Why do people buy expensive penthouses when you can buy a larger detached home at the same price? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Michael Barnard, Low-carbon Innovation Strategist, on Quora:
I’m not living in a penthouse, but I am living in a downtown condo instead of a detached home. My condo is worth more than what many people I know paid for their detached homes. I’ll provide my reasons.
- Out my back or front doors are probably 30 top notch coffee shops, restaurants and bars within a five minute walk.
- The closest excellent grocer is a two minute walk. The differently excellent grocer, the excellent convenience grocer and the Korean grocer are five to ten minute walks. The really excellent grocer is a single stop subway ride away. One of the best public markets in the world is a short harbor ferry ride away.
- I have a choice of great, freshly roasted coffee beans from multiple vendors which also have great coffee shops within 30 minutes walk or ten minutes biking from my place.
- A public seawall which runs for about 30 kilometers around one of the best urban parks in the world and out to one of the longest urban beaches in the world is a five minute walk.
- I don’t like maintaining houses. The combination of my small space, shared building amenities and low condo fees means I don’t have to shovel walks, maintain garden beds or clean gutters. I prefer to spend my time doing other things, like taking long walks with my spouse.
- I don’t have the liability of major home issues. A friend who moved from her semi-detached home in the city to a fully detached home in the country found that her new place leaked badly when it rained and the wind was from a certain direction. Her furnace conked out. Etc. All big ticket items.
- I love walking out onto the street and seeing a lot of people walking on the street with their dogs, their friends, on their way to shop, to coffee, to drinks or to work. Detached homes equals almost no street life.
- I have a bikeshare stand outside my front door and use it regularly. I don’t need to own a bike, but just borrow one cheaply when it makes sense for the trips I want to make.
- Getting to the airport entails walking two blocks with my carryon bag and getting on the train that goes to the airport every few minutes. Getting back just reverses that. It costs me about $10 for the two-way trip and avoids all of the traffic and hassle of parking.
- I have access to two separate car share systems, one for short, one-way hops in the city and one for longer trips where I return the vehicle to where I found it. I don’t pay for gas, maintenance or insurance, I just pay for the time I’ve used the vehicle and I get the vehicle I need for the trip. Then I have access to rental cars for driving vacations which we occasionally take.
- All of the above means we don’t own a car at all, and haven’t since 2012. Even then, our cars typically saw 5K or so of driving annually. As owning a car is an $8K-$10K cost annually these days and my replacement transportation costs are much, much lower and my transportation is much more convenient, living downtown is financially beneficial.
There’s an old saying about boats: they are a hole in the water into which you pour money. Detached homes aren’t holes in the water, but holes in the ground into which you have to keep pouring money and time. That’s why they call them money pits.
North America’s obsession with detached homes is interesting sociologically, but quite foolish from an urban fabric, urban planning and environmental perspective. A quite remarkable amount of innovation has sprung up solely to make suburban living tolerable, when living in dense urban areas has enormous advantages.
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