Sprawlville

Some of us live in a complex and some of us live in a development. Neither of those words really sounds like home to me. I have enough complexes already, thank you. And "development" always strikes me as a medical euphemism ("I'm afraid there's been a development in your grandmother's condition").

Development-living is inexplicably popular. A lot of people don't seem to mind living in a neighborhood where they're older than any of the trees or buildings, and where the street names seem to have been randomly generated by a committee with a thesaurus. (The original meaning of boulevard is probably a lost cause, but is it asking too much to suggest that a perfectly straight street without a single tree shouldn't be called "Poplar Circle"?)

I'm also not sure how realtors manage to show these houses without forcing their perspective prospective buyers to drive there through the same heavy traffic that will become part of their daily lives if they make these developments their homes. Here in the Philadelphia area, Route 422 curves away to the northwest from Valley Forge and into Development Land. It's a lovely stretch of highway at four in the morning on Christmas Day, but pretty much any other time it's bumper-to-bumper gridlock all the way from your driveway in Hidden Valley Estates to where it intersects with the just-as-congested arteries of U.S. 202, the Pa. Turnpike, the Schuylkill Expressway and the King of Prussia Mall. This is the Nexus of Road Rage. There were rumors that PennDOT crews working there found a Hellmouth, but the papers covered it up.

As I write this, late on a Sunday evening, radio traffic reporters are announcing that "422 is backed up approaching the St. Gabe's Curve." (I don't have the radio on, but this phrase is part of every radio traffic report -- a boilerplate mantra recited six times an hour, 144 times a day, by announcers making the sign of the cross and offering a silent prayer of gratitude that they don't have to drive that road.) And yet, somehow, prospective home buyers continue to slog their way through this traffic to visit yet another new development in Royersford or Limerick and, inexplicably, decide that this experience is something they wouldn't mind doing twice a day, every day, for roughly 500 hours every year.

As USA Today reports, it's become increasingly common for people to begin their commutes before 6 a.m.:

Americans are leaving home earlier and earlier to beat the rush and get to work on time. Census data released [last week] document the ever-lengthening commutes: In 2000, 1 worker in 9 was out the door by 6 a.m., the new data says; by 2006, it was 1 in 8. That might not seem like a big change, but it has put more than 2.7 million additional drivers -- for a total of 15 million -- on pre-dawn patrol.

But set aside the prospect of hours-long commutes. Set aside my particular objections to development living, and set aside even the more pressing question of whether these homes in sprawlville will be sustainable in the coming decades. What I really want to get to here is the matter of caveat emptor -- "Let the buyer beware" -- and to suggest a prudent course of action for anyone considering buying a home in one of these new developments.

"The old part or the new part?"

I heard that question dozens of times years ago when I was dating a girl who lived in a town-house development out in Exton. The guys who asked this question had all done work out there: plumbing or electrical, sewers or septic, paving, decks, drywall or landscaping. They all seemed to know a good bit more about this development than any of the people who lived there. They weren't terribly impressed with any of the construction in the development, but the "old part" was generally understood to be better built than the new. They also all knew something of the history of that development that the brochures for the place failed to mention. The old part, at the top of the hill, used to have a septic system. That was replaced with a sewer system hookup just before the development expanded at the bottom of the hill, with the "new part" built on what used to be the leach field.

More recently, an acquaintance of mine moved into a new development even further out in Chesco sprawlville. Those McMansions were not built on a former leach field, but this development, too, enjoys a certain notoriety. I've already begun hearing the question, "Across from St. ----'s?" They always ask with the same tone of voice -- partly pitying, partly amused, partly offended by what passes for craftsmanship nowadays. I built a deck there, they say, or installed a pool, or paved a driveway, or dry-walled a basement. And then they shake their heads.

So if you're considering development living, my suggestion is this: Before you buy that new house, hire your own inspector to double-check what the builder's inspectors tell you. And then triple-check by spending a little quality time at the neighborhood bar. I mean a real bar -- if there's anything fancier on tap than, say, Yuengling Lager, then you're in the wrong place. I mean the kind of neighborhood bar that you find in actual neighborhoods as opposed to in developments. Go in and find the guys in the landscaping or drywall or paving company T-shirts, buy them a round and ask what they can tell you about The Village at Shady Lake.

That $20 investment might just keep you from making a $400,000 mistake.

Comments

[Toby]

I recently drove through some of the extremities of the Chicagoland sprawl in NW Indiana. Miles and miles of identical strip malls; next to the strip malls, cookie-cutter neighbourhoods. I would crest a hill, expecting it all finally to come to an end, only to be faced by more strip malls, as far as the eye could see. This was my first encounter with this phenomenon, and I was seriously spooked. It felt like the Twilight Zone. A Moebius strip or something. Call an exorcist, this road needs to be sent back to Hell.

