I think getting rid of (or renovating) old structures is a good thing. 100 year old houses are not generally fun to live in, unless they have been very very well maintained to the point that it would have been cheaper to rebuild.
That depends on how building standards have shifted in your location in the last 100 years - and the durability of construction methods used.
Here in the UK most homes are built from brick, and in many regards standards of housebuilding have dropped a lot since the 1920s. A 100-year-old house will have its downsides (standards of insulation weren't high 100 years ago) but will often be more desirable than a new-build property.
Quality standards have usually gone up, but space standards are the ones that tend to go down, whether that’s de facto because of the market/demand, or actual standards.
The first step to improving this would be to vote out all the MPs who legislate in the interest of landlords- because most MPs are landlords. Reducing overall immigration would probably help too. A removal of housing benefit, which actually benefits businesses and not those receiving the “benefit”, by subsidising wages and inflating housing prices for desirable areas, instead of allowing prices to fall or for businesses to pay what’s needed, should be considered too.
What makes you think quality standards have gone down?
From what I have seen, there's two reasons people think this. One is that modern houses are extremely well insulated. Which means that if you drill into a wall or just tap it with your hand, it sounds hollow, because it is rammed with cavities full of insulation. People have a "perception" that somehow brick and mortar is magically of higher quality and solid sounds better - even though functionally it is worse, especially with the way heating bills are going.
The other is just timber framed construction. This is an objection particularly in England - in Scotland timber framed buildings have been common since the 60s, in England it is realtively recent practice. Add to that, modern builders understand exactly what size of wood to use to bear loads calculated for a once in 200 year storm event per regulations, and don't just whack in huge beams because they have no clue anymore - it means there's a perception again that older is higher quality (no matchstick wood in them!), especially in areas with a weird prejudice towards masonry or brick.
But having experience living in 18th, 19th and mid 20th century houses in the UK - I'd take a new build any day. At least it generally won't have damp, a leaky roof, tiles blowing off every time there's a storm, lead paint/pipes and a colleciton of horrific DIY mistakes inherited from previous owners. Or incredibly cold and draughty rooms - some houses I just shut the door on the cavernous living room from Seoptember till May, it was too cold and too expensive to heat.
The UK has no by-right development at all afaik, so you’re getting what they can afford to build after making it through planning.
This is a big reason San Francisco never builds anything anymore; absolutely everyone gets to have their aesthetic opinions in design review and will band together to sue you over them if you don’t bribe them.
Some older near-the-city-center suburbs of US cities have the same phenomenon. There are sometimes quirks like entire neighborhoods where all the houses have a different stained-glass window because there was a stained-glass guy nearby when they were built. That usually comes with the obligatory comment from every contractor or insurance person, "Yeah, wow, you couldn't get (x feature) made that way today for any price."
In the US the postwar heyday of modernism resulted in a generation where the skills of artisan craftsmanship in construction were unneeded, so the remaining workers never trained anybody.
How high-end and affordable were these buildings when they got constructed? I remodeled a ~300 year olds house in rural Germany. The building used to house at least two families till the first half of the 20th century. We had to in essence redo everything except for maybe 70% of the oak beams, totally change the layout, dig up and lower the floors to accommodate anyone but tiny people and build out the attic to make the building attractive at all. This building was at the equivalent of the village square when it was constructed. Had the village grown and turned into Al even a town, I'd hoped it would have been replaced a long time ago. I'm proud I got to take part in this work and will in all likelihood own it myself some day. If it wasn't a under heritage protection we'd likely not have preserved it though because it makes little economic sense.
What sort of structures? And how are you deciding "nice" ?
I do believe you, its just when I think of a nice structure to live in, good HVAC is a must and lots of place in Europe simply don't have AC... can't speak as to why that's the case but its one of those things you take for granted lol
Europeans do not consider AC a must. I live in an attic conversion on a very well to do street in Germany, and there is not a single AC unit in sight. It's not common at all, we do not care about it. We would rather get extremely hot and sweaty for a few days a year than make the investment for AC
The US is a lot farther south than most people think. People talk about Minneapolis as a cold northern place, but it is south of Paris which nobody thinks of as particularly cold. I don't know where in Germany you were but odds are it was north by enough to not get the extreme heat that "southern" cities like Minneapolis get in summer.
Most of western Europe is blessed with a mild winter climate. Some heat is needed, but not nearly as much as parts of the US that are much farther south. (If you get to Eastern Europe things are very different)
Lack of ways for startups to grow outside selling to Americans (Booking, Skype, etc) and low quality of video games outside German farming simulators and British funny animal platformers.
Fair. I think it just comes down to preference. Not sure if you can say one is better than the other. I had always just assumed everywhere had AC. Oddly enough, seemed like lots of buildings had it while the houses/apartments didn't. Maybe due to the body heat of so many ppl, it becomes necessary.
> getting rid of (or renovating) old structures is a good thing.
It's worse than that in Japan. They build everything cheaply and plan to destroy them in 50-60 years down the line, making investing in property a really bad plan as whatever you buy sees its value go to actual zero. This causes a massive economic strain on Japan.
I'd be happy with the value of housing being more or less stable. In Japan they aggressively deprecate it to zero. That's what's destructive, like some kind of time-bomb on anything you buy.
It‘s not necessarily that it‘s cheap, but also constant updating of building regulations when more powerful earthquakes hit. In 1990 if you were buying a house older than ten years it might be the difference between life and death.
The latest (‘80s) regulation buildings have held up even through the 2011 quake, so this is the first generation of 50 year old buildings that also meet the safety standards of their day.
According to the Japanese Ministry of Land, Industry, Transportation and Tourism, 29% of kyu-taishin buildings suffered major damage in the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake, with 14% totally collapsing.
> For post-1981 shin-taishin buildings, the rates were 8% and 3% respectively. Reducing your chances of damage by two thirds, or of collapse by nearly four fifths, is pretty substantial. https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/are-you-prepared-f...
Yeah, any you can't improve much on these rates anyway from now on. Diminutive returns - no reason for the value of such properties built after 81 to go to zero if they are well built.
Japan is absolutely full of developed property and in many cases way overdeveloped (there’s nothing they won’t cover in concrete, even creek beds), so it seems to work. I think their theory is it keeps the construction industry working, whereas in California we might end up forgetting how to build houses if we keep using the ones from 1969.
The terrible quality and strange choices of many Japanese buildings is notable though. A lot of residential buildings are covered in what I can only describe as bathroom tiles. And they have no insulation and extremely cheap windows.
That’s not how businesses or people plan. Discounted cash flow over 60 years means that a cost that’s 60 years away does not matter. Also, Japan went from bombed out wreck to one of the richest countries in the world with this attitude to property so if it hurts at all it’s a minor cost.
Also buildings were used differently from back then. Now we expect indoor toilets, bathrooms and so on. In even relatively recent past these really weren't standard. And they place entirely new restrictions and needs for structures that really weren't experienced to work so. Specially with moisture causing mold.
