zlacker

Unless you are living in a developing country, the answer to the second question should be "yes".

>>diegoc+(OP)
It should be but is it? I don't think anyone ever tested this building, which has a combined market value of probably close to $200M.

None of the owners want to know that their investments are worthless. So nothing will be checked unless its required by law.

>>raylad+x1
In Spain buildings older than 50 years are required to be inspected and mandated to make reforms if necessary. I doubt it's much different in the rest of Europe/north America

Also, buildings don't fall all of sudden. You would get a lot of cracks and problems before your building collapses

>>raylad+x1
> None of the owners want to know that their investments are worthless. So nothing will be checked unless its required by law.

That makes no sense. If I am buying property, it is in my best interest to make sure it isn't going to fall apart. Especially since if something happened due to my negligence, I would be responsible.

If you have no idea of whether or not the building is being inspected, why would you make the assumption it's not?

>>diegoc+Q3
> Also, buildings don't [fail] all of sudden

They certainly do in earthquakes. Even in areas that nominally don’t have earthquakes, some parts of the building code will surely be about ability to withstand a rare earthquake.

>>dntrkv+nd
Once you’ve bought it, your incentives change no?

And ‘trust but verify’ is important - there are a lot of assumptions people make about what is actually checked or verified that are, well, just wrong. About a lot of things. And if you can’t find anyone saying it is happening, it very well might not be.

To the prior poster - call the NYC building department. Here is a link to their FAQ/index page and it should be straightforward to find from there. They are the ones responsible for making sure buildings don’t randomly collapse in NYC.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/buildings/business/inspections.pag...

>>diegoc+(OP)
"First world country" does not correlate well with housing quality. UK has some of the worst housing in Europe, with 35% in need of repair. Many Ex Soviet states like Czech Repulbic are doing better.

UK also has a history of major failured in construction practices and inspection, where chunks of a new apartment block suddenly collapse like in Ronan Point, or a recently renovated tower block goes up in flames and half of residents die despite them warning about issues for years.

I wish living in first world country guaranteed sensible things are happening, but it doesn't

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-bl... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronan_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire

>>diegoc+Q3
... buildings don't fall all of sudden...

False.

Large structural failures can be catastrophic and unexpected.

Buildings can and do collapse quite suddenly. The examples here are not necessarily caused by reinforced concrete failures (though several cases make use of reinforced concrete --- generally other failures lead to the collapse). But the final failure of a system under load and near its structural limits can be quite sudden.

Taiwan bridge: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OSCPUGHUyIs https://youtube.com/watch?v=WqHXMswLwPM

Minnesota I35W bridge collapse: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CMdv2wRaqo4

Jerusalem dance floor: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5UOb7RBWlak

Morandi bridge, Italy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=V479srTBlAk

Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans (under construction): https://youtube.com/watch?v=WC8k5unvyfU

Sampoong Department Store, Korea (visualisation): https://youtube.com/watch?v=aQXTSR9koCg

The Kansas City Hyatt Regency skywalk collapse (1981) would be another instance. I don't believe there's video of the failure itself, though Grady from Practical Engineering has a great explainer of what went wrong: https://youtube.com/watch?v=VnvGwFegbC8