[85% Duane]

Actually, those still-in-development mcmansions are relatively inexpensive if you buy while they are still stamping them out. That's why so many folks opt for the long commute. The further out the house, the more square footage you get for your money. The newer the house, the less work and expense you have to sink into it. When gas was cheap, the trade off was commute time versus square footage. Now with gas prices escalating and home sales stagnating, it's more complicated

And it isn't as clear now where you have to live in order to avoid the commute. My last job was "in town" so we moved in town and I had a blissful 5 minute non-interstate traffic-free commute for about five years. My new job is out in suburbia so I'm commuting out to about where I lived prior to moving into town. You can't up and move every time you get a new job, and with a Republican economy, you can't expect to hold onto the same job for more than a few years tops.

[pepperjackcandy]

I live in what was one of the sprawling developments in my city in 1969. It's now in the middle of the city. 8-)

[Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little]

There were rumors that PennDOT crews working there found a Hellmouth, but the papers covered it up.

I cannot at the moment manage to say anything more coherent about this than "Fred, I love you forever."

Well, I'm reminded of a friend of mine who, in a Silver Sentinels campaign, played a character (roughly modeled off Raven from Teen Titans) whose basement contained a portal to Hell. And back in the real world, I have my suspicions about the "city" of Sea-Tac.

But mainly just all I'm thinking is "Hellmouth FTW lolololololololol"

I hope you understand.

[Paul Bagosy]

Living in Norristown and working in Limerick three years ago, my regular route to work was up to Oaks onto 422 and off at Royersford. 70mph, no hassles. I regularly felt sorry for the poor suckers heading in the opposite direction. It was the same thing on the ride home. Everyone trying desperately to get to Pottstown at 2mph while I zoomed along the other direction.

Now, I zip from Norristown to Yardley on the Turnpike. I get lucky with the reverse commutes.

-pb

[SueW]

I hate new developments. That's why I'm looking to move to Phoenixville. Nearly every house I've looked at lately is 107 years old. I don't know if the construction is any better (and I'm sure they all have termites or lead paint), but the neighborhoods are more like *neighborhoods*, where people mostly know each other. McMansionvilles have no history, or character or soul.

But thanks for reminding me what I have to look forward to if I go back to work, living in the land that SEPTA forgot.

[Rachel]

The worse thing for me about the McMansions is the sheer size of them. People are buying teeny tiny blocks of land, building massive houses on them and leaving only a metre either side (half a metre if we use the fense rather than the neighbours house). And they're all boxes. Fours sides, two stories and a roof.

What I find absolutely amazing is that people are buying these boxes in some of the lowest suburbs in my city - all the developers have to do is lay some turf, throw in an artificial lake and suddenly it's poshville regardless of the fact that on all four neighbouring suburbs have chronic unemployment etc. etc.

I just don't get it. My sister in law dreams of buying one of them - thank fully my brother is a chippie and he refuses to go anywhere near them. He builds them occasionally and he certainly won't live in them.

[Dan Layman-Kennedy]

A Hellmouth under the Sure-Kill Expressway would explain an awful lot.

[cjmr's husband]

You don't need to find another job to have your commute extended; my company just up and moved to another office a few years ago. Oh well.

One other advantage to buying an older house: No Home Owner's Association!

[Scott]

I think the govt should mandate that neighborhoods consist of only 50+ year old houses and family businesses that have been around for generations. It can create those from scratch if necessary, because there's nothing govt can't do.

[hapax]

Scott, dare I say it, actually has a point. When we moved to our current home, our choice was between hastily-slapped together McMansion developments out of town, and 1950's row housing crumbling to bits in town. Academics doesn't pay the kind of salaries that would allow us the lovely century-old homes.

Nor are there that many jobs; we were lucky to find two positions in the same corner of the state. Trying to find two positions in the same city, to spare the hours long commute is a fantasy, as is the one-income household.

Yeah, maybe its our own fault for choosing careers without tons of well-paying job openings. Or for wanting our kids to go to good schools and be able to safely play in our own yards. We should have stayed in the hellhole we lived before, and sacrificed our lives and children in the campaign to make the local schools better, the streets safer, and high-paying jobs mandated to all!

It's easy to sneer at the choices people make, without seeing the chain of circumstances that led up to them.

[zzyzx]

I have the reverse commute issue too. I live in Seattle proper, under 5 miles from the downtown core, yet I have to commute nearly 20 miles every day because my job is in the burbs. I wish I were working downtown. I could take the bus in and there are a lot more options for food.

[scott_bot]

UNIT REACTIVATION - UNIT REACTIVATION

Scottbot here to say that there is nothing, nothing at all that the government can do that the free market can't do better. You want created from scratch?

