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

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

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

66.1k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

8.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

206

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."

31

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"?

46

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.

23

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

5

u/MOMO-POKEMON Jun 06 '25

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

3

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. ;)

1

u/Laiko_Kairen Jun 06 '25

Oh damn that was a BAD typo 😂

3

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.

1

u/Blackbird136 Jun 06 '25

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

1

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.

2

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.

1

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.

1

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).

1

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.

1

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.

3

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.

3

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.

1

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

2

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.

1

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.

2

u/greysnowcone Jun 06 '25

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

1

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.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

[deleted]

1

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.

1

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.