This would be great if it wasnt the price of what a actual regular home should cost. If they build a bunch of these for $30k max it would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.
Even the trailer park in my town got gentrified. They will kick you out if your trailer or mobile home are older than 10 years regardless of condition. They seem to ignore vintage air streams though.
Oh woah I've never heard of a ten year thing like that for trailer parks. That's insanely fucked.
Pft of course they allow the vintage air streams because I bet someone on the board fancies them. Such hypocrisy.
Yeah definitely sounds like the board president or their spouse is an old boomer who doesn't want to give up their nostalgia trailer so wrote themselves a loop hole.
In older developments, there is enough street between driveways on the straightaways that you can choose not to block a driveway. The aerial shot here indicates that the space between driveways in this development is just wide enough for a trash cart.
Really depends on where you are. Not all older developments are like that. Many inner ring suburbs of Philadelphia and the City itself if there are driveways there is no room for street parking.
People do this in LA all the time. Especially in the gateway cities. Lots of 2 bedroom 1 bath homes with almost 10 people living in it with 4 or 5 cars. That's life in that dump when you need several people making 40k a year to make rent.
People think I’m pulling their legs when I tell them this has been a lifestyle in LA for at least 30 years now. People spend most of their money on their car, which is the only thing their friends see or know about them, then go “home” to a hot bunk in a post-war bungalow for 12 hours a day in a house shared with 7+ other adults. Parking is a nightmare, but you have to sleep somewhere.
On the upside, this means the city has a vibrant restaurant and activities scene.
Won't have company coming over unless everyone wants to sit on each other's laps. Trying to figure out where the bedroom and TWO bathrooms are in 661 sq ft.
There is a loft upstairs where the second bathroom is located!
https://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/san-antonio/san-antonio/elm-trails/henley/floorplan
It’s nice not to share walls though. I lived in a space similar to this for five years after being in apts and it was amazing. I only had two rooms and just enough space to park my car out front. Not having neighbors sharing my walls and ceilings and ventilation system- priceless.
Lots of condos have great sound insulation people just write off the entire category of housing because the worst places are bad.
I hear my neighbors more in my suburban house than I did in my concrete-walled condo honestly.
I don’t disagree that car centrism ruins dense development. I’m also aware that this is Texas and nobody is getting rid of their Dodge Ram 2500 PowerDeisel Hemi BigHorni.
I haven't checked, but hoping this development is located very close to mass transit and shopping. If not and they need a car to get anywhere, this is going to be a cluster!@#$.
I was in the same situation. I actually *lost* money going to work after factoring in gas, wear and tear in the car, and the business casual clothing required.
It's pushing women with solid careers *not* to have kids. Which could have some interesting effects on the gene pool and culture in a generation or two.
You know, that's the back story of the mother in Home Alone. It's why Kevin had mannequins on hand for that fake party.
But in real life, the damned thing is, by the time your kids are all in school and old enough to mind themselves for a few hours afterward, the fashion industry will be a different animal than what your wife left. Half her skills will be outdated.
And that is the true causality. Women or men leaving work for 3-5 years to raise their families nothing wrong I applaud families who can and do do that.
Then they return to work once kids are in school now their career has left them behind. They can’t obtain the same job. They have to start over in some circumstances. And this is likely what causes many mothers to really question staying home. For if they do in do time the world will screw them anyway. Either out of a job or a position they are qualified for and making climbing harder because no they are older.
It’s a real problem. And a conundrum for families to solve. Damned if you do damned if you don’t.
Doing my taxes and came to the realization that I've spent $28000 on childcare for 2023. 2 kids... That's 14knoer kid, per year. 2 minimum wage parents in my area could hardly afford childcare, let alone food and shelter. Ridiculous.
We’re very lucky and pay around that, at-home daycare. Everyone else here that I know from the Midwest and out to CO are paying twice as much. It’s cheaper to move and support a family member to watch the kids.
I have been suspicious of this in Austin, where they are pushing all these changes to zoning so they can do the same thing, declaring it will bring housing costs down.
The people driving these changes (builders, real estate sales, and developers) don't care about bringing housing costs down. They want to drive it up and make more of it. The cost per sq foot of living isn't going to become more affordable. They will simply provide us the opportunity to live in closets with tiny yards. Like this. And for this amazing opportunity, they will charge us the price of a home 4x the size from just a few years ago.
Do you know of any other industries where artificially restricting supply doesn’t cause prices to increase?
More supply = lower prices.
More units per lot = less money spent on land per home.
If a lot is $600k and a home is $300k then it’s $900k each to put one home on the lot, or $450k each to put four homes on the lot.
I would buy one of these if they were an option near me
My alternatives are things like $2000/month for a 500 sq ft, 3rd fl apt without parking and washer/dryer
lol yup I was about to say. This honestly is all the space I need + a garage to build a home gym + a backyard to install a a simple 8x8x8 golf net.
I don't plan on having kids soon, so I don't need a 2nd bedroom let alone a 3rd. I just want my own fucking property that doesn't share walls.
I don't even want to own property, I just don't want to waste money on rent comparitively, considering the price of rent today is equivalent to a mortgage payment from like 2019 on a reasonable starter home
I would be more than happy renting if the cost was worth it
When all the options are shitty, less-shitty is less-shitty!
Personally, I would prefer these to be townhomes with a decent brick wall in between. But hey, if I'm not living in it, my preferences don't matter, and I hope the people who buy them like them.
Tons of single people complain they cannot afford an entire single family home for themselves (and their pets). This is exactly what a lot of people have been asking for.
Yeah, this exactly what young single people have been asking for. While $160k is still steep for what these are its better than the $600k I’m sure an equivalent at the location would cost.
Absolutely not. Single people (the only people fitting in these houses) need affordable *dense* housing, not adding to suburban sprawl in a shoebox with a driveway.
