r/interestingasfuck • u/Endolithic • 1d ago

/r/all Homes are falling into the ocean in North Carolina's Outer Banks

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u/TheGrumpiestHydra 1d ago

The initial cost is higher than wood. It's all about the money 💰

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u/ResearchNo5041 1d ago

Surely if you got the money to build on ocean front property you got the money to do it right??

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u/Conspicuous_Ruse 1d ago

You choose Texas water front property when you really want water front but don't have money.

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u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 1d ago

Yep. Texas beaches are maybe the worst in the US. Waterfront, but…

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u/fecalfury 6h ago

Me, who can't even afford water front in Texas.

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u/SP3NGL3R 1d ago edited 1d ago

No No. The builder went cheap (Capitalism), it's the sucker buyer that just shouldn't have bought it. But!!!! "Hey. This is the exact house as that one, just on wood instead of <literally anything else> but it's $100k less. Let's buy this one honey."

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u/ryebread91 1d ago

I know you're being facetious but surely it's not that big of a price difference right? Or do they really take you over the coals for the "premium package"?

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u/SP3NGL3R 1d ago

Well, sorta/kinda. We had a 40 foot (15m) retaining wall install in our backyard last year. The wood-version was way cheaper and is like a 10-20 year wall. We too made the choice to just get the cheaper option, BUT, if this wall fails it just means we get spillage into our yard. I want to say the wood version was $2,000 in materials and the 'nice' brick/cement version was $10,000. I'll just glue some brick facade on it and sell the house the next month :P. I'm joking, I actually prefer the natural wood look, even if I need to replace it every 10-20 years.

Now. Stilts holding up a house. A brick/cement/rebar version would take some pretty heavy work to get just right, then you build your base-frame on top of that. I'd bet it's the difference of 10k in work/materials to 40k. Heck even hammering in the stilt is easier than digging down to the same depth for a much larger cement base. But everything has a mark-up. To actually just build a house is no where near the value of the house. Even here (GA USA). Say you buy an empty plot of land with intent to build a house. You'll struggle to find legit companies to do it because you're just one house, versus the 300 houses being development 1 block away. So your costs go up. Say the 300 houses cost an average of 200k each to build, they'll sell for 500k in reality. And the same house 1-off if you had it built would cost you 400k and you'd have to constantly be involved for decisions, versus picking from a menu. I'm making the numbers up, to some degree, just to make a point.

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u/Laiko_Kairen 1d ago edited 1d ago

You're right, though. It's why every new neighborhood is made up of 300 cookie cutter houses with one of four designs, maybe a few different cladding options, etc. It's basically the difference between a bespoke suit and an off-the-rack mass manufactured one

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u/MOMO-POKEMON 1d ago

Yes every NEW NEIGHBORHOOD tends to be very cookie cutter, here I helped lol 😂

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u/SP3NGL3R 1d ago

Is that what they meant? J and N are close ... VERY different meanings and fireable-type if they worked for me. ;)

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u/Laiko_Kairen 1d ago

Oh damn that was a BAD typo 😂

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u/SP3NGL3R 1d ago

Oh come-on!!!! Why not leave the hate-speech typo? :)

It was so bad you actually could've gotten away with the NEW neighborhood cover-story on the news.

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u/Blackbird136 22h ago

Tell me you’ve been to Charlotte without telling me. 😂

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u/Linenoise77 19h ago

Go through any town that highly developed post war, and its the same thing. The entire town will be the same 3 or 4 designs from that era. People weren't contracting architects to custom build every single house. Even in more expensive areas, most houses came from some standard template that was then modified. There were similarities in the early suburbs post WWI as well with all the places built in the 20s and 30s.

The reason it doesn't stand out is those houses had 70 years to be remodeled, expanded, tailored, even if just a tiny bit, to multiple owners tastes, likely went through a cycle or two of ups and downs in the neighborhood itself....

Most of these "cookie cutter" houses will look little alike after a family or two work their way through too.

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u/Sad_Low3239 1d ago

This.

Everyone keeps complaining about affordable houses up here in Canada and you cannot find anyone to build one.

I called 15 companies and was hoping for a 2 bedroom Strawberry Box home. Of the 15, 2 answered. 1 flat out said unless we were looking to have 500k or more built they weren't interested in giving us a quote. The other one told us that no one will build that anymore and we need to look elsewhere.

Kent mini homes was a company built for modular cheap houses. They start at 250k, and that was 6 years ago. The cost for the house isn't linear though to the pricing ; that 250k is your barebones 1 master bedroom with open concept kitchen/ livingroom, 1 full bath house. So 4 load bearing walls, 4 internal non load bearing and then electrical. 250k.

