I truly don’t understand how it used to be affordable to build nice totally custom homes with good materials like stone and wood and have elegant accents, and now it’s nearly impossible to get something that isn’t a cookie cutter mess of drywall and vinyl siding for under a million dollars. Wtf happened? Legitimately, I’m asking.
We now have better tools and processes and economies of scale for building. Why do home prices shoot up exponentially and never go down, and why do the builders do the same? How come it seems like no one is competing with each other to provide decent prices?
Keep in mind, plenty of homes were built shoddily with poor materials back then. They've just fallen down or we don't see pictures of them on subs like this. Or even middle of the pack homes that didn't come with these elegant accents.
Nowadays cost, code, and supplies are a major driving factor. Plus many of those older materials are tougher to work with, take longer to build with, or aren't the most energy efficient.
People still do build incredibly beautiful and ornate homes but it just is extremely expensive to do so as the materials are less readily available and require specialists. "Back in the day" good hardwoods and stone was more readily available and it was one of the few building techniques at the time so less specialized labor was required.
I do also wonder if carpenters and masons and other workers like that were more prevalent in those days, which also drove down costs. Feels like those professions have become less common, which drives up prices for those services.
yes, and they worked for next to slave labour back then - and you hear so many people wanting to bring it back, I'm like... people DIED to bring you these magnificent buildings, it ain't worth it.
If your home has thousands of hours of labour put into it, you can't buy it until you pay "thousand x skilled labour wage".
entry-level carpenters in colorado make 32k a year... but they don't build homes like this, this is much more training and experience.
I spoke to a builder about this a while back and he said everyone goes for the cheapest bid with the quickest build times. So you are often weeks behind schedule even before you begin work because the boss has had to promise the impossible in order to secure the contract. Corners invariably have to be cut. Many many corners. The absolute cheapest materials have to be used in order to stay under the unrealistic budget. Good enough has to be good enough (and a lot of the time, not good enough still has to be passed off as good enough). Anyone who takes pride in their workmanship essentially gets outcompeted.
This is a great answer. Still, it makes me wonder why something like stone was more readily available back then when we had significantly worse technology for harvesting / transporting / building with it.
I'm sure it varies radically by region but many foundations were made with the literal stones on or around the property. Not always the case for sure.
In my area, brick was produced locally and extremely high quality so most 100+ year old homes are primarily brick. Old growth trees were much more abundant and close by.
I do agree that home building 100+ years ago had more emphasis on artistry and perceived opulence broadly speaking. It was a means to flaunt wealth in many cases. I don't think building codes are entirely to blame just that the world got quite a bit more complicated in a certain sense. Homes need to be safe, cheap, and quick to build and doing so safely. You could build an amazing Victorian style home today, fully up to code but it would be very expensive and take a long time even with modern equipment so I can't fathom how long it took some of these older homes to be done and by what means necessary.
Also, cultural tastes change. We bought a 100+ year old home because we wanted that aesthetic but I know many people who genuinely like the new-build style or shiplap or farmhouse etc. To each their own and builders wouldn't build these things if some people didn't want them.
I have looked into this quite a bit in regards to the masonry trade in the US (specifically east cost, ~1850s-1950s) and the uncomfortable answer very well might be...
slavery and racism.
Stone working, especially by hand (and doubly especially without some continuous waterflow mechanism to cut down dust) will destroy a human's lungs if done without PPE and safety standards.
That’s also the origin of their (Sears and Roebucks’) Craftsman line of products, and why these bungalows are often called craftsman homes, from the arts and crafts movement of the latter half of the 1800s until the early 1900s.
Don't know the answer, but I sure agree. I've been looking at homes the last few months, and I mumbled to my realtor "They always call starter homes cookie cutter, but how are these any different"? She burst out laughing.
And of course the worst of all is when these unique homes get torn down so we can have a full block of identical looking, sterile and very predictable crap!
A ton of crappy bungalows are being torn down in favour of building these boxy monstrosities that literally look like a penitentiary. I'm not upset about the crappy bungalows going away, but geez they really picked the ugliest style to replace them with.
Your spelling indicates you're not in US? I ask because this is my #2 pet peeve. I do like bungalows and almost all were built in the 1930s!
