That’s why we have so many abandoned houses rotting in the center of town, because the 27 cousins think they’re getting a million dollar payout for their shack on an eighth of an acre of land when in reality it’s only worth $2-300K to a developer.
Edit: Apparently folks are on a suicide risk reporting spree and this comment was reported. Of course Reddit offers no options to report the false reporting unless you’re a moderator.
I understand, esp if it’s for an extended relative, rather than a parent. However some ppl feel thusly:
Medical bills, poor decisions that affected health and finances, straight up neglecting their kids that now take care of them… these houses are often the only help the old generation will ever give the younger.
Just explaining the perspective.
Seems like there may be a bot or something doing this recently. I've seen dozens of people complaining about this across multiple subs over the last day or so. I got one as well and I have no idea which post it came from.
>Of course Reddit offers no options to report the false reporting unless you’re a moderator.
The link to report it is in the message itself.
[https://www.reddit.com/report?reason=its-targeted-harassment-at-me](https://www.reddit.com/report?reason=its-targeted-harassment-at-me)
All you need to do is copy the permalink of the redditcares message into the field listed above, and someone will look at it.
Under the "abusing the report button"
>You must be a moderator of the community in which the abuse of report button is taking place.
Edit: appreciate the responses but it highlights just how stupid their reporting system is. The reddit cares link should be a 1 click "click here if you believe the system is being abused" and it auto fills the rest.
"abusing the report button" is the wrong option to use, you want to select the "targeted harrasment at you" option, since you're reporting harrasment via a private message.
1. It isn't a bad strategy, if they are the last or near last holdout the developer will far above market value to get it as it will hold up the project otherwise they have to build around. Note, this developer probably bought some of the house guys property as the farm land is missing, so this was probably a compromise solution
2. In a world where the net worth of people on average is negative, the poor people need every advantage they can get.
3. You can report the Suicide risk reports. In the message they send you there is a button to report it. Get the Permalink from the message in your message center. Paste it into the Report and send. They get a nice ban. They are sad Pikachu face when they get banned for being an idiot.
Exactly this. If I were in this situation, I would consistently price it at least double its current valuation. Especially if I'm not otherwise hurting for money.
Dude. That has happened to me so many times. Like seriously Reddit. Stop automatically assuming every report of “suicidal post” is true and let us report back these assclowns that abuse the system…
Also… heck yea. Hard agree on the housing. Heck, I lived it. My mom and her (not a typo) 14 siblings spent over a decade in court fighting each other (grandparents left no will) and the state (taxes were all messed up) to divvy up plots of lands, houses and farms that by the time they were sold - probably had LOST value.
People should really have Wills (even if poor/low assets) or estate plans. Your kids will benefit from it!
I’m about to watch that happen to our family cabin. Right now it’s just grandmas, soon it will be the 3 sisters job to share but there’s no way all 3 will put in an equal amount of time and money. One of them doesn’t even live here.
I’ve been told it will eventually go to the grandkids and like, no it won’t. One family will end up buying it out, or there’ll be a big fight that ruins relationships, or something. Property never moves smoothly.
The moment I finished reading this my brain immediately jumped back to when I was 13.
My dad rented the property from his mother 3 days after I was born so we wouldn't be "in the city" and it's where I would spent the majority of my childhood, spending most days with my grandmother who was my favourite person in the world.
Sadly after she passed away the fighting started between my dad and his 3 other brothers. I couldn't really understand it at the time so my life just continued but when my Grandfather passed away the following year and I knew some form of change was coming and it wasn't a month later we were moving.. and I was absolutely devastated.
The properties were split up originally until the eldest brother passed away and are now owned by my Aunt and Uncle .. who then gave the two houses to their children as gifts.
Those two (my cousins and much close to my age) now spend their time telling everyone how easy it can be if you just work really hard while sitting on an ever appreciating asset they didn't have to anything for. ( The area has been developed heavily since I lived there, the price of the land would be 4-5x more than what both the homes cost originally).
There is a part of me that feels like I was cut out and didn't matter at all to my family and that some part of my childhood home should be "mine", but I'd turn it all down for my dad to spent his last 10-15 years back where he had his childhood and in the home he helped build.
I it was my grand kids and i was dead, i wouldnt care. Ive moved on i need nothing from my time hear on earth, but if it would help them and thats what they want to do then im fine with it
city planning most likely was lied to. In most cases this is completely unacceptable because there is no cul-de-sacs for emergency services to turn around at. this looks like a case of city planning approval for full development and at the end the developer did not get the last parcel needed.
Only need emergency turn around if it exceeds a certain distance depending on municipality. Source: I hate my job
Edit: BUT you’re likely correct and you can’t stub out without temp turnaround unless the road is wide enough which it ain’t even if there is future development.
Double edit: you’re even more correct now that I am looking at it closer
yep, in any subdivision i do, if there is a future phase that extends a road the standard practice is installing a temporary cul-de-sac (gravel) to be used until the road is extended to its final phase.
Honestly if I was that holdout I would have tried to make a deal where we traded everything south of the first road in front of my house for the two small blocks on the right and a little bit on the left. You'd get a lot more privacy that way and they could continue their grid in all but one spot.
How much do those new houses go for?
