r/interestingasfuck • u/Endolithic • Jun 06 '25

Homes are falling into the ocean in North Carolina's Outer Banks /r/all

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247

u/ResearchNo5041 Jun 06 '25

Surely if you got the money to build on ocean front property you got the money to do it right??

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u/Conspicuous_Ruse Jun 06 '25

You choose Texas water front property when you really want water front but don't have money.

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u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 Jun 06 '25

Yep. Texas beaches are maybe the worst in the US. Waterfront, but…

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u/SP3NGL3R Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25

No No. The builder went cheap (Capitalism), it's the sucker buyer that just shouldn't have bought it. But!!!! "Hey. This is the exact house as that one, just on wood instead of <literally anything else> but it's $100k less. Let's buy this one honey."

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u/ryebread91 Jun 06 '25

I know you're being facetious but surely it's not that big of a price difference right? Or do they really take you over the coals for the "premium package"?

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u/SP3NGL3R Jun 06 '25

Well, sorta/kinda. We had a 40 foot (15m) retaining wall install in our backyard last year. The wood-version was way cheaper and is like a 10-20 year wall. We too made the choice to just get the cheaper option, BUT, if this wall fails it just means we get spillage into our yard. I want to say the wood version was $2,000 in materials and the 'nice' brick/cement version was $10,000. I'll just glue some brick facade on it and sell the house the next month :P. I'm joking, I actually prefer the natural wood look, even if I need to replace it every 10-20 years.

Now. Stilts holding up a house. A brick/cement/rebar version would take some pretty heavy work to get just right, then you build your base-frame on top of that. I'd bet it's the difference of 10k in work/materials to 40k. Heck even hammering in the stilt is easier than digging down to the same depth for a much larger cement base. But everything has a mark-up. To actually just build a house is no where near the value of the house. Even here (GA USA). Say you buy an empty plot of land with intent to build a house. You'll struggle to find legit companies to do it because you're just one house, versus the 300 houses being development 1 block away. So your costs go up. Say the 300 houses cost an average of 200k each to build, they'll sell for 500k in reality. And the same house 1-off if you had it built would cost you 400k and you'd have to constantly be involved for decisions, versus picking from a menu. I'm making the numbers up, to some degree, just to make a point.

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u/Laiko_Kairen Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25

You're right, though. It's why every new neighborhood is made up of 300 cookie cutter houses with one of four designs, maybe a few different cladding options, etc. It's basically the difference between a bespoke suit and an off-the-rack mass manufactured one

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u/MOMO-POKEMON Jun 06 '25

Yes every NEW NEIGHBORHOOD tends to be very cookie cutter, here I helped lol 😂

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u/SP3NGL3R Jun 06 '25

Is that what they meant? J and N are close ... VERY different meanings and fireable-type if they worked for me. ;)

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u/Laiko_Kairen Jun 06 '25

Oh damn that was a BAD typo 😂

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u/SP3NGL3R Jun 06 '25

Oh come-on!!!! Why not leave the hate-speech typo? :)

It was so bad you actually could've gotten away with the NEW neighborhood cover-story on the news.

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u/Blackbird136 Jun 06 '25

Tell me you’ve been to Charlotte without telling me. 😂

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u/Linenoise77 Jun 07 '25

Go through any town that highly developed post war, and its the same thing. The entire town will be the same 3 or 4 designs from that era. People weren't contracting architects to custom build every single house. Even in more expensive areas, most houses came from some standard template that was then modified. There were similarities in the early suburbs post WWI as well with all the places built in the 20s and 30s.

The reason it doesn't stand out is those houses had 70 years to be remodeled, expanded, tailored, even if just a tiny bit, to multiple owners tastes, likely went through a cycle or two of ups and downs in the neighborhood itself....

Most of these "cookie cutter" houses will look little alike after a family or two work their way through too.

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u/Sad_Low3239 Jun 06 '25

This.

Everyone keeps complaining about affordable houses up here in Canada and you cannot find anyone to build one.

I called 15 companies and was hoping for a 2 bedroom Strawberry Box home. Of the 15, 2 answered. 1 flat out said unless we were looking to have 500k or more built they weren't interested in giving us a quote. The other one told us that no one will build that anymore and we need to look elsewhere.

Kent mini homes was a company built for modular cheap houses. They start at 250k, and that was 6 years ago. The cost for the house isn't linear though to the pricing ; that 250k is your barebones 1 master bedroom with open concept kitchen/ livingroom, 1 full bath house. So 4 load bearing walls, 4 internal non load bearing and then electrical. 250k.

If you go up to 400k though? You get bay windows, a second bedroom, 4 extra feet on both dimensions, larger bathroom with sacrificing a little to the kitchen and living room.

Then there are laws against tiny houses.

