08-11-2008, 01:07 PM
Ah, so glad someone actually asked!
Full disclosure. I build for a living, and have for the last decade or so. I have done the bulk of my building in the boom areas of the W. Coast of the US, during the real estate boom period. I specialize in boats, craftsman restorations and interior remodels. This colors my opinion. I am a pirate by nature, and have no apologies for that.
Here is the main difficulty: entry level housing. For a builder, once lot prices, permits, and fees, and regulation in general, which in the building trades in most areas are frankly pretty sketchy and fly by night--become too expensive--there is simply no financial incentive to build small, or as I might say, sensible sized homes. There is certainly NO incentive to build ecologically benign homes. The profit made by a builder is on a per foot basis, and if the per foot cost is run up by loads of hoops to jump through, delays, and the rest, the only way to compensate and stay in business is by building McMansions. Large homes, or more correctly, large cheaply shoddily built homes, are proportionately less expensive to construct and generate higher revenues for the builder. There is no way around it. Stock plans, blast the lot with a bulldozer--no creativity at all--gold plated crap bath fixtures and a couple of columns out front. It's the only way you can survive as a businessman. Of course this does not address quality builds, something so far as I can see, is more or less alien to the entire state. No offense, but damn, there are some crappy houses out there!
So one can see why regulation favors the large builder. You can have a single hired goon in an office who's job is to solely caress the needed parts of local favor who need caressing, and meanwhile the finance guy is doing the same--you can hire local help as you're the only one actually building, and pay them a miserable wage, as they've no other options for hire--it's really the best situation you can engineer for bad business. Meanwhile, the ownerbuilder languishes, deals with hoop after hoop after hoop, which is a full time job here too, and generally has less cushion with which to caress. Hey, I am not making the rules up here. This is simply a de facto statement of how the industry functions and it should not be too much of a surprise to anybody. In an environment like Hawaii, where nepotism is rampant--and maybe excusably so, maybe not--you cannot kid me for a moment to think that the favors that have been so far granted will not continue. If anything, the PCDP only greases the skids, as it's restrictionary for those who, well, get restricted. Which, so far, would be most of us, and we haven't figured it out yet.
But there are ways to change that, which is why I'm engaged in the conversation.
Full disclosure. I build for a living, and have for the last decade or so. I have done the bulk of my building in the boom areas of the W. Coast of the US, during the real estate boom period. I specialize in boats, craftsman restorations and interior remodels. This colors my opinion. I am a pirate by nature, and have no apologies for that.
Here is the main difficulty: entry level housing. For a builder, once lot prices, permits, and fees, and regulation in general, which in the building trades in most areas are frankly pretty sketchy and fly by night--become too expensive--there is simply no financial incentive to build small, or as I might say, sensible sized homes. There is certainly NO incentive to build ecologically benign homes. The profit made by a builder is on a per foot basis, and if the per foot cost is run up by loads of hoops to jump through, delays, and the rest, the only way to compensate and stay in business is by building McMansions. Large homes, or more correctly, large cheaply shoddily built homes, are proportionately less expensive to construct and generate higher revenues for the builder. There is no way around it. Stock plans, blast the lot with a bulldozer--no creativity at all--gold plated crap bath fixtures and a couple of columns out front. It's the only way you can survive as a businessman. Of course this does not address quality builds, something so far as I can see, is more or less alien to the entire state. No offense, but damn, there are some crappy houses out there!
So one can see why regulation favors the large builder. You can have a single hired goon in an office who's job is to solely caress the needed parts of local favor who need caressing, and meanwhile the finance guy is doing the same--you can hire local help as you're the only one actually building, and pay them a miserable wage, as they've no other options for hire--it's really the best situation you can engineer for bad business. Meanwhile, the ownerbuilder languishes, deals with hoop after hoop after hoop, which is a full time job here too, and generally has less cushion with which to caress. Hey, I am not making the rules up here. This is simply a de facto statement of how the industry functions and it should not be too much of a surprise to anybody. In an environment like Hawaii, where nepotism is rampant--and maybe excusably so, maybe not--you cannot kid me for a moment to think that the favors that have been so far granted will not continue. If anything, the PCDP only greases the skids, as it's restrictionary for those who, well, get restricted. Which, so far, would be most of us, and we haven't figured it out yet.
But there are ways to change that, which is why I'm engaged in the conversation.