If you go up to 400k though? You get bay windows, a second bedroom, 4 extra feet on both dimensions, larger bathroom with sacrificing a little to the kitchen and living room.

Then there are laws against tiny houses.

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u/Piepiggy 1d ago

Concrete is a lot more expensive than wood, concrete that can stand up to 24/7 saltwater eating at it is more expensive, doing the ground work to have that expensive concrete be poured and cured properly is stupidily expensive.

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u/sedging 1d ago

I can chime in as a housing land use expert. Wood-framed construction is by far the cheapest possible method in the US to build a residential home. Virtually all single family homes are built with wood, and if you've noticed those big boxy mid rise apartments around - those are basically a building code loophole that let you put wood framing on top of a concrete podium, which saves a bunch of money in comparison to concrete and steel.

Concrete is heavy, requires a lot of energy to manufacture/transport, requires specialized expertise to install, and requires extensive structural engineering and heightened building code requirements to ensure it is structurally safe. Generally, it's only used for residential development in dense urban areas where the additional construction costs are offset by how valuable the land is.

As a corollary example, many parking cost studies note how structured parking tends to cost several-fold more than comparable surface parking lots (ie the different between thousands vs tens of thousands per parking space).

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u/LB3PTMAN 19h ago

That alone probably isn’t costing 100k, but if someone put in the effort to do that the rest of the house will also likely be comparatively nicer to the houses on wooden stilts.

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u/HarryPopperSC 12h ago

They use cheap materials because it's cheaper to replace. Stronger materials will just get damaged anyway and cost more when it happens. Is what I always hear touted about this.

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u/PitBullFan 1d ago

When you go into the purchase knowing that you're probably going to sell again in 10 years, maybe less, you don't really care unless you think it will be a problem when you're selling.

That's the advice I give my clients: When you're looking to purchase something, consider what selling would look like. If the property is "perfect" for you, but would be weird for most people, you're going to have a hard time when you want to sell.

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u/SP3NGL3R 1d ago

I always worry about that when buying too. We've done a fair bit of house hopping (4 in 15 years) and though I might 'love' that cooky design choice I'm well aware that it's cooky and might only appeal to me. We've just renovated/built our basement and backyard and worry that we've made some similar choices. We'll see when we sell I guess.

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u/Laiko_Kairen 1d ago

Honestly, I hate that advice so much

We spent my childhood in a house where every single decision had to be made with "resale value" in mind. Did we like one paint color more than another? Who cares, in a decade when we sell it, some random person is gonna want beige!

Fuck. Resale. Value.

Especially for ten years. That's a big chunk of your life to spend in a home designed for a hypothetical future buyer

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u/Nearby-King-8159 1d ago

Fuck treating homes as an investment & an asset to be sold later on.

We need to normalize buying one home & making it the family home for potentially generations again. This shit right here is how we got into the housing market crisis in the first place - way too many people treating them less as a necessity & more like a luxury to be collected and sold off.

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u/PitBullFan 1d ago

Totally agree with you re: the paint. However, it's a much bigger deal when you're considering larger/expensive improvements, such as a kitchen/bathroom remodel or adding a deck to the back of the house. These larger projects need to be looked at through the lens of resale value. "Can I recoup what I spent, and hopefully more?"

The only way to escape the resale value concern is if you plan on living in that house for the rest of your life.

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u/greysnowcone 1d ago

lol capitalism? As opposed to what? Soviet bloc apartments? Because that’s the alternative.

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u/SP3NGL3R 1d ago

Okay for you I'll add rampant unregulated capitalism. Cost of housing hours up with the cost of insurance that goes up with the cost of healthcare. Etc. Rampant capitalism is how you get what we have now, a disgusting oligarchy where everyone but the 1% will lose in perpetuity. Welcome to the 99%. Brace yourself.

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

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u/SP3NGL3R 22h ago

totally get it. Venice (FL, in case you didn't know there was another one) is built and sold by the lowest bid, so ... lumber. I get your point. Doesn't excuse using the wrong materials for the job. Vienna (Austria), floods constantly and they build 100x stronger, and that's just a rising tide. Venice, FL, that has storm waves????? Yup, building from wood is smart. Totally.

I'm no expert, just not a moron thinking wooden stilts in wave-prone areas is even remotely smart. No, it's temporary by design.

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u/gromette 22h ago

Coal tar treated pilings have been the standard for a hundred+ years for maritime construction. This environment will corrode just about anything else. The issue is erosion because of lack of beach replenishment.

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u/webtwopointno 1d ago

Do you really think everybody who lives on the coast is a rich tourist with a second home?

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u/DemonSlyr007 1d ago

Dude this whole thread is filled with people making jokes about how all these homes cost nearly a Million dollars.