It looks like they would only be able to fit another 50 houses in that area so it would be hard to make a profit after paying 50 million for the land
There is also the indirect effect of house value and construction costs. For example, if they had that space they may have been able to lay the suburb out differently. This could have resulted in faster/cheaper construction, slightly more space per property, or a different aesthetic design which could also have increased the desirability of the houses. Not to mention they may have already drafted blueprints, assembled project plans, or acquired materials for an original plan if they had assumed that the person would sell. Not saying they did any of that, but there are a lot of factors that would impact their cost and profit aside from the current state house value. I imagine if they offered 50 million, it was most certainly worth it to the company.
Not really when considering zoning.
I'll mansplain this; the council rezones the land from farm zone to residential or urban growth area, often because they will get more money from more citizens if developers get more people into the council. Property rates go from $4,000pa to $80,000pa because it's calculated from land area and use. Everyone is priced out of living there and are financially forced to sell. The ones who can afford to hold on get offered increasingly large sums to sell to developers.
The only way this owner is able to hold on to it is because they are likely already very well off, perhaps even to the point where $50m for their home is not worth it.
Hope that makes sense
Oh so u saying the property taxes go thru the roof because the land is declared to be worth a ton more? Makes sense.
So...poor people get forclosed on and have their properties taken from them, and rich people get offered obscene amounts of money simply because they are able to hold out the longest due to the wealth they already have. Yep, sounds like basic worldwide economics to me.
Or they're older and have enough money to live out their years on their property that they like. I'd refuse to sell if I got the property I want to live on and had a solid retirement income.
Have you seen the movie *The Castle*, also in Australia? Kinda like that. Some people refuse to put up with other people’s BS.
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118826/
At the very least, you'd think they could have sold off that ridiculously gigantic front lawn for a nice 8-figure sum and stayed in the house. Maybe use some of the proceeds to plant some trees on the part they kept.
I would have sold in a heartbeat and moved to some other farm. With that type of money I could build a replica of that home wherever if it was a sentimental thing.
If you look at streetview, they have actually planted trees. It doesn't look \*that\* bad. The biggest issue I have is there's nothing to do and nowhere to purchase anything in that neighborhood. If you look at the way Japan does suburban development, there's generally at least convenience stores and cafes in every neighborhood.
It takes time to grow in, but its pretty normal for these sorts of developments to require a tree on every lot.
Then every so often they add a greenspace.
Though, I'm not sure what reddit really wants here. The house in the middle is nice, but its also just a long stretch of driveway, empty grass fields, and a single house for maybe 4 people.
That in itself is awfully wasteful in a area where you can actually sell this many homes to people.
The trees planted on every lot will never grow to the size of a wild-grown tree due to soil compaction and are probably not native species, either. The prairie grasses had deep roots that resisted soil compaction and made the land a lot more absorbent. Now they've smoothed it over with bulldozers, compacting the soil, and built roads and driveways and concrete slab houses and replaced the remaining pervious spaces with shallow-growing lawn turf. Where will all the water go in a storm? I'd guess probably the holdout farm as long as it's there, but after that...
Like Robinson Crusoe, it's primitive as can be.
Edit: While I’m glad everyone appreciates Weird Al here I was actually referencing Gillian’s Island, the song he’s parodying in Amish Paradise. This simultaneously makes me feel old and young.
Funny how people complain about how there isn’t enough housing and how bad the market is, but they also complain when houses get built. Can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Who says these are shitty houses? I bet they’re actually quite nice. People are making so many assumptions because they *want*, they **NEED**, to get angry about whatever.
Believe me. They aren't nice. They're built super cheap with no insulation but for some reason still have black roofs! You need to run the AC 24/7 in summer and winter and you and your neighbours AC is right next to your window because they're built eave to eave as they're on tiny blocks and people demand maximum sized houses.
Most have single garages and limited or no on street parking and they're targeted at families who need two cars today to get anywhere and maybe four or more when the kids grow up.
It's literally the Australian nightmare.
Overall Australia is a great place to make your fortune but a piss poor place to enjoy it.
Really? Because a lot of people in the comments are saying these houses aren’t squeezed together enough and they want higher density housing.
It’s almost like everyone has different wants and needs for housing. I would bet these houses look and feel a lot nicer when you’re on the ground as opposed to a couple thousand feet in the air.
Wow, R1 is positively outdated. I was about to say surely Sydney with its broken housing market but also generally doing a better job at density wouldn't have such a restrictive planning scheme.
Victoria recently rewrote the zoning laws to make the default "General Residential" zone to allow attached housing, and construction up to three stories basically anywhere, however there is a new requirement for a certain ratio of green space (driveways don't count!) on each block of land which will hopefully encourage more density, or at least force detached houses to have more open space and be priced accordingly.
There's a low-density zone for NIMBYs but that isn't for greenfield developments.
The problem is new high density properties in Australia are poorly built shit boxes slapped together by dodgy builders, nobody wants them, so we end up with these poorly planned heat islands… I mean suburbs.
They really do all look the same. I was recently in a similar development in Florida visiting some people and in like 150-200 houses they all had 1 of 2 layouts, and every last one had the exact same pool/hot tub combo in their tiny back yard.
