A few weeks ago, I watched one of those property shows on HGTV as I folded laundry. A young couple, maybe in their early 30s, walked through a palatial – by my standards – house in Tennessee. It had huge ceilings, a marble floor entrance way, an acre of property, a fireplace. Everything was brand new.
This monster house cost something like $200,000 to $300,000. A house like that in the East coast would cost $800,000. How do construction companies build such a huge house for $200,000?
As the couple walked through the home, they whined to the real estate agent that the kitchen didn't have marble counter tops. Ugh. Take out the shotgun. Whiny 30 somethings complaining about marble counter tops do not generate much sympathy from me.
I called my buddy, Suze, to rant about the marble counter top people. She said that younger people had different lifestyle expectations that we do. She talked about a younger cousin's dorm room suite. Each suite had its own laundry. No more doing laundry with 60 other kids in the dorm basement anymore. Several commenters in the higher ed blog post talked about all the extras – Starbucks, climbing walls – that are now standard in the college experience.
I'm slowly turning into that grumpy old man.
Apt. 11d 
How do construction companies build such a huge house for $200,000?
Mexican day labor and poor quality materials.
LikeLike
Nice, new houses around here start at $250k and that is with a longish commute and a small yard. It’s hard to build cheaper than that if you want 2,500 square feet (and I’d consider that a bit below “palatial”).
LikeLike
Was this the one with the pregnant women who went on to name her daughter Gentry? I loved that one.
How long does this new, cheap construction typically last? I’ve been going to open houses and a lot of kitchens and bathrooms remodeled in the past ten years are already looking worn out. There’s also the 50’s bathrooms that look like they could last another 50 or 60 years.
LikeLike
I am cranky about the opposite here in Vancouver. A starter home is about $1.5-2 million and people in their late 20’s- 30’s expect subsidies from the city to buy them.
While I totally get how ridiculously expensive it is, no one is stopping them from moving to a more affordable city. I am MORE than happy to provide assistance to those in need – well educated people who choose to try and live in an expensive place? Not so much..,
That’s MY crankiness!
LikeLike
“Each suite had its own laundry.”
Holy cow. That’s a new one.
The en suite dorm bathroom is a mixed blessing if the college isn’t cleaning it. My much younger brother shared one with a bunch of other guys, and the idea was that the one with the weakest stomach would eventually capitulate and clean it. (It might still have been cleaner than the big traditional bathroom at my old college that invariably had huge wads of hair in the shower drains.)
“How long does this new, cheap construction typically last?”
On the Housing Bubble Blog, one of the commentors likes to say “Tolls Brothers–guaranteed for 5 years. After that it falls apart.”
For your enjoyment, here’s a 9,000 sq. ft. foreclosure once owned by Casey Anthony’s lawyer (allegedly) and allegedly visited by Casey Anthony herself. Creepy.
http://www.bubbleinfo.com/2012/03/21/safe-haven/
Sandra,
I think Vancouver may be having a Wile E. Coyote moment right now (you know, where he steps off a cliff, but doesn’t fall until he looks down). Some relatives are trying to sell a house in the $2 million range and the Chinese buyers are suddenly skittish.
LikeLike
I am happy just to have electricity and cold running water. Recently I have had the cold water, but the electricity has been spotty. Those are really the only bourgeois luxuries I indulge in.
LikeLike
“How do construction companies build such a huge house for $200,000?”
Starting with an under-$30k lot helps a lot.
($30k was the price for suburban lots when we moved to Texas nearly 5 years ago. I expect it’s gone down quite a bit.)
LikeLike
The difference is totally in the land prices.
LikeLike
I stayed in a dorm room at UT recently, and it was not at all palatial (in fact, quite marginal, and seemed worse than the dorm room I lived in 20+ years ago, though of course, that might be memory playing tricks). It did, however, have its own bathroom (and, I absolutely refuse to share a bathroom with someone unless someone else is cleaning it).
As I’ve said before, I blame television, at least as much as I blame people (kids/families/?). The lifestyles portrayed on TV, for different income levels are just wildly disconnected from reality. As we’re pointing out, starter houses in Vancouver can cost more than a million, you get practically nothing for 1 M in NY, and, even in TN, apparently you can’t get marble (really, marble?) in your kitchen for 200K. Can a lawyer & a doctor really afford a brownstone in NY (like the cosby family does)? and what about the estate the Parenthood grandparents live in? Could Ross afford his own apartment in NYC (on a museum worker’s salary)?