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u/Piepiggy Jun 06 '25

Concrete is a lot more expensive than wood, concrete that can stand up to 24/7 saltwater eating at it is more expensive, doing the ground work to have that expensive concrete be poured and cured properly is stupidily expensive.

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u/sedging Jun 06 '25

I can chime in as a housing land use expert. Wood-framed construction is by far the cheapest possible method in the US to build a residential home. Virtually all single family homes are built with wood, and if you've noticed those big boxy mid rise apartments around - those are basically a building code loophole that let you put wood framing on top of a concrete podium, which saves a bunch of money in comparison to concrete and steel.

Concrete is heavy, requires a lot of energy to manufacture/transport, requires specialized expertise to install, and requires extensive structural engineering and heightened building code requirements to ensure it is structurally safe. Generally, it's only used for residential development in dense urban areas where the additional construction costs are offset by how valuable the land is.

As a corollary example, many parking cost studies note how structured parking tends to cost several-fold more than comparable surface parking lots (ie the different between thousands vs tens of thousands per parking space).

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u/LB3PTMAN Jun 07 '25

That alone probably isn’t costing 100k, but if someone put in the effort to do that the rest of the house will also likely be comparatively nicer to the houses on wooden stilts.

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u/HarryPopperSC Jun 07 '25

They use cheap materials because it's cheaper to replace. Stronger materials will just get damaged anyway and cost more when it happens. Is what I always hear touted about this.

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u/PitBullFan Jun 06 '25

When you go into the purchase knowing that you're probably going to sell again in 10 years, maybe less, you don't really care unless you think it will be a problem when you're selling.

That's the advice I give my clients: When you're looking to purchase something, consider what selling would look like. If the property is "perfect" for you, but would be weird for most people, you're going to have a hard time when you want to sell.

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u/SP3NGL3R Jun 06 '25

I always worry about that when buying too. We've done a fair bit of house hopping (4 in 15 years) and though I might 'love' that cooky design choice I'm well aware that it's cooky and might only appeal to me. We've just renovated/built our basement and backyard and worry that we've made some similar choices. We'll see when we sell I guess.

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u/Laiko_Kairen Jun 06 '25

Honestly, I hate that advice so much

We spent my childhood in a house where every single decision had to be made with "resale value" in mind. Did we like one paint color more than another? Who cares, in a decade when we sell it, some random person is gonna want beige!

Fuck. Resale. Value.

Especially for ten years. That's a big chunk of your life to spend in a home designed for a hypothetical future buyer

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u/Nearby-King-8159 Jun 06 '25

Fuck treating homes as an investment & an asset to be sold later on.

We need to normalize buying one home & making it the family home for potentially generations again. This shit right here is how we got into the housing market crisis in the first place - way too many people treating them less as a necessity & more like a luxury to be collected and sold off.

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u/PitBullFan Jun 06 '25

Totally agree with you re: the paint. However, it's a much bigger deal when you're considering larger/expensive improvements, such as a kitchen/bathroom remodel or adding a deck to the back of the house. These larger projects need to be looked at through the lens of resale value. "Can I recoup what I spent, and hopefully more?"

The only way to escape the resale value concern is if you plan on living in that house for the rest of your life.

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u/greysnowcone Jun 06 '25

lol capitalism? As opposed to what? Soviet bloc apartments? Because that’s the alternative.

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u/SP3NGL3R Jun 06 '25

Okay for you I'll add rampant unregulated capitalism. Cost of housing hours up with the cost of insurance that goes up with the cost of healthcare. Etc. Rampant capitalism is how you get what we have now, a disgusting oligarchy where everyone but the 1% will lose in perpetuity. Welcome to the 99%. Brace yourself.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/SP3NGL3R Jun 06 '25

totally get it. Venice (FL, in case you didn't know there was another one) is built and sold by the lowest bid, so ... lumber. I get your point. Doesn't excuse using the wrong materials for the job. Vienna (Austria), floods constantly and they build 100x stronger, and that's just a rising tide. Venice, FL, that has storm waves????? Yup, building from wood is smart. Totally.

I'm no expert, just not a moron thinking wooden stilts in wave-prone areas is even remotely smart. No, it's temporary by design.

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u/gromette Jun 06 '25

Coal tar treated pilings have been the standard for a hundred+ years for maritime construction. This environment will corrode just about anything else. The issue is erosion because of lack of beach replenishment.

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u/webtwopointno Jun 06 '25

Do you really think everybody who lives on the coast is a rich tourist with a second home?

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u/DemonSlyr007 Jun 06 '25

Dude this whole thread is filled with people making jokes about how all these homes cost nearly a Million dollars.

Reddit and kids are so out of touch with reality when it comes to home prices, there's no point in trying to get through to them.

