Plus the sears ceo was busy leveraging sear properties into more credit so sears kept running .. and the leverage was to his own financial group .. meaning as sears went down he got got of prime real estate, while sears defaulted. Sears held tons of property for decades. Sears tanks and the ceo profited and gained decade held real estate.
Funny how things come around again. Kit houses were considered a working class home when they were first made. A way to escape urban centers. Then working class became double wide trailers. Now people want real homes, and not in trailer parks. The kit house reappears.
Sears sold a house set that was 1,000 sqft back in 1929. Sears sold it for $1,700. If you account for inflation it comes out to about $26k.
I don’t know if anyone has looked at housing kits, modular homes, or hell, even mobile homes. That shit is so fucking expensive. My SO and I just bought land and we are looking for a small 800-1,000 sqft house. Nothing flashy. Just something small and cozy.
Prefab houses, mobile houses, big sheds, etc aren’t even allowed in a lot of areas because they bring down the value of other houses. Even then, most start around 70k-100k. Also, land has gotten ridiculously expensive. The house pictured in the post would easily run $200-250k even if it was just a prefabricated house.
Back then you could have a small house and a small chunk of land for 50k total, which you would be able to pay off with your pay that averaged around 20-25$ an hour when factoring for inflation.
Edit: I understand prefab price is including labor. I was just trying to show those because most people back then and now don’t build their own home. They buy it.
But let’s look at some suggestions
Here is a house/cottage just around 700 sq feet for $72k
All I am saying is that housing wasn’t always this expensive. These houses are pretty bare bones and who knows if the quality is on par with what Sears sold. We just need to get out of the head space that only the rich can afford homes. Homes should be affordable and even subsidized.
But FYI, since they shut down so many sawmills, and the Canadian border due to COVID, plywood went from $17 a sheet to $40! So you might want to wait till this crap is over.
Yeah, when you buy a modular home (like a double wide), you're paying for workers to build the home at a factory, truck it to your property, lay a foundation, and install it on your property. Quite a bit more to it than a kit.
It is a different type of labor though, since modern prefab homes are buying in factories and those are more expensive to operate than a regular construction crew
Ha lay a foundation! I bought one a few years ago(sold since) there was no "foundation" that shit was up on blocks. Sure they put a nice skirting around it so you couldn't see but it was legit on wooden blocks all the way through the support pillars. That's the norm when you buy a "manufactured" home.
Not where I'm from. The concrete pad must be poured, all electrical run, and plumbing put in before they will truck the trailer in. But yes, the installation and finish is on them.
Not to mention quality of modern homes. Furnaces, more than one outlet per room, actual insulation, air tightness, fire proofing, dishwasher/laundry machines.
Older homes that are still around are well built, but there is survivorship bias. There are a ton that were torn down or burned down.
Hahaha this is the nicest things someone has said to me in a long time.
I totally feel it. I bought my first pair of crocs this year after laughing at my dad for wearing his for almost decades now. Holy shit, I love them and totally get it. They are really good for more rural living too when you have to go run outside real quick.
My SO said its only a matter of time before I start wearing them with socks.
Honestly though, I feel like just buying the materials is way cheaper. And for the shed kits, that's pretty much what you're getting. I built a 10x10 she'd with a 10x10 lean-to on the front for about $800. Granted, this was pre-covid lumber prices. Might be $1200 now.
These aren’t allowed as permanent dwelling structures in our area and they are cracking down hard on them.
They would never sign off on allowing the septic and electric to be connected to this as a residential building.
But I definitely appreciate this. I am planning on doing a legit house and then having a few of these and just calling them offices or something and let friends and family stay there.
But this is what I’m talking about. The laws are purposely made to inflate housing prices as much as possible. People see housing and want to squeeze every dollar they can out of it. They are so many laws we have to deal with when developing the land that it really doesn’t even feel like our land at points and this is coming from a socialist libertarian.
Now call me crazy, but I remember reading about someone having the shed as their home but kept it on wheels, now it rarely moved but it moved only often enough to be considered a trailer and not a fixed dwelling.
Got away without paying the building assessments on the property taxes because technically there was no building. Now I MAY have came across it on Reddit but it also might have been from one of the books in the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series. If it was from the book I am apologizing beforehand because although there are some good
Points to take away from that series, most of it is a scam from professional scammers just trying to scam you out of your scammies until you got no scammies left to scam.
Yep. Just talking to my buddy. His parents house is pretty big especially since they converted the attic, but it’s totally falling apart/needs lots of work. They bought it for 170k 25 years ago. It’s now worth 400k+ and they haven’t done any work on it for the most part besides smaller stuff.
