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A comment on How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all. Parent comment

Re:How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former indu... by leguminous on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @03:22PM (#19313870)
As you build up, the construction costs (and ongoing maintenance costs) per square foot of livable space can increase significantly, though. You need more engineering, more expensive materials, fancy cranes, extra safety procedures, etc. Plus more of the potentially livable floor space is instead taken up by elevator shafts and machinery.
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Re:How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former indu... by sampo on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @07:24PM (#19315462)
Here's one almost 30 stories high apartment building in a place where the location and land don't have too much value as such (Atlantic City). 1,000 sq.ft. 2br condos seem to be priced from $160,000 to $250,000.

https://www.zillow.com/b/bella-atlantic-city-nj-5Xjxz9/

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Re:How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former indu... by leguminous on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @10:29PM (#19316190)
That's a 30-year old building in Atlantic City, though. The building itself will have depreciated since then, and Atlantic City isn't a very desirable area any more. The current prices won't necessarily reflect the original construction costs.

There are some actual numbers in this Fannie Mae commentary:

http://www.fanniemae.com/resources/file/research/emma/pdf/MF...

The average costs to build 1-3 and 4-7 story apartment buildings was $192.0/ft^2 in 2017, compared to $233/ft^2 for 8-24 story buildings. I assume the square footage includes common spaces. I don't know if they attempted to control for sample biases (e.g. if taller buildings tend to be build in areas with higher labor costs).

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Re:How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former indu... by d-sc on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @01:12AM (#19316716)
Getting apples to apples numbers to compare can be difficult. People tend to built more stories in more desireable (read expensive) places.
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Re:How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former indu... by dredmorbius on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @02:44AM (#19317068)
Simply builing to 5 floors with dense infill would be higher density than any US city west of New Jersey.

And is approximately the scale of central Paris.

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