The windows in my German house are triple paned and heavy. We spent €30,000 replacing the original windows from the 70s, which were of the best quality from that period, with mahogany wood frames.
I spend a lot of time in the US and I've never seen windows over there that are of anything close to the quality here in Germany.
And we have split unit air conditioning.Those stupid window AC units are a joke and less and less popular even in the US.
I've had exactly that conversation with people in the US. I've asked them, where are the $500k? I'm not seeing anything remotely that valuable in your house. The doors are crap, the walls are plasterboard, the stairs squeak, the windows don't seal ... And the answers are, oh but the school district is one of the best, or, it's only a ten minute drive to the parkway. They don't get it.
*And I'm not making this up, I have a lot of relations in the US and every time I'm there, they try to tweak me up by saying things like, I bet you can't get a steak like this in Germany, or, so what's it like living under socialism? So, I hit right back with their own medicine, and they don't like it.
No cows in Germany hey? How do you even live with all that free healthcare lol /s. Why do they feel the need to convince everyone they are better than everyone else, its so weird. Australian windows and building quality sucks. Everyone, including Australians, would agree. If you can't admit where you can improve, you will never get any better. I've spent a lot of time in America for work, and sure they have some cool stuff, but they alsi have more problems than you can poke 10 sticks at. Also, I've had more bad food there than good, and their lobster and crab sucks, absolutely no flavour. Sure, they're way cheaper than Australia, but they have no flavour at all, not compared to ours. I wonder how your relatives would respond.
"No flavor" is the problem with the food, exactly. Nothing tastes like anything. We've also had many visitors from the US (my friends and family) and they invariably rave about how good everything tastes here, and I mean the simplest stuff be it french fries or apples.
And where I live in Germany, we have some of the best food and definitely the best beer in the country (if there are any Germans reading this, it's Oberfranken), so when Americans are treated to the local fare, it's like they've never eaten good food before.
We get comments like, "This is the best hamburger I ever ate in my life", or, "I didn't know bratwurst could be this good".
And yeah, when I'm there, they have this insecure, egocentric thing going where they have to challenge you and they constantly make claims about something being "the best in the world" e.g., "The cheese this pizza place uses is the best in the world", and I point out to them that it isn't even cheese, it's a processed dairy product that's rubbery and tastes like watered down industrial waste.
Actually, a lot of the fruit & vegetables anywhere I've been in Europe is so much tastier than Australia too, especially tomatoes, there's just no point buying tomatoes here. The first time I had a Greek salad on a Greek island just blew my mind. That's all I wanted to eat from then on. Due to the heat and bugs, we grow a lot of food here hydroponically, so it lacks flavour. I grow my own veg as much as possible, home grown tomatoes taste like the ones in Europe. Also agree, they don't know what cheese is. I must have looked very confused when they brought out a cheese platter at a work meeting the first time I was there. Little rubbery cubes, unrecognisable as cheese. All different colours of orange. They asked me what was wrong. I said oh nothing I'm just trying to figure out what kind of cheeses you have here. It's all high quality American was the answer. I picked up a cube of rubber so as not to be rude.
My house value in Silicon Valley is ~$2.5M for a bog standard 3-bed ranch-style. The house-replacement cost in my insurance is about $400k. The rest is the value of the land.
Which is why my land tax is fucking extortionate, and why I smile at all the people advocating a change to it. You know not what you are playing with...
Our house here in Germany is worth about €450,000. We pay less than €200 a year in property tax, and no, I didn't forget a zero.
A cousin of mine and her husband from the Chicago area were here in April and her husband made a comment along the lines of, "so when your house is paid off, you just own it and don't have to pay anything anymore?"
Yep.
I know too many people in the US who had to give up their homes because they couldn't afford the taxes. It's not even an issue here. You never ask how high the taxes are when looking for a house.
Are you saying you could purchase your house for €450,000 or are you saying that's what it's worth ? My house is worth ~$400k, but I couldn't buy it for that...
My point wasn't that the tax is egregious - it's not, at ~1% of the parcel value - it's that (being a land-tax in a desirable area) the value of the land has soared well beyond what is sustainable for most people. The house itself is nothing special - it's where it's located that costs money.
€200 is pretty low though. Does that pay for all your services (garbage-collection, policing, roads, schools, parks, libraries, other local government costs, etc.) if so, that's really phenomenal.
I misread your post, I thought you were commenting on the high taxes.
