[ThrustVectoring]

There's a similar issue, IMO, with new home construction. There's a minimum legal quality limit for having a home be sellable, and anything past that basically doesn't get done. It's made worse by the home evaluation metrics - square footage, bathrooms/bedrooms, and location are most of what matters for getting a mortgage (and thus for bidding on and pricing a house).

Like, if you look closely at a 100 year old house, you'll find details like "the awnings over the window are just long enough to shade the window in the summer and short enough to get sun in the winter" that basically don't make it into modern homes.

[Hello71]

I don't really think this has to do with legal limits; you could probably sell a hut as a "house" in most places if you wanted to, as long as it was compliant with the building codes. The problem isn't that the government won't let you call it that, the problem is that nobody will buy just a hut, they want an actual house.

While it may or may not be the case that 'house quality' has declined over the decades, that's driven by economic factors: do house buyers want to pay 1.2x or whatever for those extra details? I would conjecture that home developers are not stupid, and that they have tried adding those (presumably expensive) details, and found that they were unable to recoup those costs in an increased price.

[ThrustVectoring]

>as long as it was compliant with the building codes

Huts aren't compliant with building codes - and regardless, there's specific criteria you have to fulfill to get various statistics (square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen). Plus there are zoning restrictions on minimum building sizes, on top of regulations on minimum room sizes.

>do house buyers want to pay 1.2x or whatever for those extra details?

Even if they do, they often can't. If the bank appraises it as a $200k house, that's often going to mean that the buyer can only ever get a mortgage for $180k with $20k down. If the buyer wants to pay 1.2x, that means that they have to come up with $40k in cash.

>I would conjecture that home developers are not stupid, and that they have tried adding those (presumably expensive) details, and found that they were unable to recoup those costs in an increased price.

They aren't stupid, and they have tried adding details. What you wind up with are granite countertops, because that sort of thing impresses average home-buyers (and is an easy thing to point to for getting your appraisal adjusted).

The big issue is that American homebuyers, as a class, have lost the ability to distinguish good home design from bad. "Why" is a long essay, but the "just trust me on this" is that the vast majority of home-buyers have little to no experience in the sort of work that goes into building a home.

[Hello71]

> The big issue is that American homebuyers, as a class, have lost the ability to distinguish good home design from bad. "Why" is a long essay, but the "just trust me on this" is that the vast majority of home-buyers have little to no experience in the sort of work that goes into building a home.

and therefore this is not a legal issue, but an economic one. (or aesthetic, or whatever you want to call it, but not legal)

[beachy]

Is that a problem?

If the masses don't know or care then it's not a problem to them.

Whereas you, who do both know and care, can snap up superior quality houses at bargain prices.

Seems like a good situation to me.

[WalterBright]

My house has a number of details that would never be put in a spec house, because only someone like me would be willing to pay for them. I expect when this house is sold, it will garner a 0% premium for those features.

For example, it has GFCI breakers for all circuits, not just the bathroom ones. For another, it has a stainless steel sill plate (which keeps wood boring insects from coming up through cracks in the foundation).

[jacquesm]

> For example, it has GFCI breakers for all circuits, not just the bathroom ones.

I did that to every house I ever lived in. It's good practice and as far as I'm concerned it really ought to be code.

Do you also have the habit of installing multiple utp runs into every room ;) ?

[germinalphrase]

A list of which would make for an interest design book.

[ThrustVectoring]

You might really enjoy The Timeless Way of Building.

[germinalphrase]

That's a great suggestion. I flipped through A Pattern Language a few years ago and found it fascinating.