Housing
Why don’t we have brick houses in America ? I would feel more safe.
Bricks are brittle. In CA it doesn’t make sense because of earthquakes. Stick built homes are very robust and inexpensive, but won’t last for centuries.
wood is cheaper
Bricks are brittle. They makes horrible building material. I think you’re looking for reinforced concrete. As far as I see, all commercial real estate are concrete, but residential are wood. For all the live and play apartments popping up everywhere, the bottom half is reinforced concrete, and top half is wood.
Lots and lots of homes are built of brick in the SE. I grew up in one built of cinder blocks, every other column of holes filled with concrete. It was built in the 20s and has survived 2 direct tornado hits. The roof didn't, or course, and a screen door was once ripped off during a thunderstorm, but the bones of that house have never been or needed repair. An earthquake, though...that would be U G L Y !
Brick houses crumble in earthquakes and not the most energy efficient.
What about tornadoes? .
Not in the west, which is where I assumed you were located. Even then you need something like reinforced concrete. Any shaking, swaying or even small vibrations, if it gets to the resonance frequency can cause bricks to crumble.
You're right, we haven't invested the time and resources to build housing that is big-bad-wolf proof. He could huff and puff and blow our houses down along with our life savings and equity.
My parents built a brick house in Virginia after their wood house burned down.
Why don’t Japanese build houses with wood? It has earthquakes like every month.
True. Paper walls makes a lot of sense with their low crime rate.
Paper is from wood.
Builder here. Brick is a horrible building material. It crumbles when cheaply made and it’s not insulated. Expect to put drywall and then spend scads insulating it. It’s super expensive when well made. The Germans knew how to do this with each brick weighing almost 3lbs. The maintenance is crazy bad. Tuck-pointing after every few years. Lots of new houses (around here) have a brick facade. It’s cheaper than the real thing and many people can’t really tell the diff. Personally I love brick. I lovingly restored a 4500sf original Queen Anne and I hope to die in it someday.
Thanks for the insight. Side question. What is the outlook looking like for builders? With materials cost rising (more to come due to tariff), labor cost rising (economy and unemployment rate is good), Chinese tightening money putflowing, with land premium paid but buyers having less power due to rising mortgage interest (almost 1% higher than last year), I am thinking builders will slow down building new houses significantly. Perhaps laying off many employees down the road. Builders will not increase until say foreign investment started coming again. Is this the outlook?
Also what is the reputation of the following builders? William Buchan, American Classics (Northwest classics?), Murray Franklin, Conner, Dr Horton, Toll brothers (former Camwest). I listed according to what I heard from agents.
Earthquakes makes them less common in Bay Area. They do exist in other states
Many of the states I have visited in Usa don’t have it either
What states did u visit? Brick houses everywhere in the south(Georgia, NC, SC). New York, DC, Boston also have lots of brownstone houses