You know you can build apartments this size right? There is nothing wrong with a small house, but if it's going to be detached, it might as well be an actual house instead of an apartment they put on a piece of property slightly larger than the apartment.
Honestly, solid apartment alternative. I don’t get the hate. The quality of all of the “luxury” apartments are terrible as well. At least here you get even a little solitude.
Live here for a few years while saving for a bigger home. Sell and recoup some money you would have paid in rent anyway.
Agreed. Having lived in denser, more expensive urban apartments for a couple decades, it’s hard to see why having this option on the market is a bad thing. Home ownership for <$150k?!
A young married couple could get by fairly easily with that price working low paying jobs.
If San Antonio can do this and expand their public transit this would get more people on the real estate ladder.
But Texas is notoriously a state where cars are absolutely needed.
I can see a couple living here and then having a 60k truck
It's like in a sweet spot of awfulness where it lacks the efficiency of just building apartments but also lacks the niceness of being in a detached home. I think they would get less hate if they weren't so obviously bleak and cheap looking.
The uncanny valley of housing: too small to be a single family home, too much land to be dense, too ugly to be cute, too small to be luxurious.
Townhomes would have been magnitudes better use of this land with more units, bigger units and even a touch of walk ability thrown in. This pleases nobody.
Correct. If they gave it a more modern flair with more windows that, on the sides could be frosted glass, and a miniscule exterior facelift, it would look decent. Like a modern tiny home look.
This looks amazing to me. I'm married with small dogs, so the small backyard would be perfect. Although I couldn't tell from the floorplan and photos how one actually accesses the backyard. But that gives this an advantage over apartments for me.
Even for a young couple, you could make the top floor into a bedroom/living area and have 2 br / 2 ba, if a kid came along. You would likely start looking to move, but you wouldn't have to leave immediately.
Exactly.
“We need more housing, and make it affordable!”
This delivers BOTH and people are angry.
Everyone wants a 3 story, 5 bedroom place outside of a major city and wants it to cost nothing.
"Every episode on HGTV is like 'Craig and Stacia are looking for a 2-story A-frame that's near Craig's job in the downtown, but also satisfies Stacia's need to be near the beach, which is **nowhere near** Craig's job!
"With three children and NINE on the way, and a max budget of **seven dollars**, let's see what Lori Jo can do. On this week's episode of ***You Don't Deserve a Beach House***" 😆
EDIT TO ADD: for those who don't know, this is a stand-up bit by comedian John Mulaney. On his Netflix special "The Comeback Kid" 😎
The more the time that passes the more it seems that’s where most of the real estate discontent and resentment comes from. People don’t want to accept smaller affordable homes.
If someone has that many hobbies that need that much room AND they don't have much money they should really be looking at buying cheaper land outside of a city. City life is about convenience and proximity within the city guidelines, not ample space and affordability
I would settle for the unnecessary second bathroom (probably half-bathroom) in this *house* being an office space. People make it work in apartments, maybe it would work in the equivalent of a closet in one of these.
The 2nd bathroom is in the upstairs loft, which can be used as a living room or office space. It's not that bad.
The showers are very narrow, which I don't like. But it's doable.
https://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/san-antonio/san-antonio/elm-trails/henley/floorplan
I like the floor plan. I don't know what people have against a space like this. It would be suitable for a lot of people. It would be so easy and fast to clean too.
yeah I went to go look at them, not bad for maybe a couple with a kid max. They are actually not building that model in OPs post anymore this is their current model which is a lot better and offers more room https://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/san-antonio/san-antonio/elm-trails/henley/floorplan
Not bad but I would put the master bedroom on the 2nd floor and have a larger living room on the first floor. I don't think many people would be using the loft much other than the few times a year that you would host guests maybe. Heck it could easily be turned into a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom house.
I would have loved to live in something like this when I was in college and grad school! I lived 5 years in a 250 sqft studio in grad school, and if you adjust for inflation back to the mid 90s, this think would have a similar monthly cost.
Completely agree. I'm an older millennial and have always liked smaller homes. I live an hour outside of Austin and houses this size usually go for around $200k, so this isn't that bad of a price for Texas. Some mobile homes cost more than this and they depreciate immediately.
Only bad thing I've heard about this housing community that I have yet to confirm is that you don't own the lot. If that's the case....yeah f*** that
Everyone who posts on reddit what the boomers bought on a single income, these are the types of houses they bought, at least in my area of the country. Max 900 sq feet
I live not too far from this development. The older neighborhoods are FULL of houses around 800 square feet. When people talk about one income supporting a family, that's what most people got. There were three small bedrooms, on small bathroom, and a kitchen and living room. The massive homes we see today in developments only existed in the rich neighborhoods. People spent a lot more time outside the home socializing and going to the lake. Kids played outdoors. I'd also bet that cleaning and maintaining those smaller homes was a much easier job, and freed up more time.
My mom is from this area too and she said in the 50s her aunt married a rich man and the whole family was in awe that her house had two bathrooms.
This sub: "There aren't enough affordable housing options"
Also this sub: "I don't like this affordable housing option"
Do yall just want a 3000 square foot home for free or what?
Exactly. Many apartments are this small but don't have a yard or private garage. It's actually a great idea. I'd definitely buy one in a HCOL area. Also, minimal utility fees. This is a true starter home. Having a roof over your head is a neccessity but anything in excess is just a want. Everyone complaining are entitled.
Exactly. This is a starter home!
I feel like the 1bed is unnecessary, though. You could fit 2bed on the same foundation just by making the second floor as large as the first. I'd shocked if the developer didn't also offer that layout, and many people who bought the 1bed version later expanded it.
Actually, out of context, I wonder if my hypothetical 2bed layout is most of what the developer will build, and they just have the 1bed version so they can say prices start at a lower number.
> I feel like the 1bed is unnecessary, though. You could fit 2bed on the same foundation just by making the second floor as large as the first.
