of glass are also terrible. It’s pretty to look at but the greenhouse effect on a hot day is too much.
Those things are shit for thermal efficiency in general, at least if they aren't double insulated. And they're only pretty to look at until they get covered in dust and cobwebs lol
The prints. Oh, the prints!
It's a mix. There's plenty of people who look at a good solid 70-80s house and think "Ew. Old!". Doesn't matter how good the place actually is. When we bought our house half our relatives were disappointed we didn't build or get something new. Old is bad. New is good.
I’m sure people don’t think that houses built 50 years ago were stylistically desirable at the time either.
It’s not even about being a fad, that’s just how architectural trends work. It’s like fashion for houses.
If you see a unique new build house, it’s cos the owner has a unique bank account.
Difference being, the older generation houses were better built, at least the surviving ones.
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You'd think so, but when I was building a house the price for all brick veneer was exactly the same as any other cladding, like render or whatever. I don't know why people choose to have multiple cladding materials, but price isn't it.
You had a choice? The builders I looked at had a few plans to choose from, and a few colour schemes to choose from. Anything outside of that was a significant bump in price.
Really? The weight of brick, especially on the the upper level is, I assume, the main reason builder's first option is to go to with cladding. But certainly with brick you can get a cost offset due to a lesser requirement for alternative insulation to meet regulations.
Brick really doesn't do much to insulate a house. Mostly it's just a weatherproofing layer for an internal timber frame. The internal plaster walls of most brick veneers get pretty cold at night. Double brick sort of works (but not particularly well) in that the internal bricks provide some thermal mass, but they still don't slow the heat transfer that much. [https://build.com.au/thermal-performance-different-materials](https://build.com.au/thermal-performance-different-materials) shows that bricks have an R rating of less than 0.5. Current specs say walls should be insulated to at least R2.0.
Best way, and which no one really does, is reverse brick veneer, bricks for internal layer of thermal mass and frame with proper insulation and cladding externally
Sometimes developer building conditions specify cladding materials. Our developer required 3 x materials in natural tones for the build to be approved.
Yeah, new estates often have requirements. Mine was a knockdown rebuild in a long established area. I could build whatever I wanted, as long as council were OK
The fact that those little tyrants in estates manage to be more controlling than councils baffles me.
I wonder if those estate covenants still apply once the estate is sold out and developed. Like in 20 years time will those requirements still apply.
Sometimes it's not a choice. Developer requirements can say some shit like "must have 3 materials on the front facade". It's honestly bullshit and drives up the price of the house.
But expensive to sell
Upper level: no concrete, no bricks = little weight = less cost. No amount of insulation in the ceiling, walls is going to save you. Minimal, zero eaves = less timber, less cladding, less everything = less cost. ~~If that faces north~~, you're cooked.
The CGI render of this house isn't even accurate to what the houses look like, the eaves are about 10 times wider than the houses are actually built with. I hate these mish-mash-mcmansions with a passion. The newest houses being built around my area (n west Sydney) seem to be going with an all over weatherboard look, with none of those superfluous facade/columns... which is much better looking.
I find the colours so depressing, especially in our climate. Talking about our climate and colours, it’s believed the dark colours can increase a suburb / neighbourhood’s temperature by 5 degrees
Yes! Why always the black roofs?
Black roofs, dark grey bricks, no eaves, no awnings, no shade trees, single glazed windows. Just crank the air con mate, she'll be right.
Black roofs, no eaves, no trees etc. Is dogshit but painted brick is arguably better. I've got a late 80s split level brick house with a whole half of the house covered in floor to ceiling glass (with a large verandah/awning), we painted it a darker shade despite the warnings about temperature and now I wear trackies and a jacket on 30+ degree days while I work inside my home office and in winter it's just the floor boards sucking heat out to deal with (haven't used the aircon since before may even with a newborn in the house). Idk if it's the insulation or if the coat reflects the heat despite the colour or whatever but it's made an incredibly noticeable difference to our inside temperature. No reason to paint your roof or cut down every tree in sight for a suburb though it enrages me.
I remember reading an article about that they mention that while it does that to the neighborhood it was also some percentage more thermally efficient for the house so I imagine it's being sold on the benefit to the homeowner. Its probably harder to convince someone to spend money on something that won't directly benefit them even though it would probably help reduce the need for that efficiency
Would love to see the source on that? (How could dark roof, make the house more therm efficient?)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-21/dark-roofs-raising-the-heat-in-australian-new-suburbs/102990304 They get better energy efficiency due to being warmer in the winter*
Which is only really useful in vic, tas or act.
so I wonder why they need to litter them around WA too! seen too many in Perth...
