Why American Houses Are So Flimsy

The problem with affordable housing isn't really the construction cost - but the cost of land (and its availability). You wouldn't solve housing crisis with more single-family homes in cheap lands, but with more apartments in high-demand locations.

In Canada majority of homes have living space basements. Finished basements with an extra bedroom and bathroom plus a TV room and storage with a utility room are a big deal. I’ve owned 3 homes in Canada and all had finished basements. I’m looking for my next one and it will also have a finished basement.

Some houses in the UK are of timber construction, but they will still have an outer brick skin. Houses in the UK also have a cavity between the inside and outside walls where extra insulation goes in.

In the pacific northwest, building with wood is also a huge necessity for earthquake resilience. Every time there's a big quake here, all the brick buildings (or even building with Brick Facades) have much more damage than the wood framed buildings.

Also an important point missed here, we do actualy use frame n panel construction /on the inside/ of the buildings. So electrical, water and most other things are still fairly flexable aslong as you pick the right walls to wire them through.

My sister just ripped out an entire floor to rearrange it for her needs.

I’ve been down a rabbit hole on these recently, America built a lot of its homes out of bricks until the 1940’s. With the return of all those soldiers, who now has access to the GI bill, combined with the highway system which allowed suburban living to become convenient, housing demand exploded and builders got rid of time consuming brick construction and replaced it with these mass produced wooden houses we see today.

I’d argue the quality has decreased over time though, you can get a quality wooden home or a crappy rushed one and pay a ton of money for either of them.

12:27 SOOO THAT IS AMY!! Oh how much she has sacrificed for HAI 😂😂

9:15 "An incredibly straightforward process, entailing just simply screwing it into the stud." Yep that's how I screw things in too!

You forgot that a wood frame, flat slab building is the safest structure to be in during an earhquake -- an important consideration on the west coast.

stick frame and timber frame are very different things

11:10 "The US doesn't take advantage of its advantage" is essentially our national anthem this millennium

1:00 this isn’t exactly correct. Where around 90–95% of detached single-family homes in the US are timber-framed, only 10–20% of new detached homes are predominantly timber-framed in Australia. Most are made of steel these days. And you would rarely see particleboard like you see in America.

I think a lot of generalizations were made and a lot of nuances missed. For one, many American homes have basements, which is neither a crawlspace nor a slab. Many homes especially in wealthier neighborhoods use brick and stone on the outside as opposed to vinyl siding. Homes in the northwest use wood for earthquake resistance, and homes in the southeast use concrete block for hurricane resistance. Stucco walls and tile roofs are very popular in the southwest. In NYC, they prohibit wood construction due to fire risk. Not all houses are huge and spaced out - small "shotgun" houses packed together like sardines are very common in more urban neighborhoods, as well as "5 over 1" style apartment buildings, both of which often have window units instead of central AC. I guess the point is, the US is such a huge and diverse country with different priorities in different areas.

You compared untreated lumber in the US with treated lumber in the UK, these are not the same products and you wouldn't build a timber frame with treated lumber

Slab on grade is predominantly a southern building technique where the frost line is nonexistent. I live in the mid-Atlantic and have never seen a single slab on grade foundation.

Brit living in the US. You wouldn't replace the whole roof in Britain, you'd only be fixing patches as they come up. Plenty of Victorian houses still have the original roof and it would be insane to replace it.

You missed the fact that British houses use plaster on the walls. It's so much better for insulation both with temperature and noise! But again requires more skill and is more expensive.

There's also a fundamental difference in how long each country expects a house just work and not fall apart. In my last place the maintenance guys would always say that the things going wrong were because the building was "old", it was built in the 1960s and things had clearly been replaced since. They could never believe that my parents' house is 300 years old. Obviously most Brits don't live in old houses but an "old" house probably starts at 200 years.

Another thing about wood vs brick here in England (and a lot of Europe tbh) is that a lot of residential properties are a lot closer together, making fire a far higher risk. If you go to a small or new town in America the actual buildings between each property is relatively spacious, meaning that fire or other issues have a harder time spreading to neighbours. If you visit a village or new-builds in the UK you’ll find that the majority of homes are terraced or semi-detached. It also explains why far thicker materials are used, not just for safety but for noise and privacy too.

The weirdest part is the price is still super high

THE RETURN OF BRICKS!!!

The great fire of London also shifted the focus away from wood as a building material.