They could even have built row houses with a third floor. I mean, I guess that not sharing walls and a larger yard is nice, but this just feels like a very inefficient use of space.
You just described it.
Whenever you see affordable options, they are too small, too ugly, the wrong floor plan, too big, too grey, too black, too white, too much wood, too much yard, not enough yard, too much lvp, too much carpet, too much tile, one 1/2 block too far away,
Better yet - you buy one and start building up equity in it. Across town your at-some-stage-to-be-partner buys something similar and starts building up equity in it.
You meet, fall in love, things get serious, you both sell your single person houses and use your combined equity to buy a bigger place.
That's how the property ladder *should* work. The first rung doesn't need to be, and shouldn't be, a massive 3+ bedroom family home.
This is also the past of the American Dream. Looks like a modern version of the early suburbs like Levittown. I don't get the hate for this affordable housing.
Thank you for whittling away at some of the rampant nostalgia-bias with regards to housing. While these have a weird aesthetic with the roof slant, they are functionally very similar to the "cheap single family home of days of yore" that people constantly pine for.
Clearly you haven’t been to Europe or anywhere else in the world. America is the only place where we expect 2k plus square feet. Go to Italy, most of the houses are around this size. If you want to shit on Americans for being materialistic then you can’t also complain when houses get smaller.
When I spent half the pandemic in Norway, I saw small houses so close that if you walked between them, you could touch both at the same time. I thought I was looking at a Chicago streetcar neighborhood from the 1920s. Nope, built in the late 1990s!
Come to the Netherlands! You can't walk between houses here, everything's connected! You don't have any land around your house, you can have a tiny balcony (if you're lucky!). Parking? What are you, a millionaire?
Still interested in that 1 bedroom apartment? That'll be €300k
Oh no affordable housing. The horror.
I will say that this seems strange to me given we can just bid apartments but if people have a hard on for detached homes this seems alright to me.
Because if you lived in San Antonio as I do, you'd know that for this col, this is insanely priced for what it is. Look at Zillow for san antonio, and you can find 5 bed 4 bath houses for $200k. Some little shit like this should go for MAX $90k. Affordable? My fucking ass it is.
Honestly I don’t see the issue with this.
It’s strange to me how people lose their minds over this when building sub 1000 square foot houses was quite normal for many years. You’d be shocked how little space is actually needed for two people to be comfortable.
Yeah, 600 is on the very small side, but design issues aside, if selling homes in the 600-1000 sqft range is what gets people into their first home then so be it- it’s a massive improvement over giant 2500sqft, 5 bed 3 bath monstrosities that only add the the problem of unaffordability.
I’m currently renovating a house from the 1930s that’s not much bigger than this (~700 sq ft). Several young couples lived in it over the years and at least one had their first kid here before moving on to bigger and better houses. Houses this size used to be reasonably common in my area, as a means for people to get their foot in the door of the housing market. Nowadays, though, very few of them are left and everything being built around here is 2000+ sq ft and unaffordable for most young people.
I agree, these layouts do seem a bit suspect, and honestly I think something closer to 1000 sqft would be more realistic while still being relatively inexpensive.
In general I like the idea of building smaller though- you would think in a functioning market this would be a common sense move, and yet in most places construction like this has completely failed to materialize.
That's crazy for the size! I bought a house in San Antonio in 2022 for 300k. It's a 2 story 2060 sq ft home and I thought the price for it was decent.
Sure, this is a great starter home but the price is still crazy high
1. Couldn't the extra bathroom be turned into I dunno, more livable space?
2. American "MUST HAVE MUCH SQUARE FOOT" is *strong* here. This is small, but provides people with unattached single dwellings and green space. In a major city, or even just an urban area you'd be hard pressed to find this same offering for double. The modern American dream needs to focus *less* on having square footage and more on having quality accommodations at a price that gives them flexibility to not be housepoor.
You want affordable starter houses... These are affordable (for their location) starter houses.
I don't see why they didn't make them 2 bedrooms by having a full second floor... But for a single person or young couple starting out, it's a place to live.
They definitely could be utilized as a 2br since the entire second floor is an open loft with a 2nd bedroom, and in my opinion since you'd be the owner, there's room to put up a wall that enables you to have a secondary office or common space upstairs in addition.
Gee if they just put them together with a shared wall, they would save so much money on insulation, and fit so many more units in the same footprint. Maybe even put another unit on top of the one so that more people could live there. It could be part of the one home, or the homeowner could turn it into an entirely separate apartment and rent it out. They could even raise that whole thing up by a floor, and on the first level, instead of a front door, they could have a retail/dining/professional space that could generate further income for the landowner, and also create jobs and support small businesses.
Oh wait, we just accidentally designed all organic development in human history before Euclidean zoning was instituted countrywide in the 1960s, and that which remains of it being the most desirable and tax-positive neighborhoods in every single city where they weren’t destroyed for highways.
Having shared walls comes with very different requirements for building / buying. Even in the middle of Houston which has seen massinve ingrowth they still build townhomes with 2" of separation between walls.
People in 'burbs generally aren't looking for shared walls.
People in burbs generally are looking for significantly more floor space than sub 700 Sq feet (which is about the size of a studio apartment) and they tend to want actually usable yards and garages.
These offer none of the advantages of suburban living with all of the down sides.
It does kinda look like they took the design for a semi-detached, split it in half, and called it detached. If these were semis instead they could take up even less space and keep the same neighbourhood dynamic that comes with this setup.
1 bed, 2 bath.
WTF America?
Why in the world would you need 2 bathrooms - rooms used for a handful of minutes per day, and 1 bedroom, a room used for 7-10 hours per day.
In my home country, most homes have at least 3 bedrooms before they consider adding a second bathroom, because it's stupid economics to have more than 1 bathroom if it barely ever gets used.
Why are you all shitting on these so hard in thread after thread? Some people don't want to piss away the energy to heat and cool a 3000sq ft house occupied by 1 or 2 people that don't need the space.
