The following is an article by our expert guest writer Anthony Braun, who shares his opinion about the quality and the standards of modern housing.

The saying “A man’s home is his castle” came from England and is a very precise description of the way people subconsciously feel about their homes. Everyone wants to see their house as a comfortable and safe shelter, where they can hide from wild forces of nature.

However, recently we can see a different trend. Influenced by a whole range of circumstances, a house is not being seen as a castle and becomes a temporary living arrangement at the current stage of a person’s life. It is more of a quick solution so that a person would have a place to live while chasing a better life style.

Naturally, this approach to housing significantly affects the way houses are built. The houses are not built to stand for ages any more, they built quickly to satisfy the increasing demand.

Once people have become “gypsies” so to say, their homes start to resemble tents more than houses, but only by the quality, as the price is still very high. Those “tents” are filled with equipment: air conditioning, TV sets, modern kitchen, washers and dryers, heaters and more. A man is giving up the castle but not the comfort.

Looking at the damage a reasonably strong wind can do to houses in North America, seeing how houses in Australia burn to the ground before their inhabitants can even get out, we understand that this is the price we see for the new trend, the drifting away from “a man’s home is his castle” principle. This is the price we pay for breaking the basic rules of construction and of common sense that go way back into our past.

The price we pay for a house doesn’t reflect its real features any more - the quality of materials it’s built from, it’s energy-efficiency of the construction itself, the talent of the architect and the engineer who designed it. The price now is defined by the size of the house, its location and the reputation of the whole surrounding area.

These factors are not to be dismissed lightly because we’re living in a real world, not an imaginary one. However, the consideration of house qualities should start with it’s structural soundness and the compliance with building norms and regulations.

There are two questions that are critically important, especially in the light of the recent bushfire crisis - the fire safety of the building and the fire-stopper gaps between the buildings. A very common structure type is brick veneer - a wooden frame with a 12cm wide brick coating.

This kind of structure can be classified as a wooden structure. The fire regulations in countries covered by woods, where people have high standards of fire safety (such as Russia, for example) require a fire-stopping gaps of 15 meters between the dwellings. Here in Australia in many cases the gaps between houses are much smaller.

And now a few words about the structural soundness of the house and it’s energy efficiency. Needless to say that 12cm of brick, wooden frame and 8mm of gyprock are not very energy efficient. The combination of this structure type with the large windows (not even double-glazed) makes a house accumulate the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter. I find it absurd that people have to work all their lives to purchase a home that neither protects them from cold, not from heat.

This brings me to my last point. The slowdown in economy - let’s not forget it’s primary reason, the irresponsible lending banks in the US - was caused by some greedy that wanted too much money for a far too cheap housing (that is if we can still call those structures houses).

My dear home buyers, be wise - a house is very important to your well-being, choose one you can feel safe and comfortable in.

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