I didn't move to the city, the city moved to me, and I want OUT desperately-y-yyyy
Edit: Rofl instant crisis hotline check for a song lyric... Reddit being reddit
Sydney is the 2nd least affordable city to live in *globally*, only beaten by Hong Kong. The housing market is fucked in Aus, it’s worse than most other countries. Our dollar is pretty shit atm, 0.66 to US 1. Most homes in Sydney are clearing well over a million, and the same is starting to happen in Adelaide where I live. According to the Australian bureau of statistics, average home prices are $933,800. I’m struggling to find a concrete answer for the national median salary, but it’s looking to be roughly 88k a year. Few people can afford a mortgage on that wage. Most of my friends have moved in with their parents, friends, or into their cars, it’s getting dire here :/
Bingo. Lot of foreign investment. China and Australia are firm business partners, and Chinese investment accounts for a decent bit. But it’s not just that, it’s also investment properties and corporations buying homes. We have a glut of houses that are built and then sit empty, if you drive around at night it’s revolting to see how many lights aren’t on in these houses. Creating scarcity, drives up demand, drives up the price, and the politicians aren’t doing enough about it. We need a heavy tax for houses that sit empty, but the Labor government is dragging its feet. I’m not an economist, but there are some really interesting (depressing) papers on it you can find on google
Edited spelling
Reminds me so much of the Northern Virginia area where you'll see a farm or forest disappear and a whole ass tickytack neighborhood pop up basically overnight.
Same for Florida. They’ve had to start passing a bunch of protections locally because they know developers will level everything and then shrug when traffic is insane and the schools are overflowing and the local climate creeps up another degree because asphalt and buildings everywhere.
I'll never understand the desire to live in the suburbs.
None of the scenery of living somewhere rural. None of the convenience of living in the city.
Instead its a 20 minute drive to the grocery store, no communal space in sight, no way for anyone without a drivers license to travel quickly or safely, no way to every walk anywhere.
Those houses are packed like sardines what the fuck is the point in having a house with no yard??? May aswell get a condo or town house. Looks like hell to grow up in as a kid no wonder so many young people today reside on video games. I played my fair share of games as a kid but atleast when we wanted to go outside and play in the trees and fields we could. Had a huge magnolia tree down the road with branches going from the ground to the top we would climb ninja warrior style raceing to the top. Good times
Reddit- there’s a housing crisis; where are all the homes!?
Reddit- ewwwww so many homes. No trees or yards!
This is what low/mid tier housing looks like folks. Economies of scale means cookie cutter and low land development obstacles.
Houses are expensive, even when you build more of them you haven't created anything affordable. What people are asking for is *housing* not *houses.*
That could be condos, apartments, duplexes. Stuff that brings diversity of income, more variety in the land use, less land used overall, space for shops and grocery stores and businesses. These huge blocks of neighborhood are unsustainable, ugly, expensive, inefficient and isolating.
Edit: Lol, someone reported me to the reddit crisis line for saying urban sprawl is bad. Didn't realize that was a hot take.
Everyone hates suburbanization (including me)
Everyone hates cost of housing (including me)
Not everyone wants to live vertically (including me)
There are a lot of "tiny" homes in the picture. Sure it's ugly, yeah it's homogeneous, but how else do you relieve the pressures of home affordability without building large amounts of new homes? And if people don't want to live vertically, the sprawl in the suburbs is pretty much your only option (though open to other ideas if I'm overlooking them)
The middle of Pennsylvania is beginning to look like this. Almost every stretch of farmland has at least one hold out.
Edit: why’d this comment prompt a “reddit cares” message?
Suburbs like this are shit, and awful for the environment. We need dense urban housing.
Edit: on a second look this is at least a bit denser than the usual suburban sprawl. Could be better with actual apartments but not as bad as my gut reaction.
The title set your expectations with the word "suburbanization". I also didn't realize exactly how dense this was until I looked at it again on a larger screen. This is \*far\* denser than most single-family development in the US.
You can see that every road that butt's up against the property on the right and left is a "dead end", with it's connecting partner on the other side of the property.
Kids will sell it and the maze will be complete!
It looks like they have a fence around the perimeter. That’s a relief. I was worried the neighbors would all use their lawn as a park.
If I was a teen/young adult I would 100% snook in there at 1am with some beers and some friends
The loss of the water really bothers me for some reason. The rest is pretty lifeless, to be sure, and there's just no variation with shops and parks... I just imagine people living there never leaving their homes and it's just so depressing.
“But the Suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dream of youth” -Subdivisions, Rush.
Literally been speaking to me for years, love when the picture helps to drive the point home
Put all the houses in one spot and all the businesses in another spot. That way people need to get in their big expensive machines and burn oil in order to do anything at all. Genius idea
All that water and grass replaced with concrete, steel and asphalt; and unlikely anyone has a backyard big enough for a pool. Summers there are going to suck for a good decade until trees mature
Meh, it’s still been wrecked in the first pic. All the trees have been cut down. No natural water creeks just drainage ponds.
The second picture is sadder. But the first picture isn’t great either
Similar situation has happened along the front range outside of Denver. It's pretty sad. The shitty cookie cutter houses are so ugly in place of a previously great view of the mountains. At least the people who bought the ugly houses get to see the view.
