Real Estate Crash thread

To be fair, while NIMBYism is certainly an issue in and of itself, there are some notable downsides to just forcing housing in places.

1) It is pretty damn expensive to build worker housing in HCOL areas, which means inherently fewer units get built which doesn't solve the problem.

2) In a sort of reverse NIMBY mentality, there is a very high level of entitlement for the quality of worker housing in HCOL areas. Anyone who has lived in a ski town knows what I'm talking about. If it isn't a 4 bed, 3 bath detached on acreage in a prime location for 1k a month that also allows their rescue pitbull to roam around you get gripes, or even in some instances no takers. There needs to be a certain level of understanding that subsidized housing is going to be a tradeoff, and that tradeoff is most likely going to be location and size.

3) You need to be cognoscente of the unintended consequences, notably the devaluation of what ultimately is most households largest asset. Dropping a 60 unit apartment building on a culdesac of SFH is going to garner extreme resistance and ultimately make people more resistant to any form of housing solution.

That all said, people are going to need to get over the inherent default of no when it comes to say your neighbor putting in an ADU or reducing zoning requirements on lot size to allow infill housing that fits the character of the neighborhood. It takes lots of tiny solutions to solve a bigger problem.

I feel like we need more affordable rentals and less deed restricted affordable housing. Ski towns have a very transient population that is employed in the basic service levels jobs and those are the ones that are hard to fill when people can't find housing.

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Originally Posted by nickwm21

…..just not in your neighborhood right……


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As I said, I'm on my local planning board and continually advocate for loosening restrictions and am in the process of writing up some changes to our zoning that will make it easier in areas that are a (long) stones throw from my own house.

I'd also not really agree with AdironRider - while some are like that, many just want the option of a smaller unit (retirees, young people etc.) or something remotely affordable as most smaller areas don't have anything but 3-4 bedroom houses.

I'd also say ski towns are structurally different as you have a major AirBnB factor as well as much higher second homeownership numbers.

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Originally Posted by schuss

As I said, I'm on my local planning board and continually advocate for loosening restrictions and am in the process of writing up some changes to our zoning that will make it easier in areas that are a (long) stones throw from my own house.

I'd also not really agree with AdironRider - while some are like that, many just want the option of a smaller unit (retirees, young people etc.) or something remotely affordable as most smaller areas don't have anything but 3-4 bedroom houses.

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No location is exactly the same, my comments do not apply everywhere equally.

That said, I think my point still stands that if you have a street of 3-4 bedroom houses, suddenly changing the composition of the neighborhood with a triplex or much smaller housing is going to see resistance, and I don't find that completely unreasonable. You need to be able to adapt different solutions to different areas. All real estate is local and what have you.

I think a large part of the problem is trying to come up with grand solutions and not multiple small ones.

Ski towns are certainly different, but the entitlement issue still exists. If people don't have to bear the actual costs they are going to want more and more. That is human nature.

Ban home offices. Those rooms should be bedrooms for government assisted housing tenants. Those tenants should also be adopted and you have to take their surname. It's only fair.

Several states have just overridden the SFH zoning and the default in residential zones is 4 units or smaller and allowing ADUs. Most municipalities seem to have enacted additional rules to try to get them to fit the character of the city. This was in response to entrenched local interests holding back the production of additional units.

Transient workers just need dorms or relatively cheap apartments they can spilt. See: off campus college housing.

The big thing in OR is that the GOV just declared a state of emergency with respect to homelessness and suspended a bunch of development rules.

To Simples comment: everything around me seems to be 2500-4000k SF with 4 bedrooms and 3 baths. Crazy to me.