LikeLike
As a 30-something myself I’m baffled (and annoyed) at other 30-somethings complaining about not having the home of their dreams. Even worse if they just got out of grad school and haven’t even started real work yet!
I too blame TV, and parents, who never really let their kids know how much *they* had to scrimp and save in their 20s and 30s (when the kids were young)
LikeLike
Ok, rambling, unrelated thoughts:
If it makes you feel better, I am a grad student in my late 20s and since leaving home I’ve never had an in unit washer and dryer (in fact, it’s my main fantasy) OR marble countertops (which I really don’t care about). At my fancy liberal arts college we had coin op machines in the basement of our un-airconditioned, mice-ridden dorms. I have a dishwasher in my current apartment, so I guess I’m spoiled in other ways though. (Well, I had an in-unit washer in China once, but it was only partially automatic and it ruined your clothes, so I rarely used it, and mainly hand-washed everything. In that apartment, the toilet leaked out the base, the roof caved in during a large rainstorm, the hot water stopped working halfway through my stay, and the bed (which I had to share) had only a box spring, so the luxury of the washer was somewhat cancelled out.)
On luxury, is having a large home really that luxurious if it’s really cheaply made? Or is it like buying a $100 flatscreen TV at Walmart that then breaks? IMO, quality ought to factor in somehow.
It seems like in the US bigger is better and thus luxurious, but I’d much rather have a well-made, well-insulated house that is cheaper to run and own in the long run (maybe that’s not luxury exactly…)
I do agree it might be the case that some young people expect more in the way of material goods than our parents did. If so, it’s probably not just the product of lax parenting but also of the fact that cheaply made material goods are cheaper, so you can own more stuff for less money, and also that consumerism/capitalism only functions by convincing people that wants are necessities. Also, conspicuous consumption means signaling wealth through arbitrary signals (marble countertops), which really mean nothing.
Finally, sometimes I think about how in some ways I’m spoiled compared to my parents, which is partially a result of going to a college for the 1%. Thinking about Laura’s column about who your friends are, since many of my friends and former boyfriends/husbands are 1%ers, I’ve had access to the experiences of the wealthy, even though I myself am not. I’ve been taken out to really fancy restaurants, drunk really expensive wine, taken on expensive vacations, spent time at people’s really nice vacation homes/vineyards etc. (in fact, I just got invited to a pre-wedding party in the Hamptons). It’s not my normal life, so I don’t expect luxury like that, but I know what it’s like.
On the flip side though, my baby boomer parents lived and bummed around Europe in their 20s, which was cheap in the 70s but would now be prodigiously expensive, and bought their first home (4 bedroom, 1920s bungalow in Portland, OR) for next to nothing while in their early 20s, and then rented it out to bum around and go to grad school. A house in a comparable price range to what my parents paid (adjusting for inflation) in Chicago would be condemned and in a neighborhood where I’d have to invest in a bullet proof fence if I wanted to live there.
LikeLike
Do kids still want to live in dorms past the freshman year? I got out as soon as I could because it was cheaper to live off campus and so much easier to drink.
LikeLike
Actually, after moving back to Vancouver, Manhattan looks affordable! Now if only NYC would give me a subsidy to live there…
Seriously, though, it IS tempting to consider NYC.
LikeLike
B.I.’s assessment seems right on. Most 20-somethings don’t expect marble counter tops, these types of shows draw the type of people who do.
One thing I’m interested in, totally due to selfish curiosity, is, how many 20- and 30-somethings still receive parental support? I’m in my early(mid?) thirties and my sense is that more than a few of the couples I know are still receiving some support from their parents, even the people with jobs, kids and houses of their own who seemingly should be able to support themselves. It’s very much a secret though, it’s just about the only thing no one talks about.
LikeLike
If you really want to feel ill, watch Househunters International and ask yourself “who are these families in Ohio that have the money to buy a one million dollar vacation home in FIJI — and SIX PLANE TICKETS to take the family there several times a year?” These are the ones that always make me feel a little sick, since I would have liked to have had a fourth child — but we couldn’t afford it.
