My parents have built two homes now, the second was a Coventry kit like you are suggesting. The cost of the kit is reasonable. Quite reasonable, or was pre-pandemic before lumber prices and such rose.
The costs were WAY above the cost of the kit though.
Land purchase
Perc tests, permitting, any site surveys needed.
Site prep to put in driveway access, clear building site, dig foundation. You can do the lumbering yourself, but there ends up being a point where large equipment is needed and professionals have to do the work, if nothing else to pour concrete. Unless you have a home on a floating block foundation, which happens some places if it is small enough.
You pay to have utilities run to the home such as electric, cable, phone line if you are remote enough and it is also your DSL, satellite if you can’t get cable or DSL. This is MANY thousands.
Well dig or public water hookup. You pay for that up to the main line + hookup costs if any + inspections.
Septic system if not on public sewer. This can get very expensive in some areas if near water or bedrock that make septic fields more challenging.
ALL the labor to assemble (build) the house is something you pay for or do yourself. Every nail, screw, tool, paint, stain, caulk, bit and bauble, you pay for. It takes months to build even with a crew doing it unless very small.
Electric, plumbing, and any other wiring are not part of the kit. You buy those materials, get your permits, and pay for labor yourself.
Solar if wanted and useful in the area, backup generator, heat/AC systems.
Appliances are not included in the kit, nor are sinks, faucets, tubs, and a lot of other things. Kit is walls, floors, roofs, windows, stairs, stair rails.
Cabinets are not included in most kits.
Incidentals like a pod type storage rental on site to keep tools, and materials in out of weather/theft range. Portable outhouse rental if you have a crew hired (required in some places for construction).
Fill dirt, landscaping, etc.
Your $50K kit turns into a 300K house very very fast.
It is certainly worth it if that is what you want to do, but it is not the cheap solution many think it is.
The least expensive on paper are older homes in need of rehab. Those of course have hidden costs such as having to completely re-do electric, plumbing, well, septic/sewer, foundation repair, etc. Anyone can sand and paint, but they often have a lot of extra expensive costs. Some are liveable while working on them though. IF you can find one you like, IF you can live in it while working on it, and IF it is somewhere that has employment (or remote work), that is a decent deal.
I have a 1947 cape cod cottage that I adore. I had to do the roof, sewer line, all the garage electric (it was an old fuse box and had mixed standard and aluminum wiring EEEK). Lots of sanding, painting, caulking, fixing. It is now worth a lot more than I paid for it. Thank you real estate market!! I was about 45 mins from work although worked from home most of the time. I have all hardwood floors, a cast iron tub, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, a front porch, a large back deck that is half covered with a tin roof, screen porch, etc. I adore it. I pay less a month for the house and utilities than I would have paid for a ROOM in Irvine CA. I own my house.
The internal workings of a video game company end up affecting the player if/when the product turns out to be half-baked, crappy, or low-quality… so discussing how things are going at the company is a valid discussion topic
It’s a $15/month subscription game, this isn’t a charity. It’s perfectly fine to be concerned about the internal workings of Blizzard since we’re on the receiving end of the product - and any shakeups or drama at the company could possibly affect the quality of the game or patch content
I’m absolutely not saying its “cheap” im saying its cheaper. Additionally, you dont need a house to be “finished” before its livable. It’s what I plan to do when I sell this house. I will do the finishing, I have family members who are in the trades so it will cover electrical and hvac. Drywall, painting and fixtures is all stuff I can do. Depending on where I find the land will dictate a lot of stuff but around here most property is already cleared.
There are a lot of costs you can cut by doing work yourself.
Because “career growth” as you and lots of people understand it must follow a 20th century model of the 9-5 facetime grind. Imagine being so arrogant to think remote-capable jobs require in-person mentorship only in order for newcomers to be successful.
This is a tiresome argument I’ve heard time and time again from boomers. Right away, they assume not going into the office is negative, lazy and immediately sets a negative example to children and others. Quite the opposite, being able to work efficiently might actually encourage the next generation to not accept stupid things like long commutes and ridiculous real-estate prices in head-office cities.
