1. Asthetics: While people are comfortable all looking alike with an iPod, they don't want their homes to look alike. Such customization demands increase the price dramatically.
2. Land. People want to live in places already built-up. You aren't going to be creating new housing in a desirable Boston neighborhood without knocking something down first (assuming you could ever get permission to knock a building in Boston). For this reason, most property purchases are trades of currently erected buildings rather than construction of new buildings.
3. Labor. On one side, it's hard to find skilled construction workers today. The 20-somethings of today have been programmed that it's college or bust. That has left a short supply of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc. As such, wages are huge because property is valuable and people who want to build can't find enough workers. On the other side, we're a lot safer in our construction than we used to. Workplace injuries aren't as common and that's a good thing.
4. Regulations. There are a lot of them and they are meant to improve the quality of houses, but they cost money.
5. Improvements in Quality. Do you think you're going to build a house today without cable and Cat-5 jacks everywhere? Of course not! Old homes have similarly been retrofitted with such amenities. Double-paned windows are now the norm in colder climates, dishwashers and garbage disposals, garage door openers, etc. all add to the price of homes. Heck, even the number of electrical outlets in new homes is quite different from homes built in the 70s.
5. US tax laws. It makes sense to buy as much house as you possibly can scrimp for due to US tax laws which treat home ownership as this panacea of good citizenship. That drives prices sky high.
Obsoletion doesn't come from nowhere. What's the problem with current LAN-cabling that warrants the coming of a new network technology? Yeah, wireless, but it's still nice to have some places to easily plug in the access points.
Pairs of copper wire is, if anything, a proven technology. And it's not like we're anywhere near pushing the limit of Ethernet technology for domestic purposes.
Even if a new technology will come along, the fact that entire cites are wired from top to bottom with cat-5, you're guaranteed that any new technology wil be heavily biased towards backwards compability on the physical layer.
The only thing that will ever replace a Cat-5 cable in the forseeable future is a wireless spec that works. Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about retrofitting a Cat-5 jack to transmit WiFi data :)
I had a minor remodel recently. The electrician installed cat-5 for everything, phones, ethernet, etc. He said he always does it. The wire is too cheap to mess with anything else.
1. Asthetics: While people are comfortable all looking alike with an iPod, they don't want their homes to look alike. Such customization demands increase the price dramatically.
2. Land. People want to live in places already built-up. You aren't going to be creating new housing in a desirable Boston neighborhood without knocking something down first (assuming you could ever get permission to knock a building in Boston). For this reason, most property purchases are trades of currently erected buildings rather than construction of new buildings.
3. Labor. On one side, it's hard to find skilled construction workers today. The 20-somethings of today have been programmed that it's college or bust. That has left a short supply of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc. As such, wages are huge because property is valuable and people who want to build can't find enough workers. On the other side, we're a lot safer in our construction than we used to. Workplace injuries aren't as common and that's a good thing.
4. Regulations. There are a lot of them and they are meant to improve the quality of houses, but they cost money.
5. Improvements in Quality. Do you think you're going to build a house today without cable and Cat-5 jacks everywhere? Of course not! Old homes have similarly been retrofitted with such amenities. Double-paned windows are now the norm in colder climates, dishwashers and garbage disposals, garage door openers, etc. all add to the price of homes. Heck, even the number of electrical outlets in new homes is quite different from homes built in the 70s.
5. US tax laws. It makes sense to buy as much house as you possibly can scrimp for due to US tax laws which treat home ownership as this panacea of good citizenship. That drives prices sky high.
So, housing prices are a combination of factors.