Fr you never see ranch houses being built anymore, they’re all luxury townhouses or multi story mcmansions or generic suburb homes that trade good design for maximum sq ft.
I just want a small house with a decent yard… $500k easy around where I live. The affordable ones are bought above asking price and demolished to build two-flats or luxury homes.
Man I’m in the same boat. I bought a short sale condo during the housing collapse and I’m selling it now to buy a house…150k for a down payment and I can’t find SHIT I can afford.
I want a 2-3 bedroom house with enough room for a workshop (meaning a basement or 2-car garage) and ANY sized yard. The only ones I can find within an hour radius are 100k too expensive or need 100k in work.
If you’re the kind of person who wants a workshop, “need 100k in work” might be a trade-off you should make.
Fr you never see ranch houses being built anymore
I just want a small house with a decent yard
That’s because what you want doesn’t make economic sense to produce. You could make it work economically* to have a small house on a small lot, but if you’re forcing developers to build only a single house on a large lot (and that’s exactly what the zoning code does), then it’s going to be a big one in order for the developer to make the profit margin he needs.
(* I initially wrote “you could have,” but changed it because you actually can’t have that. Not because the economics wouldn’t work, but because the zoning code often just prohibits the “small house on small lot” market segment outright.)
Edit: quit downvoting facts, NIMBYs. Why is it so threatening to you for me to accurately identify the problem?
Well maybe we shouldn’t turn something people need to survive into a game of min/max P&L. I know construction and real estate companies need a profit to survive, but unchecked profit maximizing is bad for everyone but shareholders.
Why build a ranch when you can build a 2flat or multi family unit that takes up the entire lot, that only corporations can scoop up as an investment, or already wealthy individuals can buy outright and rent it out to squeeze any potential profit out of the working class that’s struggling to survive. That’s why there’s so few affordable single family homes being built, and if you don’t see that as a problem right now then I don’t know what to tell ya.
The worst part where I live(Ontario, Canada), they aren’t even high end, they are just insanely expensive. An absolute pile of shit mass-built subdivision home where I live starts at about $500k. Houses where they cut every single corner possible and only hire trade workers under the table or minimum wage. Houses where they pay off inspectors to be able to build without following codes. Houses where they rush every single worker because they are building them as fast as possible. It’s a fucking joke.