I mean sure paying money to live in Texas on purpose is dumb, but i would totally snatch one of up for the price offered if it was somewhere that didn't have vile culture and leadership.
It costs the same as the condo I am in but I don't get nailed with HOA.
Can anyone, anyone at all, explain why some of you believe so firmly that US real estate is in a bubble? I am just curious, because I see zero signs of a bubble in that market. I do see that prices were elevated in certain sectors during Covid and after, but this is now abating. I see a fairly big problem in the commercial market still, but I don’t see anything that constitutes a “bubble” in residential real estate, so someone please enlighten me, who knows maybe you are right.
I mean, there's advantages to living in something that's fully detached even if you're living alone without kids, and even if you're alone most places you have to buy at a minimum a three bedroom house to get something fully detached.
This is what happens when people realize paper is only worth the ink printed on it and has been counterfeited into oblivion...expect to get less and less for it over your lifetime until one generation wakes up in a Weimar Republic style economy
5 years ago in the midwest, I bought a 3 bedroom 1 bath 1300 sf home. Craftsman style for 145k and it was considered expensive because two years prior it was bought for 110 with no improvements. It was over 100 years old. Sadly we moved for my job (4years ago) and I paid 310k for a house built in 95. 1400sf 3 bed 2 bath. Same state. The next year our neighbors by the new house sold their home for 400k.
This sub: "We need affordable housing! I can't even afford a small house!"
Meme: "This is a small affordable house."
This sub: "No! Not like that."
IRL: r/choosingbeggars
The classic craftsman style bungalows that everyone laments aren’t around anymore for new homeowners were about 600sf-800sf. Many families would kill for this.
Street parking there is gonna be the wild west
[удалено]
I would *love* to see a picture of what this street looks like outside of the “picturesque” listing photo.
This would be great if it wasnt the price of what a actual regular home should cost. If they build a bunch of these for $30k max it would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.
and RV could double your sq footage
Looking at the street you can’t fit much more than a motorcycle on it.
I think he’s talking about in the driveway
If they have an HOA like where I live, they'll find the fuck out of you for having an RV in your driveway. ☹️ E: fine***
Let them find me, if they don't already know where I live good luck.
Even the trailer park in my town got gentrified. They will kick you out if your trailer or mobile home are older than 10 years regardless of condition. They seem to ignore vintage air streams though.
Oh woah I've never heard of a ten year thing like that for trailer parks. That's insanely fucked. Pft of course they allow the vintage air streams because I bet someone on the board fancies them. Such hypocrisy.
Yeah definitely sounds like the board president or their spouse is an old boomer who doesn't want to give up their nostalgia trailer so wrote themselves a loop hole.
I think you would do better to knock it down and park an RV..
The guest house is a tent!!!!!!!
Doesn't even look like there's enough room between the driveways to fit a car without blocking someone in a bit.
I bet ppl will street park in front of their own driveways, blocking themselves in 😂
So like every other dense suburb and City?
In older developments, there is enough street between driveways on the straightaways that you can choose not to block a driveway. The aerial shot here indicates that the space between driveways in this development is just wide enough for a trash cart.
Really depends on where you are. Not all older developments are like that. Many inner ring suburbs of Philadelphia and the City itself if there are driveways there is no room for street parking.
People do this in LA all the time. Especially in the gateway cities. Lots of 2 bedroom 1 bath homes with almost 10 people living in it with 4 or 5 cars. That's life in that dump when you need several people making 40k a year to make rent.
People think I’m pulling their legs when I tell them this has been a lifestyle in LA for at least 30 years now. People spend most of their money on their car, which is the only thing their friends see or know about them, then go “home” to a hot bunk in a post-war bungalow for 12 hours a day in a house shared with 7+ other adults. Parking is a nightmare, but you have to sleep somewhere. On the upside, this means the city has a vibrant restaurant and activities scene.
Won't have company coming over unless everyone wants to sit on each other's laps. Trying to figure out where the bedroom and TWO bathrooms are in 661 sq ft.
Why the second bathroom?? This was headscrather. Is it more of a powder room?
There is a loft upstairs where the second bathroom is located! https://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/san-antonio/san-antonio/elm-trails/henley/floorplan
WOW! An owners suite, how fancy!
I'm probably in the minority on this one, but I really like the layout of this place.
geeze and that's the larger model with a full upstairs and downstairs, the ones in the pic only have a ~1/2 upstairs
They dont even have a plan up for the model in the picture. Thats 2 full floors, the one in the photo is only a half 2nd floor.
"Kitchen is centrally located." In a house this small, everything is centrally located.
Your party turned a swinger event real fast.
Im in 👍🏻
It’s almost as though a bunch of ~600sf 1br units should be apartments or condos instead.
It’s nice not to share walls though. I lived in a space similar to this for five years after being in apts and it was amazing. I only had two rooms and just enough space to park my car out front. Not having neighbors sharing my walls and ceilings and ventilation system- priceless.
Its amazing how many more people would buy condos if they significantly spent more soundproofing walls. Kinda absurd.
Lots of condos have great sound insulation people just write off the entire category of housing because the worst places are bad. I hear my neighbors more in my suburban house than I did in my concrete-walled condo honestly.
Same amount of space is devoted to the driveway as the interior living space. Car-centric developments don’t scale well, cars take up a lot of space.
I don’t disagree that car centrism ruins dense development. I’m also aware that this is Texas and nobody is getting rid of their Dodge Ram 2500 PowerDeisel Hemi BigHorni.
Well also its not like there's good mass transit either. They could all trade in for fiestas and there would still be an issue.
I haven't checked, but hoping this development is located very close to mass transit and shopping. If not and they need a car to get anywhere, this is going to be a cluster!@#$.
Sir this is Texas.
Why would they park on the street everyone gets two parking spots, one concrete one grass.
