In Seattle there are a ton for town homes being built, split lot and connected, most without any hoa. When they need work I bet you’ll see a lot of neighbors suing neighbors to fix and replace shared elements. I would never move into shared living space that didn’t have some sort of hoa to manage any the shared space.
As someone with an interest in the Seattle market, I'm wondering if one should consider Mercer Island preferable to Seattle to rent or purchase a residence. Do you have any insight?
Very different places. Lived downtown for 15 years. Never been to Mercer island as it pretty much only residential and hard to access. Those can be good or bad depending on the person.
In Seattle there are a ton for town homes being built, split lot and connected, most without any hoa. When they need work I bet you’ll see a lot of neighbors suing neighbors to fix and replace shared elements. I would never move into shared living space that didn’t have some sort of hoa to manage any the shared space.
I'm not sure what you're describing but a traditional row house doesn't share any elements or living space. It's on a small rectangular lot facing the street and has its own walls that directly about the walls of houses on each side with no setback. Shared space like the street and sidewalk are owned by the city.
(Edit: there are also of course row house duplexes that would share a roof, front stairs, etc... But many are single family homes).
If you look closely when walking around a neighborhood of row houses you'll find that they don't actually share side walls. Each row house has its own exterior walls with siding / exterior finish that may end up directly adjacent to the next house's exterior wall. This is apparent in areas where one row house has been torn down or is larger than its neighbor. Of course sound and fire might travel through these more easily but they share no structural elements.
For an example of what I mean, take a look at SF's Outer Sunset district on street view.
Edit: it's possible that terminology and construction methods vary a bit between cities so all I can say is that you can certainly build a row of houses that share no structural elements.
I would call those townhouses, it's probably just a regional thing.
The row houses I'm thinking about are in Philadelphia, and I think most other east coast cities. Occasionally you'll see one with the neighboring house(es) demolished, and there are usually remaining bricks from the missing house on the now exterior wall.
Has anyone built a new rowhouse, like those in Philly, since the end of WWII? Serious question. I don't think they are allowed anywhere in the US anymore. Existing ones are grandfathered in.
Unpopular opinion: IMHO single family homes are an idea whose time passed, at least in big urban areas.
While the "American Dream" is to own a home with a backyard, it is logically easier if everyone lived in highrise condos and apartments in urban areas.
Homes would be cheaper, since you could scale up and not just out (e.g. avoid urban sprawl). Not to mention lower gas costs and we don't need to cut down as many trees to build homes.
My mom owns a home (which I rent the downstairs, it's cheaper for me), and it has a big backyard. That in expensive Seattle. Combine that with tens of thousands of homes (if not hundreds) and you have a lot of wasted land.
A lot of the housing problem isn't Amazon or Big Tech, its single-family zoning. Today's cities need high rise buildings to accommodate everyone.
Almost nobody, having had the pleasure of living in even a modest SFH, would prefer to be packed in like sardines the way modern high-rise buildings do.
It's possible to make high density housing that doesn't feel like that, but it's not as profitable so developers don't. That's why the vast majority of high-rise condos are one and two bedroom shoeboxes instead of spacious three (or more) bedroom homes. We won't get to that point until we either force developers to do it with regulations or good incentives, or if the government does it.
Had lived only in single family houses up until I moved to an apartment in the middle of the city and wow, the quality of life bump was astounding. Being able to just walk to anything you need, not owning a car, having so many high end places to eat at and entertainment venues to visit, the huge security benefit of being above ground level, being at the centre of public transport so friends can visit easily.
So many benefits with so little downsides. I can’t ever imagine going back to a detached house.
Ok but the same floorspace my $500k apt has costs about $1M as a townhouse in the same area. If you want _more_ space then you are looking at $2M or more. Sure, I'd love a house in the city. I'll put it next to my boat and Ferrari.
You could just do a lot of 4-5 story buildings like in Paris. Building up too high has its downsides because it requires more space on the ground, plus a good percentage of space (30-40%) in a high-rise isn't actually usable living space.
Most places don't need high-rise condos everywhere when low-rise condos in a dense neighborhood orientation would work out great.
> packed in like sardines the way modern high-rise buildings do.
> but it's not as profitable so developers don't.
Developers can only build what is legal, and the size and allowed uses are dictated almost entirely by planners. And in places with discretionary approval, other power brokers like landowners and non-profits that turn out the vote for city council members get to make most of the decisions about what is built.
It's a fallacy to think that the only thing that could be built are homes for sardines.
The US is blessed with plenty of space for single family homes. Sure you’ll pay out the nose for one in SF or other major cities, but it’s an option.