…so the global pandemic and government isolation / lockdown measures had nothing to do with mental health then? Right.
As someone who worked in the industry, I’m seeing a lot of comments here that speak with a “jusitifiable” apathy; (the same kind currently being exhibited by Blizzard execs actually)
To a relevant degree, comments like this do hold water and rightfully so- we players want a good product that we’re actively paying for, and don’t care about company politics; however…
Like all things in life, idiocracy is real, and for every one person who takes the time to think before acting, you get the many smoothbrains who act before even thinking about thinking-
The truth of the matter is this-
For WFH vs RTO in a general sense:
RTO works on a company-by-company basis, and it’s success has become evidently tied to geographical parameters
It’s statistically less embraced by older generations who mostly know a “chat by the whiteboard or watercooler” approach to idea sharing as well as “do your job and don’t complain”. There is no statistical correlation between these and better work output, but there is for the adverse effect, even more with younger (<35 yo) generations.
WFH allows the best of the best to contribute their talents regardless of geography
If the company is malleable and able to adapt, there are no realizable losses in product quality to WFH.
WFH has similar psychological benefits to 4-day work weeks. Employees are more likely to legitimately care about what they’re working on past a professional obligation to, and this creates a positive feedback loop of good life, good work, good job.
WFH affords the worker anywhere from 350 to 700 additional hours per year that would’ve otherwise been wasted on commute (based off of the US average commute there/back of 1 hour per day, but in California’s worst instances, that value is doubled)
WFH affords the worker anywhere from 350 to 700 additional hours per year that would’ve otherwise been wasted on commute to spent on recreational time, hobbies, family, whatever. It encourages a better work-life balance.
For WFH vs RTO specifically in Blizzard Irvine’s case:
Orange County has one of the highest, most inflated rent costs/housing markets in the world, only dwarfed by Vancouver, Canada and a few others.
The average monthly cost for a stock-standard 1-bedroom apartment there is the same price as a 3-bedroom high rise in other countries.
It is one of the only regions in America where making a 6-figue salary is completely subverted when 40-55% of that salary goes directly to paying rent. The average rent/income ratio is supposed to be 20-30% of one’s salary.
For the employees that aren’t getting 6-figure salaries (aka the majority of non-leadership creative roles), that rent can cost them as much as 60% of their income.
For the employees who choose to live in a cheaper suburb for the sake of their own livelihoods, they’re then subject to a minimum of 2 hours of LA traffic per day, traffic that is world famous for being some of the worst in any developed nation, which during rush hour to and from work can be exacerbated to as high as 4 hours of daily commute.
With their age, Blizzard’s hiring strategies have shifted from “talented individuals” to hiring loyal players of their games. While this isn’t inherently a bad thing, it does create a unprofessional power imbalance where you’re asking your employees to ‘weather’ the bad work circumstances for the betterment of the product they love so much. This is a job, not a militia.
Riot Games is Blizzard’s biggest talent poacher- offering equal-to or higher salaries while providing WFH/RTO on a game-by-game basis within the company. Housing costs are also 22% less expensive in West Los Angeles.
It is costly to re-hire, screen, vet new employees, get them up to speed with how the company operates, and manage to have them gel well with the company ecosystem. As such, any company that values time and money would objectively aim to avoid this as much as possible
Insider claims state that since WFH was no longer a permanent option, as high as 50% of the WoW team has been in a constant revolving-door cycle where employees join, take up to 3 months to get in the rhythm of the company, realize they’re getting physically, financially, and mentally ripped off and taken advantage of, and either get poached by Riot scouts or leave California entirely.
Riot Games, a company notorious for poaching and employing literal dozens of ex-Blizzard employees, is currently working on their own MMORPG set within a franchise that has fiscally matched or surpassed World of Warcraft in annual revenue every year for the past 8 years, and sees 20x more monthly active users across all games within that franchise.
This entire situation objectively shoots Blizzard in the foot both short-term and long term. It creates bad press. It creates a negative talking point for players. It creates division between players between those who swear loyalty until death and hail corporate and those who see the writing on the walls. It actively gives their biggest competitor a consistent advantage in terms of revenue comparisons. It actively makes Riot’s hiring process easier as Blizzard are effectively doing it for them now. This sort of stuff fuels uncertainty and speculation about Blizzard’s future with WoW which further strengthens Riot Games’ MMO’s future.