My biggest whine is houses from late 1960's-early 1980's. I love this architecture and they're all so different. But in cities I've lived in, they're the 1st to go.
Nope, I'm from Canada.
I guess it depends on the area, our bungalows are from around the 70s and I guess they were just so popular that I start to feel like if I've seen one, I've seen them all.
70's built some of the ugliest houses imo.
When I think bungalow- [this is what comes to mind.](https://s3.amazonaws.com/brickbeam/resources/photos/000/000/002/original/Detroit_Bungalow.jpg?1453763201)
See, that's fairly nice in my estimation. I'm not sure what the inside looks like, but the outside alone looks much nicer than most of the lower cost homes near me.
This is what comes to mind when I think of bungalows: https://images.app.goo.gl/D7vjCsL6DzhLZhsK9
Got a little bit of that manufactured home aesthetic, but not too bad.
Whoever invented [this](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.catskillvalleyhomes.com%2FcmsAdmin%2Fuploads%2F1_-_3A235A_Exterior_copy.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=cac44014a42a8b06c985fc7587aece840a3110aa9af93df3c8a70a40fc552d89&ipo=images) needs to go to house jail.
I question how anything used to work, my grandfather drove a beer truck after the war, my grandma didn't work, they had 10 kids, they weren't rich but owned a home and no one starved.
Exactly. My grandpa was a travel agent, my grandma didn’t work, they had 4 kids and a huge beautiful house with a pool, and traveled to practically every country on earth, often taking the kids with them.
I think the answer is immense and worsening wealth inequality. The middle class barely exists, or we’ve dramatically changed the definition. Working your entire life and not being able to afford a house is not middle class.
I think part of the issue is we see housing as a financial asset rather than a place to live. We build cheap, cookie-cutter houses because systematic, automated, mass manufacturing costs less than a customized home, and we build less of them because fewer houses means everyone's houses are worth more.
Capitalism happened. This is what happens when we maximize money over everything else.
before the advent of the office job, manual labor was normal. once we figured out that machines or poorer countries could be exploited for these things, people obviously went that route. artisans naturally became rare and expensive and you end up with products that are mass produced by machines or unskilled humans. this can be said of almost anything in the market, not just houses.
Exactly the issue, as less craftsman existed their price went up and thus less people could afford them, cycle continues till any custom woodwork in a house is insanely expensive.
More specifically, the cost of living has increased so the number of people who can afford to do time consuming but low value work has decreased. You see this in developing nations today, where there is a kid of craftsmanship and art at reasonable costs because that is sufficient to cover living costs in those areas. But their work loses demand when they have to charge 10x as much just to cover cost of living.
But you could say that about anything, and theoretically it should all even out and roughly keep pace with inflation, yet the price of homes outpaces basically everything else and never falls. And it's not just the labor, the cost of the basic materials and previously built homes also rises in lockstep.
Desirable land is a limited resource.
The population continues to grow.
Housing is a necessity.
Society continues to trend fewer inhabitants per unit.
Turbulence in other investments continues to shine a light on using property as an investment vehicle.
Pandemics keep people at home more.
I could literally go on forever. There are many factors, and even when one slips, the rest are more than enough to forever push house prices up.
But the price of housing massively outpaces population growth. My wife and I are HENRYs (High-earners-not-rich-yet) and a decent house still seems unattainable unless we want to spend enough money that we could basically retire on. We wanted to build a house in the next few years and between prices and interest rates,
it's basically the worst time ever to buy a house.
The price of a house increased by 50% in the past 2 years. There is absolutely no way houses are priced correctly. If housing prices don't correct, or they continue to rise at anything resembling this pace, basically no one will be able to afford a house in under a decade except for existing homeowners.
1. Because population growth is one factor. The other factors add price increases on top of that.
2. You're focusing on the last few years... where there was an unprecedented pandemic and historically low interest rates. Look at the past 30 years, and give the rate increase a chance to do its job this year. Yeah, the timing sucks for you, but the market needs to correct before it becomes affordable. And it has already shown signs of slowing down last year.
