Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
I would add to this, that the single detached houses that were built back then (and are glorified today) are nowhere near housing today. They were significantly smaller, had one bathroom for 4-6 people, no garage and the list goes on. The reality is that our preferences have changed, and what people saw as adequate at that point no longer is. Our houses are much bigger, have many more amenities and if you put one of our average houses back in the middle of a 1960’s neighbourhood (not including the obvious technological advances), it would be a mansion and people would be in awe.
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That's not all that relevant though, because those exact houses which lack those amenities still exist, and they're often extremely expensive still.
The examples I used in the post that Cliff linked are exactly that. They are houses that my grandparents owned and I know for a fact that they are in essentially the same condition as they were when they bought them (1,300-1,500 square feet, 3 small bedrooms, 1 bath, no garage, minor updates to maintain the condition but no real upgrades/retrofits, etc.) yet they're worth $1.5-2M.
If modern house sizes were driving unaffordability, then the existing stock from the '50s and '60s would would be affordable, but by and large they're not. And that's because land value is driving prices in cities. And I don't even know that there's anything policy-wise that can be done about that. As cities grow, land is going to become more valuable. But we can't just pretend that there isn't a fundamental difference between now and then.