If you like to share with other disgruntled House Hunters Watchers, try the Television Without Pity forum, where some people have actually managed to identify the househunters. The guy in Ohio with the house in Fiji was the head of a huge construction company, etc. (Oh, and apparently it’s all staged anyway. In most cases they’ve already bought the house.)
When we lived in Northern Virginia, I don’t think you could have even bought a cardboard box for $250 K, and one of her neighbors finally told her husband he couldn’t watch Househunters in front of the children anymore, because he couldnt’ stop shouting at the TV screen about the fact that he worked his a** off at a boring government job so they could live in a 1600 square foot house that was 50 years old and didn’t have a dishwasher.
LikeLike
I’m not sure in general, but I have anecdotal evidence. I’m a grad student and don’t receive any support from my mother, and haven’t since she bought me a one way plane ticket to China as a college graduation gift. I live completely on my grad student stipend/teaching salary, which is relatively generous when I teach, plus I live with three people in a 2 bedroom apartment (one is my boyfriend) (and yes, we share a bathroom). I try to save as much as possible for when the (relative) gravy train gets cut off since I expect to take longer than my fellowship. If I was ever absolutely destitute or in need of money I’m sure my mother or brother would lend me money, however neither of us want to be in that sort of situation. My siblings are also totally financially independent too (although my brother married a girl from a really wealthy family, whose parents gave her an SUV when she got married, and I think co-signed his mortgage so he got a lower interest rate.) My brother bought a million plus dollar house (in the Bay Area) in his late 20s, and now in his mid 30s has remodeled the kitchen and bathrooms and is looking to buy a cabin around Lake Tahoe. Sometimes I get annoyed that my brother has never not lived in relative luxury, but then again his first job at 15 paid $100/hour in the early 90s, and in college he basically earned half his private college tuition at his summer job. I have no idea how much he makes now, but I know that by 23 he was making more than my mother. I don’t have his talents, I don’t want his job, and I don’t ever expect to have his lifestyle.
I have friends whose parental support ranges from nothing (like mine) to paying the cell phone bill to paying car insurance to buying them an apartment.
Honestly though, I haven’t met a single person my age or a little older who whines about not owning their dream home. Most of us just hope for a place with not too many rodents and a non-crazy landlord. Also, health insurance, which we have, luckily. The people my age who DO have fancy homes or stuff and not super high paying jobs have wealthy parents who didn’t necessarily scrimp and save when they were young either. I feel like there’s a “kids these days” narrative, but outside of TV I’m not sure how true it is. Most people I know have a fairly realistic idea that their lifestyle may never resemble their parents’, or if it does, it’s because their parents are wealthy and in the business of transferring wealth to the next generation, which isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.
LikeLike
Oh, the comment was in part addressed to Scantee.
LikeLike
Whiny 30 somethings complaining about marble counter tops do not generate much sympathy from me.
Did you notice the year? Was it pre-2008?
If the couple intended to sell the house, they should care about the features future buyers in that category care about. Marble countertops probably make the list. Three car garage? Upstairs laundry?
The school district was probably not nearly as good as your current school district. They weren’t facing the sort of get-me-into-a-good-school-district competition which can inflate home prices in certain parts of the country, especially on the coasts.
Look at this chart: cost of living by state, vs. education by state. New Jersey: 46th in cost of living, 2nd in education. Tennessee: 2nd in cost of living, 43rd in education. http://www.cnbc.com/id/41666605
So, there are tradeoffs. The couple on HGTV chose different tradeoffs. They probably can’t understand why anyone would choose to live in an expensive state.
LikeLike
Raleigh, NC, where we moved to 12 years ago, used to be very affordable. You can still live in a burb 20 miles out with granite for 200-300k but if you want good schools, decent commute times and amenities it is expensive. We spent a fortune for our house but at least we did get granite and good schools and 5 minute trips to nice grocery stores.
And the HH INternational where the people from Ohio buy the million dollar beach homes astounds me as well.
LikeLike
“Also, conspicuous consumption means signaling wealth through arbitrary signals (marble countertops), which really mean nothing.”
Worse yet, it’s all worthless in 10 years. The 9,000 sq. ft. foreclosure I pointed out up above will be dated by the end of this decade, and it will be terribly expensively to replace all those hard surfaces.
