Posted on 02/07/2024 8:53:49 PM PST by NoLibZone
Bob went into house framing. He said it takes a crew three days to frame a typical middle class mainly masonry Florida house.
I’m trying to figure out how a contractor has a crew plumb an entire house for $600, which includes his profit and their skilled wages, what kind of plumbing are you talking about?
I’m familiar with the Rice University, River Oaks and downtown areas and the areas in between, which were being refilled with Yuppie housing on the vacant lots. I visited around the time the streetcar line was being put in.
Visiting doesn’t show you the neighborhoods and get you to know this old American city that doesn’t have zoning laws.
“About 13 months ago I hooked up to county water - $2900 capacity fee...”
Yikes!
When we built in ‘95 I told my contractor to put $8,000 in the budget for our well, he argued that $4,500 would do it. I stood firm and the bill came in at $8,150.
He was a great contractor and a good man. I think with everything today it would be $35,000.
The nearest city water, natural gas or cable is 2 miles away, yet I live just 4 miles from the center of downtown...its just that we live in the mountains...
“Houston doesn’t have zoning laws.”
Houston had lots of vacant land to the southwest of the Greyhound station not far from downtown when I was last there that was simply ideal for Yuppie housing.
“skilled wages”
paid to Mexicans taught how to join and slope PVC piping and not forget about traps.
Seriously, what kind of plumbing are you talking about when you say plumb the house and how could $600.00 possibly cover it?
I didn’t say anything of the sort. In fact one proposal I put forth was to eliminate the property tax; or at least eliminate the property tax for one residence. That would lower the cost of owning a home for young people and allow them to live near their families, friends, schoolmates etc.
Another solution would be to make the sale of a primary residence 100% tax free. If you bought a $200k home in Los Angeles in 1988 it may be worth say $2 million today (some a lot more some less depending on zip code). After the exemption for a married couple, that sticks them with (if I did the math right) $260,000 in capital gains on federal taxes and around $140,000 in state income taxes. No small number. If they could keep all of it, they may be more apt to make their own decision to leave the area, or, could afford to downsize and stay in the general area without having to take on another mortgage. And that $400,000 would do them well if they age poorly thereafter and need to hire some forms of in home care or other improvements for accessibility etc.
“The tragedy of the commons is a metaphoric label for a concept that is widely discussed in economics, ecology and other sciences. According to the concept, should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would merely supplant them, the predictable result being a tragedy for all.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
You must not know anything about construction plumbing.
You have valid points.
I think it is better to not trash existing neighborhoods, but to build further out or to move a business and its employees to another area altogether.
London retains most of its 19th Century housing of quality. Manhattan does not. Walk around London to understand the cost of trashing neighborhoods.
Then why don’t we have that either?
Now convince all the nonexistent voters to do that and we’re all set.
Bob was a licensed plumber. That $600 figure from about 14 years or so ago is what he told me.
My mother kept some of the bills for building the house I live in. My mother was upset that my uncle didn’t haggle with the contractors. My uncle didn’t need to, he was getting good prices.
“You must not know anything about construction plumbing.”
Full-flow shut off valves at the house, by the meter and for the hot water heater. Expansion tank for the water heater. Service pipe (3/4 inch minimum & for my size house) at least 12 inches into the ground here in Florida (where the ground doesn’t freeze), tracer line for PVC service line, backflow value above flood level, ...
PEX pipe sensitive to sunlight...
1. Builders could build and young buyers could accept more “starter” homes. The average size of houses in the United States has increased from 831 square feet in 1790, to 945 square feet in 1910, to 2,496 square feet in 2019. Over the same time range, the number of people living within each house has decreased. Housing is reching the end of the splurge of the Federal Reserves cheap money printing presses.
2. States and localities need to get out of the zoning game (Houston has no real zoning) and get out of the massive housing permit costs and requirements (making money off the permitting process as revenue makers more than an essential service). Some states are doing a good job on this and some are doing a horrible job on this. Friends who were building a house in California were told by their bank and their housing contractor that permits and fees alone would be about $35 thousand of the house’ costs.
… The metaphor is the title of a 1968 essay by ecologist Garrett Hardin. As another example, he cited a watercourse which all are free to pollute. But the principal concern of his essay was overpopulation of the planet. To prevent the inevitable tragedy (he argued), it was necessary to reject the principle (supposedly enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) according to which every family has a right to choose the number of its offspring, and to replace it by “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon”.So, just another way to say “Malthusianism”, where the proposed solution is collective totalitarianism.
The concept itself did not originate with Hardin, but extends back to classical antiquity, being discussed by Aristotle. …
Then explain how a plumbing business can drill all the holes and fight the electricians for them, redrill, run all the water, drains, gas, rough in toilets and sinks and tubs, water heater, outdoor hose bibbs and showers with skilled labor passing all inspections, and do top out for $600 total labor?
That $600 being total contract, including company profit.
My parents started off with an apartment......
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