House lots shrinking in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis, St. Paul: condo, new house)

[1stpontiac]

On the plus side, I think a lot of houses today are closer to square and level than the ones built in the 20s.

[Min-Chi-Cbus]

Originally Posted by golfgal

There are a lot of 20 year old houses around us and none of them are falling apart . We had more issues with our 1920's Craftsman house than our 1995 "new' house....

But you KNOW that doesn't debunk his point.....AT ALL. The craftsmanship of construction has gone downhill significantly since the turn of the century (20th), and that's really not very debatable. While your home may still be upright, what will it look like when it's 90 years old?

[Beenhere4ever]

Originally Posted by golfgal

There are a lot of 20 year old houses around us and none of them are falling apart . We had more issues with our 1920's Craftsman house than our 1995 "new' house....

"Falling apart" may be an overstatement. But for sure when we looked at houses, we looked at some built in the 50's, the sellers always wanted more, and they just looked shabby and dated. The older ones had had work done over the years. As to houses built in the 80's and 90's, we never walked through any of those. They tend overwhelmingly to be suburban, and that never interested us.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by 1stpontiac

On the plus side, I think a lot of houses today are closer to square and level than the ones built in the 20s.

Sure, but I've always thought that tilting floors and similar things added a certain personality to an older house.

[Beenhere4ever]

Wait till frost heave starts to work on those houses. The GROUND doesn't stay level. The real danger of houses built today is that their prices are inflated and could quite possible drop below what is owed. My old house cost little enough that I got huge equity on it. Don't have crippling payments either. Partly because the crazy bank handed us a budget that we automatically distrusted and cut it in half. We bought seriously below what our household income could "afford". So our payments are easy to handle. Whatever you might say good about a newer house, if it becomes a millstone, I have a hard time seeing the point. An expensive house doesn't shelter any better than a cheap house that is sound.

[golfgal]

Originally Posted by Beenhere4ever

Wait till frost heave starts to work on those houses. The GROUND doesn't stay level. The real danger of houses built today is that their prices are inflated and could quite possible drop below what is owed. My old house cost little enough that I got huge equity on it. Don't have crippling payments either. Partly because the crazy bank handed us a budget that we automatically distrusted and cut it in half. We bought seriously below what our household income could "afford". So our payments are easy to handle. Whatever you might say good about a newer house, if it becomes a millstone, I have a hard time seeing the point. An expensive house doesn't shelter any better than a cheap house that is sound.

So you automatically assume people living in larger houses don't know this? You do realize that there are people that make more money than you do, right? We've never owned a house where our house payment was more than 1/4 of our TAKE HOME pay. Sure, we qualified for a heck of a lot more too, but we like to do silly stuff like eat.

[StanleyVegas]

I'm not trying to say that all new homes are poorly built, and there are a lot a advantages to new construction. Shoddy construction by big builders might be more common out west than here, where the harsher climate may dictate heavier building standards.

Old houses need updated wiring, plumbing, heating, etc. Old houses ARE quirky, but that's part of the character everyone talks about.

However, I think that modern "cookie cutter" houses, with maximum square footage on tiny lots, will suffer by comparison over time. Likewise I don't see a McMansion revival in the future, but maybe they said the same thing about row houses, victorians and bungalows back in the day!

[Beenhere4ever]

Yeh, McMansions are a fad. A product of desire to move closer to stuff, of city history where small houses were built on minimum lots and are later torn down and replaced with new houses at a time when money is very very cheap. The people building the houses want max return on t heir real estate investment which they hope to get by building an oversize house on a minimum lot. The meltdown has already done quite a bit to interrupt that fad.

[1stpontiac]

Originally Posted by Beenhere4ever

Wait till frost heave starts to work on those houses. The GROUND doesn't stay level. The real danger of houses built today is that their prices are inflated and could quite possible drop below what is owed. My old house cost little enough that I got huge equity on it. Don't have crippling payments either. Partly because the crazy bank handed us a budget that we automatically distrusted and cut it in half. We bought seriously below what our household income could "afford". So our payments are easy to handle. Whatever you might say good about a newer house, if it becomes a millstone, I have a hard time seeing the point. An expensive house doesn't shelter any better than a cheap house that is sound.

But now you are automatically conflating newer houses with more expensive houses, which isn't necessarily true. A 2,000 sf house built in 1920 in St. Paul will cost far more than a 2,000 sf house built in Blaine in 1995.

And, as GG said, you aren't the only one who has figured out not to buy more than you can afford. I punched our financials into an online estimator for "how much can you afford" and the amount it kicked back was 3X higher than what I would use as a ceiling when we start looking in a few months.

[1stpontiac]

Originally Posted by rcsteiner

Sure, but I've always thought that tilting floors and similar things added a certain personality to an older house.

Well, that is true. A slight inconvenience when you want to remodel and you realize your T-squares are useless for cutting sheetrock, and you have to hand-cut your new closet doors to accommodate the slope, but such is the price you have to pay.