I’ve lived in dense cities where single family homes are out of reach for everyone but the top 0.1%. People get used to it, but condo living kinda sucks.
Just need strong regulation. All house builders want to make lots of small apartments, as that often gives a higher price per square meter of flooring. But the local government should aim for it being a mix.
The only reason it gives them a higher price per squarefoot is that building is so constrained. If there were adequate built space, the smaller apartments wolud be less desirable and maybe even go for less per square foot.
It all does come down to strong regulation, but instead of strong regulation to limit building, we should have strong regulation to prohibit hoarding and underuse of land.
I think people think they don’t like condos. I currently live in a condo I own and while not without challenges overall I like it. I think people have unrealistic pessimism for hoas. In Seattle there are a ton for town homes being built, split lot and connected, most without any hoa. When they need work I bet you’ll see a lot of neighbors suing neighbors to fix and replace shared elements. I would never move into shared living space that didn’t have some sort of hoa to manage any the shared space.
I think people have unrealistic pessimism for hoas
I dunno, while I'm in no real rush to paint them all with a broad brush, there's certainly some validity to the some of the ire towards HOAs that the HOAs themselves rightly earned. The one I'm under certainly has. They wont be missed.
Shared living spaces require more coordination with neighbors, either directly or through an HOA. I don't like coordination, so shared spaces are not my preference. Having to run important repairs through a consensus process makes things take longer and become more expensive.
If you can't coordinate with your neighbors directly, and resort to the courts, you're likely to end up in the same place when you can't coordinate with your neighbors as HOA. Although, sometimes, having established procedures can smooth things over.
Single family detached homes without an HOA may not scale (probably doesn't), as you say in another comment, but that doesn't mean we only think we don't like the options that would scale. I haven't lived in a condo, or in an HOA, because I have had choices and I'm not going to pick a choice I've got enough information to determine I'll dislike.
> I'm not going to pick a choice I've got enough information to determine I'll dislike.
You've been duped by the loud anti-HOA crowd and their scary stories, then. For most people, living in a condo is hassle-free. It's cheaper to be many when doing repairs. And someone else coordinates everything so one doesn't have to think about maintenance.
> And someone else coordinates everything so one doesn't have to think about maintenance.
Is that someone else going to move my stuff out of the way when the repairmen come to fix the ceiling under the leaky roof? Will that someone else actually let me know when they'll be swinging by? Will they use a quality repairperson or their cousin? Will it take them so long to get someone out to fix the roof, that more rooms need ceiling repair? How are we paying for this coordinator's time?
Roof will probably not leak nearly as often as in a house, as stuff is being actively maintained. I've never had to think about the roof or the walls, the heating, the water, garbage, etc. So one still comes out way ahead.
But yeah, no one can stop you from dreaming up weird scenarios in your head. Doesn't mean you have a point, though..
Trust me, I do - I have experience of living in a condo and it's subpar to a detached house.
Don't get me wrong, I've been living in condos for the last 8 years in various places and it's doable - it can even be nice. But I'd never buy a condo: I'd just spend more or move to a cheaper location where I can afford a detached house with a large plot.
Having a private garden is great, not crossing people when getting home is great, not hearing people around you is great, not having to deal with the useless administration is great, not having to pay them fees is great.
The thing that bothers me the most about where I live is that even detached houses don't tend to have big plots (makes sense in a developer driven market: buy a ton of land and cram as many houses as you can in there), so you're still too close to other houses.
I understand it's a luxury but it's one I'm happy to put all my money in
Do you have kids? Among my friends group there was a very stark change in home-type preference between when people were childless and when they had kids.
I do not. But I have neighbors who do. My wife also grew up in a condo. Every living situation has different trade offs. Maybe condos don’t work for some people. I think for most people, particularly young people they make a great first home.
My wife and I live in a townhome and we hate it. The noise through the walls, especially if you have inconsiderate neighbors, is a huge pain and you have essentially zero control over it.
It is surprisingly easy to mess up things. In "condo" I rent, noise is from balcony or the hallway. And the renovated bathroom. All other walls perfectly decent for most of the time...
Ofc, occasional loud situations, but that is no different from monsters that have parties outside their house.
I think a lot of modern construction sucks. My condo was built in 1980 and I almost never hear my neighbors. It is also a fairly well designed building where both vertical and horizontal neighbors have aligned spaces for sleeping eating and living. Along with side shard walls being used for closets and bathrooms.
My townhome is actually an old WW2 military hospital that got gutted in the 90's and turned into townhomes. I can hardly hear anything from outside since it was apparently built to survive bombing, but the walls between units allow a ton of sound through.