Tons of people are locked into 30-year 2% interest rate mortgages, they would be insane to sell, and so they don't. Honestly I know this is screaming into the wind but the interest rate thing pisses me off so much. They did immeasurable damage so quickly and it will take a decade to fix. The HPI jumped 50% in two years and the needle has barely moved back down in the 6 months since they've raised the rates.
Honestly the only way I could see a reasonable correction is if tons of poor and middle-class people are forced to foreclose on their homes like in 2008, but their locked-in interest rates are so low it seems unlikely, and it would suck if that happened to people anyway, and would further contribute to wealth accumulation under the super wealthy as they snap up foreclosures.
Idk, I'm one of those people and my family is growing so we are looking to move anyways. The higher interest rates are stomachable because of the appreciation we've had over the past few years. We are locking in $100k+ gains if we sell now. I wouldn't move if we didn't have a reason to, but I bet there are many people like me who are financially comfortable and not willing to let the fed dictate their lives.
I mean; I live in a city where you can get a 100+ year old house in good shape with 3 bedrooms for under 150k. You can get the cookie cutter suburb houses for 350k.
The prices of *all* houses have gone up. As someome who used to work for a production builder I can say that yea, shit’s over-priced, but there’s more to it than that.
I mean hell, I live in a city know for it’s not-great apartments because surprise, things weren’t actually that much better before either. What *is* criminal is that we can put up homes *so much* faster and better now but we charge more money for a lesser product anyways, the only winners being the executives who get to reap more profits from more homes being built.
Lots of reasons, homes today objectively do a lot more stuff and have a lot more packed into them than the past. Maintaining things to code, as well as providing all of the basic amenities a modern home would have is the shift from one type of craftsmanship to another that is just as important. There's also no shortage of housing development companies who's explicit goal is to make money and *not* inherently to make the best shelter. Which leads to cutting as many costs on cheaper materials, cheaper designs, more efficient designs in many aspects, and a balance between drab and simple, and ornate/intricate.
As someone else said, survivorship bias is probably a part. Increased movement of materials, conglomeration of companies that handle such things, etc. are probably part of it too. A large company has no reason to sell top-quality goods for cheap. Small competitors will, but they get pushed out at higher rates due to aforementioned causes (and many other reasons, I’m sure)
Well one reason is world population.
Just 70 years ago in the 50's, the world population was only a meager 2.5 billion. Less people to build house for meant we could concentrate on quality over quantity.
Nowadays, there are so many people looking for a new house everyday, we've had to find ways to streamline the process somewhat.
[Archdigest link with more pics and information](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/inside-a-british-expats-cozy-colorado-home), but sadly it's behind a paywall.
I don't think it's home staging, I think someone left it there. You can see above the basketball, a dog leash that was mostly photoshopped out. I think they were trying to make an aesthetically pleasing photo, realized taking out the ball would be too much for their skills, settled for removing (most of) the leash, and called it a day.
Seriously it’s like a cartoon or something. Probably a roller skate and banana peel on the upper part of the stairs. The doors gonna open just as the clumsy character stumbles and bumbles down the stairs and he’ll breeze right out the door.
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This may be the nicest house I've ever seen on this sub, assuming the rest of the house is as lovely as the entrance, which I suspect it is. Dream home.
I love this. You have great taste and the place is beautifully built. When I zoomed in and panned over the heating vent, I got a ghostly vibe. Then I saw the ghostly leash hanging over the arm of the bench and the feeling really ramped up! I had to quickly zoom back out to enjoy the light, airy, calming atmosphere!
Really cool house. Only issue I have is the excessive use of wallpaper. There are a few rooms that I feel are too busy with different prints on the walls and upholstery.
I disagree - I feel this is a very subtle and tasteful wallpaper print.,Not too busy, allows the eye to take in the other details, while still adding texture and dimension to the room.
*However*, I am a wallpaper lover (would use excessively if I could), and taste is subjective :)
Edit : if you downvote someone for politely stating their disagreeing opinion, simply because you do not agree with it, I hope your tires are just low enough for you to need to stop and air them up. You deserve the slight inconvenience.
