Comments on: House prices in Boston down only 6 percent

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:44:34 +0000

The Atlantic ran A Tale of Two Houses in 2007, which describes part of this problem. Notice the graph in particular and that Boston is relatively inexpensive.

By: John

John — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:44:30 +0000

There was an earlier energy efficient house movement in North America after the ’70s energy crisis. It was very big in Canada, I believe many aspects of research then migrated into their building codes. When I was designing my superinsulated house in the early ’80s, I tried to obtain some software called HOTCAN, but it was too pricey for me. I ended up doing calculations on heat loss in a spreadsheet.

There is a US book, The Superinsulated Home Book. http://www.amazon.com/Superinsulated-Home-Book-Ned-Nisson/dp/047188734X claims it is from 1985. The author did a newsletter (Energy Design Update) that I used as a resource in designing my house.

Mine is a double wall house, using two 2×4 stud walls and 6″ insulation space in between. A friend built one about five years back, he used the ICF wall method. I wish that technology was out when I built. And the windows I used were R3.3, I see that R10 windows are available now.

By: patrick giagnocavo

patrick giagnocavo — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:45:51 +0000

What is the net migration into / out of the Boston area? I seem to recall reading that there is a net migration out of MA, but it did not have numbers for Boston.

By: njkayaker

njkayaker — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:35:59 +0000

Boston is a good bit colder than Germany in the winter.

And…

“And those who want passive-house mansions may be disappointed. Compact shapes are simpler to seal, while sprawling homes are difficult to insulate and heat.

Most passive houses allow about 500 square feet per person, a comfortable though not expansive living space. Mr. Hasper said people who wanted thousands of square feet per person should look for another design.”

It looks like that they are talking about multifamily dwellings.

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The attitude about housing construction in Europe is different than in America. Europeans tend to have less of a problem with building expensive (but not fancy) housing. That is, they have more of a tendency of seeing how the housing is built as a long term investment. You can see this when comparing things like doorknobs in typical housing.

In the US, houses are built cheaply to maximize the profit on the initial sale. (the -builders- don’t look at the house as a long term investment). The fact that it costs more to heat in the future is irrelevant to the person who built it (since they don’t have to pay for it).

A related problem is that it takes quite a long time (at least it did, historically) to recoup extra construction costs (to make more efficient housing) with future savings in reduced energy needs.

By: rjh

rjh — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:13:44 +0000

That is possible factor, but it does not show up in the Schiller indices. Using 2000 to establish the index of 100, Boston peaked at 182 while the top 10 market index peaked at 226. This means Boston showed only 2/3 the average price increase post 2000. The drop has been slower in Boston, which might reflect the difficulty in building and renovating. Boston is presently 159 vs the top 10 composite value of 170.

By: Wirehead

Wirehead — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:42:35 +0000

When I was but a wee lil nerd in the 80s, one of my mom’s friends had a double-walled house. They had to borrow space heaters long enough so they could meet code because the heater was judged to be undersized.by the zoning folks.

By: Paul Pencikowski

Paul Pencikowski — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:27:26 +0000

I’ve been in a lot of “super-insulated, air-tight” homes. Not fun! A 1200sf home needs to exchange the air approx every 4 hours, or it gets “stuffy” (horridly so) and that’s the problem. The solution is to introduce air via an underground heat-exchanger so the air introduced into the home (or perhaps heat-unit) is 50F instead of the freezing air from outside. Few eco-homes have this. Still, eco-homes “the future” but based on my own (recent/extensive/sorry) experiences the *enemy* is Zoning Boards who are controlled by local construction lobbies.

Certain towns in CT (like Boston) have a similar “can’t tear down” zoning problem. The “solution” there is to build a house-within-a-house and tear down the shell.

The last eco-problem for eco-homes is external light. Large windows (nice) introduce a lot of heat if facing south, creating a huge HVAC (Heating Ventilation Air-Conditioning) problem even in the winter. In summer, these same big-south-windows become HVAC nightmares.

philg, I still reference your (awesome) long-ago story on Early Retirement. Irvine CA is (sadly) not the place to be. I’ll investigate Reno in January (the “worst” weather). Your #1 tip: (paraphrase) “You want to be fundamentally wealthier than the general population” (a brilliant deduction).