[almosthere]

What is wild to me about that, is that there is a huge untapped market for 1 man builds. If I can go out and build a house twice a year for 150-200k each, and sell them for 400-500k, then I'm way ahead of what I would get as a remote developer. And 400-500 is conservative, in the right market, 600-700.

What bothers me is gatekeeping the capital to do this, as well as the "apprenticeship" requirements to get your gen con license.

It would solve two problems simultaneously - something laid off engineers can easily do (they are problem solvers and fast learners).

I'm building my own house, and it's ridiculously easy (not all parts). I hope to build more after and sell them.

[nancyminusone]

If that's what's bothering you, there's no way in hell I'd hire you to build a house.

[quesera]

That's unnecessarily hostile.

House building is not that difficult. And literally zero of the licensed trades (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc) cannot be learned by a smart and motivated person in 1-2 months at most, instead of the multiple years (each, nonconcurrently) required for apprentice, journeyman, and eventual master licensing.

I've built three houses. I subbed out the work that was required by local regs (this varies by jurisdiction and year), and did the work myself, with inspection where available, wherever possible. Not difficult at all.

[nancyminusone]

Of course it's not hard, licences are not awarded based on how hard something is, they are supposed to be awarded for competence.

Anyone can and should be able to build their own house (I have done so myself), but if you ask for someone else to depend on your work, you had better prove it.

[quesera]

But licenses are not awarded based on competence.

They are awarded based on years of service as an apprentice and a journeyman to a master, who is effectively your pimp until you become a master yourself.

Guess who certifies master tradesmen? They guy who prefers to have you working for him instead of competing with him. It's a racket. There's some logic behind it, but less than you'd think.

Becoming fully competent to plumb or wire a house takes a few weeks of instruction. If that. It's just not difficult to become competent. It takes a bit longer to get fast though!

I would fully support a certification process that allows you to demonstrate your competence in a written and practical exam in front of experts who have no stake in your success or failure. But that is not the way it works.

(Actually, there are a few programs where you can do this for some work that would otherwise require a formal license. Lead paint remediation, of low or medium-risk surfaces, is one of them.)

[ty6853]

In AZ you can get a lot of trades licenses like finish carpenter with just a test. You can also owner/build and self certify then later flip the house which bypasses licensing and sometimes even codes.

[almosthere]

It's called passing inspections. Which you should know if you had actually built your own house.

[ty6853]

Not always required. I recently built a house, I did not get anything but septic inspected.

[quesera]

I'll guess that was in a rural area in the US West?

The further east and urban you go, the more rules you have to follow. This is, ultimately, sensible.

[hobs]

I would not want a house wired by a 60 day electrician, that's for sure. I don't think I'd want a flood done by the 60 day plumber either, but those are the only two trades I am familiar enough with to be aghast by this comment.

[quesera]

I'm sure that's true.

And it means that you do not know how to do electrical or plumbing work.

That's fine! But take it from someone who does: it does not take years of training to be excellent at it. Household electric and plumbing is extremely straightforward. Commercial can be much more complicated! And if you run into any semi-complicated stuff, like say a bathroom below grade where you need a toilet to flush uphill ... you learn it from the vast resources available, or you call a plumber for that bit. Simple.

Similarly, if you ever are not 100% certain of your own work, you call a licensed tradesman for the inspection. Note that this is not always allowed -- but where it is, everyone agrees that it makes total sense.

[hondo77]

Household electric doesn't necessarily take years but it takes longer than 60 days of YouTube videos.

[quesera]

I learned it in a few days of work. You could too. I don't recommend YouTube though!

The most complicated thing is knowing the code, which boils down to just a handful of simple rules for residential stuff. Most importantly: look it up, don't guess. There's a right way to do everything, and it's never the hard way. There is very little variance or judgement call involved, the code is quite clear and specific.

Doing it right might take additional materials or time though, and that's fine.

[s1artibartfast]

I think 60 days is excessive depending on your prior knowledge. If you understand voltage current and resistance, you can read the electrical code book in a day. Most of it will be irrelevant. Home wiring is almost entirely outlets, junction boxes, and running Romex. You can teach someone to do 95% of it in a day.

It's the edge cases that are time consuming to learn. Understanding each case that could come up on different types of builds, in different scenarios, is an important skill to be a proficient electrician that can walk onto a unknown job site, complete it, and leave at the end of the day. It makes sense if you are running commercial job sites where time is money. It makes sense if there is a failure or upgrade needed on an operational structure.

If someone is smart and time is less critical, it is only moderately slower to learn the edge cases as they come up.