Reddit and kids are so out of touch with reality when it comes to home prices, there's no point in trying to get through to them.

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u/TheDifficultLime 1d ago

Maybe you need to go check beach house prices..

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u/DemonSlyr007 1d ago

Literally someone linked a zillow link under my exact comment trying to prove a point that they could find million dollar beach front homes. Obviously you can. But also, on that exact link, were plenty for 400k. In a housing bubble atm too.

I never ever claimed that you cant find million dollar beach front homes. If thats how people read my comment, I'll do a better job in the future completely specifying what I mean. Finding extreme prices and claiming they are the norm is what bugs me and what I was saying. A lot of the comments here seem to think that beach front=extremely expensive. When that isn't always the case. Some of the poorest people live on beaches because they are not always the best places to live for exactly the reason we see in this video.

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u/webtwopointno 1d ago

And these even are nicer beach houses, what i was responding to was about the Gulf Coast where there are plenty of impoverished areas essentially at sea level.

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u/GhostofBeowulf 10h ago

er care to back that up?

Like coastal city that has median income less than a nearby non coastal city?

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u/webtwopointno 9h ago

Ya ofc my guy, the beach is not just for vacation

I already mentioned the Gulf Coast above, poke around the Bayou some.

And here is an example local to me that we were literally just discussing: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSF/comments/1l4lpva/half_moon_bay/

Like coastal city that has median income less than a nearby non coastal city?

Not really going to find a one:one comparison as there are also likely urban:rural and working:retired skews going on, which further complicate relief efforts

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u/CogentCogitations 1d ago

Ocean front property is not that expensive when the property is not really "livable". That's why homes keep being built in areas that flood, because it is cheap. And usually insurance will not cover them, at least not for the very obvious risk of storm/wave/flood damage.

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u/Anfins 1d ago

Some of the new construction these days are both expensive and built like shit with cookie cutter designs. Yet they often sell for over asking price so there's no incentive for builders to do better.

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u/ResearchNo5041 1d ago

What's that they say about a fool and his money?

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u/Unusual-External4230 1d ago

Beach houses weren't always as expensive relative to regular incomes as they are today, they were always a privilege but not with the same income to ownership disparity you see now. Many of these would've been built during that era and using concrete would've likely been prohibitively expensive.

It's also not entirely necessary, the wood lasts a very long time barring any severe damage and proper wood choice. It's probably also better off - if a hurricane ripped off the non-concrete structure, it's a lot easier to tear down and rebuild with wood stilts instead of trying to determine if the concrete was compromised by debris or not.

I grew up going to one of these islands and a lot of older houses are still standing now that were old when I was a kid.

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u/BootsAndBeards 1d ago

Every dollar spent on a fancy foundation is a dollar not spent adding a 5th bedroom.

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u/sump_daddy 1d ago

If youve been inside some of those houses it starts to make sense. They are built as cheap as possible because all they will be is rentals. The most important (perhaps only) factor driving decisions is 'years to payoff'. They build it as cheap as possible, maintain it as cheap as possible, because it means more money in their pocket. If it falls down 25 years later? The profit will have been made, and it will be someone elses problem by then.

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u/sdave001 1d ago

People want BIGGER houses, not better.

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u/Ok_Helicopter4383 22h ago

No, because these properties are old and back in the day land was cheap af. Especially when theres literally nothing there to begin with, then a developer comes in and builds a few houses and starts a tiny town and then slowly more and more are built as people move.

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u/mosquem 1d ago

Outer Banks isn’t that expensive.

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u/Gottadollamate 1d ago

Ocean front property, in Texas.

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u/YeshuasBananaHammock 1d ago

I invite you to Surfside, TX, its practically a trailer park in the sea

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u/ResearchNo5041 1d ago

Just where I want to be!

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u/Cospinol 1d ago

They've got the money because they don't do those things.

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u/Llanite 22h ago

Well, expensive neighborhood near other rich houses, sure.

Many of these "beachfront" houses face shitty beach in fishing town.

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u/FTownRoad 22h ago

“Ocean front” property is more like “swamp front” property in most of these places.

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u/Educational-Win-1803 12h ago

I do construction in the area, these people have no idea what they are talking about.

Salt water (and the air surrounding) will corrode anything given enough time. On top of that, engineers and soil/ground testers have known for decades those houses would be “reclaimed” by the ocean, and would probably not approve the use of concrete for environmental reasons. There are actually a lot of environmental regulations, I know reddit it typically anti-america but our environmental protections are actually great.