Try the Mainstreet feel of a Reston Town Center, surrounded by acres of parking lots on all sides - just like Mayberry, but not in black and white.

Which is a shame, because Scottbot loves black and white.

And even better, Reston was the private vision of a true American pioneer ( http://www.reston.org/Home/h_history.html ) - 'Providing the services of roads, streets, sewer, water, shopping centers, parklands and recreational facilities, and working with county officials to provide schools, libraries, and other necessities became too great a burden for one man’s bank account. One of his principal investors, Gulf Oil, stepped in to save the project from bankruptcy in 1967.' Oops - let's ignore that part. Easy with a reactivated Scottbot - it just deletes from reality whatever doesn't fit into its own uniquely perfect perspective.

Pushing on, as Scottbot knows no shame -
'Another key component in Bob Simon’s original master plan for Reston was the heart of this urban landscape in a rural setting.
....
The planning and development of Reston have surpassed all expectations as has the phenomenally successful Reston Town Center. In 1996, the total number of visits to the Town Center for all purposes during the year was more than 5 million. It has become the “downtown” for western Fairfax County and eastern Loudoun County.'

And yet note the key word of 'visits' relating to this proud accomplishment of the free market creating an 'urban landscape in a rural setting' - no one actually lives there. There are parking places for 3000 cars, but no actual living humans in Reston Town Center, which is 'downtown.'

Scottbot remains impressed at such an accomplishment of the free market, and sneers at goverment's miserly achievements, like Central Park or the Library of Congress. There is nothing the free market cannot do, especially when given a free hand - and as this Scottbot has never actually seen the hand that flips the on switch, believing in the invisible hand as the source of all life and goodness comes naturally.

[SueW]

It can create those from scratch if necessary, because there's nothing govt can't do.

Hee hee! :-D

McMansions in this area, as they are designed these days, are oversized, overpriced monstrosities.

[85% Duane]

It's easy to sneer at the choices people make, without seeing the chain of circumstances that led up to them.

Yeah, that was a thought I had when I posted earlier. Like everything else, these issues are really simple if you ignore all the complicated stuff.

[rm]

Fred, that's prospective buyers, not perspective.

I am with hapax . . . as an academic, in my small town, the choice is between a tiny old house in town (where there aren't really any neighborhoods out of walking distance from a cluster of drive-through liquor stores) or a "development" that is eating up the historical farm landscape, wasting gas, etc. So we go with the development. We can see a famous historical farmhouse from our yard, on the historical farm of which we now have our cookie-cutter one-entrance neighborhood.

We are quite aware of building quality issues. Our first "development" house was literally falling apart, into a backyard that had shit bubbling up from the septic tank in ground that should not have passed the perk test that allowed the builder to begin work. We had to get a lawyer to force the builder to buy the house back . . . and he promptly sold it to another sucker. In our state there was no residential building code at all until 1999.

On names, what really bothers me is not that "a perfectly straight street without a single tree shouldn't be called 'Poplar Circle'" but that NO street in any neighborhood in the United States should be given a name like "Old South Drive." It took me a few years to realize that the entire naming scheme of my "development" is based on a nostalgic romance of the slavery days. (They had not paved "Old South Dr." yet when we moved in, and the other names are more subtle). I guess this saves real estate agents the legal risk of overtly discriminating, given the cultural signals being sent out by the street names.

All this on the former land of a famous abolitionist.

Sometimes, I confess I do hate America.

[hapax]

To be fair, there ARE things gov'ts can do. One thing that would help a lot in this area would be government subsidized mass transit -- rail would be lovely, but a decent bus system would help -- instead of pouring more money into building more roads, which then get bordered by strip malls, which cause more congestion, requiring more roads...

The problem is, the growth here has been so fast. All the different towns cannot get over the concept that they are no longer independent civic entities, surrounded by acres of rural farmland, but rather interconnected in a four-county mega-community. Everybody jealously guards their prerogatives, and nobody is willing to cooperate.

[cjmr's husband]

McMansions in this area, as they are designed these days, are oversized, overpriced monstrosities.

I can't speak for other areas, but here in suburban DC the land prices are so high the price of the actual house barely affects the final price. Once the construction cost is less then 25% of the final price, why NOT get a loan for another 10% and build a McMansion?

Yes, I know the answers to that one: because of the cost of heating the eyesore, and we're still talking tens of thousands of dollars here.

But a better solution is to save that 25% and buy a house that's already built. With mature trees and everything.

And no, Scott, no government intervention should be necessary here. Unfortunately an unregulated banker knows that the possibility of foreclosing on a McMansion in a rising property market is a Good Investment, and will work aggressively to make sure such opportunities present themselves.

[Jesurgislac]

About twenty years ago, I had an American couple staying with me, and they asked how old the block of flats I lived in was: I told them I didn't know to the year, but it was probably around 150 years old.