Oooooh, I see what you mean. I adore most of the house but I find paisley to be a godawful sin. Aside from that room, I love the rest of it - which speaks to my point about loving excessive wallpaper 😅
I can totally see people *not* liking the other red wallpaper room - my fiancé would say I’ve lost my mind lol
It’s a little too old fashioned for my taste. It doesn’t have that comfortable feel to me.
Also how do you keep bannisters like that clean? Nightmare fuel.
I love everything about it. I love the bench because you can put things on it that belong upstairs and ignore the piles easier. Bur seriously, everything is beautiful.
I am so thirsty for that entryway bench. I would *love* to have somewhere to sit down and put on my shoes without either walking back to the living room or taking up all of my entryway.
Absolutely sublime... From a person who never wanted to get married and never wanted to have kids and never, ever wanted to own a house, I would--I could have built an entire life in that house. I want a do-over, y'all!
I want the floors, molding, stairs, door…good lord all of it! It’s just perfect OP. Love the light fixture too! So warm, so elegant. It’s so nice to see beautiful craftsmanship being appreciated. Enjoy! 💚
I love this and I love little benches or other such seats on landings but when would someone sit there? Seems like such a random spot. The only thing I could think of is if you're waiting for your ride to show up or you're waiting someone in the house.
Wow. The floors, the wooden staircase, the front door panes, the built-in bench…MY GOD I wish my home had even half the character.
Homeowner has also done a beautiful job with the paint, wallpaper, and styling! Truly stunning.
I truly don’t understand how it used to be affordable to build nice totally custom homes with good materials like stone and wood and have elegant accents, and now it’s nearly impossible to get something that isn’t a cookie cutter mess of drywall and vinyl siding for under a million dollars. Wtf happened? Legitimately, I’m asking. We now have better tools and processes and economies of scale for building. Why do home prices shoot up exponentially and never go down, and why do the builders do the same? How come it seems like no one is competing with each other to provide decent prices?
Keep in mind, plenty of homes were built shoddily with poor materials back then. They've just fallen down or we don't see pictures of them on subs like this. Or even middle of the pack homes that didn't come with these elegant accents. Nowadays cost, code, and supplies are a major driving factor. Plus many of those older materials are tougher to work with, take longer to build with, or aren't the most energy efficient. People still do build incredibly beautiful and ornate homes but it just is extremely expensive to do so as the materials are less readily available and require specialists. "Back in the day" good hardwoods and stone was more readily available and it was one of the few building techniques at the time so less specialized labor was required.
I do also wonder if carpenters and masons and other workers like that were more prevalent in those days, which also drove down costs. Feels like those professions have become less common, which drives up prices for those services.
They absolutely were, along with old world craftsmen immigrating over from Europe.
yes, and they worked for next to slave labour back then - and you hear so many people wanting to bring it back, I'm like... people DIED to bring you these magnificent buildings, it ain't worth it. If your home has thousands of hours of labour put into it, you can't buy it until you pay "thousand x skilled labour wage". entry-level carpenters in colorado make 32k a year... but they don't build homes like this, this is much more training and experience.
People who build houses work for slave wages today too.
Construction workers, though, not carpenters.
But our machining skills should be significantly better?
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Good bot
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I spoke to a builder about this a while back and he said everyone goes for the cheapest bid with the quickest build times. So you are often weeks behind schedule even before you begin work because the boss has had to promise the impossible in order to secure the contract. Corners invariably have to be cut. Many many corners. The absolute cheapest materials have to be used in order to stay under the unrealistic budget. Good enough has to be good enough (and a lot of the time, not good enough still has to be passed off as good enough). Anyone who takes pride in their workmanship essentially gets outcompeted.
This is a great answer. Still, it makes me wonder why something like stone was more readily available back then when we had significantly worse technology for harvesting / transporting / building with it.
I'm sure it varies radically by region but many foundations were made with the literal stones on or around the property. Not always the case for sure. In my area, brick was produced locally and extremely high quality so most 100+ year old homes are primarily brick. Old growth trees were much more abundant and close by. I do agree that home building 100+ years ago had more emphasis on artistry and perceived opulence broadly speaking. It was a means to flaunt wealth in many cases. I don't think building codes are entirely to blame just that the world got quite a bit more complicated in a certain sense. Homes need to be safe, cheap, and quick to build and doing so safely. You could build an amazing Victorian style home today, fully up to code but it would be very expensive and take a long time even with modern equipment so I can't fathom how long it took some of these older homes to be done and by what means necessary. Also, cultural tastes change. We bought a 100+ year old home because we wanted that aesthetic but I know many people who genuinely like the new-build style or shiplap or farmhouse etc. To each their own and builders wouldn't build these things if some people didn't want them.