“One thing I’m interested in, totally due to selfish curiosity, is, how many 20- and 30-somethings still receive parental support? I’m in my early(mid?) thirties and my sense is that more than a few of the couples I know are still receiving some support from their parents, even the people with jobs, kids and houses of their own who seemingly should be able to support themselves. It’s very much a secret though, it’s just about the only thing no one talks about.”
We’re in our latish 30s and we never ASK for stuff, but we get help from my in-laws with travel expenses to the West Coast when we visit, got $900 medical scholarship from them for our oldest when she needed evaluation and physical therapy (very helpful at the time), and have been getting help paying for riding therapy for our oldest (that’s about $1200 a year). There’s been other one-time stuff over the years. They’re also offering us $20k to help with downpayment on our first house. On the other hand, when my husband did his first doctorate and was living at home, he turned all of his stipends over to his parents. I suppose all that help adds up to a lot, but we very rarely make plans with the expectation that they will cover stuff. When I was a newylywed, I was very proud, but now that our kids are big and expensive, I’m not nearly as proud as I used to be. We never ask for any financial help, though.
We know a foreign graduate family our age where the husband has a stipend, but his wife can’t work legally in the US and they have two school-age kids. Grandparents in the old country are paying for private school for one child. Even though it’s an Asian family and the kids are doing amazing, I think the mom at least finds the situation embarrassing.
LikeLike
“The school district was probably not nearly as good as your current school district. They weren’t facing the sort of get-me-into-a-good-school-district competition which can inflate home prices in certain parts of the country, especially on the coasts.”
It’s actually odd how little emphasis those shows put on neighborhood, schools and commutes (at least from what I’ve seen). So much for location-location-location.
LikeLike
Help from parents is culturally specific. I think it’s more rare to have to go it on your own without help from extended family – a very nuclear family north american view.
In other cultures – Asia, southern Europe – the family unit is the extended family and the resources are much more likely to be pooled.
There’s also a lot of what I call “stealth wealth” – trust funds and the like that people (as is their perogative) keep quiet about. Homes are purchased for kids, trips paid for, school tuition, etc.
I don’t think that there is anything wrong with it – it’s just a different take on things.
LikeLike
The reason I mentioned parental help is that I wonder how much it skews young adults’ perceptions of what is affordable. If the parents of these young house hunters are picking up the down payments or monthly payments for these houses then the buyers might not think twice about demanding the best.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with parental help but I do sense embarrassment from my friends when it comes out that they don’t fully support themselves. One big concern I think they have is how one-sided it is: they receive financial or substantial in-kind support from their parents but they do not have the resources to reciprocate.
LikeLike
“The reason I mentioned parental help is that I wonder how much it skews young adults’ perceptions of what is affordable. If the parents of these young house hunters are picking up the down payments or monthly payments for these houses then the buyers might not think twice about demanding the best.”
Right. We’re buying a house in that price range next year (long story) and I think it has the potential to be a big sucking financial black hole. The neighborhood is very good, though, and there’d be no commute for my husband and it’s close to school, and there’s nothing else for sale there, so I guess we just hold our noses and jump in. We wouldn’t go near it without downpayment help or years more savings of our own, but I’m certainly experiencing some dread with regard to doubling our housing expenses. I guess it’s just that I’m old enough to have a very good idea of what a quarter of a million dollars actually means, or how much it costs to keep something like that going or how much renovation really costs. (We may have to wait up to 10 years or longer before we fully de-pink and de-purple the house–it’s those darn hard surfaces again.)
Now, one possibility is that the reason the young people are so insistent about getting marble NOW is that they’re cash poor and so everything has to be included in the mortgage, because they have absolutely no cash money to do stuff themselves.
LikeLike
Scantee: “but I do sense embarrassment from my friends when it comes out that they don’t fully support themselves.” And that right there is the cultural difference – some families don’t see that it is important that each member can support themselves on their own. They see the family as one unit rather than made up of individuals. There is no embarrassment.
If there was embarrassment or shame it’d probably be over leaving someone in the family to fend for themselves!
The friends that I have who share that value aren’t necessarily spoiled – they still go through the same affordability decisions. If someone is going to overextend, they’ll probably do it whether or not they are using pooled resources or their own income.
LikeLike
Marble’s a terrible choice for the kitchen. It scorches and stains.
It’s o.k. if you only unwrap take-out on the counters.
