One of the tragedies of building housing is the inverted incentive structure. It leads to costs being cut, or, more likely, investments not made in the right place and time, when they are not only way less expensive but also possible. Opportunities that can’t be reverse engineered without a Time Machine. Unfortunately, the builder, likely isn’t the beneficiary of the investment and is not inclined to do it without reimbursement for the effort, time and cost of capital. As the builder do you really want to put an extra $3000 into an invisible upgrade? If you are working on slim margins, you’d have to do $30000 in successful work to earn that 10%, this makes the 3k hit to the budget actually require you to 30k of business to fund it. In other words, as benevolent construction volunteer you are giving a 30k upgrade of your value that you work hard to create, to the owner for free, at your personal cost. My view is most builders are going to be extremely reluctant to enter into this transaction. And many home owners are equally not likely to want to fund the type of improvements I view as most essential. So I do it anyway. In my view reducing air leakage and humidity in winter into the attic and wall cavities is one of the best places to spend money, for many reasons we won’t go into here. Nobody ever asks anyone to justify luxury cosmetic upgrades, like fancy stone countertops. But what about a drafty house in winter?
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