I did the gas, electricity, and plumbing install for my Mom's kitchen, and I did it to the State building code. I did it in one week and with no prior training.

In a lot of ways, the certification process for contractors mirrors that of our white collar workers. Someone might spend 4 years getting a computer engineering degree, learn a dozen languages, study English and art, only to code basic tasks in CSS.

Even simpler, barbers don't really need a 1000 hours of certified coursework to do a buzz cut, or even your 50 most common haircuts.

[potato3732842]

New construction is stupid simple. Anyone with a pulse can do it. It's like the difference between greenfield dev and surgical bug fixes.

[hondo77]

So you haven't done bug fixes on something poorly architected initially because the project was started by anyone with a pulse instead of someone experienced?

Same with electrical. Yeah, you can learn the basics but only experience is going to get you to do it right. And two months ain't enough experience to do all the new construction electrical for someone else's house. Doing it for yourself is fine because only you have to deal with what you didn't do completely right when you didn't know any better.

[quesera]

You will sell your house someday, so doing it yourself has more than just personal implications, which is why inspections are required.

But you're wrong about the experience required. Everything you do in a house gets done repeatedly. A modicum of code knowledge, a good reference book, some simple math to calculate loads, some skill with power tools, and a lot of patience. No problem.

There are zero surprises in a house, the requirements are 100% predictable. Get it inspected, of course, because QA is always beneficial. Be careful, but don't be afraid of it, it's not magical or malevolent.

[potato3732842]

That's exactly my point. Troubleshooting an intermittent problem on a bathroom fan in a subdivided triple decker with common grounds -> hard.

Doing the wiring in a new house (yours or otherwise) -> easy.

The fact that you're making a mountain out of a mole hill her really just screams that you have no experience with ANY of this. The stuff that's hard to "do right" is the stuff that you get one shot at (like concrete) or stuff where the feedback loop is very long (it may take decades to find out that your poor flashing job is letting water in and ruining your siding). The stuff the internet likes to screech about like plumbing and electrical and framing are way easier to validate the quality of because you can test them or because problems will become obvious quickly.

[almosthere]

Most people in those individual trades hired by D.R. Horton are doing things as fast as possible with the cheapest materials.

I personally would want a person that is being paid very well that oversaw every nail, every wire going into that house.

But :shrug: I don't mind you not being my customer. I will give my meticulously installed kiln dried studs/plates, zip sheathing, rockwool, interior rockwool, exterior rockwool jacket and james hardie fireproof house to someone that appreciates it!

[ty6853]

That's not how one off man and a truck builds normally work. Its usually only viable as a business when doing owner/builder on your own dime then flipping it and repeat. Clients don't want to wait years for one man, nor will banks, but someone will almost certainly buy even a half ass built house upon completion.

Sometimes you also see tradesman do this during down seasons, as it gives them a steady flow of stuff to do that they can complete almost as slow as they like then flip when done.

The buyer likely won't have any insight into the personal motivations of the builder, or what bothers them.

[carlosjobim]

Any man who is unable to learn to build a house is far behind the average in talent. Everybody used to build their own houses.

[harimau777]

I think that may be due to differences in building standards between then and now. For example, fire was a much greater risk in previous generations.

[potato3732842]

It's not that buildings burn that much less readily today. It's that in the past they caught fire way more often. The plethora of wood stoves, lanterns for light, matches for smoking, etc, etc, had more to to with it than anything else.

[8bitsrule]

In the US here was a decades-long period when you could buy a set of books for next-to-nothing (from Audel; most are now public domain) that would fill you in on most details of most trades. You (along with friends and relatives) could do the parts you understood and farm out the rest.

My dad (Navy electrician) built his own house with help from a Navy friend (carpenter). It sold a half-century later for 5 times what it cost him. The stucco exterior (whoever did it) lasted with zero fails in a climate that varied from -30F to +90F.

[bongodongobob]

That's hilarious. I'd rather hire a team of people that have specialized teams and have built 1000s of houses, not a guy that built one and thinks he's really good at it, sorry.

[_carbyau_]

I understand the point of specialisation/efficiency etc. The concern I have is that of conflicting motives.

A person who builds their own house will care about what they built. A specialised team will care to get paid and know all the corners to cut to get the job done to the minimum standard.

What kind of house do you want? One built robustly with care? Or one built to minimum standard? Not everyone wants minimum standard.

[bongodongobob]

It just sounds like you don't know how construction works.

[_carbyau_]

It just sounds like you don't know how people work.

As some of the other "I build my own house" commenters here have mentioned, nothing stops them from hiring people when they want and specifying higher than code minimums. Building your own house doesn't mean you have to do absolutely everything even when it doesn't make sense because someone else has the tools to do it better. But it does mean they have the choice.