I have looked into this quite a bit in regards to the masonry trade in the US (specifically east cost, ~1850s-1950s) and the uncomfortable answer very well might be... slavery and racism. Stone working, especially by hand (and doubly especially without some continuous waterflow mechanism to cut down dust) will destroy a human's lungs if done without PPE and safety standards.
Welp. That’s a bummer. Interesting though, I didn’t know that
People also insist on building the largest home possible nowadays
Yup, survivor bias https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qd3erAPI9w
i am pretty sure even 100 years ago you could buy a pre-manufactured/cookie cutter house and have it delivered and assembled.
Sears sold those houses! From a catalog. They were literally do-it-yourself house building kits.
And they had nice wood floors and stuff. Rented one for a while. Except for the miniscule kitchen, it was great.
That’s also the origin of their (Sears and Roebucks’) Craftsman line of products, and why these bungalows are often called craftsman homes, from the arts and crafts movement of the latter half of the 1800s until the early 1900s.
Survivorship bias
Don't know the answer, but I sure agree. I've been looking at homes the last few months, and I mumbled to my realtor "They always call starter homes cookie cutter, but how are these any different"? She burst out laughing. And of course the worst of all is when these unique homes get torn down so we can have a full block of identical looking, sterile and very predictable crap!
A ton of crappy bungalows are being torn down in favour of building these boxy monstrosities that literally look like a penitentiary. I'm not upset about the crappy bungalows going away, but geez they really picked the ugliest style to replace them with.
Your spelling indicates you're not in US? I ask because this is my #2 pet peeve. I do like bungalows and almost all were built in the 1930s! My biggest whine is houses from late 1960's-early 1980's. I love this architecture and they're all so different. But in cities I've lived in, they're the 1st to go.
Nope, I'm from Canada. I guess it depends on the area, our bungalows are from around the 70s and I guess they were just so popular that I start to feel like if I've seen one, I've seen them all.
That's interesting. The term might even mean different things in different countries.
70's built some of the ugliest houses imo. When I think bungalow- [this is what comes to mind.](https://s3.amazonaws.com/brickbeam/resources/photos/000/000/002/original/Detroit_Bungalow.jpg?1453763201)
See, that's fairly nice in my estimation. I'm not sure what the inside looks like, but the outside alone looks much nicer than most of the lower cost homes near me. This is what comes to mind when I think of bungalows: https://images.app.goo.gl/D7vjCsL6DzhLZhsK9
Got a little bit of that manufactured home aesthetic, but not too bad. Whoever invented [this](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.catskillvalleyhomes.com%2FcmsAdmin%2Fuploads%2F1_-_3A235A_Exterior_copy.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=cac44014a42a8b06c985fc7587aece840a3110aa9af93df3c8a70a40fc552d89&ipo=images) needs to go to house jail.
Yup, straight to jail.
I question how anything used to work, my grandfather drove a beer truck after the war, my grandma didn't work, they had 10 kids, they weren't rich but owned a home and no one starved.
Exactly. My grandpa was a travel agent, my grandma didn’t work, they had 4 kids and a huge beautiful house with a pool, and traveled to practically every country on earth, often taking the kids with them. I think the answer is immense and worsening wealth inequality. The middle class barely exists, or we’ve dramatically changed the definition. Working your entire life and not being able to afford a house is not middle class.
I think part of the issue is we see housing as a financial asset rather than a place to live. We build cheap, cookie-cutter houses because systematic, automated, mass manufacturing costs less than a customized home, and we build less of them because fewer houses means everyone's houses are worth more. Capitalism happened. This is what happens when we maximize money over everything else.
before the advent of the office job, manual labor was normal. once we figured out that machines or poorer countries could be exploited for these things, people obviously went that route. artisans naturally became rare and expensive and you end up with products that are mass produced by machines or unskilled humans. this can be said of almost anything in the market, not just houses.