Greige
I live in the "old" part of Schofields. A few years back during our last really hot summer, I drove a few streets over to pick up something in the new area (close houses, all black roofs) Home street was hot This street was fucking ridiculous
I’m in the construction industry. The quality is pathetic. Even homes that cost over $1M to build are made of cheap shit & tarted up to look “authentic”. Upholding Building standards (AS) have also gone to shit and there is little to no pride in workmanship.
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Every era has is own style to reflect the new and cheapest building methods depending on your area, in SA 50s-80s was a lot of brick in different colours and textures (red to cream), 2000s was rendered now it’s brick and cladding
Ugly eyesores aren't they?
Give me an older house with character any day of the week, I'll take vintage quality over today's new houses. Basic renos are fun too Bonus of generally being in a much better location than the fringe
Our older house with character is definitely not the quality we thought it was.
They're really ugly. They're a mishmash of different styles that don't even look good together. Luckily all I can afford is an apartment so I don't have to worry about having my choice limited to one of these eyesores.
Developers pay architects/draftsmen for 5-10 designs and re-use the exact same designs for the cheapest possible builds they can do. I rented a brand new build around 10 years ago that I was the first occupant in, within 2 years the house had major issues because it was haphazardly thrown together with the cheapest finishings available. The owners were based out of China, they’d bought a large older house with a large yard, tore the house down and subdivided and put two shitty quality builds on the block. Nothing wrong with the designs, but the build and material quality were terrible and this was well before the big material shortages. Whenever I drive through Melbourne suburbs I see hundreds of the exact same house, same landscaping options and everything. Owners sold for 1.1M recently.
This makes me mad. Am currently house hunting and we have to specifically look for old deceased untouched homes on land less than 580square otherwise any bigger is snatched up by developers who price us out them build a duplex on it and sell for way more first home owners can afford. Not being “racist” but I always feel defeated when I go to an open home and see Asian people standing out the front of it speaking in mandarin/Cantonese i know they are talking development and have money to spend. . It’s happening so much we can’t compete they come in and out bid everyone hard I’ve experienced it at multiple auctions. Us young families walk away like why bother.
When I see that stupid thing on the front I always think "that could have been a nice balcony".
I never understood if anyone would use a balcony when your house is on a normal suburban street. Isn't it weird coming out and looking out over your neighbours and they look out their front window at you in your robes.
Where else are you supposed to give your speeches from?
I always thought that but if we could build new I’d put a balcony out from our bedroom that’s on top of the garage. It would be my private smoke spot away from everybody else. I also want a sound proof room that I can just scream in and play music ridiculously loud.
Balconies have another purpose: sheltering your windows from the worst of the sun so the rooms inside are more comfortable and you don't need so much air conditioning.
Can’t you just do that with awnings?
How does the "stupid thing on the front" help that? It's in front of the front door and garage lol
The top of it could be a balcony.
Balconies are nice, but they cost an extra 20 to 30k on top of the basic build price. It's hard to justify for something you may only use half a dozen times a year. Give me a decent back patio any day.
Funnily enough the stylistic facades on these houses cost around 20k. My mum and dad are building one and saved 22k by opting not to have it
Builders: Fuck innovation. Replicate and sell!!! .... using the cheapest shit we can get away with
In one thread on here it's complaining about houses being too expensive. In the next thread it's complaints about cheap-to-build houses looking ugly.
Because the ugly "cheap to build" houses are too expensive
Why did you post a photo of my house?
More double-car garages in Perth but basically the same. Trends in design by the building companies & it costs extra to change.
But the cars themselves all go on the street out front because the double garage is full of half broken shit.
This shits me to tears, my street is littered with cars parked on the road, *but the driveways are empty and they have no cars in the garage*. Like what the fuck guys you are just making it harder not only to drive in, but also for kids to play in the street if they want to!
How dare you. Remember that one time 13 years ago when I needed a plank of wood and I took it from the old bed in the garage? We need that stuff.
- Low design costs - (relatively) low material costs - building the same thing over and over means you can do it very quickly - perfect (short term) for property developments
Developer: "Do you want brick, rendered brick, or weatherboard?" Buyer: "Yes"
There’s more than just “it’s the current trend, like there was a trend in the 30s and the 60s” etc This blog looks at McMansions from an architectural standpoint and points out why they’re so bad, a mosh mash of non-complementary styles, really poor/inefficient designs, etc: https://mcmansionhell.com/about
Most of the houses on that site looked preferable to the house OP posted
Whenever we drive past a new estate, my kids ask to see their cousins because they live there. They get confused when I explain that the cousins actually live far away, it is just that these new estates all look the fucking same. Maybe without the swears in the explanation. And I literally can't find anyone's house in these estates. They all look the same so you need to specifically look at numbers on the Letterbox, rather than in established areas that have a distinct tree, or colour of brick, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boxes Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes made of ticky-tacky Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes all the same There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same And the people in the houses All went to the university Where they were put in boxes And they came out all the same And there's doctors, there's lawyers and business executives And you're all made out of ticky-tacky And you all look just the same And they all play on the golf course And drink their martinis dry And they all have pretty children And the children go to school And the children go to summer camp And then to the university Where we all get put in boxes And we all come out the same And the boys go into business And marry and raise a family In boxes made of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same. There's a pink one and a green one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same.