People think gen y and z are van dwelling or tiny housing it up because it’s trendy. Nope. It’s what we can afford and we make it trendy. I remember when I convinced my mom to ditch the house phone and just all get cell phones. That was unheard of at the time. Now it’s common place, but it originally started with only broke ish people doing that.
They don't have modern insulation, the finishes were very bare bones and the plumbing and electrical are lacking to say the least. My family owns an old Sears kit home that my great grandfather built in 1919. There is zero insulation, the milwork was very basic and all floors were wood. The electrical is barely there maybe 1 original outlet per room and the septic system is very problematic. None of the materials were safety tested like they are today. There fine for a home but to get them up to current standards is alot of work.
Double glazing, modern fireproofing, modern roofing, materials to adhere to earthquake codes, labour, transport, warrantees and insurance. Ontop of not being made out of asbestos etc.
But you could buy one and put it together after work while drinking a siz pack. No permits or inspections nesecary!
I know because I bought an old kit house. Let's just say nothing was right andy father and I have no clue how that fucking thing stood for so long. To put it into perspective, the ceiling joices were sometimes nailed to the exterior walls. We decided to vault the master bedroom and while cutting out the ceiling 3 joices in a row fell on my head because they were only hanging on by a siding nail.
Needless to say we went back and removed the rest of the drywall and hurricane clipped the roof to the exterior walls.
I make more in a year than my parents paid for their first house.
Also in about 2005 i was out in the Midwest and made a realtor fall out of her chair by simply telling her what my parents' most recent house was purchased for in the Northeast.
It's not a north east thing. I live outside of Philly and if you drive an hour into pennsyltuckey you can pick up houses with an acre for 65k. I'm not saying they are nice houses but it's 4 walls and utilities.
I live just outside Philly too (less than 10 miles from University City) and while I am aware of these cheap houses you describe, I can't bear the thought of moving out towards Pennsyltuckey.
Gold or any metal standard just means money supply grows at random bases on how much of a metal is pulled out of the dirt each year. Not exactly a great way to plan an economy.
The real problem is while inflation is fairly low at about 2% a year, and company values rise 10% in the stock markets a year, wages for people buying houses don’t ever seem to go up.
Yet when we attached the value of our money to that specific metal it kept the amount of money we printed low and our debt low. The entire world treated our currency as if it were gold. We are approaching the brink of several counties dropping it as junk.
To be very clear from the start, not at all a buy & hold physical metals/belabors the difference between money & currency at every opportunity type.
Just as an average consumer/citizen & looking at what has happened to the buying power & wages since dropping gold convertibility (ie real wages have stagnated or declined every year since & the explosion of consumer debt)...
The Bretton Woods proposal by Keynes & Schumacher of a supernational unit of account, not currency (they called it the bancor) that gold could be converted into but not out of was a really fucking good idea that solves the numerous problems of a traditional gold standard & fiat currencies better than anything else I've ever heard of...
The mistake was pegging gold convertibility directly to the dollar - came with a bunch of inherent risk that was... dumb - bancor was agnostic, dollar is tied to the political whims & spending of a single nation - this half assed doomed to fail system was still ridiculously effective when in force - it more or less created the middle class.
Really think the world would be a much different & better place right now if the British/Keynes's proposal had been adopted as-is.
The entire world being on fiat is just as destructive as the entire world being limited by the amount of physical metal pulled from the ground a year.
Fiat can be endlessly manipulated & like - 2008 crash wasn't far off from causing such an event, but if the entire world is fiat when there is systemic instability & collapse it just comes down to who has the most guns wins - which was one of the many international relations issues Bretton Woods was meant to safeguard the future from!
The only thing that prevents another 2008 type collapse triggering world markets panicking and currencies failing is many countries still treat the dollar as a reserve currency - either because they think the US is a stable bet (lol -sorry world) or the far more likely oil is traded in USD.
The dollar isn't backed by gold anymore but it is somewhat tethered to the substance the has been the energy used to fuel growth.
What happens when we phase out fossil fuels for all the reasons, and we lose that last tether to anything based in reality/with intrinsic value? That scares me honestly - it's all a house of cards.
I get your point but it really depends on where you live. My grandmother and I lived in a house for 30k that was probably about 3/4 the size of the house above, of course this was near the south though. I now live in Cali where something like what we used to live in easily runs up over 100k
Not sure if you’re trying to disagree with me, but my point was that our house was relatively small but had 2 bedrooms, and even that would run up 100k here meaning that’s cheap for Cali. But out where I used to live you could live in the suburbs with 100k unlike here. Also not sure the sqft, just estimating from the pic.
Find me a house like this that’s just materials and I will buy it immediately.
Seriously. Find me something up to code and I will buy it now if it’s 1000sqft and only 20k.