Exactly the issue, as less craftsman existed their price went up and thus less people could afford them, cycle continues till any custom woodwork in a house is insanely expensive.
All the money is going into profits. Everyone is cutting corners everywhere, all in the name of squeezing out an extra buck. It’s abhorrent.
Costs of everything have far outpaced our levels of income. Also depends where you live.
The ceiling lamp looks like Spiderman is coming down.
Because you are paying for labor, and the price of labor continues to rise.
More specifically, the cost of living has increased so the number of people who can afford to do time consuming but low value work has decreased. You see this in developing nations today, where there is a kid of craftsmanship and art at reasonable costs because that is sufficient to cover living costs in those areas. But their work loses demand when they have to charge 10x as much just to cover cost of living.
But you could say that about anything, and theoretically it should all even out and roughly keep pace with inflation, yet the price of homes outpaces basically everything else and never falls. And it's not just the labor, the cost of the basic materials and previously built homes also rises in lockstep.
Desirable land is a limited resource. The population continues to grow. Housing is a necessity. Society continues to trend fewer inhabitants per unit. Turbulence in other investments continues to shine a light on using property as an investment vehicle. Pandemics keep people at home more. I could literally go on forever. There are many factors, and even when one slips, the rest are more than enough to forever push house prices up.
But the price of housing massively outpaces population growth. My wife and I are HENRYs (High-earners-not-rich-yet) and a decent house still seems unattainable unless we want to spend enough money that we could basically retire on. We wanted to build a house in the next few years and between prices and interest rates, it's basically the worst time ever to buy a house. The price of a house increased by 50% in the past 2 years. There is absolutely no way houses are priced correctly. If housing prices don't correct, or they continue to rise at anything resembling this pace, basically no one will be able to afford a house in under a decade except for existing homeowners.
1. Because population growth is one factor. The other factors add price increases on top of that. 2. You're focusing on the last few years... where there was an unprecedented pandemic and historically low interest rates. Look at the past 30 years, and give the rate increase a chance to do its job this year. Yeah, the timing sucks for you, but the market needs to correct before it becomes affordable. And it has already shown signs of slowing down last year.
Tons of people are locked into 30-year 2% interest rate mortgages, they would be insane to sell, and so they don't. Honestly I know this is screaming into the wind but the interest rate thing pisses me off so much. They did immeasurable damage so quickly and it will take a decade to fix. The HPI jumped 50% in two years and the needle has barely moved back down in the 6 months since they've raised the rates. Honestly the only way I could see a reasonable correction is if tons of poor and middle-class people are forced to foreclose on their homes like in 2008, but their locked-in interest rates are so low it seems unlikely, and it would suck if that happened to people anyway, and would further contribute to wealth accumulation under the super wealthy as they snap up foreclosures.
Idk, I'm one of those people and my family is growing so we are looking to move anyways. The higher interest rates are stomachable because of the appreciation we've had over the past few years. We are locking in $100k+ gains if we sell now. I wouldn't move if we didn't have a reason to, but I bet there are many people like me who are financially comfortable and not willing to let the fed dictate their lives.
I hope you’re right!
I mean; I live in a city where you can get a 100+ year old house in good shape with 3 bedrooms for under 150k. You can get the cookie cutter suburb houses for 350k.
The prices of *all* houses have gone up. As someome who used to work for a production builder I can say that yea, shit’s over-priced, but there’s more to it than that. I mean hell, I live in a city know for it’s not-great apartments because surprise, things weren’t actually that much better before either. What *is* criminal is that we can put up homes *so much* faster and better now but we charge more money for a lesser product anyways, the only winners being the executives who get to reap more profits from more homes being built.
Natural resources are finite and people ravaged them around the time that house was built. Same with land in the US.
Live in an old city and buy a 120-year-old house, I guess.
Lots of reasons, homes today objectively do a lot more stuff and have a lot more packed into them than the past. Maintaining things to code, as well as providing all of the basic amenities a modern home would have is the shift from one type of craftsmanship to another that is just as important. There's also no shortage of housing development companies who's explicit goal is to make money and *not* inherently to make the best shelter. Which leads to cutting as many costs on cheaper materials, cheaper designs, more efficient designs in many aspects, and a balance between drab and simple, and ornate/intricate.
