Plain talk on building and development.
There is an opportunity within the chaos created when work from home and hybrid work hollowed out the Central Business District (CBD) of places like San Antonio and Portland. In San Antonio I saw a number of former office buildings with concrete structural frames and floor plates which are not excessively deep headed for conversion to residential. This includes several great Art Deco buildings,…
Some years ago, I was looking at building a four-plex in Portland, Oregon. At the time the local impact fees were calculated at $20,000 per Dwelling Unit. That was the fee for one of the 4,000 SF single unit houses that were replacing little 800 SF workers cottages as One-forOne Tear-downs, and it was the fee for one of the 500 SF one bedroom four-plex units I wanted to build in a diverse walkable…
I have been at this Placemaking for a while. I have met so many sincere and dedicated people who want to make their town or neighborhood better. I have been in the room when they confront the reason their town’s planning process has failed. It is never pretty. Most states mandate municipalities to adopt a Comprehensive Plan and keep it updated regularly. The shorthand is Comp Plan. The intended…
A cottage court by Jeremy Sommer of Sommer Design Studios I continue to be amazed at how many well intentioned people want to talk about affordable housing without being willing to put any effort into learning the basic math required to build....well, anything. Capital "A" Affordable Housing is a term of art, a subspecialty amount real estate development. Affordable Housing is crudely defined and…
I am hearing from an increasing number of people trying to figure out how to make the place where they live and work better. Sometimes this follows a vacation or business travel to a place that has built some protected bikeways, a walk down a tree lined street fronted with gorgeous four-plexes with two story porches, or a stay in a sunny apartment over someone’s garage, Folks return home and start…
When hedge funds buy up detached houses and town houses, those houses are not likely to come back on the market. They are gone for now and likely for the long term, because they won’t be coming back. Hedge funds may hold a portfolio of homes for 5-10 years, but when they decide to sell, I seriously doubt those homes are not going to show up on your local MLS. Now that the homes have been bundled,…
Incremental Development Boot Camp Columbus, Georgia For the last 24 years the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) has been my primary professional network as a developer, builder, and urban designer. During that period the CNU has made a lot of progress in providing alternatives to the conventional sprawl development pattern. We figured out a lot of the hardware side of things, better zoning…
Yesterday I got a question from a member of the Neighborhood Development Facebook Group. They wanted to know why there are a number of low down payment mortgage products for 2-4 unit buildings, but no low down payment construction loan products for new 2-4 unit buildings. The reason there is low down payment money for building but not for new construction is the kind of underwriting that gets done…
During the Great Recession there was very little construction work to be done for about five years. During those five years lots of people in the trades retired, changed careers, or returned to their country of origin. Now the demand for housing is overwhelming the supply of existing and new homes. The problem is made worst because suppliers of lumber, drywall, insulation, HVAC equipment, and…
Boarded up corner store in New Orleans First off, let’s be clear in the terminology. Banks don’t invest . A bank will sell you a construction loan to build/rebuild if you and an investor put up 20-30% of the project cost. A bank will sell you a mortgage to retire the construction loan for 70-80% of what the building is worth once it is completed and leased. Banks don’t invest. Banks lend money,…
Snout Houses with no front door. Today I saw a lot discussion and concern about a potential housing bubble in the Facebook chatter among residential realtors. All over the Atlanta region we continue to see rapid increases in house prices and rents. Folks are wondering how long this is going to last. Toward the end of the piece linked below, (part one in an excellent series of five from Strong…
I continue to be impressed with the silly and rather elaborate mythology otherwise intelligent people whip up around housing and money. For example: Podium buildings with elevators cost more per SF to build than three story walk up buildings. Concrete and steel mid rise building cost even more per SF than podium buildings. How many times have you seen people lose the minds of the construction of…
Inclusionary zoning( IZ) efforts completely depend entirely upon getting the incentives right. Otherwise nothing gets built. Greater housing choice and affordability do not happen by decree or assertion. There is actual math involved. Developers will have to do that math, so I figure it is only reasonable for the elected officials who vote in IZ requirements should do the math as well. IZ…
Work it out on paper first…. How do I know what I can build/rebuild on a particular site? Before you get too far analyzing a particular piece of property, you should get a handle on the likely market for what could be built and the likely costs delivering the completed project in the neighborhood. What are folks paying in rent near the site you are looking at? As a starting point/rule of thumb the…
IncDev folks in a familiar setting, (a bar after one of Invest Atlanta’s Community Builder classes). I have been getting a fair number of inquiries about recent changes at IncDev, so this is probably as good a time as any to put up a blog post on the topic. The Incremental Development Alliance was started back in 2015 as an educational nonprofit dedicated to teaching folks how to do small scale…
Commodity detached suburban houses REITS and Asset Management outfits are assembling capital to invest in suburban single family (SFR) rental portfolios. This is not a surprise, since rents for SFR properties went up 11% in June. Let's keep an eye on this. When Big Money make big mistakes, the impacts are often felt by other people and by neighborhoods far away from the offices of the REIT…
Over the past 5 years we have trained and coached lots of folks looking to do their first development project. I always press rookie developers to Start Small. Start with a modest project that you can handle as a side hustle to your current day job or income source. Renovate a house. Do a HouseHack so that you can liver rent free. Maybe convert your garage to an Accessory Dwelling Unit to rent…
Nobody does excellent work under duress. You gotta care. For the last 13 years since the the Financial Crisis I have been relentlessly haranguing my friends, (good people who are very skilled Architects, planners, and urban designers) to take up the craft of small scale development. I have to admit that I have largely failed at this effort with some of my most capable colleagues and friends. I…
Five over 1 Podium Explainer from Base 4 Architects & Engineers I am working with Cary Westerbeck one of my favorite Architect/Developers to put together a design challenge for the Neighborhood Development Facebook Group I administer. We want to tackle the problem of the Five over One Podium Building. The illustration above shows how the guts of these buildings can comply with the International…
Ivy with 8 gallon stock pot for scale Here is a guest blog post from one of my favorite humans. Ivy Van is a what many would describe as “a handful”. She is a small developer in New Hampshire just completing the conversion of a former bed and breakfast into a tri-plex. She is the chair of her local planning board and serves in the State Legislature. She is a recovering daily newspaper reporter,…