This is really the result of the massive skills loss in the construction industry. Everything has to be cheap to purchase and installable by low skilled labor. The whole point is to maximize profit with minimal quality. This is most evident in masonry construction. You basically can't get brick work of a quality comparable to what was done 100 years ago any more.
> This is really the result of the massive skills loss in the construction industry
The skills weren't lost, just no one wants to pay for them. If ten people can build ten houses in a year, but to do decorative houses they can only do five, hey suddenly the masonry costs on your house have doubled.
> You basically can't get brick work of a quality comparable to what was done 100 years ago any more.
Bricks were mostly used structurally a century ago. In about the late 1930s, most brickwork started being veneer (non-structural). Combined with dramatically increase labour costs as a proportion of overall building cost, it's pretty clear why.
If you want some decorative brickwork done, order a pallet of brick and some bags of mortar and learn how to do it yourself. Anything else is reserved for those with money to burn.
I worked for the biggest building supply/manufacturing company in the US. It's not a loss of skill, it's the economies of scale that comes with prefab. It's not only faster to build with, it's cheaper to the builder, and it's a higher margin product to sell. It's the right choice for a majority of homes, and a majority is what you see.
It's at the point now where you can build your house out of a catalog then do VR walkthroughs. That's a great sell to the customer and something you can't do the old way.
Was going to echo this. There has been an explosion of building products/systems/technologies that make comparing to even just 20+ years ago difficult. A focus on energy efficiency and air quality also means that some old methods have been demoted from their status quo position of the past. Other products actually enable low skilled workers to do things that once required high skilled craftsmen.
It's a combination of prefab cost meeting regulatory constraint. The most generic of the new builds have been optimized for cost while also working within legal requirements for many states and cities.
Overall I welcome it, because there's a herd strength in having a generation of homes all built the same way, with the same kinds of known caveats.