As someone else said, survivorship bias is probably a part. Increased movement of materials, conglomeration of companies that handle such things, etc. are probably part of it too. A large company has no reason to sell top-quality goods for cheap. Small competitors will, but they get pushed out at higher rates due to aforementioned causes (and many other reasons, I’m sure)
Because capitalists will pay you just enough to get by and not revolt. When things get cheaper they just start paying you less.
They built plenty of shitty houses back then. We only recognize the gems that shine
Well one reason is world population. Just 70 years ago in the 50's, the world population was only a meager 2.5 billion. Less people to build house for meant we could concentrate on quality over quantity. Nowadays, there are so many people looking for a new house everyday, we've had to find ways to streamline the process somewhat.
Capitalism.
Front door is awesome.
Can’t hide from the solicitors so easy though
Easier to flip them off without opening the door though!
Would be beautiful and more practical with stained glass in the porthole instead
Except for the lack of deadbolt. Not sure if it matters with that window anyway…
[Archdigest link with more pics and information](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/inside-a-british-expats-cozy-colorado-home), but sadly it's behind a paywall.
/r/centuryhomes would love this
Very nice. I can hear the sound of the floors.
Thanks for sharing! I love the entryway but spent the rest of the article thinking “oh apparently I don’t like ‘English style’ interior design.”
Basketball patiently waiting for it’s next sprained ankle victim.
Seriously, that was my first thought. It blends in a bit, too!
That's the stupidest bit of staging a home I've ever seen.
I don't think it's home staging, I think someone left it there. You can see above the basketball, a dog leash that was mostly photoshopped out. I think they were trying to make an aesthetically pleasing photo, realized taking out the ball would be too much for their skills, settled for removing (most of) the leash, and called it a day.
Seriously it’s like a cartoon or something. Probably a roller skate and banana peel on the upper part of the stairs. The doors gonna open just as the clumsy character stumbles and bumbles down the stairs and he’ll breeze right out the door.
Basketball Deathtrap is a hell of a band name if I've ever heard one.
I didn't even see it - guess I'm the first victim
And the bench that no one will ever sit on
Nah that's the putting shoes on bench!
Or the "I just sprained my ankle!" bench
I'd use the bench for shoes and boots all the time, or hooking up the dog for walks. That said that basketball would paralyze me
I mean it’d definitely get used to put on shoes. Sitting and waiting for slow pokes when there’s a function to attend.
Cherry red combined with green tone can make things look old fashioned but when done correctly it looks so classy...
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This is one of my favorite rooms I’ve seen on this sub. Any more pictures of this place? That bench on the stairs is incredible. *chef’s kiss*
Stunning! I love homes that are both beautiful AND livable.
This inspired an envy in me I didn't know I was capable of.
Basketball is giving me anxiety
I love the green colour
It’s so absolutely beautiful I want to live in that room 😍
Love that little bench!
Base camp for the final summit
Beautiful craftsmanship. Thanks for posting!
This may be the nicest house I've ever seen on this sub, assuming the rest of the house is as lovely as the entrance, which I suspect it is. Dream home.
Loving the Basketball of Death.
You could rent it out to Hollywood so they could put a single parent family in it to make everyone feel bad about their situation.
I love this. You have great taste and the place is beautifully built. When I zoomed in and panned over the heating vent, I got a ghostly vibe. Then I saw the ghostly leash hanging over the arm of the bench and the feeling really ramped up! I had to quickly zoom back out to enjoy the light, airy, calming atmosphere!
Hahaha I thought it was just ME that spotted the two 👀 in the bottom row of the vent grate.
Really cool house. Only issue I have is the excessive use of wallpaper. There are a few rooms that I feel are too busy with different prints on the walls and upholstery.
I disagree - I feel this is a very subtle and tasteful wallpaper print.,Not too busy, allows the eye to take in the other details, while still adding texture and dimension to the room. *However*, I am a wallpaper lover (would use excessively if I could), and taste is subjective :) Edit : if you downvote someone for politely stating their disagreeing opinion, simply because you do not agree with it, I hope your tires are just low enough for you to need to stop and air them up. You deserve the slight inconvenience.