There is no way you slice this where RTO is the objective advantage here. This entire situation can be summed up as old habits dying hard, the stubborn ideologies of the people in power refusing to change with the times.
Nothing says you need to be an activist here, in fact for those who don’t care and don’t want to care, all the better- but if you’re going to engage in the topic and actively defend it, you shouldn’t. Hopefully this information has helped change your perspective. And, if in spite of this information you still choose to adhere to that blind sense of apathy and entitlement as to what any workers should endure, it screams only one thing, you were
People who worked in the office created BFA. It’s almost like the design philosophy is the problem and not where the employees were when creating content.
Also Vanilla came out when the company was more focused on created good products instead of running their communities pockets in many different ways
I agree, a job is a job , working only from home definitely does not promote work environment no matter how hard anyone tries to prove it. Simple fact.
If everyone worked from home in IT, nothing would get done in any field.
Hate to tell you …you’re wrong on that now…Most of Shadowlands was created before Covid hit and many went too work at home …now you could say Dragon Flight was created somewhat at home but much of these games are created years ahead of release dates…
Shadowlands released November 23, 2020…100% was finished before then …and Covid mess started early 2020 which started the work from home… January 20, 2020 is when CDC put out word on Covid…there is no way Shadowlands was completely only worked on and released from Jan 20, 2020 too Nov 23 2020… all that work was done before Covid mess hit…know your release dates.
‘College professional’ is an oxymoron. Why not become an actual professional and be able to afford an actual house?
Or are you a public school teacher? Which such revelations would make your little tantrums understandable and hilarious (to me) at the same time.
Well, to put it bluntly, people who WFH don’t really contribute as much as they think they do to the towns and counties they move into because their net worth is nothing compared to the actual business that hired them.
If towns had to choose between a business settling down or some WFH well-to-do that buys a shack and shops on Amazon, the town will always go with the business.
Wrong wrong wrong…I live in Florida have for over 22 yrs now…my sister lives in same city as me and is a teacher…she is busting a gut right now at your remark… As of Apr 17, 2023, the average annual pay for a Teacher in Florida is $24,174 a year. You are sooo out of whack on that remark now of $53K for a avg salary in FL for teacher.
Don’t be curious …they are way off the mark on that remark now … As of Apr 17, 2023, the average annual pay for a Teacher in Florida is $24,174 a year. I live in FL …have for over 22 yrs now.
Why is it you think someone should be paid to watch them? I’m not understanding. If they do quality work and turn it in on schedule, that’s what they company needs. Paying a supervisor to do nothing but watch employees to make sure they are sitting at their desks, when that is about the worst way to determine how well they are completing their assigned tasks, seems to be something a control freak thinks would be worth hiring lots of extra managers to do at a loss.
No it isn’t. As a manager, you do not want to discover problems right before they lead to bigger problems. As a manager, you have an over-arching goal that involves ten to hundreds of people that have to work together.
So, in order to make sure problems are managed ahead of time, a good manager checks in on every person under his/her umbrella, regardless of how good in their heads they believe to be, to make sure they are well-off.
I know people who WFH get these big ego trips about ‘how the workplace should look like’, but this is just getting silly.
And these people somehow made it to work, through that commute and all of the other terrible obstacles, from wherever they were living before the great WFH exodus. If they moved houses thinking WFH would last forever, more the fool them. Now it’s time to pay the piper.
I’m not sure WFH works in every instance with regard to productivity. I don’t know the answer, but I’m of the “old school” gen I guess. If you have a job, get out of your pajamas and go to work. If you don’t, someone else will be along with the same skills and they’ll sit in your chair in your (old) office and be happy to do it.
Mmmkay. My point was that at even the “average teacher salary” (taken from Salary dot com) was barely enough to afford the most basic housing needs. You’ve helped prove my point that even a mid-range public employee can’t afford the housing costs of the state.