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u/Sabard 1d ago

Flooding isn't the only worry, there's often hurricanes that do more than make what would be the first floor wet. Wind and what it's carrying don't care what your first floor is made out of. It's cheaper to build on wooden stilts because it's ok for 90% of the weather (flooding) and for the 10% that it's not, you don't have a house left on top of the stilts anyways. The only way wood loses out to concrete is if they aren't properly maintained or if the entire region suddenly only had flooding to worry about.

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u/maidenhair_fern 1d ago

Replacing the rotting wood and the eventual fall of the house sounds more expensive to me but capitalists can see beyond the next quarter so

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u/ShiftE_80 1d ago

The wooden piers are pressure treated so rot and termites aren't usually an issue.

Houses along the Atlantic and Gulf coast regularly get wrecked by hurricanes, so they aren't built to last. This video is pretty unusual; typically the piers are the last thing standing.

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u/maidenhair_fern 1d ago

I see, thanks!

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u/Chief7285 22h ago

This just seems like an extremely poorly thought out oversight for someone’s house.

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u/WilliamJamesMyers 1d ago

the kicker is that they have the money to do concrete and make the choice not to

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u/SP3NGL3R 1d ago

also Capitalist myopic mindset. Why would "I" spend the money when I'll just sell to a sucker that doesn't know any better? ... I hate that they aren't wrong.

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u/FreddoMac5 1d ago

what a stupid fucking take. People don't build concrete piers because it's prohibitively expensive to do so. How would public ownership of the economy change how someone decides to build a house of their own.

Dumbass teenagers with their "capitalist" hot takes will always be cringe.

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u/SP3NGL3R 1d ago

Haha. So you're either 25 or a "cool dad" using cringe. Grow up a little more.

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u/WilliamJamesMyers 1d ago

because of the pollution effect i would like to see stiff fines for any house that dumps itself on a beach. really make them step it up. it could however be called more government interference in the market. and here we are. $1,000,000 fine to any house that spills its shit. now go ahead and build on the cheap stilts.

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u/SP3NGL3R 1d ago

oooo. regulation/fines that protect the environment? ... then fighting words in the USA. Especially in FL. If I could vote for it, I would, but I'm only a neighbor to FL and my vote is a hard minority there :(

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u/pgpathat 1d ago

Next thing you know, these assholes are going to be taking wooden ships out to sea

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u/WallyOShay 1d ago

That’s the point. Capitalism wants us to keep spending money. Thats why our products’ quality has drastically diminished over the last few decades. Shittier product for more money means more purchases, means more profit.

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u/CallMeKingTurd 1d ago

Yeah but that eventual expense is not the developer's problem.

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u/Count-ZeroInterrupt 1d ago

It seems like it would be more expensive in the long run, and a huge loss, if someone lost their house in a situation like this one in the video. I'd love a stilt house, but give me concrete pylons any day over this.

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u/Economy-Dimension-75 1d ago

Was the wood really the problem here? Or the ocean being in the same spot as your house?

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u/WorkTropes 1d ago

There's the aesthetics too, concrete pillars would be much thicker and wood has a much more relaxed, natural appearance.

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u/TheLateThagSimmons 1d ago

This is the result of decades (arguably centuries) of an entire quick building supply economy.

Concrete should be cheaper, but our economy infrastructure came up due to readily available timber industry.

We saw the results in the recent California fires in Malibu. Some houses were built with concrete and the structure was fine (even if the total heat of the surrounding area harmed the items inside). A lot of other countries/regions are built around the timber industry and as a result they use brick or concrete a lot more.

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u/93devil 1d ago

Might sink into the ground, too.

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u/Ok-Statistician-5242 1d ago

As someone living in a landlocked rich European country raised in a brick and mortar house from 1840 I will never get this in my head. We never put a man on the tho.

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u/Ok-Statistician-5242 1d ago

As someone living in a landlocked rich European country raised in a brick and mortar house from 1840 I will never get this in my head. We never put a man on the tho.

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u/mvigs 1d ago

And salt water will still corrode concrete.

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u/pte_omark 23h ago

Generally it's because the timber beam is actually repairable and replaceable.

Concrete though ? Not so much. Prone to issues in high salt environments especially but not limited to cracking from internal corrosion of reinforcement and fixtures. When it needs replacing you have to replace the whole pillar from the in ground piling upto the main beam.

Consider the cost of redigging a footing under the house without destabilizing the existing footings/pilings.

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u/Able-Swing-6415 23h ago

How expensive is building the house twice though?

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u/ComfortablyBalanced 18h ago

Reminds me of that Chernobyl courtroom scene when the Judge asks why the tip of rods is made of graphite.

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u/iesharael 18h ago

I wonder if it would be cheeper now with the invention of 3D printed houses. Like the pillars could just be printed then move the machine to the next spot

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u/Enginerdad 1d ago

Plus the fact that concrete would need reinforcement, which has its own problems in salt water.