I'm coming from an attitude of "a house is a home, a machine to make the lives of my family easier and more comfortable", not "houses are an investment with incidental utility as shelter." Is it that many don't care about their house as a home?
In Europe at least legality of the process. I do a shitload of DIY in the home and so does my brother in his home. Fancy hotel-looking closet with lighting and whatnots? (this sure give a "luxury" feel): we got it. But I'm not allowed to build a house from scracth. I'd love to: my grandfather build a chalet all by himself in the fifties and that chalet still exists.
For the architect plans you kinda can do it yourself and then find an architect that'll adapt and sign the plans.
But the concrete, the electricity: you need stamps/approval from professional and the state does send people verifying that everything is kosher.
You can have the wall and electricity lay out and then do a lot yourself, but you now have the issue that the price you'll pay for "stuff" aren't the discounted prices the professionals do get.
I'd also say zoning generally prohibits this in most desirable areas. Developers have the ability to do a lot of legal work to get approvals and permits. Since they are getting approval for a large number of buildings or units, they can distribute that cost and so they can sometimes build in those desirable areas where it would be too costly for me to build as an individual.
Most people do not even understand something as simple as marginal income taxes and income tax withholding procedures. They would be well out of their league managing real estate development. Not to mention they would need to quit their day job to manage all the contractors.
And even with a general contractor (GC), you need to know enough and spend enough time to make sure you and/or the GC is not getting scammed. You will not find out about big problems until years after, and good luck pursuing those at fault.
Also, most people have nowhere near the necessary liquidity or cash flow to handle purchasing land, obtaining a construction loan, and managing payments for materials and labor.
So, it's somewhat of a luxury to be able to form an emotional attachment to your home, without worrying about its effect on your finances.
Isn’t that the rule ? Wasn’t there a huge shift to the US west in search of opportunities?
People move all the time to find a better life for themselves
You can sit around and wait for your cities laws to revert the market and offer walkable cities, mass public transit, solve homelessness… or move
Many people move because they're priced out of their former dwellings. Many people who want to move to a different area can't because of financial/family reasons.
1) The animating principle of his simple construction designs was that they were based on off-the-shelf materials and the industry conventions on how they are sold, and could be built incrementally. Those designs turned out to be hard to insulate. Alternatives that were far better to insulate would require new designs, the materials were harder to find, and building codes are tuned to enforcing the exact kind of construction that we always do (and that the old designs were a variation of.) He also created this sort of drag and drop style of architecture based on standard material sizes enabling people to design their houses themselves, and all of that has to be thrown away with alternative materials. That gets rid of most of Walter Segal's material contribution, leaving only the spirit of self-building.
2) Houses in Segal developments ended up shooting up in value, so it ultimately didn't solve any problems. It's land value that's important anyway. The way to solve this would be to only self-build in undesirable areas or on your own land?
* in my humble opinion from research.
-----
http://www.ianwhite.info/THE_SEGAL_METHOD.pdf
http://www.waltersegal.org.uk/
https://thequietus.com/articles/19906-aa-self-build-revoluti...
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/peek-inside-the-ho... [posted just for the main photograph and its caption. Segal houses were eventually just baubles for rich people.]
"appliances" too. moreso if you count frankenstein abominations that only I can run safely. there's some things I could sell to others and expect them to use without dying, so that counts.
"Laptops" meh. but I've had mobile computing things that featured structural duct tape and were indeed mobile, so I think that counts too.
"Car" ... I've assisted with the construction of go karts, dune buggies, and the repurposing of mass market cars into nasty perversions of their original functions. So I'll say "done that" too.
So yes, I think on reflection I can answer "I do."