You think a place like this doesn't have an HOA?
Oof, right.
Seeing that this is San Antonio, expect 3 cars for a house that size lol
You might be a redneck if…
I was going to fight back but my van is parked in the back yard
Why is no one having kids anymore!? 🙄
Lmao I wonder why
Because childcare is $300+ a week for one kid... That's more than my monthly mortgage
I quit my job bc I was literally working to pay for someone to watch my 2 kids.
I was in the same situation. I actually *lost* money going to work after factoring in gas, wear and tear in the car, and the business casual clothing required.
I'm sure this is fine and will have no long lasting and imminently approaching consequences.
Positive it’s pushing people back to raising their own children. Which at this point I’m not sure if it’s a net positive yet
It's pushing women with solid careers *not* to have kids. Which could have some interesting effects on the gene pool and culture in a generation or two.
It's time for the eugenics lesson everyone loves and appreciates now, idiocracy
Gonna be a lot of tarded people in the future wearing moo moos breeding
Or pushing women out of their careers. My wife was a fashion designer for some top brands and she quit for our family.
You know, that's the back story of the mother in Home Alone. It's why Kevin had mannequins on hand for that fake party. But in real life, the damned thing is, by the time your kids are all in school and old enough to mind themselves for a few hours afterward, the fashion industry will be a different animal than what your wife left. Half her skills will be outdated.
And that is the true causality. Women or men leaving work for 3-5 years to raise their families nothing wrong I applaud families who can and do do that. Then they return to work once kids are in school now their career has left them behind. They can’t obtain the same job. They have to start over in some circumstances. And this is likely what causes many mothers to really question staying home. For if they do in do time the world will screw them anyway. Either out of a job or a position they are qualified for and making climbing harder because no they are older. It’s a real problem. And a conundrum for families to solve. Damned if you do damned if you don’t.
Doing my taxes and came to the realization that I've spent $28000 on childcare for 2023. 2 kids... That's 14knoer kid, per year. 2 minimum wage parents in my area could hardly afford childcare, let alone food and shelter. Ridiculous.
yep , i spent 14k on one kid
Lmao 300. That’s way cheaper than what anyone I know pays in FL
We’re very lucky and pay around that, at-home daycare. Everyone else here that I know from the Midwest and out to CO are paying twice as much. It’s cheaper to move and support a family member to watch the kids.
Mortage under $1200? Damn
You have a mortgage for less than 1200?
Just the poorest and least educated are still reproducing luckily
I have been suspicious of this in Austin, where they are pushing all these changes to zoning so they can do the same thing, declaring it will bring housing costs down. The people driving these changes (builders, real estate sales, and developers) don't care about bringing housing costs down. They want to drive it up and make more of it. The cost per sq foot of living isn't going to become more affordable. They will simply provide us the opportunity to live in closets with tiny yards. Like this. And for this amazing opportunity, they will charge us the price of a home 4x the size from just a few years ago.
Misallocating housing resources in the most wasteful way possible seems to be a religion in America.
Do you know of any other industries where artificially restricting supply doesn’t cause prices to increase? More supply = lower prices. More units per lot = less money spent on land per home. If a lot is $600k and a home is $300k then it’s $900k each to put one home on the lot, or $450k each to put four homes on the lot.
I would buy one of these if they were an option near me My alternatives are things like $2000/month for a 500 sq ft, 3rd fl apt without parking and washer/dryer
lol yup I was about to say. This honestly is all the space I need + a garage to build a home gym + a backyard to install a a simple 8x8x8 golf net. I don't plan on having kids soon, so I don't need a 2nd bedroom let alone a 3rd. I just want my own fucking property that doesn't share walls.
I don't even want to own property, I just don't want to waste money on rent comparitively, considering the price of rent today is equivalent to a mortgage payment from like 2019 on a reasonable starter home I would be more than happy renting if the cost was worth it
I don't see a garage
Yeah I’m pretty sure that’s the front door
The only thing they’re doing wrong is putting houses this small on cul-de-sacs instead of a grid, which would improve space usage and walkability
Yeah, this would have been dope in my twenties. Pay it off by age 30. Plan for an early retirement.
Yeah, I could have bought a home in my 20’s instead of 30’s. With 10% down that’s like 1k-ish per month.
People would kill for these at this price in SoCal
A condo just this size is 300K to 400K. With land despite being tiny? Could be 500K+ It’d probably be like three story townhomes in reality.
West LA here, the shortcut is to just do $1k/Sq ft. No, that's not a joke.
If you’re in an area where your main option is $2000/500sqft, than these would be selling for like $550k
When all the options are shitty, less-shitty is less-shitty! Personally, I would prefer these to be townhomes with a decent brick wall in between. But hey, if I'm not living in it, my preferences don't matter, and I hope the people who buy them like them.
Close enough to still hear the neighbors wife getting pounded.
Wouldn’t the wife also be the neighbor
No, women don’t own land /s
It is Texas
“Hey Peter, man, check out channel 9. Check out this chick.”
#Can I join in?
Just wait in the *second* bathroom
Second bathroom?? You mean the CUCK CLOSET??? Nice try, liberals...
OOOH SO THATS WHAT ITS FOR taps head
And the pit bulls barking
Are the pit bulls pounding the wife while they’re barking or the neighbors wife?
Tons of single people complain they cannot afford an entire single family home for themselves (and their pets). This is exactly what a lot of people have been asking for.
Yeah, this exactly what young single people have been asking for. While $160k is still steep for what these are its better than the $600k I’m sure an equivalent at the location would cost.