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u/TheDifficultLime Jun 06 '25

Maybe you need to go check beach house prices..

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u/DemonSlyr007 Jun 06 '25

Literally someone linked a zillow link under my exact comment trying to prove a point that they could find million dollar beach front homes. Obviously you can. But also, on that exact link, were plenty for 400k. In a housing bubble atm too.

I never ever claimed that you cant find million dollar beach front homes. If thats how people read my comment, I'll do a better job in the future completely specifying what I mean. Finding extreme prices and claiming they are the norm is what bugs me and what I was saying. A lot of the comments here seem to think that beach front=extremely expensive. When that isn't always the case. Some of the poorest people live on beaches because they are not always the best places to live for exactly the reason we see in this video.

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u/webtwopointno Jun 06 '25

And these even are nicer beach houses, what i was responding to was about the Gulf Coast where there are plenty of impoverished areas essentially at sea level.

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u/GhostofBeowulf Jun 07 '25

er care to back that up?

Like coastal city that has median income less than a nearby non coastal city?

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u/webtwopointno Jun 07 '25

Ya ofc my guy, the beach is not just for vacation

I already mentioned the Gulf Coast above, poke around the Bayou some.

And here is an example local to me that we were literally just discussing: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSF/comments/1l4lpva/half_moon_bay/

Like coastal city that has median income less than a nearby non coastal city?

Not really going to find a one:one comparison as there are also likely urban:rural and working:retired skews going on, which further complicate relief efforts

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u/CogentCogitations Jun 06 '25

Ocean front property is not that expensive when the property is not really "livable". That's why homes keep being built in areas that flood, because it is cheap. And usually insurance will not cover them, at least not for the very obvious risk of storm/wave/flood damage.

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u/Anfins Jun 06 '25

Some of the new construction these days are both expensive and built like shit with cookie cutter designs. Yet they often sell for over asking price so there's no incentive for builders to do better.

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u/ResearchNo5041 Jun 06 '25

What's that they say about a fool and his money?

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u/Unusual-External4230 Jun 06 '25

Beach houses weren't always as expensive relative to regular incomes as they are today, they were always a privilege but not with the same income to ownership disparity you see now. Many of these would've been built during that era and using concrete would've likely been prohibitively expensive.

It's also not entirely necessary, the wood lasts a very long time barring any severe damage and proper wood choice. It's probably also better off - if a hurricane ripped off the non-concrete structure, it's a lot easier to tear down and rebuild with wood stilts instead of trying to determine if the concrete was compromised by debris or not.

I grew up going to one of these islands and a lot of older houses are still standing now that were old when I was a kid.

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u/BootsAndBeards Jun 06 '25

Every dollar spent on a fancy foundation is a dollar not spent adding a 5th bedroom.

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u/sump_daddy Jun 06 '25

If youve been inside some of those houses it starts to make sense. They are built as cheap as possible because all they will be is rentals. The most important (perhaps only) factor driving decisions is 'years to payoff'. They build it as cheap as possible, maintain it as cheap as possible, because it means more money in their pocket. If it falls down 25 years later? The profit will have been made, and it will be someone elses problem by then.

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u/sdave001 Jun 06 '25

People want BIGGER houses, not better.

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u/mosquem Jun 06 '25

Outer Banks isn’t that expensive.

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u/Gottadollamate Jun 06 '25

Ocean front property, in Texas.

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u/YeshuasBananaHammock Jun 06 '25

I invite you to Surfside, TX, its practically a trailer park in the sea

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u/ResearchNo5041 Jun 06 '25

Just where I want to be!

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u/Llanite Jun 06 '25

Well, expensive neighborhood near other rich houses, sure.

Many of these "beachfront" houses face shitty beach in fishing town.

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u/FTownRoad Jun 06 '25

“Ocean front” property is more like “swamp front” property in most of these places.

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u/Educational-Win-1803 Jun 07 '25

I do construction in the area, these people have no idea what they are talking about.

Salt water (and the air surrounding) will corrode anything given enough time. On top of that, engineers and soil/ground testers have known for decades those houses would be “reclaimed” by the ocean, and would probably not approve the use of concrete for environmental reasons. There are actually a lot of environmental regulations, I know reddit it typically anti-america but our environmental protections are actually great.

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u/Sabard Jun 06 '25

Flooding isn't the only worry, there's often hurricanes that do more than make what would be the first floor wet. Wind and what it's carrying don't care what your first floor is made out of. It's cheaper to build on wooden stilts because it's ok for 90% of the weather (flooding) and for the 10% that it's not, you don't have a house left on top of the stilts anyways. The only way wood loses out to concrete is if they aren't properly maintained or if the entire region suddenly only had flooding to worry about.