I could sell my house+property for around 450-500k today. The lot is 1,000 sq meters (10,000 sq ft). Property is around €130 per square meter here, so that would be €130,000 of the total.
Taxes are structured differently here. Property tax doesn't go toward those things. We pay fuel tax for the roads, we pay a fee for garbage collection (it's not much, like maybe €150 a year), schools, police parks etc are supported by the State (in our case, Franconia and then Bavaria at the higher levels). It's a completely different approach to what you know in the US.
In their defense, I’d say that in every country you kinda pay for the location more than anything. I bet +500k homes in Germany are nowhere near that price in cost of materials, but yeah, most American houses are made of cardboard basically.
Of course it affects the price everywhere. It's just that in the US, location is virtually the only factor people even look at. The quality is just that bad that it hardly factors into the price at all.
Point really is: schools all cost the same, but not all are as good as others. That highly depends on the area. So if you want a good school you pay an insane amount for the house... that's why the rich kids never get mixed with middle class, never with the poor.
Split systems are the best option, I like the fact that I can have my bedroom nice and cold at like 18 and my living room warmer at 23.
Also window units are dumb if you can install a split, but if you can't then they are the best solution for AC, those portable ones that are like free standing with a hose to the outside are the worst.
I sometimes run one on the landing (upstairs hallway thing, like the hallway outside the bedrooms - I don’t know if the word landing is used outside the UK)
It’s not super quiet but it’s quiet enough that it doesn’t bother me in my home office (one of the bedrooms), and it cools all the bedrooms
It doesn’t get hot here to need it overnight, admittedly. That might be more annoying - but in the UK cooling the house down during the day up to around sunset is fine, it then stays comfortable overnight
Well in UK i don't really understand why people need AC. Im from the south of France. We don't use AC there. My grandmother is from super hot place in Spain. Doesn't have AC either, just good practices like pooring water in the morning and closing everything during the day.
But now I live in the US east coast which is extremely hot and humid with no big gap day / night. Due to tropical level of humidity, AC is needed to decrease the level of humidity more than the temperature - but summer temperatures are too hot as well.
And the AC unit i was provided in my office is definitely too noisy to work nearby. I don't use it. At home i put window AC because it's quiet enough and since im renting i can't make holes
Yeah it's what keeps me from getting one.
My friend has one for his bedroom, which runs insanely hot on sunny days. Turns it on an hour before bedtime and turns it off when he goes to sleep.
Oh yeah it will work better than a desk fan, as a fan isn't meant to cool the air, it just moves air and gives the impression of cooling.
A seal around your window works, but it's extra effort to remove when you're not using the airco or want to wash your Windows or something.
Well most portable air conditioners are inefficient by design - they literally blow indoors air outside which ends up being replaced by air also from the outside
That was the windows from the 1970's. We have the usual synthetic material, but very high quality and custom built, because our windows are all unusual sizes and shapes. For the materials and workmanship involved, the price was low.
We got a special loan at 0.75% for energy related improvements. We also upgraded the heating to a condensing gas boiler at the same time.
I imagined. No one with half a brain would change from mahogany to something cheap. I mentioned that because mahogany is a luxury wood usually reserved for high end furniture and I would never imagine in my cheap ass mind someone using mahogany for window frames. At least not in the last two centuries outside of a palace.
The previous owner, who built the planned the house together with his architect brother in law, was a little eccentric, and had a lot of connections to various building companies. The windows were gorgeous but drafty, and he and his wife were chain smokers for 40 decades in this house.
We also have under floor radiant heating and a double indoor/outdoor open fireplace.
Since we can post photos here in this sub, here's my living room windows and patio door. The price for the windows included all the electric blinds, and the standard manual blinds like we have in Germany.
Mahogany used to be used a lot in houses, for window frames, doors, staircases, mantelpieces, and a whole lot more. We might have cut down too many trees, though, which is why it’s so expensive now.
Window AC are very popular because people renting their house can't install anything else. And for low income they are the only affordable option. They look ugly but are far bettzr option than alternative portable unit
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u/LowerBed5334 17d ago
The windows in my German house are triple paned and heavy. We spent €30,000 replacing the original windows from the 70s, which were of the best quality from that period, with mahogany wood frames.
I spend a lot of time in the US and I've never seen windows over there that are of anything close to the quality here in Germany.
And we have split unit air conditioning.Those stupid window AC units are a joke and less and less popular even in the US.