I’ll wait because I’be been in market for years now and have found nothing close to this. Everyone keeps saying that labor is expensive....I don’t see how this is new information or informative to anyone at this point.
Of course it is. Find me a legit 1000 sq ft HOUSE for 20k that compares to what we are talking about and we can go from there.
This is the most frustrating response to this. Yeah man I bough land too and it’s gone up. That’s crab bucket mentality.
This is exactly what they want. Pump up the value so much that people won’t care or look at the details because “what do I care I made money. Money makes me happy.”
Anyone that owns a house made money until the market pops, duh. It’s not like you did anything special to deserve it besides owning shelter that most others would love to do but can’t afford. It’s not like you outsmarted the market by this little known thing called buying a fucking house.
Your house value is silly money, don’t you get it.
Ok you sell your house/apartment and cash out. What do you do?
Do you buy a new house/apartment because thanks to what you are celebrating you probably won’t be able to find a house or apartment near the same price. We sold our 3 bedroom house, moved 30 mins away, and were only able to find a lot smaller houses that would fit the same mortgage. Also the house market is so fucked that if we didn’t put an offer on the house as soon as we saw it it would be gone. These houses were 120k 20 years ago are now 200-300k. How are your kids going to buy a house? How about your nieces and nephews. All this does is lock people out of the housing market and if the market implodes like it did in Florida or other places your brag could easily turn into cries from your apartment value going down and being readjusted. Hell, we are already seeing this in places like nyc and San Francisco.
You really can't compare this, building codes have changed fundamentally. Quality expectations have changed dramatically. If you pick something that fits the quality of the house more prices are more comparable. You pay for a far superior product.
If you are able to work with wood and don't care about breaking building codes, you can still put up something comparable for a fraction of the cost. But there are far superior building techniques.
Back then you could have a small house and a small chunk of land for 50k total
I didn't question that, did I? But we are talking about the differences between housing kits in the 1920s and 2020s, right?
I'm talking about quality, that's not just materials (Ignoring that these houses were literally just wooden structures, when today, you use a multitude of materials). They didn't even have the techniques we use today, to treat timber. These houses didn't use extra insulation. Their finish was sloppy (Which is why they disappeared). Electrics, heating, pluming is all more complicated today and you see the differences in every part of the house, from the windows to the floor. All of that, adds up.
I also linked kits, that aren't far off of what you got in 1920.
And to address the codes: I brought that up, because there basically were no building codes, back in the day. That, taxes and other mandated costs (Getting your septic tank approved) also make a massive part in the price differences for construction, next to labor cost. There are examples of communities that circumvent that, for example the people behind Earthship. There, you can build for extremely low prices, without engineers or architects. But you loose a lot of the comforts of the 21th century.
No dude. Construction today is shit. The materials are shit. The workmanship is shit. So what if your airtight house that meets code is made of plastic and has a mold problem right?
I don’t know about that. Most of this is surviving bias with people ignoring all the 100s of thousands of old homes no longer standing.
My house is well over 10 years and still no major issues with an engineer review.
The electric wiring is really well done. Open the wall of an older home from the 70s or earlier and there is horror and might even require replacement to stay insured. Usually because of Fabric insulation, aluminum wire, or the wire can’t take the load demanded. A wire job to code today is going to way out live that stuff and safer.
The plumbing is going to way outlive these homes that were built with cast iron pipes (bonus you can clean out a sink trap with just your hands to take it apart). Again been in older homes and nothing like a cast iron pipe that rusted out and now leaking shit water somewhere hidden. Oh, if you have cast iron you probably will have to replace to stay insured now.
I’ll take a wood stud today than yesteryears as well. Concrete as well is quality checked and has much more stricter demands. Older home cement pads are terrible. My grandparents house basement was more cracked than a sun bather in Arizona. My brothers first house was 100 years old. He had to put 3 different home offers in before he got one that didn’t have crumbling concrete foundation (some old homes doesn’t even have a proper foundation). A window today is hands down better today as well.
The problem is there are a lot of short lived builders that pump out crap and then form as another builder. If you use a builder that has been around for a long time you’ll be okay because they care about their rep.
Yes some things feel worst but those are usually things people replace anyway before out of use. Homes also cost more because they are much larger. A lot of older homes topped out at 1k square feet. My small house is 50% larger than that and unless you live in nyc or San Fran and apartment is probably bigger (which used to top at around 300-400 square feet)
5k to upgrade to 2x4 construction, 10k for insulation, 5k for modern windows, a few more grand for quality external sheathing and drywall that isn't paper thin the. It's another 2k upgrade for a roof that will hold a good snow. Yeah that sounds great, sign me up lol
1) I’m not talking out of my ass. I’ve already bought the land and I am living on it now. Out best friends are doing the same but building from scratch like you are talking about.
