Eliminating zoning rules and "voluntary" homeowners associations and eliminating property taxes would help.
Not worried about that.
The costs of heating and cooling a dwelling + the maintenance and upkeep are actually way in excess (1x - 2x) of the original house price adjusted for inflation. You get... dis-economies of scale the more you go up.
Housing markets are cyclical over long periods with nil capital gain.
Put the two together and you see a dismal end as entropy catches up. Not even to mention that this process shall accelerate if economic growth falters.
> Especially since the energy cost is small compared to the finance fees and property taxes paid.
Energy costs at first appear to be a small encroachment, but they really mount up over time in the most astounding way. I don't have a graph to hand but I remember being very impressed by it.
What is called THOWs or Tiny Houses on Wheels do not pay taxes or association fees. They are classified as vehicles and hence do not need to pay property taxes. They are also not very likely to encounter HOAs since complaints drive them away on their wheels to greener pastures. Sometimes they visit RV parks and pay those fees but those aren't very much.
> Eliminating zoning rules and "voluntary" homeowners associations and eliminating property taxes would help.
Of course! And I think such 'revolutions' will happen in time, because 'living like a normal American/European' will just become uneconomical.
So RVs or campers with a cute name.
That can mostly be attributed to the use case:
RV (original intent) usecase was temporary living, moving often, the TH usecase is permanent living, moving rarely.
Compare:
https://i.reddituploads.com/303b76eaa06e495f8381f2bca3cf48f2...
https://i.reddituploads.com/ff4dee466ad34517bf0c1149ac3ba934...
with
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/crjeV4QxGmY/maxresdefault.jpg
http://www.bobhurleyrv.com/console/watermark.php?src=48636&w...
http://images.rvs.com/FOH/1222412/1000x/2016_dutchmen_aeroli...
http://www.finehomebuilding.com/2009/09/18/a-complete-guide-...
Fine Home Building is the HN of construction tech, I never fail to find something useful that saved money or gave me an idea or prevented me from doing something stupid. I'm sure I wouldn't have come across the concept of a Rainscreen (despite reading several construction books) but for them and I suspect that alone saved my butt.
> I agree but if you're clever you can low-tech hack by inserting pipes through the wall which contain what I'm going to call 'guide wires'.
Pipes can be conduits. And instead of guide wires, many use fish tape.
Thanks for mentioning fish tape since I wouldn't have heard of it before, it looks like the correct terms are 'draw wire' and 'fish tape' and they are used together.
Yes, my TH will the size of an average townhouse in sq ft in Ireland.
> what I think is unfortunate in house design and construction is that houses are built for use < 100 years, aren't easily upgradable via conduits, etc.
I agree but if you're clever you can low-tech hack by inserting pipes through the wall which contain what I'm going to call 'guide wires'.
That shall allow one to insert new cables into walls in the future.
You have to appreciate also that buildings get a 'deep upgrade' every 30-50 years. If only because with today's shit tier new growth wood and shoddy craftsmanship a house deteriorates around the time people finish paying a mortgage. What an unholy alliance there exists between bankers and building/material standards...
> Aerogel's Spaceloft that could significantly decrease residential energy needs is barely spoken of.
Don't tell internaut that! Things said by internaut in the last three months include:
> we do not see things like technologies to make heart attacks impossible or cheap aerogel insulation, the kinds of leaps we made in the past that really lifted all boats.
> using a material invented by them called aerogel (thin strips!) to thermally isolate the studs to prevent thermal bridging, it'll cost me just 1300 to raise the R (insulation) value by a min of 10% - 20%
> suppose the manufacture of aerogel could be brought down by 2 orders of magnitude.
The caveat I have to mention is that getting cheap aerogel production is not enough by itself to effect large industrial level change and an order of magnitude drop in energy bills for new builds. We also need an AR system (a special pair of glasses/goggles) that highlighted the places in the dwelling that require foam, special housings around penetrations, beads of chaulk, all in order to prevent the air escaping. Good insulation is close to worthless without the correct methods to prevent air infiltration.
Myron Ferguson does a nice demonstration of what I'm talking about on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhv9iFE3AY4
The passive house people are getting there but that will take forever unless they can be augmented by AR. So that is a good B2B start-up idea.
> We could be building small modern castles that we could hand down, but instead we still build cheap throwaways.
Yeah. The next generations should not have to worry about building their own houses unless they really wanted to.
My problem with modern building systems is that they are biased towards modern architecture styles I dislike. My attitude is the same as most normal people. Passive house cannot succeed without allow traditional building styles to exist.