when did houses in america start being built w/ such cheaply made expensive materials?

Question

when did houses in america start being built w/ such cheaply made expensive materials?

Answer 1

Actually, things started to go down hill in the 1970. Large companies started building 100s of homes, saving a board here, a nail there. Builders who did things right, just could not sell quality.



Find a builder and have him build the house, he should build less than 10 a year.



Find a realtor, who has high friends in low places in the local building industry, they may be able to steer you away from the worst ones.

Buy a 40 year old house and update it.

Answer 2

IT's called CHINA---



American executives buy there KNOWING two things;

a; their products are made for 1/10th the cost of USA products

and 2nd;

b; China warrants NOTHING because, as a Communist nation,

they have no TORT law to protect buyers-customers.



so, the importers earn tons of $ and hope that only 1 in

100 or fewer buyers will be harmed. Then, they have to

settle complaints........



IF we stayed out of China in all ways whatever, our quality

goods would sky rocket.



[and their costs would not need to go up at all!]

Answer 3

15 years after my parents' neighborhood was built in 1956, all the bathrooms were falling apart because of the plastic tiles they used, the back steps were rotting because of the untreated lumber they used; some of the roofs were leaking and two houses at the base of a hill had foundations that were sinking, crumbling plaster and leaking plumbing. The builder' had declared bankruptcy, so the owners of the defective houses were on their own. They also had no insulation, had fuse boxes instead of breakers and windows that needed to be re-sealed every time the house was painted. If you looked at most of those houses now, you might say "they don't build them this well anymore", since all of those problems have been fixed. For each era, there are some materials that work well and others that fail miserably, but older houses tend to seem better built because they were the ones that survived and any problems they might have had have been fixed. Houses built during recessions and those built a few years after a natural disaster tend to be the best built; those built during booms tend to be slapped up by incompetent fly-by-nighters.

Answer 4

Although it would appear that some materials are cheaper than in the past, technology has improved significantly. For example, windows today are MUCH better than anything you could have purchased 30 or 40 years ago. The same can be said for all of the heating and cooling systems, appliances, insulation, etc

Answer 5

In about the seventies, my ex husband worked on prefab houses here in texas. The sections of roof were literally hauled on a truck to the home site, nailed to the rest and roofed.I was amazed at the neighborhoods these were built in. These were all spec houses, not custom built.At that time they probably cost $65,ooo. A home here that cost in the $700,000's could still be built crappy if you had a con for a builder. But that kind of money will buy a mighty fancy house here in Texas even from a wonderful builder.You get more value here because we are a cheaper place to live.

Answer 6

There CAN be many reasons, & some of the statements above are valid, but from what I KNOW to be true (my two brothers are contractors), I would like to add a couple things:



1. - Unskilled labor.

When housing bubbles start happening like this one did in the last decade or so, you see all sorts of 'get on the bandwagon' behavior (pyramid scheme psychology, basically).

You know how all of a sudden almost everyone you know was investing in real estate, hoping to make a killing?

Well, the same thing happens in the SUPPLY side of the equation - every idiot who's ever swung a hammer or fixed his own sink, suddenly thinks he can make a living building houses... and in a bubble economy, he's right!

There was so much demand for new houses, that maybe 1/3 of the guys building your house had been in the business more than 1-5 years. LOTS of newbies doing substandard work.

In other words, it's not all the materials, although, obviously, some of it is, and for the same reason - too much demand, too quickly, and the China trade.

(Don't even get me started on the half-*** skills of most of the Illegals streaming into this country for these kinds of jobs. And if you think I'm being racist or inaccurate, do you see a whole lot of quality workmanship in home building in Mexico and other Central American houses in the last few decades? Hmmm... didn't think so).



2. -New wood.

A lot of your cracking problems, etc., are because all the environmentalists have damn near shut down all logging in this country. They certainly have killed off any logging of old-growth trees, which are the BEST wood, with good thin solid grain.

If you doubt this, do a bit of searching for 'reclaimed lumber'. It actually costs MORE to buy old wood that has been ripped out of barns & old houses and buildings, than the new stuff!

So we get wood from OTHER PEOPLE'S FORESTS in other parts of the world (with the extra environmental destruction of all that pollution from ships and trucks getting the stuff here!!!), and again, the demand is so high, that the trade would basically take whatever it could get.

A lot of the new stuff is green and twisted, so months after building, it warps and cracks whatever is attached to it.

Answer 7

It started in the 70's and took rapid declines in the 90's/



I would not touch anything built after 1980 unless it was a custom built home.



I live in a home built in the 40's. two story. My house is still plumb! Every door, every window. Same wood floors, but I did carpet when I had kids in their bedrooms. My house needs very little maintenance and is easy to heat and cool and the plaster walls make it pretty much sound proof.



The biggest problem I have is the trees. Many are over 80 feet high and while I love the shade, big storms worry me.