[bongodongobob]

I work for a national construction company. You saying "construction not done diy = bad quality" makes you an absolute clown dude, just stop. There are guys working here that have been tradesman before you were born. The arrogance to say you can do it better is astonishing.

[_carbyau_]

Whoa up there. I am not attacking the people you work with. I also don't have to "stop" because you wish to put words in my mouth and broadcast assumptions unchallenged.

I never said "construction not done diy = bad quality". I tried to say: "tradesperson work has incentive to meet code and move on, as opposed to diy which has incentive to build something that person wants to live with". My attempt to say that clearly didn't work well. Good thing my trade is not wordsmithing.

If you want to bring up "bad quality" ... like all humans there are dodgy elements in any group. I'm sure a whole forum of war stories of dumb shit tradespeople have done can come to light - there's probably a subreddit. Maybe all the people you work with are legends in their craft. However my point is not the skill level - it is the structure of motivations.

A person building their own house thinks differently about the house than tradespeople coming and going.

Asides: 1. where do you think DIY builders come from? Everyone I know doing/did it either is or was a tradesperson. They decided to stop going job to job for someone else and put more time into generalising so they can make something for themselves.

2. how old do you think I am? I would hope the "tradesman before I was born" could be retired before they got to their 70's. I guess some people like to keep moving and work is as good as anything.

[acheron]

The “team of people that build 1000s of houses” have the motto that if they didn’t make any mistakes, they’re not working fast enough. Give me one guy who actually cares any day.

[quesera]

This post is literally about the value of building things with your own hands.

If you do not derive value from that sort of thing, then what point are you trying to make?

I have no desire to sew my own clothes, but I'm guessing you are not interested in hearing me talk more about that?

[bongodongobob]

When I think of building things with my hands I think of building a table, refinishing a dresser, building a shed, soldering some electronics. 99% of people should consider doing these things. 99% should not consider building a house. That's engineering, not a hobby. How many people have done this, 1/100000? It's beyond the spectrum of things you should DIY. You have to be a little crazy to even consider it. Most people have 40+ hr a week jobs and can't build a fuckin home in their spare time. If you have the time, talent, and money to do this, great. You are part of a tiny elite group of people.

[defrost]

> How many people have done this, 1/100000? It's beyond the spectrum of things you should DIY.

Where I live, Western Australia, maybe 2% of adults that I know have been actively involved in building and or major rennovations of a house.

There are a lot of people here with serious trades backgrounds, many with rural backgrounds that'll tackle anything.

People here even build their own aircraft and quirky ground effect flying machines.

I've built three houses; two significant renno's (jacking up and replacing major structural elements), and one from foundations upwards.

My father's played a major role in three full builds (he's not a "builder by trade", just a former farm hand, shearer, five year navy, mining foreman, etc. type).

> You are part of a tiny elite group of people.

Still, not that hard.

[AngryData]

If it is a standard type of wooden stud home the engineering skill is basically nonexist just by following general framing patterns which haven't changed much at all in around 150 years except for not balloon framing studs across multiple floors and instead stacking floors on top of walls. Framing and layout design is probably the easiest part of building a wood stud home. Once you know how basic floors, walls, and openings like doors and windows are built they will all fit together in any combination you like and be more than structurally sound because the basic design is seriously overbuilt.

I think most people would run into the most trouble trying to follow code with electrical, plumbing, and HVAC. You can frame 95% of a house the same way as a 120 year old house, but if you go beyond 15 years then all those utilities have had constantly evolving regulations and design constraints and just because you saw it in a dozen other houses doesn't mean it will pass this years code.

[ty6853]

If you follow IRC ( code book )building a home can be entirely prescriptive with 0 engineering. This is what I did since I'm not a structural engineer and I didn't have money for engineered plans nor an architect.

[quesera]

You've established that you don't know much about house construction.

OK, definitely do not build a house until you do a little bit of research on the topic.

But if the topic interests you, it's worth looking into. It's not nearly as complicated or arcane as you imagine.

In the meantime though, you seem to have very strong opinions without the knowledge to support them. If you do find a receptive audience for that kind of thing somewhere, it will be to the detriment of all involved.

[horns4lyfe]

lol specialized teams? It’s just whatever illegal immigrants are willing to show up that day

[loa_in_]

It's the same logic as people doing machineworking projects on YouTube. Things thought crazy, but not so crazy after all, fascinating instead. Going off the beaten path might be expensive at first, but the payoff is much better too. Emanating inspiration lasts for ages and is immeasurable in value.