Why America's New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same

Re:Why America's New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same by RcouF1uZ4gsC on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @02:14PM (#19155799)

> A four-story Texas doughnut can get 50 or 60 apartments onto an acre of land, while the most aggressively engineered West Coast stick-and-concrete hybrid (two-story podiums are allowed now, along with other variations) can get almost 200.

Sounds like we should be building more of these in our cities to increase the housing supply.

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Re:Why America's New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same by ido on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @04:43PM (#19157346)

I wish they’d build them here (Berlin)!

Germany is noutriously slow to build, and as a result there are stark housing shortages in the big cities. Partially it’s due to the German affinity to bureaucracy but otherwise the local quality of construction is actually high (and therefor buildings take a long time to build).

However with rapidly growing urban areas that already experience housing shortages and soaring rents & purchase prices there is no other solution than to dramatically and swiftly increase supply.

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Re:Why America's New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same by magduf on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @05:04PM (#19157550)

From my little bit of investigation into rents in German cities, it seems like they're downright cheap compared to American cities now.

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Re:Why America's New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same by ido on Thursday February 14, 2019 @01:45AM (#19160094)

That's just because they started from a much lower base 10 years ago, there has been massive relative increases.

Also rents are controlled[1] so it can be a bit deceptive - they are cheap but if you go to a viewing for one of those units you will find yourself as one of 50-100 applicants. And if you want to buy your own flat those prices are not controlled.

Additionally, remember that salaries are a lot lower than in the US, and that at least in Berlin there have been ~10% YoY rise in real estate prices for 10 years now & even those (mostly-controlled) rents have increased 6-7% YoY every year for a decade.

[1] https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/controversial-rent-control-...

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