They were stunned. I was stunned at their being stunned. As I explained, I had never lived in a house that was less than a hundred years old - and twenty years later, aside from a year or so spent in a house that was about fifty years old, that's still true.

Of course, British houses tend to be (by comparison with the American houses I've stayed in) tiny, narrow, awkward, with modern bathrooms and kitchens usually in chilly extensions off the main house or cramped up into cupboards. Oh, and the showers are terrible: the water-pressure is usually too low and the bathrooms were never designed for showers. But we built to last...

It's like having bought one really good-quality suit, hand-stitched, made to measure, of the best cloth. It'll last forever, long past when you're sick of wearing it, because, well, it was made to last forever.

I stayed in a hotel in the US that was 8 years younger than my father. It was labelled a historic monument. My dad is many things, but not a historic monument...

[McJulie]

It might be complex, darn it, I hate the McMansion phenomenon with a burning, bitter passion.

I've been inside a house in that kind of development, and it's appalling -- giant picture windows that give you an excellent view of the neighbor's giant television. The kind of place where I think, if you can afford to live here, why would you?

And it's partly driven by developers seeking to maximize profit -- they can charge more for a bigger house on the same plot of land. And it's partly driven by consumers -- there are a lot of people who want "more house" for the price even if it's at the expense of less green space. And there are also people who are impressed by the bells and whistles and don't notice fundamentally shoddy design or construction.

But these developments are soul-killingly ugly, the worst of all possible residential worlds. The houses are so close together they might as well be row houses. You have all the crowding and traffic of an actual city, but not one of the amenities.

Sure, there's a lot of talk about "safety" and "kids" and I don't have kids, so maybe the "good schools" thing is really a big tough issue that I am blissfully unaware of. But if your concern is "safety" then living in a far-flung suburban development isn't exactly safe: obesity rates are higher than in the suburbs, and riding around in automobiles is still the most dangerous thing most Americans will ever do. And suburbanites do a lot more of it than urbanites.

Also, I grew up in the suburbs, and it seemed to me that nothing was more dangerous to teenagers than their own boredom. Adults seem to have this idea that teenagers who don't have, say, all-ages clubs to go to, will magically, I dunno, be going to church youth groups instead. But what they really did was go to the woods and snort cocaine and have unprotected sex.

I don't want to seem like I'm accusing anyone in specific of anything, but in general I am cynical about the notion of urban "danger" and suburban "safety" because it seems strongly related to racism/classism. This cynicism is based on my own history growing up in the suburbs, and observing how family and friends reacted to urban environment. They seemed to have an instinctive, unreasoning fear of the environment itself, and reacted with exaggerated "oh my god!" helplessness to encounters with, say, crazy homeless people, or panhandlers, or large numbers of nonwhite people all eating in McDonald's at the same time.

So, even if you are somewhat more likely to be robbed in an urban environment* that fact isn't actually what drives people to consider the suburbs "safe."

*Statistically there is more crime per capita in cities, however, my own anecdotal experience is that you are more likely to be robbed in the suburbs.

[Richard Hershberger]

I am in the process of buying my first house: a townhouse built in the 1970s in a mid-sized town. It is, technically, part of a development. How could a townhouse not be? But this development is two blocks, set apart from the thoroughfare, with my property backing up to a creek with trees (thus assuring that I won't wake up one morning and look out my back window to find condos). There are lots of families in these two blocks: clearly a good place to raise a kid, which is why we are moving there.

I specifically did not want new construction. I have seen too many modern residences where you can see the shoddy workmanship just walking up to the front door, with joints that don't quite meet and the like. It's not that I am rosy-eyed about 1970s construction, but if it were built on the cheap this would have become immediately obvious long before now.

The observation I like about McMansions is that clearly the sole priority is to enclose the maximum volume of air as cheaply as possible, with esthetics completely out of the equation. So wouldn't it make the most sense to put up quonset huts?

[hapax]

McJulie: Also, I grew up in the suburbs, and it seemed to me that nothing was more dangerous to teenagers than their own boredom.

This is, to put it bluntly, classist bullshit. It is an unbelievable luxury to be frightened of boredom.

I grew up in the boring burbs too, and couldn't wait to escape them. Until I did.