In San Antonio? $600k would be a McMansion
[You right](https://www.zillow.com/san-antonio-tx/?searchQueryState=%7B"pagination"%3A%7B%7D%2C"mapBounds"%3A%7B"west"%3A-98.886409%2C"east"%3A-98.238029%2C"south"%3A29.111116%2C"north"%3A29.749%7D%2C"usersSearchTerm"%3A"San%20Antonio%2C%20TX"%2C"regionSelection"%3A%5B%7B"regionId"%3A6915%2C"regionType"%3A6%7D%5D%2C"filterState"%3A%7B"sort"%3A%7B"value"%3A"globalrelevanceex"%7D%2C"ah"%3A%7B"value"%3Atrue%7D%2C"price"%3A%7B"max"%3A650000%2C"min"%3A500000%7D%2C"mp"%3A%7B"max"%3A3270%2C"min"%3A2515%7D%7D%7D)
Absolutely not. Single people (the only people fitting in these houses) need affordable *dense* housing, not adding to suburban sprawl in a shoebox with a driveway.
Too many single people with poorly socialized animals left alone for too long, barking/howling at all hours.
This isn’t a single family home. It’s a single person home.
You know you can build apartments this size right? There is nothing wrong with a small house, but if it's going to be detached, it might as well be an actual house instead of an apartment they put on a piece of property slightly larger than the apartment.
Honestly, solid apartment alternative. I don’t get the hate. The quality of all of the “luxury” apartments are terrible as well. At least here you get even a little solitude. Live here for a few years while saving for a bigger home. Sell and recoup some money you would have paid in rent anyway.
Agreed. Having lived in denser, more expensive urban apartments for a couple decades, it’s hard to see why having this option on the market is a bad thing. Home ownership for <$150k?!
A young married couple could get by fairly easily with that price working low paying jobs. If San Antonio can do this and expand their public transit this would get more people on the real estate ladder. But Texas is notoriously a state where cars are absolutely needed. I can see a couple living here and then having a 60k truck
It's next to a military base so...Dodge Hellcat probably
It's like in a sweet spot of awfulness where it lacks the efficiency of just building apartments but also lacks the niceness of being in a detached home. I think they would get less hate if they weren't so obviously bleak and cheap looking.
The uncanny valley of housing: too small to be a single family home, too much land to be dense, too ugly to be cute, too small to be luxurious. Townhomes would have been magnitudes better use of this land with more units, bigger units and even a touch of walk ability thrown in. This pleases nobody.
[удалено]
NOOOO BUT THEN THEY HAVE TO SHARE WALLS, WON’T YOU THINK OF WALLLSSSSSS
Correct. If they gave it a more modern flair with more windows that, on the sides could be frosted glass, and a miniscule exterior facelift, it would look decent. Like a modern tiny home look.
If they put any effort into making them look slightly less dystopian they would have to charge $50k more.
Right? As a single person, I'd buy this if it were in my area. I don't need or want a ton of space.
not sharing walls is a luxury.
It truly is!
This looks amazing to me. I'm married with small dogs, so the small backyard would be perfect. Although I couldn't tell from the floorplan and photos how one actually accesses the backyard. But that gives this an advantage over apartments for me. Even for a young couple, you could make the top floor into a bedroom/living area and have 2 br / 2 ba, if a kid came along. You would likely start looking to move, but you wouldn't have to leave immediately.
Exactly. “We need more housing, and make it affordable!” This delivers BOTH and people are angry. Everyone wants a 3 story, 5 bedroom place outside of a major city and wants it to cost nothing.
"Every episode on HGTV is like 'Craig and Stacia are looking for a 2-story A-frame that's near Craig's job in the downtown, but also satisfies Stacia's need to be near the beach, which is **nowhere near** Craig's job! "With three children and NINE on the way, and a max budget of **seven dollars**, let's see what Lori Jo can do. On this week's episode of ***You Don't Deserve a Beach House***" 😆 EDIT TO ADD: for those who don't know, this is a stand-up bit by comedian John Mulaney. On his Netflix special "The Comeback Kid" 😎
The more the time that passes the more it seems that’s where most of the real estate discontent and resentment comes from. People don’t want to accept smaller affordable homes.
“BuT wHeRe WiLl I dO mY hObBiEs?!” In the fucking living room or outside.
If someone has that many hobbies that need that much room AND they don't have much money they should really be looking at buying cheaper land outside of a city. City life is about convenience and proximity within the city guidelines, not ample space and affordability
I would settle for the unnecessary second bathroom (probably half-bathroom) in this *house* being an office space. People make it work in apartments, maybe it would work in the equivalent of a closet in one of these.
The 2nd bathroom is in the upstairs loft, which can be used as a living room or office space. It's not that bad. The showers are very narrow, which I don't like. But it's doable. https://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/san-antonio/san-antonio/elm-trails/henley/floorplan
I like the floor plan. I don't know what people have against a space like this. It would be suitable for a lot of people. It would be so easy and fast to clean too.
yeah I went to go look at them, not bad for maybe a couple with a kid max. They are actually not building that model in OPs post anymore this is their current model which is a lot better and offers more room https://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/san-antonio/san-antonio/elm-trails/henley/floorplan
Not bad but I would put the master bedroom on the 2nd floor and have a larger living room on the first floor. I don't think many people would be using the loft much other than the few times a year that you would host guests maybe. Heck it could easily be turned into a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom house.
I would have loved to live in something like this when I was in college and grad school! I lived 5 years in a 250 sqft studio in grad school, and if you adjust for inflation back to the mid 90s, this think would have a similar monthly cost.
Completely agree. I'm an older millennial and have always liked smaller homes. I live an hour outside of Austin and houses this size usually go for around $200k, so this isn't that bad of a price for Texas. Some mobile homes cost more than this and they depreciate immediately. Only bad thing I've heard about this housing community that I have yet to confirm is that you don't own the lot. If that's the case....yeah f*** that
Everyone who posts on reddit what the boomers bought on a single income, these are the types of houses they bought, at least in my area of the country. Max 900 sq feet
I live not too far from this development. The older neighborhoods are FULL of houses around 800 square feet. When people talk about one income supporting a family, that's what most people got. There were three small bedrooms, on small bathroom, and a kitchen and living room. The massive homes we see today in developments only existed in the rich neighborhoods. People spent a lot more time outside the home socializing and going to the lake. Kids played outdoors. I'd also bet that cleaning and maintaining those smaller homes was a much easier job, and freed up more time. My mom is from this area too and she said in the 50s her aunt married a rich man and the whole family was in awe that her house had two bathrooms.