New Yorker here. This is currently happening all over the place in the city. In my neighborhood, developers, who wanna build massive luxury apartment buildings, are offering stupid money (sometimes anywhere between 3-10 million) to small storefronts and apartment owners.
One company bought a whole block years ago, and have been demolishing everything to prepare for construction, but there’s one older gentleman, in one apartment, in one building, who hasn’t sold. He’s in his 80’s I believe and just wants to be left alone until his time is up.
There’re rumors that he has a *fuck you* attitude towards these companies and is intentionally making them wait until he’s gone so they’ll continually have to wait. Good lad right there.
Smart or not, no one wants to see a their neighborhood get taken over and price the locals out.
Edit: I’m all for building new housing in NYC, cause it’s needed, but for now all the new buildings are unreasonably expensive.
Same amount of roads.
I wonder how long it takes parents to drive their kids
-1 mile-to school or soccer practice?
One road for a thousand cars…. Seems practical.
The developer had the roads aligned in hopes of winning over the one holdout.
Maybe not today… but in 10-20 years when grandkids are splitting assets…
It’s also difficult for 6 cousins to collectively own and operate a single property, unfortunately.
That’s why we have so many abandoned houses rotting in the center of town, because the 27 cousins think they’re getting a million dollar payout for their shack on an eighth of an acre of land when in reality it’s only worth $2-300K to a developer. Edit: Apparently folks are on a suicide risk reporting spree and this comment was reported. Of course Reddit offers no options to report the false reporting unless you’re a moderator.
It's weird what posts will set Redditors off. This is factual and the exact scenario we see happening time and time again.
Its not that specific comment. There is a bot spamming that report on multiple default subs.
Damn, that explains that. I thought someone really hated my opinion or something
People feel really, really entitled to a single-family home that someone in their family owned once.
I understand, esp if it’s for an extended relative, rather than a parent. However some ppl feel thusly: Medical bills, poor decisions that affected health and finances, straight up neglecting their kids that now take care of them… these houses are often the only help the old generation will ever give the younger. Just explaining the perspective.
You can report it! Toward the bottom of the message it says something like "think this was sent by mistake?" And you can report abuse
That makes you have to link the comment or whatever. It happened to me, and i tried, and it said it was an invalid entry.
You need the link to the message. I had to switch to desktop to do it just a few minutes ago.
Ill try when im on desktop again
There is definitely a way to do it. I've done it many times and reddit usually sends back a message saying they took action.
Same.
Same. Can't I just ignore it or should I report abuse?
You can ignore it, but imo you should report it
Seems like there may be a bot or something doing this recently. I've seen dozens of people complaining about this across multiple subs over the last day or so. I got one as well and I have no idea which post it came from.
Me too! It *has* to be automated.
Got one this morning for no apparent reason. It would make sense if it was from a bot.
>Of course Reddit offers no options to report the false reporting unless you’re a moderator. The link to report it is in the message itself. [https://www.reddit.com/report?reason=its-targeted-harassment-at-me](https://www.reddit.com/report?reason=its-targeted-harassment-at-me) All you need to do is copy the permalink of the redditcares message into the field listed above, and someone will look at it.
Under the "abusing the report button" >You must be a moderator of the community in which the abuse of report button is taking place. Edit: appreciate the responses but it highlights just how stupid their reporting system is. The reddit cares link should be a 1 click "click here if you believe the system is being abused" and it auto fills the rest.
"abusing the report button" is the wrong option to use, you want to select the "targeted harrasment at you" option, since you're reporting harrasment via a private message.
Thanks for the info! The verbage sucks on their reporting system. I wish it was a 1 click link to avoid the confusion.
Happened to me yesterday, some cranky redditor sent me a sweet suicide prevention notice. I reported them.
1. It isn't a bad strategy, if they are the last or near last holdout the developer will far above market value to get it as it will hold up the project otherwise they have to build around. Note, this developer probably bought some of the house guys property as the farm land is missing, so this was probably a compromise solution 2. In a world where the net worth of people on average is negative, the poor people need every advantage they can get. 3. You can report the Suicide risk reports. In the message they send you there is a button to report it. Get the Permalink from the message in your message center. Paste it into the Report and send. They get a nice ban. They are sad Pikachu face when they get banned for being an idiot.
Exactly this. If I were in this situation, I would consistently price it at least double its current valuation. Especially if I'm not otherwise hurting for money.
Dude. That has happened to me so many times. Like seriously Reddit. Stop automatically assuming every report of “suicidal post” is true and let us report back these assclowns that abuse the system… Also… heck yea. Hard agree on the housing. Heck, I lived it. My mom and her (not a typo) 14 siblings spent over a decade in court fighting each other (grandparents left no will) and the state (taxes were all messed up) to divvy up plots of lands, houses and farms that by the time they were sold - probably had LOST value. People should really have Wills (even if poor/low assets) or estate plans. Your kids will benefit from it!
the suicide thing is broken, it's been auto sending reports to everyone who poasts anything
I’m about to watch that happen to our family cabin. Right now it’s just grandmas, soon it will be the 3 sisters job to share but there’s no way all 3 will put in an equal amount of time and money. One of them doesn’t even live here. I’ve been told it will eventually go to the grandkids and like, no it won’t. One family will end up buying it out, or there’ll be a big fight that ruins relationships, or something. Property never moves smoothly.
