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chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

One thing I haven’t seen anyone talk about in this discussion is the size difference in houses that are being built today vs 1950.

Typical homes being built in the 1950s were around a thousand square feet. Today they’re over two thousand square feet. The kind of homes that would be a starter home for a working class family back in the 1950s just don’t exist anymore.

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grue@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

The kind of homes that would be a starter home for a working class family back in the 1950s just don’t exist anymore.

First of all, yes they do. They’re just mostly condos instead of single-family detached houses.

Second, even houses literally built in the '50s that still exist are expensive these days.

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- chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  A 1950 single family house was 1000 square foot AND it had 3 or more bedrooms (I’ve seen up to 5). A 1000 square foot condo built today is 1 bedroom, not at all built for a family.
  
  The difference? Basements don’t count toward square footage.
  
  As for cost on existing old homes, they’re expensive today because there are so few of them and they’re in demand. That proves my point.
  
  US population in 1950 was 151 million. Today it’s 342 million. Yet if you look at the data, housing construction has been flat since 1968.
  
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- gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The houses from the 50s that survived were those which were built better and/or more expensive in the 1950s
  
  The rest fell apart or were knocked down
  
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DagwoodIII@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
That’s not really relevant.

There are plenty of reasons for houses to be bigger today; things like improved building techniques, better heating.

Also, I doubt the claim. In my area, when a big old one family house gets torn down, it’s usually replaced by a dozen condos. The average size of today’s houses might be skewed by giant mansions

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- chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The main reason houses are bigger today: they’re more profitable. Building bigger houses on smaller land nets developers a big profit.
  
  McMansions is what they’re affectionately known as in the architecture world. They’re not proper mansions (enormous 20 bedroom country estates), but hardly any of those exist anywhere.
  
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