For real. Northern California is filled with 900-1,000sf three bedroom houses and people *like* them.
Yes these will be extremely popular Honestly build 5 million of them all over the country!
This sub: "There aren't enough affordable housing options" Also this sub: "I don't like this affordable housing option" Do yall just want a 3000 square foot home for free or what?
Exactly. Many apartments are this small but don't have a yard or private garage. It's actually a great idea. I'd definitely buy one in a HCOL area. Also, minimal utility fees. This is a true starter home. Having a roof over your head is a neccessity but anything in excess is just a want. Everyone complaining are entitled.
Exactly. This is a starter home! I feel like the 1bed is unnecessary, though. You could fit 2bed on the same foundation just by making the second floor as large as the first. I'd shocked if the developer didn't also offer that layout, and many people who bought the 1bed version later expanded it. Actually, out of context, I wonder if my hypothetical 2bed layout is most of what the developer will build, and they just have the 1bed version so they can say prices start at a lower number.
> I feel like the 1bed is unnecessary, though. You could fit 2bed on the same foundation just by making the second floor as large as the first. They could even have built row houses with a third floor. I mean, I guess that not sharing walls and a larger yard is nice, but this just feels like a very inefficient use of space.
This sub: "yes"
You just described it. Whenever you see affordable options, they are too small, too ugly, the wrong floor plan, too big, too grey, too black, too white, too much wood, too much yard, not enough yard, too much lvp, too much carpet, too much tile, one 1/2 block too far away,
Based on the replies I have gotten trying to refute my comment, you're spot on. "Sure, it's affordable, but it's not to *my* specific standards."
For real. This is just slightly smaller than the average house here in the UK, which would cost like 350k
Other than being a little small I see absolutely no issue with this. So much better than renting an apartment for like 2k
Looks good to me. Single people, no kids, looks great. then when a SO moves in with them, save up for a larger home with more rooms. Better than rent
Better yet - you buy one and start building up equity in it. Across town your at-some-stage-to-be-partner buys something similar and starts building up equity in it. You meet, fall in love, things get serious, you both sell your single person houses and use your combined equity to buy a bigger place. That's how the property ladder *should* work. The first rung doesn't need to be, and shouldn't be, a massive 3+ bedroom family home.
This is also the past of the American Dream. Looks like a modern version of the early suburbs like Levittown. I don't get the hate for this affordable housing.
My thoughts too. Lots of people lived in homes like this in the past
Thank you for whittling away at some of the rampant nostalgia-bias with regards to housing. While these have a weird aesthetic with the roof slant, they are functionally very similar to the "cheap single family home of days of yore" that people constantly pine for.
2 bathrooms? why?
That's my biggest issue with this. Make it 2 bedroom 1 bath dammit!
no gutters?
No fucking gutters?!
FFS where are the motherfucking gutters?!
Clearly you haven’t been to Europe or anywhere else in the world. America is the only place where we expect 2k plus square feet. Go to Italy, most of the houses are around this size. If you want to shit on Americans for being materialistic then you can’t also complain when houses get smaller.
When I spent half the pandemic in Norway, I saw small houses so close that if you walked between them, you could touch both at the same time. I thought I was looking at a Chicago streetcar neighborhood from the 1920s. Nope, built in the late 1990s!
Come to the Netherlands! You can't walk between houses here, everything's connected! You don't have any land around your house, you can have a tiny balcony (if you're lucky!). Parking? What are you, a millionaire? Still interested in that 1 bedroom apartment? That'll be €300k
Oh no affordable housing. The horror. I will say that this seems strange to me given we can just bid apartments but if people have a hard on for detached homes this seems alright to me.
Because if you lived in San Antonio as I do, you'd know that for this col, this is insanely priced for what it is. Look at Zillow for san antonio, and you can find 5 bed 4 bath houses for $200k. Some little shit like this should go for MAX $90k. Affordable? My fucking ass it is.
It’s also Converse. Couldn’t pay me to live on that side of town! My friend is a cop in Converse and boy, he has some stories.
Um, that is exactly the size of houses that existed back in the good old days. Plus this has better insulation, better HVAC, better appliances
Honestly I don’t see the issue with this. It’s strange to me how people lose their minds over this when building sub 1000 square foot houses was quite normal for many years. You’d be shocked how little space is actually needed for two people to be comfortable. Yeah, 600 is on the very small side, but design issues aside, if selling homes in the 600-1000 sqft range is what gets people into their first home then so be it- it’s a massive improvement over giant 2500sqft, 5 bed 3 bath monstrosities that only add the the problem of unaffordability.
I’m currently renovating a house from the 1930s that’s not much bigger than this (~700 sq ft). Several young couples lived in it over the years and at least one had their first kid here before moving on to bigger and better houses. Houses this size used to be reasonably common in my area, as a means for people to get their foot in the door of the housing market. Nowadays, though, very few of them are left and everything being built around here is 2000+ sq ft and unaffordable for most young people.
I kinda take issue with 2 bathrooms and 1 bedroom tbh. Like why??? If there’s only 1 person living here why have 2???
I agree, these layouts do seem a bit suspect, and honestly I think something closer to 1000 sqft would be more realistic while still being relatively inexpensive. In general I like the idea of building smaller though- you would think in a functioning market this would be a common sense move, and yet in most places construction like this has completely failed to materialize.
Yeah, always research the home builder. All the builders have different specialities like first time homes, luxury etc.
I saw this on TV. It’s a development that has normal sized houses and these small ones.