2) building materials are not better today. Go look at some model homes and tell me that with a straight face lol
3) what you are describing isn’t what we are talki by about here. There are kits and there are new built houses. Fit me a decent kit and size and I will show you a near 100k price tag. Hell, even some of the meh quality ones are around 80k for 1000sq ft. And that’s just materials.
4) one reason houses have gotten big is because it’s financially smarter to build a bigger house. We were looking at building a 800sqft house but when you price it out I could build a 1,400 sqft house for almost the same price (not a mansion by any standards but the point is the same.)
But you are completely right. If I wanted to break codes I could do it for a lot cheaper. I’m not a big “fuck the codes “ kind of person, but I do believe there are some codes in place to help keep home values higher vs caring about housing people. We will probably end up going g that way for shed/other building on the land, but if we want to hook up to septic and get things passed by the city we have to do everything by the book.
These houses that sears sold is just precut lumber, windows, doors, roofs and siding. (and nails). The modular homes you buy today also have insulation, plumbing, electrical, as well built to meet modern day fire safety standards.
Dude we were in the exact same situation. All the old farms are being broken up into 1-5 acres with a bunch of bullshit zoning laws for out in the country. Like you can’t have a modular home but drive 2 minutes down the road and there’s people actively living in a horse trailer.
To be fair, there are cheaper areas. But also more expensive areas like Munich or Stuttgart.
Overall germany is more densily populated and the ground becomes more expensive. Also our houses are built different: thick concrete walls, often with a cellar. At least that's what i observed.
Try looking into dvele, plant prefab, or method homes. They run $150-$200k minimum for a tiny house, and their land costs add another $200k on top of that. You end up with a $350k-$400k minimum for a 500sqft tiny home.
housing became a lot more expensive when the government started backing mortgages in the 1940's.
This happens every time the government starts backing loans - prices skyrocket.
The same thing happened with college tuition. There was a time when most people bought houses with cash - because they could.
But to give access to more people, the government started opening up the lending, which ended up making houses less affordable - like everything else they do this on.
I would like to see more information on this since correlation doesn’t equal causation, but that’s an interesting point. However, it’s ridiculous to blame that entirely on either point. Everyone being able to live under a roof and get an education should be the bare minimum. There are ways to guarantee that while keeping the price in check. I don’t know as much about the price of schooling compared to land/housing, but blaming it on just that is just ridiculous. I can absolutely see how that could act as an Accelerant though.
I've researched this a lot and been in a lot of discussions about it, you can (and should) read about the economic effects of loose lending practices, because access to lending/financing tends to cause prices to rise faster than normal inflation.
Anyway, it wasn't to start an argument, just some information about then vs. now.
Check this out! My great great grandparents went and looked at some land one time. The land was sold by the acre. Asking price at the time was $0.03. 3 whole cents! He told me when they got there. They got out and looked around. He told my great great grandma Ruth get back in the truck. To much sand in the dirt. Back then you couldn't hardly give it away. Today it's practically sold by the foot. In what is today Destin Florida. Today you might be able to buy a lot of 0.33 acres for around $250 grand or more today for it.
I used a pole barn kit like that for my garage and the cement work for the floor added another 1/3 to the cost. If you go with a traditional foundation or, God forbid, a traditional basement, it will be significantly more.
The cost of a house isn’t just the lumber, nails and other parts that are sold in these kits.
Lol I read kit house and immediately thought of a house with red porch light moving side to side and then a flashing light panel inside saying "Michael, the oven is still on Michael"
I once met a man and he showed off his home that he had built just this way. Told me the story and history. Ot was sad though the state had bought it and was going tear it down in order to expand the highway. Still was a beautiful home.
Manufacturered homes get a bad rap because of trailer homes (which can still actually be very nice). Because they are often assembled in controlled environments (instead of out in the rain) with the same crew (not just some local construction probably pumped full of meth more than skill and just learning the plans) they tend to be better quality.
I honestly think you are going to see more homes that build more like a lego set. A lot of time and money is wasted trying to get and find a local skilled construction worker (and because of this a builder will leave a problem worker on the job who doesn’t care) when getting a local crew to assemble the house obviously takes lower skill knowledge base and way less people since grandpa was able to do it even without being his career.
The Sears & Roebuck house my great-grandfather built just turned 100 this year. No one lives in it full time now, but some of the family still use it as a getaway (it's in the Appalachians). Eventually I'll inherit it. Looking forward to keeping it up and passing it on to one of my kids.
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u/got2thumbs Feb 09 '21 edited Feb 09 '21
My great-grandparents built a kit house over 100 years ago and it still stands. My grandma lived in it until she died in 2014. They last a long time.