Homebuilder Lennar Corporation recently faced criticism for using misleading photographs to advertise new residential homes in the Fort Worth area. The dubious advertising allegedly concealed the fact that the 763-square-foot houses crammed together on postage-stamp lots were selling for $197,999. Various social media critics condemned the mini row-housing as “kind of like communist housing meets corporate housing,” “a minimum-security prison camp,” and “trailer parks [rebranded] as tiny homes.” The sad truth is that the nation’s second-largest builder is confined by the same economic forces barring millions of Americans from the iconic dream of homeownership. Tiny-house gulags are the dystopian consequence of Utopian federal spending and errant energy policies.
Post-WWII row housing construction in the United Kingdom created hundreds of thousands of cramped private and public houses in a time of rebuilding and societal optimism. Like most European homes, these were small relative to American houses. Most UK residences remain “attached” in connected rows, versus the “detached” free-standing single homes expected in the US. In between are “semi-detached” properties: what Americans call “duplexes.”
Numerous variables contribute to the price difference between housing in England and the United States. Brick or stone construction is less costly than America’s predominantly wood-based homebuilding. More densely populated European areas push up land prices, while the US boasts vast rural areas to develop. Regulations and land use restrictions are generally more permissive stateside. […]
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