You guys would have experience buying properties or looking for them in current times, so I think this thread could yield some good anecdotes and construction.

When I go in some neighborhoods, unplanned not village types, there are some which are well organized but each plot has a completely different type of house. Yes there is a general common aesthetic, but there are no set floor plans that people are lightly customizing and and switching up.

But when I look at most new construction I see, it is all cookie cutter with some limited veneer options given, and not much else. Even in the expensive side (which is most new stuff nowadays, I guess?). Now, of course, this is cause so many people are moving I guess, but is this just a narrow perspective I'm seeing, do the "individual plots" still exist where you build your own type of home? And this of course has been going on pre-covid too, so if you have gone down the rabbit hole, when did this mass construction become popular? Is it limited to certain regional areas (say the expanding South vs contracting rust belt)?

What are you experiences talking to realtors and builders and what types of options currently exist? Both around here and in general.

4/14/2024 9:42:19 PM

You're demonstrating a lack a familiarity with how property gets developed and homes get built.

Let's say your famer dad died and you just inherited 40 acres. You don't want to farm, so you figure you'll subdivide the land and sell off home plots and cash in your inheritance that way. Your local government will make you improve the property to local standards. e.g. grading for drainage, connecting to utilities, building access roads, runoff mitigation, etc... Then you'll probably sell of the lots to individual buyers since you don't have the capital to build spec houses and you probably just burnt much of your capital getting the subdivision ready for sale. You might have attached a building standards rider to the sale, but the byers are mostly free to build what they want. Each house is likely to be different.

Let's say that you're a big corporate builder and you haven't made a million dollars yet today. You go find some aging farmer and buy their farm or timber tract. You plan to build a whole neighborhood so you subdivide and improve it based on much of the standards described above, but usually on a larger scale and usually denser because you can afford things like having the sewer service extended instead of relying on septic tanks. Since you're working at scale, you're looking to maximize return at every stage and you have the capital to vertically integrate. As such, you have a portfolio, of easy and cheap to build houses that your construction crews have built dozens of times and they know every short cut and savings. You've spent years iterating on the design to save on every nail and board. The uniformity allows you to purchase in bulk to reap even more savings and profits. Basically, efficiency at scale requires uniformity. The large corporate developments are a form of mass production.

4/15/2024 10:03:16 AM

Yeah

4/15/2024 12:06:38 PM