Re:Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching...
by garyrichardson on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @08:02PM
(#26733254)
Where I live the numbers your suggesting would be amazing!
In Vancouver proper, Average 3 bedroom house price is $2.1M. A townhouse or condo of that size is $1.5M. Your typical house payment is going to be much higher than $1500/month. Rents are probably in the $3K+ range -- I don't actually have data on this. Lots of factors there. I don't think zoning is one of them as there is constantly land assemblies and razing blocks of houses for town houses and condos. I suspect it's more geography: we're up against and ocean, a border and a mountain range.
Re:Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching...
by bluGill on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @10:21PM
(#26734383)
The cost of building a new house that size is about 200-250k. Everything else is land value. Note that I was taking about apartments ,when land value us as high as you say that supports tall buildings to divide the land costs between more units.
The mountains don't help, but nobody is building the apartments people want to live in.
The lack of affordable 2500sq ft apartments is the big failure. It doesn't cost that much more to build them, and so rent shouldn't be any more than a house payment ($1500/month!). If that doesn't exist it is because zoning won't let them build it. (or more likely they can, but why do that when you can get more $$$ from 3 800sqft apartments each at $1000/month. Until the high profit apartments are filled nobody will build the ones families would actually live in.
Or to put it a different way: it isn't 1880. People have always wanted more space, now with cars we can afford it in the suburbs.