LikeLike
I think bakers like marble for some reason having to do with dough.
LikeLike
For fondant. You can apparently use a food processor instead: http://www.thebakingpan.com/recipes/fondant/fondant.html.
At any rate, a marble slab would suffice. All the countertops don’t need to be marble.
Serpentine marble is supposed to be tough enough for kitchens.
There’s always granite, but it can be radioactive.
LikeLike
I don’t know how the marble they’re using in kitchens these days will wear, but older marble (on old floors or on antique counters) does not look anything like new marble. I haven’t seen that much staining, but the old stuff has a lot more patina. Maybe it’s a less polished cut?
I really hate the idea that something that took thousands of years to form (or however long) is going to get torn out in 10 years.
MH, they can’t really use dough as an excuse for doing a couple hundred square feet of marble countertops. (Before marble went big, I remember seeing kitchens with just a small baking center with a marble top.)
I am (or hope to be) a quartz gal.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2271059_care-quartz-countertops.html
LikeLike
My counters are twenty year-old formica. I do have marble flooring (pink) in the main bath. I’ve never tried to make fondant there. Considering the aiming problems of a five-year-old boy and me when I’m sleepy or drunk, I probably never will.
LikeLike
“I do have marble flooring (pink) in the main bath.”
I’m not sure that counts as marble these days.
LikeLike
OMG Laura all I could think about while reading this post was the size of the I-House dorm rooms (remember the pull out beds?)and our mouse infested apartment in Hyde Park! My daughter has an ensuite single dorm room and she complains that it feels like living in hotel. I find it hard to be sympathetic.
When I worked as a real estate agent, I definitely got frustrated with my younger clients. My first house was a piece of crap that needed everything, and I felt lucky to have it. (Now I sound like Grumpy Old Man.) Not the case with younger buyers. Showing 20 – 30 houses to buyers is not unheard of. It’s often like an extreme case of Goldilocks.
LikeLike
“Showing 20 – 30 houses to buyers is not unheard of.”
This won’t make you feel better about it, but I strongly suspect they were using you as cheap entertainment, a sort of live-action version of the HGTV shows.
LikeLike
“This won’t make you feel better about it, but I strongly suspect they were using you as cheap entertainment, a sort of live-action version of the HGTV shows.”
They would eventually buy a house, but were so concerned about making the wrong decision, they were afraid to make a move until they found the “perfect” house. I’m talking about buyers with leases about to expire, relocating for a job, or baby on the way living in a studio apartment.
Prior to the housing market crash, buyers had to move so quickly – they didn’t have time to think about the marble counter tops. Houses sometimes sold in a matter of hours. Kitchens could be remodeled and home values were so quickly appreciating, they didn’t have to think about recouping the costs. After the crash, they saw what happened to their friends or lost a bundle themselves and suddenly decided they were not going to part with their money unless they found exactly what they wanted. Yes, they are spoiled, but it comes from a place of fear.
LikeLike
“OMG Laura all I could think about while reading this post was the size of the I-House dorm rooms (remember the pull out beds?)and our mouse infested apartment in Hyde Park!”
If it makes you feel better, I am in my late 20s and have lived in a mouse infested apartment in Hyde Park (with a crazy landlord as a bonus). I feel very happy to now live with 3 people in a 2 bed 1 bath apt. in Hyde Park with, AFAIK, no visible signs of mice.
LikeLike
Based on our local housing stock, I think the bad, cheap (but not inexpensive), mildewed, thin-walled, poorly-maintained off-campus apartment is alive and well. However, what’s different is that there is now an entirely new market segment of fancy-schmancy student rentals that (I’m prepared to wager) look nicer than the homes of at least half of the commenters in this thread. (In our area, those tend to be named after expensive Colorado resort towns.) Of course, once you fill that photogenic house with 3-6 19-year-olds, the overall effect may not really be that luxurious.
Mid-range, there are newish roomy duplexes without fancy finishes, but with an amazing number of bathrooms and bedrooms for the square footage. (We’re going to be moving into one of those in a couple months for the year, and it’s 4BR/4BA–the standard for newer off-campus student rentals is one bath per bedroom. I’m already planning to turn one of those superfluous baths into some sort of closet.)
LikeLike
“There’s always granite, but it can be radioactive.”
Radioactive
LikeLike