Message from America

[andrewducker]

My brother Hugh sent me this email when he got back from the US:

Just coming back from America its a very different picture in living over there.

A large amount of America is still very rural and America is very large. Any kind of housing shortage that might have triggered this kind of boom was really only applicable to small very urban areas.

To give the largest comparison of size. The UK is 95,000 square miles (that includes NI) and has a population of 65,000,000
Wyoming is 98,000 square miles and has a population of about 500,000 (okay wyoming is the least populated state, but still America averages 10% of the population density of the UK)

As a couple of examples;

In Lima, where Meredith's family mostly lives, the lowest I saw you can get housing repossessions at the moment is for $6,000. Yes $6,000 for a house. In poor condition and only 2 bedrooms, but a house for less than I pay in nursery fees this year.

For $100,000 you can get a very nice looking house with 3 bedrooms and gardens out of town.
For $200,000 you can get a very nice looking 3+ bedroom house with big gardens in town. That would have multiple bathrooms, a 2+ car garage, etc...

Makenzie brought a small (e.g. the rooms aren't that big) 3 bedroom house (with 2 small bedrooms upstairs, one downstairs, a reasonable living room, a kitchen, a two room basement, back and front garden and a garage) for $70,000, which is about £45,000. This house is on the outskirts of Cincinnati (56th largest city) the largest city in Ohio, which is the 7th most populated state in America. Its about a 15 minute drive into town. Edinburgh would be the 36th biggest city in America. Manchester 4th biggest.

So, in other words, land is cheap n the states. I saw vast areas with closed shops on them for sale. I mean something the size of a football pitch in parking for a single store.

Which also means that the cost base for America is much lower than it is over here. If you think to include the cost of the land/building in everything that you buy over here you can see why prices are so much higher.

If you go to a restaurant then it costs more to build the restaurant cos of the land
It costs more to ship stuff to the restaurant, as everywhere where you buy things from also has a higher cost base
It costs more to grow food for the restaurant
It costs all the workers more to live because house prices/rent is higher so you need to pay them a higher wage

It also means that over here land/housing prices won't decrease as much. In America you can walk away from a house even if you owe far more than its worth, you can't do that here.

I don't know how applicable this is to other parts of America - but housing prices over here do seem to be staggeringly higher.

I'd love to know whether he's just getting an impression based on Ohio, or whether it's common across the whole USA...

Comments

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

It's not common across the *entire* US, technically--there are a few pockets where this is the exception rather than the rule--but it's true for the vast majority of it, yes.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

It's true for the vast majority by geographical area.

If you look at the east coast urban corridor (Boston south to DC) or the west coast (from San Francisco south to San Diego by way of Silicon Valley and Los Angeles) it's anything but. These areas aren't as densely populated overall as the UK, but they're not far off -- and land prices are commensurately high.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

It's also true for the majority by population. The two coasts, while they are densely populated, do not hold the majority of the American population. When I said "a few pockets where this is not true" I had in mind mostly the First and Second coasts.

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

Also, the suburban US houses that we saw (around Idaho and Montana) were not _brick built_ (which we favour in the UK). Houses tended to be made with wooden frames, boards and clad in either wooden shingles or plastic sheets that looked like painted shingles. i.e. the house was basically made with a lot more wooden infrastructure and took a fraction of the time to put up, costing less labour.

Cheaper land, cheaper materials, cheaper labour = much cheaper houses.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we mostly use treated pine. The majority of our houses will be lumber, though it is of course possible to find brick or masonry. But even when you do, it's most likely going to have a wood frame.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Heh.

There's a house going up in the lane across from my kitchen window, here in Edinburgh; I've been watching it grow.

First they dug a diry great hole and lined it with breeze blocks.

Then they installed a steel beam structural frame.

Then more breeze blocks as inner walls, then a damp-proof membrane, then an outer curtain wall of carved stone blocks (to match the surroundings). Cavity foam insulation going between the membrane and the inner wall, I believe (that bit's not visible).

So: steel, stone, and concrete, plus insulation.

(Admittedly the roof is timber-framed, but still: what's on top of it is good old-fashioned slate.)

[cybik.livejournal.com]

It's a shame that we use more expensive materials*, but manage to make terrible, terrible housing that is badly designed and badly put together. New housing estates are generally awful.

*more expensive, but not necessarily better.