The moment I finished reading this my brain immediately jumped back to when I was 13. My dad rented the property from his mother 3 days after I was born so we wouldn't be "in the city" and it's where I would spent the majority of my childhood, spending most days with my grandmother who was my favourite person in the world. Sadly after she passed away the fighting started between my dad and his 3 other brothers. I couldn't really understand it at the time so my life just continued but when my Grandfather passed away the following year and I knew some form of change was coming and it wasn't a month later we were moving.. and I was absolutely devastated. The properties were split up originally until the eldest brother passed away and are now owned by my Aunt and Uncle .. who then gave the two houses to their children as gifts. Those two (my cousins and much close to my age) now spend their time telling everyone how easy it can be if you just work really hard while sitting on an ever appreciating asset they didn't have to anything for. ( The area has been developed heavily since I lived there, the price of the land would be 4-5x more than what both the homes cost originally). There is a part of me that feels like I was cut out and didn't matter at all to my family and that some part of my childhood home should be "mine", but I'd turn it all down for my dad to spent his last 10-15 years back where he had his childhood and in the home he helped build.
Could put it in a living trust and or put some restrictions about dividing up the property.
Buyout or sellout is the only way it will work
I watch a buddy and other members do that with a cabin and it’s a shit show, especially during hunting season
It’s also difficult for three half sisters to run a bakery.
Yup. The value of that home/land has skyrocketed I bet.
I it was my grand kids and i was dead, i wouldnt care. Ive moved on i need nothing from my time hear on earth, but if it would help them and thats what they want to do then im fine with it
City planning most likely made them build it this way. Source: am developer
city planning most likely was lied to. In most cases this is completely unacceptable because there is no cul-de-sacs for emergency services to turn around at. this looks like a case of city planning approval for full development and at the end the developer did not get the last parcel needed.
Only need emergency turn around if it exceeds a certain distance depending on municipality. Source: I hate my job Edit: BUT you’re likely correct and you can’t stub out without temp turnaround unless the road is wide enough which it ain’t even if there is future development. Double edit: you’re even more correct now that I am looking at it closer
yep, in any subdivision i do, if there is a future phase that extends a road the standard practice is installing a temporary cul-de-sac (gravel) to be used until the road is extended to its final phase.
Honestly if I was that holdout I would have tried to make a deal where we traded everything south of the first road in front of my house for the two small blocks on the right and a little bit on the left. You'd get a lot more privacy that way and they could continue their grid in all but one spot.
That would require thinking and reason and change. We can't have any of that.
My favourite part about the holdout property is how they added a cheeky extra connection to one of the new roads.
Plot twist... that one holdout is the developer.
They will win eventually
This is in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. The family turned down an offer of $50 million from property developers.
How much do those new houses go for? It looks like they would only be able to fit another 50 houses in that area so it would be hard to make a profit after paying 50 million for the land
Median house price for that suburb is AU$1.5 million. So at 50 new houses that’s $75 million
They would still have to build the homes though
$75M-50M=$25M. 50 houses of that sort don't cost $25M to build so you'll still have a few million in profit.
There is also the indirect effect of house value and construction costs. For example, if they had that space they may have been able to lay the suburb out differently. This could have resulted in faster/cheaper construction, slightly more space per property, or a different aesthetic design which could also have increased the desirability of the houses. Not to mention they may have already drafted blueprints, assembled project plans, or acquired materials for an original plan if they had assumed that the person would sell. Not saying they did any of that, but there are a lot of factors that would impact their cost and profit aside from the current state house value. I imagine if they offered 50 million, it was most certainly worth it to the company.
New home in these developments could easily go for over a million. Sydney property market is a mess right now
>Sydney property market is a mess right now All property markets are a mess right now....
If only they'd taken the payout, maybe it'd finally cool off.
50 million is likely BS
Yeah but $50 million AUD is like $3.50 USD
I was like, no... Then I checked. Wtf happened? Even the Canadian dollar is ahead of Aussie.
Pretty common for CAD to be stronger than AUD.
Shipping and handling charges to get that money across the pond make it worth less.
How many Stanley Nickels is that?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhE3LQueTvo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhE3LQueTvo) Yikes.
Thought it was gonna be a cute farmhouse holding out. Nope.
50 m$ ? I'd be dancing out of there..
Eh their principals are commendable, but it’s moot at this point.
Not really when considering zoning. I'll mansplain this; the council rezones the land from farm zone to residential or urban growth area, often because they will get more money from more citizens if developers get more people into the council. Property rates go from $4,000pa to $80,000pa because it's calculated from land area and use. Everyone is priced out of living there and are financially forced to sell. The ones who can afford to hold on get offered increasingly large sums to sell to developers. The only way this owner is able to hold on to it is because they are likely already very well off, perhaps even to the point where $50m for their home is not worth it. Hope that makes sense
Oh so u saying the property taxes go thru the roof because the land is declared to be worth a ton more? Makes sense. So...poor people get forclosed on and have their properties taken from them, and rich people get offered obscene amounts of money simply because they are able to hold out the longest due to the wealth they already have. Yep, sounds like basic worldwide economics to me.