My apartment (what Americans would call a condo I think) was built in 2019 and I never hear a sound. Have tested playing loud music and I can’t hear it at all from the hallway. It just depends on how much the developers cared when they built it.
As someone living in a condo with and hoa I completely disagree. I get yearly budgets, bi-yearly building inspection reports. The hoa has a fiduciary responsibility to the building and is required by law not to let things decay. Without the hoa communal living wouldn’t work, and not everyone can have a single family home, especially in urban centers.
I think this heavily depends on your local regulations.
My grandparents had a condo once and because the people in the association didn't want to pay, they endlessly deferred maintenance until it was 40K a unit. All because they didn't want to fix leaky windows 10 years beforehand.
My home city is filled with examples of this kick it to the next year approach to maintenance.
Most people are that way. They view a bucket as a solution to water dripping in through the roof.
We use websockets and solve a lot of the state management problem called out here by keeping very little state on the server itself. The primary thing on server is a monotonically increasing integer we use to stamp messages, this gives us total order broadcast which we then build upon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_broadcast
Here are some code pointers if you want to take a look:
The deltamanger in the container-loader package is where we manage the websocket. It also hits storage to give the rest of the system a continuous, ordered stream of events:
The main server logic is in the Alfred and Deli lambdas. Alfred sits on the socket and dumps message into Kafka. Deli sits on the Kafka queue, stamps messages, the puts them on another queue for Alfred’s to broadcast:
https://github.com/microsoft/FluidFramework/tree/main/server...
I've had good luck filing complaints with the CFPB to get things fixed on my credit reports for some of the other credit reporting agencies: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/
To understand Net Neutrality you first need to have an understanding of how the internet works. The internet is basically composed of a bunch of different networks. These networks interconnect with each other (see Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) for more details).
There are basically three different kinds of networks:
1) Networks that primarily host content; azure.
2) Networks that primarily do transit; level three.
3) Consumer Terminating Networks; Comcast.
I admit this is a generalization, and some networks fit multiple of these categories, but lets not get too bogged down in the details here, as I don't think it's necessary to understand net neutrality.
Given these types of interconnected networks lets go through an example. Let say a consumer wants to watch Netflix. The consumers pays Comcast to access Comcast's network and get some bandwidth. Netflix pays their hosting network, and possibly a transit network for bandwidth. Comcast either directly, or through another networks connects to Netflix's hosting network. Neither Netflix or Comcast necessarily pays anything to these in-between networks. This works because these in-between networks trade about the same amount of traffic (see Peering). This is basically net neutrality; you pay Comcast for some bandwidth, Netflix pays their host and the content flows freely.
Without net neutrality Comcast can change you, Netflix, or both more to connect to each other. It can make Hulu free to connect to. It can make youtube inaccessible unless you get the super premium package. No one is just paying for bandwidth anymore, someone is paying for individual services on top of bandwidth. This allows Comcast to either pick the winner by making their services cheaper, or lets the company which pays Comcast the most be most available to their customers.
So what it really boils down to is, are you paying for bandwidth that you choose how to use, or not.
My problem is that you're currently not paying for bandwidth either, because ISPs generally don't promise you all of the advertized bandwidth all of the time. There have been times when my ISP has been unable to deliver the bandwidth that was advertized to me without throttling things like BitTorrent. I would be 100% for net neutrality if that problem actually got addressed. Most of the examples I've seen of companies throttling things are actually very high-bandwidth services - it's not just things that people are willing to pay more for or that compete with the ISP. Without that solved, then yes - I'd like to be able to pay more to get my work prioritized over entertainment or piracy.
If they throttle due to load, then they should simply throttle all load equally, or in accordance with consumer preferences (e.g. per-line prioritization of VoIP above torrents, but not, say, Comcast VoIP above Google Voice). When the network is full, every customer should get their fair fraction of the network to do with as they please.
I've thought about this quite a bit, and think the tech community is going about this wrong. The public doesn't like being told it can't be done, but I can't explain why, because it's too complicated.
Even though we know it's impossible, we should disregard that and lay out common sense tenants that such system would require, even if it can't be feasibly built. We could then base our arguments on those tenants, and those are public fights I think could be won, because its things non technical people could understand.
For instance, one tenant could be any key escrow system must be open source. We can't base it off keeping the code secret, as then if the code is ever stolen or leaked, the whole system is compromised.
If you can win those arguments, and it just happens such a system can't be built due to the laws of mathematics, you then fall back to arguing which tenants you should break, and ideally breaking any of the tenants would be unpalatable.
I think you are grossly overestimating the general public's ability to consume and understand a technically complicated argument no matter how well-reasoned.