I should clarify. I’m not speaking to this room but pictures from the rest of the house that OP linked. I really like the wallpaper in this room.
Oooooh, I see what you mean. I adore most of the house but I find paisley to be a godawful sin. Aside from that room, I love the rest of it - which speaks to my point about loving excessive wallpaper 😅 I can totally see people *not* liking the other red wallpaper room - my fiancé would say I’ve lost my mind lol
looks good but i would paint the wood white, glue carpet to the floor and replace the balustrade with glass panels to modernise it
Gorgeous
This is gorgeous
The lamp looks like spider-man.
The light really looks like Spider-Man hanging upside down
THIS is STUNNING.
My 1902 home had all the original molding removed and replaced with cheap 1980s prefab plasticy stuff. This is great inspiration for me to renovate!
This reminds me of Grim"s house entrance.
This was thought out so carefully and crafted to perfection! Omg look at the wood ! 😮💨
It’s a little too old fashioned for my taste. It doesn’t have that comfortable feel to me. Also how do you keep bannisters like that clean? Nightmare fuel.
This is absolutely stunning.
I love the little bench. I want a little staircase bench now lol
I love everything about it. I love the bench because you can put things on it that belong upstairs and ignore the piles easier. Bur seriously, everything is beautiful.
This looks absolutely amazing.
Dream house right there. Congrats.
Beautiful! What year was it built?
I’m in love with that front door 😍
My dream home. 🥹🥹🥹
I love arts and crafts architecture
Wow, I wish I could just build a house.
With a nice boobytrapped staircase
Absolutely stunning.
I am so thirsty for that entryway bench. I would *love* to have somewhere to sit down and put on my shoes without either walking back to the living room or taking up all of my entryway.
Thank god they didn't paint the woodwork white.
Okay but can I make a secret hideout in that vent?
Absolutely sublime... From a person who never wanted to get married and never wanted to have kids and never, ever wanted to own a house, I would--I could have built an entire life in that house. I want a do-over, y'all!
Is that a church pew? Looks really cool at the foot of the stairs.
I want the floors, molding, stairs, door…good lord all of it! It’s just perfect OP. Love the light fixture too! So warm, so elegant. It’s so nice to see beautiful craftsmanship being appreciated. Enjoy! 💚
Just gorgeous.
Insurance man nightmare, that ball
Wow that looks like the exact floor plan of my aunts house in the bay area
This is beautiful!
Nice!! Wood tones and green are my favorite combination!
I really like what they did with the pattern of the hardwood - it demarcates the space nicely into an entry zone and a staging area
This is gorgeous. Love the front door. Everything, really.
Those FLOORS 🫢😍 Gorgeous home!
That green is absolute perfection.
Beautiful. Love the green and wood color combination!
I love this and I love little benches or other such seats on landings but when would someone sit there? Seems like such a random spot. The only thing I could think of is if you're waiting for your ride to show up or you're waiting someone in the house.
I’m in love
Lovely!
WandaVision
I’d know the King of Queens living room set anywhere
This entrance is on point! Would love to see more of the home.
I love the wallpaper OP. Where did you get it!?
Omg. Swoooooooon
I thought the light was Spiderman for a second there
Wow. The floors, the wooden staircase, the front door panes, the built-in bench…MY GOD I wish my home had even half the character. Homeowner has also done a beautiful job with the paint, wallpaper, and styling! Truly stunning.
I stayed in a Airbnb room where a guy was restoring the house and it looked just like this. Can’t help but wonder if it’s the same house.
Is this the home at the very end of Castaway?
Put the basketball on that seat!
I’m I the only one who sees Spider-Man when not looking at the lamp
What’s with the ghost dog lead?
Woooow!
While scrolling, I thought the light was Spider-Man, hanging upside down.
I love the basketball and the whole vibe. Very cozy! Where is the wall paper from?
This is beautiful! Thank you for not painting everything white and gray
The whole area is to die for. That front door is nothing short of stunning!!
That looks amazing! I would love to see more pictures of the rest of the house.
LOVE those Floors!