Why are so many homes in North America built with unfinished basements? Why do the builders leave it that way?
In: Engineering
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Having a basement in your house can be necessary because of the frost line. Basically if you don’t dig that hole under your house, when the cold times come, it’ll break the concrete foundation of your house.
So in those situations you have to build a basement. But not everyone cares about a finished basement. If you’re just storing boxes in there, who cares if it’s carpeted. So a finished basement is only going to increase the value of the home to *some* buyers. Because the builders want to maximize their profit they just don’t finish any of the basements, because the houses they sell to people who don’t care about finished basements won’t sell for as much. Someone who wants a finished basement can either work with the builder ahead of time or finish it after the fact.
Historically housing is a volume game and you want to build as many houses as cheaply as possible to maximize your return.
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