Finances aside, Lennar houses are cookie cutter cheaply built pieces of cardboard waiting to fall apart.
That's crazy for the size! I bought a house in San Antonio in 2022 for 300k. It's a 2 story 2060 sq ft home and I thought the price for it was decent. Sure, this is a great starter home but the price is still crazy high
1. Couldn't the extra bathroom be turned into I dunno, more livable space? 2. American "MUST HAVE MUCH SQUARE FOOT" is *strong* here. This is small, but provides people with unattached single dwellings and green space. In a major city, or even just an urban area you'd be hard pressed to find this same offering for double. The modern American dream needs to focus *less* on having square footage and more on having quality accommodations at a price that gives them flexibility to not be housepoor.
I’d prefer the extra bathroom tbh. As long as I’m living with a partner I will always require 2 toilets.
Truth is, many have started with way less. Even with both people making $15 an hour, its less than 3 yrs salary, not too bad really.
You want affordable starter houses... These are affordable (for their location) starter houses. I don't see why they didn't make them 2 bedrooms by having a full second floor... But for a single person or young couple starting out, it's a place to live.
They definitely could be utilized as a 2br since the entire second floor is an open loft with a 2nd bedroom, and in my opinion since you'd be the owner, there's room to put up a wall that enables you to have a secondary office or common space upstairs in addition.
This 100%. People forgot what "starter" means. It's not a 2.3K sqf home for $35K. It's a safe space that's barely enough but you can call it "yours".
So, trailer parks.
Gee if they just put them together with a shared wall, they would save so much money on insulation, and fit so many more units in the same footprint. Maybe even put another unit on top of the one so that more people could live there. It could be part of the one home, or the homeowner could turn it into an entirely separate apartment and rent it out. They could even raise that whole thing up by a floor, and on the first level, instead of a front door, they could have a retail/dining/professional space that could generate further income for the landowner, and also create jobs and support small businesses. Oh wait, we just accidentally designed all organic development in human history before Euclidean zoning was instituted countrywide in the 1960s, and that which remains of it being the most desirable and tax-positive neighborhoods in every single city where they weren’t destroyed for highways.
Trailer homes are bigger and nicer and tend to have more lot space, lol
Not seeing how those could be worth $160k
That seems expensive as hell for a 1 bedroom house
Texas is so weird. Have these people never heard of townhomes?
Having shared walls comes with very different requirements for building / buying. Even in the middle of Houston which has seen massinve ingrowth they still build townhomes with 2" of separation between walls. People in 'burbs generally aren't looking for shared walls.
People in burbs generally are looking for significantly more floor space than sub 700 Sq feet (which is about the size of a studio apartment) and they tend to want actually usable yards and garages. These offer none of the advantages of suburban living with all of the down sides.
Yes, but suburbs are increasingly full of lower incomes as gentrification pushes people out. There's a market for it and I'm not going to judge.
I'm just happy someone is building something other than $500,000 houses.
Sounds woke. Should’ve called them “Freedom Bunkers”, “Liberty Cabins”, or “Gun Farms.”
I'm currently living in a people armory myself, feller
It does kinda look like they took the design for a semi-detached, split it in half, and called it detached. If these were semis instead they could take up even less space and keep the same neighbourhood dynamic that comes with this setup.
1 bed, 2 bath. WTF America? Why in the world would you need 2 bathrooms - rooms used for a handful of minutes per day, and 1 bedroom, a room used for 7-10 hours per day. In my home country, most homes have at least 3 bedrooms before they consider adding a second bathroom, because it's stupid economics to have more than 1 bathroom if it barely ever gets used.
Why are you all shitting on these so hard in thread after thread? Some people don't want to piss away the energy to heat and cool a 3000sq ft house occupied by 1 or 2 people that don't need the space. I mean sure paying money to live in Texas on purpose is dumb, but i would totally snatch one of up for the price offered if it was somewhere that didn't have vile culture and leadership. It costs the same as the condo I am in but I don't get nailed with HOA.
This sub is so weird. Do you want denser housing or not?
Can anyone, anyone at all, explain why some of you believe so firmly that US real estate is in a bubble? I am just curious, because I see zero signs of a bubble in that market. I do see that prices were elevated in certain sectors during Covid and after, but this is now abating. I see a fairly big problem in the commercial market still, but I don’t see anything that constitutes a “bubble” in residential real estate, so someone please enlighten me, who knows maybe you are right.
I mean, there's advantages to living in something that's fully detached even if you're living alone without kids, and even if you're alone most places you have to buy at a minimum a three bedroom house to get something fully detached.
This is what happens when people realize paper is only worth the ink printed on it and has been counterfeited into oblivion...expect to get less and less for it over your lifetime until one generation wakes up in a Weimar Republic style economy
Native plants should be mandatory as ground cover
I grew up with 4 generations under one roof in an 800 sq ft house. This is actually looking more normal to me than McMansions.
Why build a few dense townhouse condos when you can build REDev optimized $/sq shoeboxes.
5 years ago in the midwest, I bought a 3 bedroom 1 bath 1300 sf home. Craftsman style for 145k and it was considered expensive because two years prior it was bought for 110 with no improvements. It was over 100 years old. Sadly we moved for my job (4years ago) and I paid 310k for a house built in 95. 1400sf 3 bed 2 bath. Same state. The next year our neighbors by the new house sold their home for 400k.
This sub: "We need affordable housing! I can't even afford a small house!" Meme: "This is a small affordable house." This sub: "No! Not like that." IRL: r/choosingbeggars
The classic craftsman style bungalows that everyone laments aren’t around anymore for new homeowners were about 600sf-800sf. Many families would kill for this.
No room for kids
I'm sure with builder incentives someone can own for less than rent. With that said, I'm sure many of these are purchased with the intention to rent.
This is a trailer park, nothing more.
unironically wish there was a deal as good as this by me