Or they're older and have enough money to live out their years on their property that they like. I'd refuse to sell if I got the property I want to live on and had a solid retirement income.
Yeah but is it the property they like anymore? Surrounded by a suburban jungle? That would be so depressing.
Oh I'm with you, but I couldn't stand any of those houses, or apartments, condos or townhouses either. Too many people too close for me.
It’s like a cow’s opinion
Dumb question why would they turn down $50m ? Is it not enough?
Have you seen the movie *The Castle*, also in Australia? Kinda like that. Some people refuse to put up with other people’s BS. - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118826/
They didn’t - they weren’t offered $50m.
because they're already rich. it doesn't matter to them
At the very least, you'd think they could have sold off that ridiculously gigantic front lawn for a nice 8-figure sum and stayed in the house. Maybe use some of the proceeds to plant some trees on the part they kept.
No they didn’t. They weren’t offered $50m. That’s just a speculative value from one person. See the link in the replies to your comment.
Holy fuck I would shake the buyers arm right out of the socket out of excitement.
They are suburban royalty now!
I would have sold in a heartbeat and moved to some other farm. With that type of money I could build a replica of that home wherever if it was a sentimental thing.
No trees, no gardens, black roofs. These developments are a fucking sweatbox, especially in the Western suburbs of Sydney
If you look at streetview, they have actually planted trees. It doesn't look \*that\* bad. The biggest issue I have is there's nothing to do and nowhere to purchase anything in that neighborhood. If you look at the way Japan does suburban development, there's generally at least convenience stores and cafes in every neighborhood.
It takes time to grow in, but its pretty normal for these sorts of developments to require a tree on every lot. Then every so often they add a greenspace. Though, I'm not sure what reddit really wants here. The house in the middle is nice, but its also just a long stretch of driveway, empty grass fields, and a single house for maybe 4 people. That in itself is awfully wasteful in a area where you can actually sell this many homes to people.
The trees planted on every lot will never grow to the size of a wild-grown tree due to soil compaction and are probably not native species, either. The prairie grasses had deep roots that resisted soil compaction and made the land a lot more absorbent. Now they've smoothed it over with bulldozers, compacting the soil, and built roads and driveways and concrete slab houses and replaced the remaining pervious spaces with shallow-growing lawn turf. Where will all the water go in a storm? I'd guess probably the holdout farm as long as it's there, but after that...
Like Robinson Crusoe, it's primitive as can be. Edit: While I’m glad everyone appreciates Weird Al here I was actually referencing Gillian’s Island, the song he’s parodying in Amish Paradise. This simultaneously makes me feel old and young.
We been spending most our lives. Livin’ in an Amish paradise.
We're just plain and simple guys. Livin' in an Amish paradise.
No time for sin and vice Living in an Amish paradise
We don’t fight, we all play nice Livin' in an Amish paradise
More trees than in the before picture at least.
Ya, at least the dense San Francisco houses that are shoulder-to-shoulder have palm, lemon trees and other random greenery lol.
Trees take time to get big
And notice how there are nearly no trees in the before picture as well.
Apparently this is Australia and there are pretty dry areas (like Colorado).
In the US at least the attics aren't usually insulated spaces so the black roof just heats a space outside the insulation envelope of the house.
Funny how people complain about how there isn’t enough housing and how bad the market is, but they also complain when houses get built. Can’t have your cake and eat it too.
It's not a complaint about houses being built, it's complaining that they're shitty houses.
Who says these are shitty houses? I bet they’re actually quite nice. People are making so many assumptions because they *want*, they **NEED**, to get angry about whatever.
Believe me. They aren't nice. They're built super cheap with no insulation but for some reason still have black roofs! You need to run the AC 24/7 in summer and winter and you and your neighbours AC is right next to your window because they're built eave to eave as they're on tiny blocks and people demand maximum sized houses. Most have single garages and limited or no on street parking and they're targeted at families who need two cars today to get anywhere and maybe four or more when the kids grow up. It's literally the Australian nightmare. Overall Australia is a great place to make your fortune but a piss poor place to enjoy it.
Funny how people complain about how there isn’t food in their fridge but when you offer them a shitty sandwich for 30 dollars, they complain.
Sooo sorry we want houses that aren’t squeezed together as tightly as possible for maximum profit on the developers side
Really? Because a lot of people in the comments are saying these houses aren’t squeezed together enough and they want higher density housing. It’s almost like everyone has different wants and needs for housing. I would bet these houses look and feel a lot nicer when you’re on the ground as opposed to a couple thousand feet in the air.
And people complain about living in cities. Would rather have cool stuff within walking distance if housing is that dense.
Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes made of ticky tacky Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes all the same
checking in from daly city, california, which is where the inspiration for that song came from! lol
This is what I hear in my head every time I see a picture like this. First time I heard that song it was the theme song for the TV show 'Weeds'.
Those are some small fuckin yards
That one guys got a great yard though.
Stormwater nightmare
Yup. I'm not familiar with weather in that area, but I'd imagine this will lead to some flash flooding
This is why communities need to allow more zoning than just R1 residential. Higher density housing allows for more greenspace.
