i saw a tumblr post once where someone said that humans are an endangered species in the animal crossing universe so they set up these towns as a habitat for humans and then the economy and collections and all that are enrichment. VERY good post.

I like to think the basement was there the entire time, with a trap door or even regular floor covering the top of the stairs, and Nook just charged you 2mil bells to remove the door/cut out the opening

The reason everything is so expensive is because Tom nook has to create a wormhole to each new room

i like to imagine the basement was always there, but nook just charged you to access the stairs

Jokes on you.  Nook built the basement at the start. But only revealed it at the end.  After making it look like he did each step.

Basement is a scam room.  He has it hidden at all times until you beat the final phase. They just add stairs and remove a not needed wall keeping it hidden

i should say, that bells are assumedly similar value (on a good day) to jp yen. So 100 bells=1 dollar give or take. So 98k would be closer to 980 dollars. Which is the most bargain house price I've ever seen and also probably means the walls are made of moldy wood and asbestos.

Look, man, YOU try dealing with these construction codes. He has to redo ALL the paper work for every single existing square every time he adds a new one.

my dumb explanation has always been that the lower initial prices are in essence subsidised by the largest expansions, so the incredibly low prices of the early houses are only possible because nook "overcharges" for the renovations for those who want the biggest house

Any Austin desperately needs you on as a consultant

I never thought about this but Stardew Valley has a somewhat similar problem. For the most part, the house upgrades are all additions - additions which make sense given you start in a dinky old cabin that seems impossible to have been lived in by anyone. But one of the last additions is... a cellar... which means Robin had to dig a cellar out, after building the rest of the house. The way it's positioned almost looks like it's not even below the house, maybe that's how she was able to do it?

The unreasonably low premium of the first house, plus the lack of basement, the quick turnaround, all leads me to believe that the first house is completely prefab. Tom Nooks trick is pretending you're getting the house first and paying for it later, but really hes giving you a series of prefab rooms that hes surreptitiously linked together despite not having a proper foundation.
The reality is hes not ACTUALLY gonna break ground until you put down 2 mil bell, or roughly 20k in American dollars, and rather than give an ACTUAL loan like a normal person, hes giving us a convoluted series of bread crumbs that hes still going to make a fair profit from considering his connection to the Happy Home Association.
But even in this case, I can assume that Happy Home's philosophy is getting people housed as soon as possible, and at worst Nook's philosophy is "If they can sleep they can produce, and that means I get my principle". Two pholosophies that together means we get to be house owner. So I still dont see any of this as the 'evil conman' fans often portray him as.

As a Texan, basements are a very fascinating concept because we don't have those. We just start with the foundation and build up. My house was built on a small cliff or ledge(?) (No idea what to call it) It's hard rock/stone so we have only a few inches of dirt and grass. No digging massive holes for us.

Isabelle. The only government employee I trust because she fights in a tournament against the world's strongest fighters and she's friends with Doomguy.

Great video as always.

While I personally subscribe to the endangered human conservation program theory, my next guess is that nook's real business is modular prefabs that basically snap together on location. And in that case, the initial low cost is just a loss leader because he knows everyone will eventually buy upgrades with real margins.

Tbf every house he builds is a non-euclidean space potentially in a pocket dimension so I think it's fair

Honestly, who's to say Nook DOESN'T just knock down the house and build a new one? Would explain why the cost of additions seems to scale with the size of the entire house, instead of the size of the addition.
Alternatively, he just knows he has a monopoly on housing construction, and keeps increasing his prices because he knows he can.

Stitches IS real and treasures every letter you send them

Basements are really only common in the center and NE of the US, barely any have them on the west coast or the south. It's like 4% that have basements here in Oregon

my thery is every time you upgrade, tom nook demolishes the whole house and builds it bigger from scratch, so you're paying for the whole house each time

Hello Mr. Cowboy! A residential framing tale to go with the discussion at 9:35
When I framed houses on the Seattle waterfront, my bosses were hired to do an even more extreme remodel than the one you're talking about here! We tore down all but the exterior wall next to the water, then built an entirely new, about 5x larger home to attach it to.
This was because local building ordinances forbade new construction, but allowed for remodeling. And yes, it was a massive headache to fit the old wall into our nice fresh build.
Thanks for the videos!