How much is charm worth?

Quote: Nareed

IMO, there is a cultural fetish to make houses look alike. It's just something I find incredibly odd.

I think there are more national building companies, that tend to build similar looking houses across all regions.

When there was a terrible fire in San Diego county, there were a lot of individual homes burned down because the fire was in the back county. I remember someone saying that it would take 12 years for independent builders to rebuild the lost homes. Many homeowners had to rebuild with development style homes just to get out of temporary quarters.

I saw tract housing in Mexico, but I am not sure as to what percentages of individual vs tract are built.


But I am not sure if housing is much different than in other areas of the economy (food, gadgets, cars).

Quote: Nareed

Maybe.

IMO, there is a cultural fetish to make houses look alike. It's just something I find incredibly odd.

I think that most people would prefer a more individualistic house but in the end they go with the "more bang for your buck" developer built housing. The main reason for this is for every construction trade a custom house is a one off. My saying used to be when building a custom home that I had to marry the lady of the house to try and understand what she wanted. Invariably after the house got to the stage they could visualize it (seldom could they convert the 2D drawings to a 3D mental picture) we had to start making changes that were very hard to get paid for. Developer houses you were given a drawing or two and you could fly from on house to the next with no worries as long as you did your job.

By the way shingle roofs are more economical than flat under our building codes.

Quote: Pacomartin

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all 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.

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 and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they 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 they are put in boxes
And they come out all 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.

Malvina Reynolds - "Little Boxes"

I was going to bring up the song "Little Boxes" in my next post on this thread. It was actually a fairly big hit for Pete Seeger in 1962. See Nareed your complaints about cookie cutter houses is far from new.

And to quote the chorus "and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same"

Still true today.

Quote: kenarman

I think that most people would prefer a more individualistic house but in the end they go with the "more bang for your buck" developer built housing. The main reason for this is for every construction trade a custom house is a one off.

I once heard a talk by an ER doctor about how best to avoid winding up in the ER. One thing, which surprised me at first, was to buy a built house rather than building a custom one. He didn't go into details about style or materials, but he said he saw a lot of cardiac patients who'd just got their dream home built, or were involved in building one.

Thinking back to the time when my brother and his wife hired an architect and contractor to build their house, there was nothing surprising about it.

So, sure, I get it.

I don't get why all developers turn out such similar houses all over the country. After all, apartment buildings vary a great deal.

New questions: are new houses and/or apartments commonly sold finished? That is, with wallpaper/paint on the walls, flooring in place (carpet, wood, tile, whatever), bathroom fixtures, kitchen with pantry, oven and stove, and so on? Or are they sold unfinished, with the buyer expected to hire contractors to put all of that in?

In Mexico the norm is to sell unfinished units.

The developer would typically be supplying all of those as part of his package. If the buyer purchases early enough he can choose within a limited choice most of those items. At additional cost of course if he varies what the developer has included in his base price.

One of items that I forgot to mention earlier Nareed that ties into your impression of the developments is that the exterior colour palate is usually very restricted. Very few people in a new subdivision in their brown house want to live next door to a pink house.

Quote: Nareed

New questions: are new houses and/or apartments commonly sold finished? That is, with wallpaper/paint on the walls, flooring in place (carpet, wood, tile, whatever), bathroom fixtures, kitchen with pantry, oven and stove, and so on? Or are they sold unfinished, with the buyer expected to hire contractors to put all of that in?

In Mexico the norm is to sell unfinished units.

I looked at a new house in Tijuana and they are much more finished in the USA. It would be very rare to sell them in the condition they do in Mexico.

It's all about labor costs. In Mexico people would much rather hire a contractor to finish out the home to their preference. In USA it is common to give the buyer a choice of options on the final product.

Quote: kenarman

The developer would typically be supplying all of those as part of his package. If the buyer purchases early enough he can choose within a limited choice most of those items. At additional cost of course if he varies what the developer has included in his base price.

This is beginning to sound an awful lot like aircraft.

Quote:

One of items that I forgot to mention earlier Nareed that ties into your impression of the developments is that the exterior colour palate is usually very restricted. Very few people in a new subdivision in their brown house want to live next door to a pink house.

Personally I'd rather pay my neighbor across the street to paint their house blue. I'd be seeing their house more often than my own anyway.