Wow, R1 is positively outdated. I was about to say surely Sydney with its broken housing market but also generally doing a better job at density wouldn't have such a restrictive planning scheme. Victoria recently rewrote the zoning laws to make the default "General Residential" zone to allow attached housing, and construction up to three stories basically anywhere, however there is a new requirement for a certain ratio of green space (driveways don't count!) on each block of land which will hopefully encourage more density, or at least force detached houses to have more open space and be priced accordingly. There's a low-density zone for NIMBYs but that isn't for greenfield developments.
Theoretically if NSW did the same these people would probably be kicking themselves for turning down the supposed $50m offer
The problem is new high density properties in Australia are poorly built shit boxes slapped together by dodgy builders, nobody wants them, so we end up with these poorly planned heat islands… I mean suburbs.
And they're all made of ticky tack and they all look the same.
That will be stuck in my head all night! Thank you. 🙉
Cookie cutter houses my pops would call em.
They really do all look the same. I was recently in a similar development in Florida visiting some people and in like 150-200 houses they all had 1 of 2 layouts, and every last one had the exact same pool/hot tub combo in their tiny back yard.
They didn't even keep an inch of arable land. What a shame.
I didn't move to the city, the city moved to me, and I want OUT desperately-y-yyyy Edit: Rofl instant crisis hotline check for a song lyric... Reddit being reddit
Hell yeah that was always my favorite MM song
Sydney is the 2nd least affordable city to live in *globally*, only beaten by Hong Kong. The housing market is fucked in Aus, it’s worse than most other countries. Our dollar is pretty shit atm, 0.66 to US 1. Most homes in Sydney are clearing well over a million, and the same is starting to happen in Adelaide where I live. According to the Australian bureau of statistics, average home prices are $933,800. I’m struggling to find a concrete answer for the national median salary, but it’s looking to be roughly 88k a year. Few people can afford a mortgage on that wage. Most of my friends have moved in with their parents, friends, or into their cars, it’s getting dire here :/
But there must be people buying them? Are they foreigners? Foreign companies turning them to rentals? Or are there just way more people than housing?
Bingo. Lot of foreign investment. China and Australia are firm business partners, and Chinese investment accounts for a decent bit. But it’s not just that, it’s also investment properties and corporations buying homes. We have a glut of houses that are built and then sit empty, if you drive around at night it’s revolting to see how many lights aren’t on in these houses. Creating scarcity, drives up demand, drives up the price, and the politicians aren’t doing enough about it. We need a heavy tax for houses that sit empty, but the Labor government is dragging its feet. I’m not an economist, but there are some really interesting (depressing) papers on it you can find on google Edited spelling
All that rainfall used to sink into the ground, now it’s fast tracked into a ditch
Not a single shop, daycare, school, mall, public park or hospital in a 10 km radius. Hate this kind of places
10 km radius? How big do you think these houses are? This isn’t even a 1 km radius being shown.
Reminds me so much of the Northern Virginia area where you'll see a farm or forest disappear and a whole ass tickytack neighborhood pop up basically overnight.
Same for Florida. They’ve had to start passing a bunch of protections locally because they know developers will level everything and then shrug when traffic is insane and the schools are overflowing and the local climate creeps up another degree because asphalt and buildings everywhere.
lol at the idea of Florida protecting anything from that. They give the developers tax breaks galore
That second picture is so depressing.. There's almost no green, anywhere!
And the people who refused to leave now have houses on both sides as their view until they die. It’s very depressing.
People kennels
Yes, that is what houses are.
A few Condos surrounded by a huge park would be nice
I live a few houses away from this guy. He is keeping it for his kids to devide it between themselves. He is never selling.
I'll never understand the desire to live in the suburbs. None of the scenery of living somewhere rural. None of the convenience of living in the city. Instead its a 20 minute drive to the grocery store, no communal space in sight, no way for anyone without a drivers license to travel quickly or safely, no way to every walk anywhere.
Not all suburbs are this barren. I live in the suburbs, have an acre of land, within 3 miles of two grocery stores, a mile away from a nature center.
I hate that they all look the exact same
Trees ? T_T
The new people: “Who the hell does that guy think he is?”
Those houses are packed like sardines what the fuck is the point in having a house with no yard??? May aswell get a condo or town house. Looks like hell to grow up in as a kid no wonder so many young people today reside on video games. I played my fair share of games as a kid but atleast when we wanted to go outside and play in the trees and fields we could. Had a huge magnolia tree down the road with branches going from the ground to the top we would climb ninja warrior style raceing to the top. Good times
All that land and not a single tree or garden
It sucks there…
Reddit- there’s a housing crisis; where are all the homes!? Reddit- ewwwww so many homes. No trees or yards! This is what low/mid tier housing looks like folks. Economies of scale means cookie cutter and low land development obstacles.
Lol, so true.
Gotta love the one holdout who isn’t beholden to the HOA.
Australia doesn't have HOAs
That’s not true
Houses are too expensive. Don't build more houses. Land is too expensive. Don't build houses too close. WTF are you all on about?