Then, where I could afford to live, I had the drug dealers downstairs; but hey, it was educational to explain to the kids what the baggie they found in the driveway contained, and that they should never ever answer the door without a parent next to them. The wifebeater upstairs (I used to sit with my phone in my hand, silently begging her to say something like "help!" so I could call the cops.) The biker on the run from the Mafia because he had been a dealer in Vegas and absconded with a wad of cash (he was a nice guy, though, and his wife a terrific cook). The chop shop behind us, that would periodically fill our yards with billowing clouds of greasy black smoke. The yard, btw way, which was full of rusty nails and splintered lumber because our landlord stored it there, and wouldn't remove it, no matter how we begged, so we had to drive our kids to a city park so there was someplace safe for them to see grass and trees. Although it was taking our life in our hands to back out on the street, since there wasn't a day that didn't pass without a major wreck, sirens flashing and ambulances screaming. Our favorite neighbor was the liquor store two doors down, because at least the guys who worked there knew my face and nodded, instead of hiding behind their doors most of the time. Besides, you got used to the drunks face down in the parking lot, in a puddle of their own urine.

Gosh, do I feel all guilty and racist for prefering my development, ugly and soulless though it admittedly is, where the crime consists of teen kids breaking windows, and the life-threatening dangers are adolescent sex and death by cheeseburger.

[cjmr's husband]

The great thing about 1970s construction? They were still using asbestos, which almost makes up for the aluminum wiring.

[cjmr]

You can't put $50K three-story-tall picture window 'complexes' into a Quonset hut. Mind you, I'm not sure why people want them in their houses, either. I like just enough window to provide sufficient light that you don't have to use lamps during the day, but small enough that they can be conveniently covered with insulating drapery when it's cold. In other words--the number of windows that are in houses built in the 1960s and 1970s.

[cjmr's husband]

Isn't one of the great design features of the standard McMansion the one wall with NO windows?

[Rozzen]

My family had a new house built some ten years ago and the thing I missed most bitterly was the lack of climbable trees. Other than that having a new house is nice, you can build it to spec and don't have the worries of modernising an old house.

On the other hand, having a house built is in itself an ordeal...

@McJulie : I enjoy walking, and often have to walk at late hours and have no fear of doing so. Or to be more accurate, I have a slight fear of doing so which has been entirely caused by the people who go : "you're going to walk in that neighborhood at three in the morning ? ARE YOU INSANE ??"
(small voice: but, it's where I live.....)

Of course you have to remember the experience of the guy who saw a menacing person ahead of him, thought of crossing the street but then remembered Edward Murrow's words "we shall not live in fear of one another". So he went on, and got mugged.

So... fingers crossed ! :)

[cjmr]

RE: walls with no windows

All the ones in those developments that we drove by this weekend were situated at odd angles on their lots so that they didn't need to have blank walls between the neighboring houses. But the ones that are only 10 feet apart, yeah, those tend to have totally window-less walls on that side.

[SueW]

I grew up in the boring burbs too, and couldn't wait to escape them. Until I did.

You kind of make it sound like the *only* alternatives are either boring suburbs or drug-infested slums. I don't find that to be the case. What I'm looking for is a small-town sort of place - not really suburban, but not North Philly either. I've lived in the suburbs most of my life, and now I find it kind of deadening. I hate the way this neighborhood seems to have been planned for the purpose of making you drive to everything, even to the mall 1/4 mile away. Maybe I would like it better if I had kids like everyone else, I don't know. But I'm ready to try something different.

[Jeff Weskamp]

"There is nothing the free market cannot do, especially when given a free hand - and as this Scottbot has never actually seen the hand that flips the on switch, believing in the invisible hand as the source of all life and goodness comes naturally."

I've read many economists and "prosperity-gospel" preachers who damned near regard The Free Market as an impersonal deity in Its own right. "Trust the Free Market, it will regulate all things to the Greater Good..."

Funny how these "prosperity-gospel" preachers believe so fervently in the Free Market, yet will still campaign against pornography, prostitution, and drugs. Hey, all of those things earn billions of dollars every year, so the All-mighty Free Market must approve of them, right?...

[Rozzen]

Posted by: cjmr's husband | Sep 17, 2007 at 11:30 AM
Posted by: cjmr | Sep 17, 2007 at 11:30 AM
Posted by: cjmr's husband | Sep 17, 2007 at 11:32 AM

Great. Now I'll spend the day wondering... Are cjmr and her husband on the same computer, alternating ? If so, are they fighting over the computer, or laughing at us ? Or are they in the same room but communicating through the internet ? Do they talk to each other about who will post what next ? Are they at work procrastinating and very cutely talking to each other in the comments despite the miles and miles that separate them ?
The mind boggles.

[cjmr's husband]

One of us has an 8-to-5 office job. At home, we are a nine-computer family.

[Jeremy]

Scott, McMansions are not the result of any "free market" but rather are as tightly symptomatic of DEEP government involvement as genital warts are of the HP virus.

Why do we have suburbia?

1.) Because property taxes are calculated based on the current market value of what is built on top of land, not what the land itself might conceivably be used for. Thus, municipalities have an interest in turning triple-A-plus farmland with 40" of black-as-pitch clay soil into fields of "townhouses" or McMansions.

