Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

melmagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 129 posts

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#31

Post by magashna »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #8
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #2

At least in California, especially in Los Angeles, it's really important to factor in that parking lots -- even on land worth $10M+ -- often pay property taxes as little as $100-$1000 a year (thanks to Prop 13). You buy a parking lot, sit on it as the value of land increases (paying effectively 0% in taxes), then you eventually sell, paying only a capital gains tax (much lower than income). I only bring up California…

> This is also the reason you see single family homes with front and back yards like 1000 meters away from sky scrapers in Los Angeles and San Jose. Those homes are paying property taxes of like $400 a year, and most of them are being rented out. It's not poor old ladies living in them that don't want to leave the neighborhood they lived their whole lives in, but gentrified under their feet into some urban monster. I…

So it's even worse. They're charging as much as possible for slum lord services.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#32

Post by bryanlarsen »

sp332 wrote: post #14
oarabbus_ wrote: post #6

Self-driving cars will render these obsolete

Is your self-driving car going to take up less space or something?

IIRC, a typical city has 3.5 parking spots per car. A car that can always return to it's "home" spot doesn't need more than 1 spot. And if you can assume that a certain percentage of cars are always on the road you might be able to have more cars than parking spots.

Of course the increased traffic of homing cars might turn the roads into metaphorical parking spots...

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#33

Post by sp332 »

marpstar wrote: post #23
sp332 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your self-driving car going to take up less space or something?

I believe GP is referring to the idea that when self-driving cars make up a majority of transportation, the cars can just go drive for someone else instead of sitting in a lot.

That's not going to help if everyone is going to work and coming home from work around the same time. And it's only going to make a difference if a large % of people stop owning cars and start renting them from other people. Buses and trains would actually help during rush hours though.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#34

Post by gumby »

This is sadly true: about 10 years ago when self driving cars were on the horizon* I looked into buying some parking lots in Manhattan and SF figuring that I could get a good price now and turn them into something valuable down the road.

Turned out the people who owned them weren't dummies and had the same strategy. The prices I could get (and few were even willing to talk) were enormous multiples of likely revenue: basically the price of a buildable city lot where you didn't have to demolish an existing structure.

* They seemed only a decade away. Now, 10 years later, they are only a couple of decades away. Like fusion power.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#35

Post by dpflan »

amatecha wrote: post #22
dpflan wrote: post #17

I found this article while doing cursory research on the economics of parking lots and booting. My assumption is that when booting companies could charge booted cars to remove the boot on the spot (i.e., on-site credit card reader), then booting became a more serious side-business for businesses that have parking lots (add in CV-monitored parking lot technology - automated delinquent detection). I have more research…

By "booting" do you mean "towing"? I'm from western Canada and have never heard the term "booting" before in relation to parking lots and what I assume must be towing.

Like @mkmk linked: by booting I mean "wheel clamping". Your car is immobilized in the lot instead of being towed from the lot, and you have to pay the fine.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#36

Post by scld »

farisjarrah wrote: post #25
andys627 wrote: post #15

I like this billboard from the good old days https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Ev... . It says: "Everybody works but the vacant lot. I paid $3,600 for this lot and will hold till I get $6000. The profit is unearned increment made possible by the presence of this community and enterprise of its people. I take the profit without earning it." These lots produce negative externalities to society a…

Like the city of Chicago's parking tax that was cited in the article? https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/revenue/...

More likely a land value tax, based on the quote.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#37

Post by andrewmunsell »

sp332 wrote: post #28
andrewmunsell wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that a self-driving car rarely has to park, it can simply drive around for your entire 8-hour work day after dropping you off. Or, maybe provide some ride-sharing services instead to be more useful and profitable.

I would guess that parking in a parking lot is preferable to continuing to waste fuel and make traffic worse for the entire work day. Not to mention the other hours in a day you're not driving it.

Yes, that's a pretty common counterargument. Having a large number of autonomous cars roaming the streets during the day like zombies isn't really sustainable. But, with companies like Tesla promoting the idea that you car could be productive via ride sharing during the day, it might prevent the cars from at least wandering aimlessly.

Fortunately, many self-driving car companies are using alternative fuel vehicles (Cruise uses the Bolt, Tesla is obviously electric, Waymo has the i-Pace and Pacifica Hybrids), and things like inductive charging are also helpful for complete autonomy so the future of autonomous zombie cars may involve fewer tailpipe emissions at least :)

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#38

Post by WorldMaker »

rtkwe wrote: post #13
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #2

At least in California, especially in Los Angeles, it's really important to factor in that parking lots -- even on land worth $10M+ -- often pay property taxes as little as $100-$1000 a year (thanks to Prop 13). You buy a parking lot, sit on it as the value of land increases (paying effectively 0% in taxes), then you eventually sell, paying only a capital gains tax (much lower than income). I only bring up California…

For parking lots it's a catch-22 of the car centric city design, they're required for businesses to function but you can't charge them the true value of the land because making enough money to cover those property taxes would make parking prohibitively expensive. The real solution is proper public transit of course but that's hard and expensive so we get bandaids instead.

Proper public transit wouldn't look as hard or expensive if the true value of the land was taxed on parking.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#40

Post by yardie »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #2

At least in California, especially in Los Angeles, it's really important to factor in that parking lots -- even on land worth $10M+ -- often pay property taxes as little as $100-$1000 a year (thanks to Prop 13). You buy a parking lot, sit on it as the value of land increases (paying effectively 0% in taxes), then you eventually sell, paying only a capital gains tax (much lower than income). I only bring up California…

> parking lots -- even on land worth $10M+ -- often pay property taxes as little as $100-$1000 a year (thanks to Prop 13).

Commercial property is also exempt under Prop 13?! What a screwed up system. I kind of understand if it applies to primary residences. I think it's ridiculous it also applies to commercial property as well.

Post reply on HN