Ask HN: What will self driving cars do to real estate?

* Centralized parking at the neighborhood level for cars to be out of sight and charging while not needed. Services could be built off of this concept to handle cleaning, maintenance, etc.

* Reduction in need for street parking in busy areas. Cars can drive themselves away to "orbit" or be parked while the owner is shopping/eating/etc. This allows for alternate uses for the space ... bike lanes, or just better pedestrian zones.

* Smaller lot sizes are possible for homes if driveways and large garages are not needed/downsized. Smaller parking lots for apartment/condos are also possible. This makes denser real estate developments possible, especially in suburban areas.

1. You can, literally, not build enough highways for the demand. As you rack up lanes buildings get further away from each other. This means more drivers and more driving. Attempts to elevate or bury highways are only cost effective in very specific circumstances.

2. Peak flow (cars per minute) is at around 80km/hr, although sometimes increasing flow further is only a temporary salve, as exit points (the city downtown streets) block.

3. People are likely to respond to incentives. For example, dynamic pricing on the 407, higher rates during rush hour have pushed out enough traffic to maintain a high flow, even during rush hour. (Though some argue that this has resulted in more spillover to the 401, the closest competing route. I've yet to see a competent paper proving this either way.)

Consider that Uber already has ride sharing code in test markets. With algorithms that work together to minimize driving friction, and with surge pricing to deal with supply and demand at peak rush hour here is what I envision:

1. Way more capacity to get close to the city.

2. Much more expensive to get into the city, as capacity increases to the perimeter. With surge pricing, only the very rich will be able to afford a car alone. The poor will either get to the downtown core with a denser option (like a self driving bus) or they will get into the city at an earlier time, even if it means waiting around for work to start. Also, I see "surge insurance" being popular with the poor, since a 10x commute on a single bad day (due to weather or a unexpected road closure).

So where does this leave us? In the short term the core get's more expensive. The closure of a few parking lots is not going to make up for the built in surge pricing of self driving cars. When the price goes up, some companies move to the edge of the core. Leading prices to go up there as well.

The people that really get hosed are the people in the zone just outside of that. Suburban homes no longer command a large premium, since what would have been an unthinkable distance previous years (say, 175kms from core) is now completely reasonable. A software developer can sit alone in a self driving car that drives 150 km/h for an hour, get some work done, then pick up some co-passangers for the last 25kms to offset the cost. Get in work by 10:30am leave by 4:00pm, get some work done on the way home. Maybe watch a show. By 5:30 he's on his hobby farm.

Now all of this is in a relative context. If the Canadian housing market is too bubbly, and across the board it goes down then I'm just arguing it will go down more in the suburbs than elsewhere.