2.) Because schools are paid for with property taxes. Thus, the perfectly normal, yet perfectly perverse calculus becomes, "How can we maximize revenue for the schools while minimizing student population?" There are 2 possible answers: 1.) "Active adult" housing, open only to folks 55 or older; generally condos or other reasonably dense--nay, urban--housing. These people pay taxes, but rarely add children to the school population. 2.) McMansions; high property taxes, but very spread out geographically. The average town only can hold so many McMansions before the "developments" finally spill over into someone else's school district and become Someone Else's Problem. This amounts to government intervention in pursuit of a low population density of middling-rich to very-rich people.

3.) Because of the federal highway system. Absent GIGANTIC federal transportation subsidies, 1946-to-present, we would not have suburbia in America. Anywhere. Ever. Because the Federal Highway System will kick in $9 for every $1 that a state puts up for a highway of federal standards. Thus, every dirt-shouldered 2-lane country road gets expanded to four or eight lanes so it can get a 90% federal subsidy. And once that happens, the transport architecture is set for suburbia. Out the "country", it's not such a problem: Build ramps, appropriate farmland and voila, there you are. In the cities, you generally need to blast through old neighborhoods to set up the skyways and offramps. This has the dual effect of uprooting people from cities and then of giving them somewhere tempting to live afterwards.

Federal Highways--and even the old U.S. Roads--are NOT paid for by the tolls of the people who use them. Not even close. Not even FRACTIONALLY close. The people zipping along in cars, thinking themselves to be noble libertarian actors while it's the grasping, subsidized parasites who ride the El or the subway or the BART have got it ass-backwards. Our highway system is the most heavily subsidized transport system on earth, ever.

(Note: Want to feel the dark pull of becoming a ScottBot? Read the history of the Federal Highway System. You too may suddenly understand the appeal of a radically diminished federal government . . .)

[cjmr's husband]

Funny how these "prosperity-gospel" preachers believe so fervently in the Free Market, yet will still campaign against pornography, prostitution, and drugs. Hey, all of those things earn billions of dollars every year, so the All-mighty Free Market must approve of them, right?...

Better yet, imagine how much LESS money those three industries would make if they weren't railed against; then ponder the question of kickbacks!

Back on topic: the word of the day is splanch.

[LL]

Grew up in the burbs, live in one now (kinda; it's Irving, TX, which is technically a suburb of Dallas, though everything runs together here, so it's really just one big metroplex held together by about a dozen highways).

Giant houses are what people want, apparently. And if acceptably old-ass houses in the city are not available (or are so expensive that people of normal means, which means most of us, can't afford them), what are people supposed to do? Live in a tiny ancient house in a shitty neighborhood so they don't have to drive an hour to work? Nice if you can manage it, but many people can't. I'm unmarried, no kids, so I could (within reason) live anywhere I want. But when you're married with kids, I would imagine relatively unimportant things like the aesthetics of a house are kind of secondary to affordability, schools, etc.

Just sayin'.

[mmack]

Go in and find the guys in the landscaping or drywall or paving company T-shirts, buy them a round and ask what they can tell you about The Village at Shady Lake

Fred, the problem with this idea from my experience is you'll need to be fluent in Spanish to strike up a conversation with the landscapers, drywallers, or paving company workers who worked on your prospective development. And I don't want to be classist or racist, but I don't think a group of undocumented aliens from Mexico is going to want to talk to a lily white gringo with a poor grasp of the high school Spanish he took over twenty years ago.

Nostalgic Side Note

"Yuengling Lager"

I first tried it on a trip to Nag's Head, NC 2 years ago. It's Great Stuff, and I'd love to find a six pack of longnecks somewhere.

[mmack]

Funny how these "prosperity-gospel" preachers believe so fervently in the Free Market, yet will still campaign against pornography, prostitution, and drugs. Hey, all of those things earn billions of dollars every year, so the All-mighty Free Market must approve of them, right?...

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Porn
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?

:^)

[J]

Giant houses are what people want, apparently. And if acceptably old-ass houses in the city are not available (or are so expensive that people of normal means, which means most of us, can't afford them), what are people supposed to do?

Nope, sorry, I reject that as truth. Housing is not a consumer market where there's a product for everyone. What I want is to live in a moderate sized home at a moderate price close to work. I'm willing to sacrifice plenty to get it--you can keep your lawns, your garages, your palatial bathrooms, your four or five bedrooms, your central air conditioners--and yet, I cannot get this thing that I want.

So no, LL, the market does NOT provide what "people want". They provide what some people want and what some people are willing, under socio-economic duress and a dearth of alternatives, to accept. But the housing market is not like the candy bar counter where there's a flavor for everyone. A lot of us--probably more than you seem willing to admit--are simply SOL.

