Adaptive Reuse – Historic Homes & The Housing Shortage

This week, we discuss historic homes, the housing shortage and how the two go hand-in-hand. 

More About the Show

The Build Perspectives podcast shares insider knowledge to build connections and community in the building materials industry. Tim and Carolina are friends, colleagues and former coworkers who love the construction industry and their clients, and want to share their passion and insights to attract future talent to the industry.

In this episode, Tim and Carolina discuss the answer to these questions: how do older construction methods compared to new budget, multifamily or mixed-use projects and are we losing anything through their progression of time that could help new and current construction practices and how would this affect material? 

The Housing Crisis

As more and more historic homes are being replaced with modern homes and apartment buildings, younger generations are trying to preserve these parts of the past. But how can they accomplish this?

Part of the issue ist hat there’s not enough awareness about options that are available or the options that are out there are difficult to source or prohibitively expensive. There’s also the issue that there’s not enough housing available right now. According to a Zillow report, there were 102,112 fewer homes on the market in the U.S. than in 2018. That’s a 6.4% drop in just one year.  

However, there’s also a lot of abandoned properties that are being torn down each year. Instead of tearing them down, why not rescue them? It would be easier and faster to preserve these historical, abandoned homes than to try and build more new homes. 

Especially in cities with a high housing demand, such as L.A., Chicago, Pheonix and more, it would be easier to fix up older homes than to try and find new places to build homes that would be exceptionally expensive. You could spend $50,000 to rehab an old building instead of knocking down a $200,000 to build a $900,000. 

Is There Really a Housing Shortage?

Developers are tearing down 300,000 homes a year. If you look at that over 10 years, do we really have a housing shortage or do we have an affordability problem? 

If the largest builders decided to stop tearing buildings down and instead of looking at things from an ROI perspective, looked at the in more of a sustainability perspective, they could actually make money on these properties.

What do we want our neighbors and communities to look like? Not only does tearing homes down and building new ones increase taxes and home prices, but it also destroys the historical nature of the area. 

One way to help preserve the historic nature of homes is to create a strategy around maintenance. A lot of people today don’t know how to maintain their homes or don’t have time, so they fall into disrepair and get torn down. Instead, we should focus on helping teach people how to preserve their neighborhoods and buildings, using maintenance as a strategy to sustainability.  

This podcast was dedicated to Chuck Swanson, a dedicated Nichiha employee. He was a positive light in the world, and we miss him greatly. Please remember to appreciate the people around you. 

Join the Conversation

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this week’s episode! Shoot us an email at buildperspectives@gmail.com.