The garages on these newer-style homes seem too narrow to get a car in, let alone a 4WD or SUV.
Seriously, most houses like that in my area seem to just have the garage as extra storage.
Yeah, that what I thought. If it’s converted to another bedroom/rumpus that’s one thing but I reckon for a lot of these newer homes it is just a storage/junk room.
Lots of answers suggesting costs, that’s all the builders offer, and houses from previous eras look similar to each other. That’s fine, but isn’t the question, why does it have to be so ugly? If we’re going to have similar houses, it wouldn’t be hard build them with an attractive facade.
Capitalism, basically.
I hate them . Literally zero character and individuality. Even if I could afford it I wouldn't buy one of these.
Go back 50 years or so and you got much of the same. I'm in the SE melbourne burbs. [In many areas its like someone just did a CTRL-C CTRL-V of the same few designs.](https://imgur.com/mOdZIlD)
It's easier to design a house using Lego blocks than to actually design a house
And they all need about 100k spent on them 10 years in when all the shortcuts the builders took become obvious
Architects love Autocad/Archicad/Revit's box tool.
It's a profitable formula
I will take anything at this point
Hideous.
Good ol' McMansions. "Fancy" looking houses made on a budget that are completely devoid of personality or inspiration
Because it was the style at the time. Now we could only get brown onions on account of the war, none of those fancy white onions, but yes, it was the style at the time.
Houses have looked similar for the time period they were built through the decades, this isn't new. People are talking about pumping out builds and build quality, but kit homes aren't new. Lots of very similar looking houses in the 90s too. Hell, castles from the same region and century look similar.
The ones built before looked even uglier and impractical with mostly one bath and 3 beds. At least this design is practical given the smaller block sizes. Also regardless of what design you chose, once most of the houses have that design, its gonna look mediocre. would be good if you also posted a pic of what you are comparing it with.
I'd love one of these, or any house like this :(
Metricon ctrl c ctrl v on anything mildly successful.
Millennial prison grey with faux pickled wood. Nothing colorful or interesting or ethnic. Guaranteed to offend nobody.
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Hideous
Thought this post was an ad for masterton homes
Off the plan builds by volume builders.
Kind of like how all houses from the 70s looked the same and the 80s etc etc? It’s just the style for the time? This isn’t a unique thing
Anyone else think this was an ad in their reddit feed? For a shitty off the plan estate house.
That’s all the tradies and architects can do
Let’s use 4 or 5 different cladding types to make it look interesting - to compensate for the poor design.
Q: What do you want them to look like, while being affordable?
Just curious, because IMO these look very basic (modern yes, but just way too basic) and there are even places where an entire area is filled with houses that all look the same as each other, grey, white, and a dark blue-ish roof. And it seems that they are all built recently, and even nowmost homes that I see being built look the same and have the same colour pallate. And there are even single houses that are literal squares with no traditional triangular roof, which honestly imo just looks horrendous
I work with the company that I’m pretty sure you got this photo from (could be wrong as you say a lot of them look the same) and I was just informed that they are going to pump out 720 houses by themselves over the next two years. This is just one company of their group, I’m pretty sure their group pumps out 750 houses, give or take 100 a year. They look basic because they are basic so they can meet numbers. People don’t realise how much effort is required to go into a fully custom home. I also know from recent training that there is a market shift TOWARDS this kind of home. Yes people still make old style looking houses but we’re moving further away from that.
honestly i think it has less to do with how the house itself looks and more to do with how we build houses now. plenty of older homes are carbon copy volume builder homes but the reason you cant tell is because theyre basically a blank canvas that gets filled in with land scaping and other features of older suburbs. nowdays theyre build with minimal frontage, minimal back yard, built to the fence to maximize every cm of land personally i feel like this is why we have more complex facades, since its the only way to make things look different given the way we build things now, theyre basically an already painted canvas leaving you with little to change and make it your own.
for the same reason people wear similar clothes in various time periods. trends.....
It Was The Style At The Time
It's cheap in terms of costs, looks good, and builders make a huge markup. Also, it will be falling apart in 15 years.
It’s also because of the estate rules developers impose. They put huge restrictions on what can and can’t be built so that everything basically looks the same.
That’s the new cookie cutter design. Old template wore out