The housing market is more like a presidential election; diverse as our wishes are, we all sort of force ourselves to accept one or another of a very limited range of piss-poor options.

[cjmr]

Are they at work procrastinating and very cutely talking to each other in the comments despite the miles and miles that separate them ?

Procrastinating? You betcha!

Do we communicate via the comments here? Guilty as charged. Sometimes. Sometimes it's just a coincidence.

Miles that separate us? See husband's comment about his office moving three years ago. That was a year after we bought a house a reasonable distance from where his office used to be. We can't afford to move any closer to where it is now and stay in a reasonable size house.

[--susan]

I am convinced that part of the current mortgage-mess is because the cost of houses have been driven up artificially and ridiculously by the Development-Making-Companies. They don't build starter homes anymore. The marketing geniuses have managed to convince apparently most of the country that if you don't have at least four bedrooms and a garage, you're wasting your money.

People need cheap ways to finance a 200k mortgage because there just isn't much out there lower than that in new homes, and they've been made afeared of old homes, which are overpriced because they have been classified into this other marketing niche of people who can afford to spend 200k and then another 100k renovating.

Honestly, I don't understand why there isn't greater protest. Regular working-class people are effectively shut out of most of the housing market unless they're willing to be mortgaged up to their eyeballs. I have a similar beef with the zillion overpriced condos that ignore that hey, working class people deserve to be able to live in the middle of the city, too. Stop tearing down perfectly good apartment buildings.

(While circumventing traffic hell at the PA-DE border last night by taking 13N, I saw a sign for new "trendy urban townhomes starting in the low 200s" on somewhat shabby mostly commercial area in north Wilmington. Egads.)

[cjmr's husband]

We can't afford to move any closer to where it is now and stay in a reasonable size house.

Actually, we probably could, but I don't want to live that close to a prison.

[Geds]

Actually, we probably could, but I don't want to live that close to a prison.

But you meet such colorful people roaming about the edges of prisons...

[Buhallin]

So no, LL, the market does NOT provide what "people want". They provide what some people want and what some people are willing, under socio-economic duress and a dearth of alternatives, to accept.

The market will provide what the market can make a profit providing. There will inevitably be people left out of the loop - we just finished a similar discussion over the way so many good sci-fi shows get killed. The market provides what enough people want, and are willing to buy, to keep the market going. While there may be some left out, the simple fact that you feel the need to complain about the situation means that there are quite a lot MORE people happy (or at least content) with it.

If people are willing to get up at 5am and get home at 9pm in order to have a bigger house, that's their choice and their priorities. One of the things that hard-core liberals have never figured out is that you don't change people's minds by insulting them.

You want a house they don't make, and I want Farscape back on the air... We are all at the mercy of the tyranny of the majority in market matters.

[H. Wren]

Jeremy wrote:

Because of the federal highway system. Absent GIGANTIC federal transportation subsidies, 1946-to-present, we would not have suburbia in America. Anywhere. Ever.

The federal highway system had a tremendous impact on postwar American residential and commercial impacts, but suburban developments like those that we have today began in the early part of the twentieth century. Cities in the West such as Los Angeles had, on their outskirts, isolated, auto-centric residential areas, often segregated by economic class or race, beginning in the 1910s and 1920s. Real-estate developers were not as key to the origin of these suburbs as they were to their postwar counterparts (residents in some of these early Western suburbs built their own homes, for example).

Yet cars are as important to pre-war suburbs as they were to post-war suburbs. Without cars (and, to some extent, streetcars and other forms of mass transit), these suburbs would have not existed. Local and state governments were building and subsidizing roads long before the federal government got into the game. The federal highway system did not create the suburbs all on its own; rather, it intensified and exacerbated a process that was already in place.

[cjmr]

The market provides what enough people want, and are willing to buy, to keep the market going.

The market provides what advertising and real estate agents tell people they deserve and ought to have. Not necessarily what they actually need. There aren't enough people in our area that need $750-$900K executive luxury homes to justify the 200+ that are being put up in a five mile radius from where we live. What the area really needs is more modestly-priced, medium-sized homes that police officers, government employees, and teachers can afford. There are no developments going up around here in that price range, though, and haven't been in some time.

[Buhallin]

The market provides what advertising and real estate agents tell people they deserve and ought to have. Not necessarily what they actually need. There aren't enough people in our area that need $750-$900K executive luxury homes to justify the 200+ that are being put up in a five mile radius from where we live. What the area really needs is more modestly-priced, medium-sized homes that police officers, government employees, and teachers can afford. There are no developments going up around here in that price range, though, and haven't been in some time.

