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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

>I can assure you that individuals artisanally and incrementally building their homes is not a scalable approach to housing.

I think they were saying that the time and hours taken is not commensurate with the purchase cost, not proposing it as an actual solution. That said I think they are still very wrong.

If you were to build a modern house from scratch, you're taking enormous amount of time. Imagine felling the the timber and Milling it alone would take years. Ignoring the material side of things, most of what you're paying for is the knowledge and experience of the laborers. It takes a lot of time to learn each trade and how to build properly. It also takes a fair amount of work to learn the the regulations and comply with the certifications for each task

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I wasn't assuming that you'd be mining the gypsum and milling the screws. The materials cost of houses isn't the justification for the lion's share of the price.

Materials cost is a major factor however.

Here’s a house in materials form - it’s still $120k.

https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/books-buildi...

Interesting. Surely the price includes some amount of markup however?

I'm just talking about doing the stuff that anybody can figure out to do. You purchase materials, and you hire craftsmen to do the hard stuff. I'm also not talking about getting a house for free, I'm talking about boring house prices that track inflation rather than exciting house prices that track bitcoin.

Well you can always be the general contractor and do just that for a standalone home. Shop around and hire the workers for each part. Most people don't because it takes time, work, and knowledge, so they would rather pay someone.

Alternatively, you can get a new prefabricated home built and delivered for about 100K or less.

I think a lot of cities have zoning regulations against doing that, but it's common in the country and counties.

Where I think you do have a point is the land. That's often the expensive part. It's not as wild as Bitcoin, but it certainly does follow the market.

> You Save $16,061.01 with Mail-In Rebate

So 3-10% of the cost here in the Bay Area?

Who pays 1mil building costs for 1700 sqft?

Huh?

Building costs in SF are high but not that high

I think you’re completely inverting the situation I was describing?

A typical 1700 sq ft in the peninsula is 1.5-3million.

Materials costs for construction are at most 3-10% of that. So a couple hundred grand.

I see, I thought you were saying that number was 3-10% of the building costs in the BA

The problem is overwhelmingly about land value being propped up by nimby restrictive building policies.

Obviously with dense housing policies people would be building their artisanal condos by hand in utopia

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