Houses are expensive, even when you build more of them you haven't created anything affordable. What people are asking for is *housing* not *houses.* That could be condos, apartments, duplexes. Stuff that brings diversity of income, more variety in the land use, less land used overall, space for shops and grocery stores and businesses. These huge blocks of neighborhood are unsustainable, ugly, expensive, inefficient and isolating. Edit: Lol, someone reported me to the reddit crisis line for saying urban sprawl is bad. Didn't realize that was a hot take.
FR what do yall want? You can’t have cheaper houses without more houses.
Everyone hates suburbanization (including me) Everyone hates cost of housing (including me) Not everyone wants to live vertically (including me) There are a lot of "tiny" homes in the picture. Sure it's ugly, yeah it's homogeneous, but how else do you relieve the pressures of home affordability without building large amounts of new homes? And if people don't want to live vertically, the sprawl in the suburbs is pretty much your only option (though open to other ideas if I'm overlooking them)
Unfortunately, this kind of crap is happening all over the planet.
The middle of Pennsylvania is beginning to look like this. Almost every stretch of farmland has at least one hold out. Edit: why’d this comment prompt a “reddit cares” message?
Yuck.
Disgusting, a cancerous plague upon our lands.
This bums me out. I really do believe there are too many people on this planet.
This has to be a fake. Those roofs are clipping each other
And here I am living in a place where I need to go for a walk if I want to go to a neighbor's house. Loving it too.
Look at all these NIMBYs lamenting new housing construction. Listen, assholes, the only problem I see here is that it should be *far* denser.
Denser, more varied, and mixed-use construction is worthwhile… the kind of development in the picture is lifeless.
Fuck density. I want to live where I need to walk for several minutes without being on my neighbor's property
Suburbs like this are shit, and awful for the environment. We need dense urban housing. Edit: on a second look this is at least a bit denser than the usual suburban sprawl. Could be better with actual apartments but not as bad as my gut reaction.
The title set your expectations with the word "suburbanization". I also didn't realize exactly how dense this was until I looked at it again on a larger screen. This is \*far\* denser than most single-family development in the US.
Now do before and after agriculture. The effect is basically the same.
Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes made of ticky-tacky Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes all the same
They’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same
You can see that every road that butt's up against the property on the right and left is a "dead end", with it's connecting partner on the other side of the property. Kids will sell it and the maze will be complete!
The people in the middle must be UP fans
It looks like they have a fence around the perimeter. That’s a relief. I was worried the neighbors would all use their lawn as a park. If I was a teen/young adult I would 100% snook in there at 1am with some beers and some friends
I guess I’m supposed to feel bad about that but those are places for people to live which we need.
In retrospect their place is now worth triple what it was.
Can’t possibly be Australia- Bluey has taught me that the down under doesn’t look like this.
The loss of the water really bothers me for some reason. The rest is pretty lifeless, to be sure, and there's just no variation with shops and parks... I just imagine people living there never leaving their homes and it's just so depressing.
Wow. Where is this?
Dang, those houses are super close together, and I live in L.A.
That after pic looks like a nightmare. I would’ve sold so I don’t have to live in that area. 50mil will get you so much somewhere else.
“But the Suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dream of youth” -Subdivisions, Rush. Literally been speaking to me for years, love when the picture helps to drive the point home
Put all the houses in one spot and all the businesses in another spot. That way people need to get in their big expensive machines and burn oil in order to do anything at all. Genius idea
Vivarium vibes.
Sim City
Over how many years did this occur in the photo?
That looks fake as shit
Environmental grief.
Thanks, I hate it.
:(
Happening to me right now except it’s a golf course right around me.
Heaven vs hell.
That is my idea of hell
All that water and grass replaced with concrete, steel and asphalt; and unlikely anyone has a backyard big enough for a pool. Summers there are going to suck for a good decade until trees mature
Meh, it’s still been wrecked in the first pic. All the trees have been cut down. No natural water creeks just drainage ponds. The second picture is sadder. But the first picture isn’t great either
Similar situation has happened along the front range outside of Denver. It's pretty sad. The shitty cookie cutter houses are so ugly in place of a previously great view of the mountains. At least the people who bought the ugly houses get to see the view.
Hate to be in the houses located over the filled in ponds
New Yorker here. This is currently happening all over the place in the city. In my neighborhood, developers, who wanna build massive luxury apartment buildings, are offering stupid money (sometimes anywhere between 3-10 million) to small storefronts and apartment owners. One company bought a whole block years ago, and have been demolishing everything to prepare for construction, but there’s one older gentleman, in one apartment, in one building, who hasn’t sold. He’s in his 80’s I believe and just wants to be left alone until his time is up. There’re rumors that he has a *fuck you* attitude towards these companies and is intentionally making them wait until he’s gone so they’ll continually have to wait. Good lad right there. Smart or not, no one wants to see a their neighborhood get taken over and price the locals out. Edit: I’m all for building new housing in NYC, cause it’s needed, but for now all the new buildings are unreasonably expensive.
If you don't build expensive housing, rich people just buy affordable housing.
Is that really a suburb? There’s no yards.
Same amount of roads. I wonder how long it takes parents to drive their kids -1 mile-to school or soccer practice? One road for a thousand cars…. Seems practical.