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To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

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Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#171

Post by CPLX »

lazypenguin wrote: post #69
epistasis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you OK with other people living in multi unit housing, or does your desire for a detached unit extend to others' way of living? I ask because it seems that where ever this happens, many people oppose merely allowing multiunit because they don't want to live in multiunit, even though it doesn't actually impact where they live. It's like lifting a ban on a certain type of car; it doesn't change your car, and there…

To me it’s replacing one problem with another. Simply changing zoning from single to multi-family doesn’t actually change core root problems in my opinion. A suburb full of single family homes or a suburb of multi-family homes are just different kinds of suburban hells. I think we need to be thinking about designing entire communities more intelligently with things like local markets, shops, parks, rest areas, school…

> I think we need to be thinking about designing entire communities more intelligently with things like local markets, shops, parks, rest areas, schools, public transport etc. within walking distance.

Start by asking if these things you’re mentioning are literally banned. If so start there.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#172

Post by antasvara »

osigurdson wrote: post #164
antasvara wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covering a mortgage payment each month is much more feasible than purchasing a house for most. The real issue is saving for the down payment and having good enough credit to get approved for a loan. There's a considerable difference between the loan payment with a big down payment and good credit versus bad credit and a low down payment. That difference can essentially turn an unaffordable home purchase into an "affo…

Your thesis is a large number of people are right at the inflection point between being able to afford mortgage payments but cannot qualify for a mortgage. I don’t mean to sound harsh but this seems like a highly unlikely explanation.

My thesis is that there are a lot of people that either can't qualify for a mortgage, can't save up enough money for a reasonable down payment, qualify for a mortgage that they can't reasonably afford, etc.

On a 300k house, the difference between 5% and 20% down results in around a 400 dollar difference per month in a mortgage payment. That can be a pretty big difference maker for a lot of families.

5% down on a house like that is also 15k. That's a significant amount of money to save for a lot of families.

There are other relevant factors here as well, but this is certainly a significant one.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#173

Post by blululu »

unethical_ban wrote: post #53
blululu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need a lawn to have equity. There a plenty to frameworks that can offer equity in these recently legalized multi-family dwellings. Condominiums, duplexes, townhouses to make a few.

I didn't argue that. But in my experience in the south, that's what goes up. I'm suggesting we should be more active in calling for condos and townhomes instead of apartments.

Good point. Thank you for clarifying. The legalization of multi-family homes would not prevent this trend but zoning for owner occupied units seems like a reasonable policy to shift the outcomes.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#174

Post by roenxi »

ticviking wrote: post #15
rayiner wrote: post #2

> We don't have the space to incorporate a city, or urbanized living, within this small village of a community that we have," says Julie Lee, president of a neighborhood civic association and founding member of Arlingtonians for Upzoning Transparency, a group fighting the plan. Comments to these zoning fights are full of gems like this. Arlington is about the size of Buffalo NY and 50% denser. It hasn’t been anything…

An interesting question to ask is why do we always seem to grow by increasing density rather than establishing new small towns? Leon Krier's Drawing For Architecture contrasts over-expansion both with excessive density and excessive sprawl and by duplication. It seems to me that if it were legal to do so there are plenty of tiny towns that could grow to the size of a small city like Arlington or Buffalo.

Dunno why anyone downvoted you, it is an interesting question. It also has an interesting answer - turns out we get a much more complex and pleasant society if we cram everyone in tightly in a city.

The is a lesser-known branch of economics called economic geography that studies what happens when you have big concentrations of people. Turns out you get much better services and it is cheaper to support everything (eg, one big trainline which costs a lot but gets huge amount of use, one big market where you can buy and sell everything, etc).

The short of it is that small towns are not a bad thing, but if you want to live a comfortable life with lots of services and material luxuries then you had best seek a city.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#175

Post by raldi »

unethical_ban wrote: post #123
raldi wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know people can rent single-family houses and buy apartments, right?

"Buying apartments" is not something that happens for most places in the United States, so no. Condos and townhomes exist, but are not what I call the norm compared to houses and apartments for rent. I know people can rent single-family homes, but I am also against institutional home-ownership. My point is that living-quarters ownership should be more universal. >Nobody's trying to "take away homeownership" When hous…

30 million Americans own apartments; 40 million rent them. So yes, buying apartments is absolutely something that happens in the United States, and will happen more if the prices come down.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#176

Post by [deleted] »

nostrebored wrote: post #170
javanissen wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Housing can not be both an investment and affordable. Mathematically this isn’t true, as housing (even owner-occupied housing) pays a dividend [0]. So a house whose price tracks inflation (0% real price return) that pays a 4% dividend in net operating income still has a respectable 4% real return. Juice that return way up with a fixed-rate mortgage and you still have a great investment without home prices racing pa…

This is something that only makes sense in the lunacy of housing-based-investment. Your house might pay a dividend, but it has immense maintenance cost. If the dividend from your house, on average, is enough to pay this cost, we’re in this hellscape.

[deleted]

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#177

Post by ProAm »

c3534l wrote: post #122
ProAm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same thing worded differently.

Well, I did complain about how these things are worded - I thinking the framing is misleading.

Oh I was alluding to they are actually ending SFH without actually killing it legally.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#179

Post by osigurdson »

resonantjacket5 wrote: post #161
osigurdson wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need to lower our expectations now? Single family homes are what most people want. Why jam people into apartments if they don’t want to live in them? All houses should be cheap imo - it is just a few cheap sticks and some plastic after all. Some cities obviously have no room to expand so the only option is higher density. Where that is not the case, build single family homes en mass until anyone can afford…

To clarify the issue isn't really shortage of single family homes by itself but single family homes nearby amenities (jobs etc...) Which while one can build massive freeways (Los Angeles, Atlanta etc...) eventually you'll run out of land a circular radius or end up having to build ever larger freeways to reach those suburbs.

I'm not sure if the massive freeways will really be needed. If a significant portion of people can work from home, I don't see much reason for it. I think the ideal future for many is single family homes in a resort like setting. If you are already where you want to be, there are fewer reasons to drive to other places.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#180

Post by naveen99 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #107
tonfreed wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, when my wife and I were looking at homes it'd be inevitable we'd hear someone else at the open houses talking about their 7th or 8th investment property. My wife is the chatty sort, so she'd ask them about how they could afford it and they'd always be leveraged up to the eyeballs. The cheap credit hog has been a complete disaster, and when the rates inevitably rise to where they should be we're going to…

If they locked in the rates for 30 years, then they can be leveraged and probably be fine. Anyone know if investment properties are eligible for the same 30-year fixed that primary homes are?

Not eligible
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