I just checked to make sure, and nowhere in my post did I say the market provided what people NEED ;) If we're really going to turn this into a debate about America's wants vs. needs, it's a lot bigger debate than just the housing market... At the very least, want vs. need is entirely subjective - do you really NEED to live farther away from that prison? I'd be willing to bet the crime rate around it is less than some of the worse parts of town...

Don't get me wrong - I'm not pleased with what the market is offering either. I have a much bigger house than I want at the moment, because there were certain features that were very important to us that we just couldn't get without also getting that extra bedroom in the bargain. But the reality is what it is, and telling people that the house that they are perfectly happy with is wrong because they don't NEED it isn't likely to change anything. The builders are building what people are buying. Those purchases may not be wise, but that's another issue that goes well beyond the housing market.

[Marc]

THe discussion brings to mind the song "Subdivisions" by Rush --
"Any escape might help disprove/the unattractive truth/that the suburbs hold no charms to soothe/the restless dreams of youth"

[LL]

What Buhallin said, kinda. I didn't say the market (in fact, nowhere in my post does the magic word "market" appear) provided for EVERYONE. And I think people who care more about having a giant house on a tiny lot than an affordable house are stupid. And I'm also not disagreeing that the average size of houses has gone up largely as a function of the builders' and banks' desire to get tons of money from people.

But people (here, anyway, in the Great Plains) seem to care more about square footage than anything else. Every time I've moved (to different APARTMENTS, not houses), the first or second question anyone has asked me is what the square footage is, like that matters in an apartment. Heaven forfend that anyone should have to make do with a measly 1500 square feet, it's 2000 and up for us, apparently. First, they ask you where your dwelling is. If they live in Dallas and you answer anything other than "Dallas" they are mostly distinterested from then on, as they believe that Dallas is the only place to live (because of all that character-building crime and traffic and incompetent city government) and if you live anywhere else, you're practically trailer-park dwelling white trash. You would not believe the way people here act (kind of horrified) when you say you live in Plano or McKinney or Mesquite, as if the metroplex is the high school cafeteria and Dallas is the cool kid table. Then, they ask you about square footage. That's all they care about. It's OK if you have a "smaller" house in Dallas, because the Dallas part makes up for the "small" part. Many, many people in Dallas are unbelievable snobs with not that much to be snobby about. It's Dallas, not Palm Springs.

I don't know how people here can afford to heat and cool (especially cool) their giant houses when my electric bill (for my relatively tiny apartment) was $100 last month. Yes, it would be nice if more Americans were smart enough to want smaller, more efficient houses, but it doesn't appear to have happened yet. So my original point still stands. If you want to know why you can't buy a new, small house, I'd suggest you rant to the Realtors (R) or the homebuilders.

P.S. I read somewhere that 40% of the cost of a house in NJ now is the land underneath it (up from 20% about 25 years ago).

[J]

One of the things that hard-core liberals have never figured out is that you don't change people's minds by insulting them.

Uh huh. Mostly what I've figured out is that no one changes anyone else's mind about anything by any means, ever.

[Jesurgislac]

I live in a house that was built (about) 120 years ago by a workers' cooperative: an early building society, which allowed ordinary working people on incomes normal for those days to buy good-quality housing. The cooperative both built and sold the houses.

No one is doing that today in the UK. In the idiot Thatcherite era, which is not over yet *waves fist at Blair* processes were set in train that prevent councils who sell off publicly-owned housing from using the proceeds to build more housing stock: and shareholders in building societies let the managers sell off their century-old assets for 30 pieces of silver. Where I live, no one on a normal income - or even two normal incomes - can afford to buy a house to live in, and often they struggle finding a place to rent, too.

But if I ever win millions in the Lottery, I'm going to start a new workers cooperative, for the purpose of building new houses. Because that's what we need, more than anything else, and we're not getting. (I have a reasonably-sized mortage because I put my 5% down on a flat before property prices started going through the roof...)

[Karen]

LL, you haven't lived 'til you've experienced Austin real estate snobbery. Here, living in the 'burbs still means living in the same bleeding city, just further down MoPac, but the Kewl Kids only live inside a square bounded by MoPac, I-35, Ben White, and Highway 290 (which is mostly a residential street through town, complete with stoplights and three different names.) I live in Oak Hill, which is within the city limits, but in a new development (well, new-ish. My house was built in '99.) so therefore responsible for pretty much the End of the World.

I live here because the house was cheaper than one half its size inside the Magic Circle, next door to an excellent elementary school, and far away from downtown's drunks passing out on my lawn. Many, but by no means all, progressives assume that the only reason anyone moves away from the city center is because we're racists or snobs or whatever. I so wish more of my friends would understand that while I can handle the drunks and the loud noise and the school problems, my kids can't. Thus, I live somewhere with fewer social problems to ensure that my kids only have to deal with those problems when they're older and readier for it.