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Originally Posted by nickwm21

…..just not in your neighborhood right……


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

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https://coloradosun.com/2023/02/02/t...ural-rezoning/

pretty much it

the unfortunate reality is that alot of these pie in the sky do gooder politicians don't know shit about anything other than saying magic words to make people feel good

in summit county they swapped 50 acres of land w the forest circus to build affordable housing the local politicians were tripping over themselves to smile in front of the camera
ten years later not one apt has been built because no one thought about sewer water and traffic as well as the costs associated with them
now they think they can build their own sewer and water system ummmm do you know how much that will cost for 500 - 1000 housing units?????

the telluride development is a great idea but where does all the shit go? I guess rainbows and unicorns make it all disappear into the green environment kinda like the much heralded alta verde green built apt complex in breckenridge whose snow covered solar panels never get cleaned off while half of them are in the buidings own shadow

politicians being developers is a bad idea

Seems like just your standard case of NIMBYism, unless any Telluride locals want to chime in: https://coloradosun.com/2023/02/02/t...ural-rezoning/

I'd agree with much of what Adironrider said regarding what locals want. Shared walls? -"hell no", is the attitude of most.

Edit- FastFred is faster.

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Originally Posted by AdironRider

No location is exactly the same, my comments do not apply everywhere equally.

That said, I think my point still stands that if you have a street of 3-4 bedroom houses, suddenly changing the composition of the neighborhood with a triplex or much smaller housing is going to see resistance, and I don't find that completely unreasonable. You need to be able to adapt different solutions to different areas. All real estate is local and what have you.

I think a large part of the problem is trying to come up with grand solutions and not multiple small ones.

Ski towns are certainly different, but the entitlement issue still exists. If people don't have to bear the actual costs they are going to want more and more. That is human nature.

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Lots of small change is the norm for real estate/community changes. All the old victorians didn't become multifamilies overnight.
A lot of people seek to freeze their community in time, ignoring that by trying to do so in desirable areas you ensure only rich people can live there rather than a healthy mix.
What I'm potentially targeting is more density where it's already busy. It's not like people will scramble to build multifamily units on dead end roads. That said, the reflexive reaction we get is always "you're destroying the rural character!"
The area is growing and will continue to grow. That ship has left the dock and set sail.

so what is rural character?

is that where you build or buy a nice big house out in the country then complain ever spring because (in the west) the farmer burns the ditches? Or back east/mid west where they spread shit all over the fields for weeks on end before planting and you don't like the smoke and smells?

I lost a beautiful private little wooded area years ago dirt bike trails booters good ole place they bulldozed aspen groves and built multi million dollar homes it was a bummer to lose that plot of land

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Originally Posted by AdironRider

No location is exactly the same, my comments do not apply everywhere equally.

That said, I think my point still stands that if you have a street of 3-4 bedroom houses, suddenly changing the composition of the neighborhood with a triplex or much smaller housing is going to see resistance, and I don't find that completely unreasonable. You need to be able to adapt different solutions to different areas. All real estate is local and what have you.

I think a large part of the problem is trying to come up with grand solutions and not multiple small ones.

Ski towns are certainly different, but the entitlement issue still exists. If people don't have to bear the actual costs they are going to want more and more. That is human nature.

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If you don’t put in multi families eventually the neighborhood becomes tear downs for millionaires, which the existing 3-4 bed SFH owners also bitterly resent and complain about.

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Originally Posted by oldnew_guy

Several states have just overridden the SFH zoning and the default in residential zones is 4 units or smaller and allowing ADUs. Most municipalities seem to have enacted additional rules to try to get them to fit the character of the city. This was in response to entrenched local interests holding back the production of additional units.

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Washington legislature is currently considering whether to allow four plexes on all parcels within cities greater than 6,000 people. 6 plexes if near transit. As I understand, only CA and OR have passed similar legislation.

As it stands, Seattle currently allows up to two ADUs on every SFH parcel in the city (one attached, and one detached).

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Originally Posted by fastfred

so what is rural character?

is that where you build or buy a nice big house out in the country then complain ever spring because (in the west) the farmer burns the ditches? Or back east/mid west where they spread shit all over the fields for weeks on end before planting and you don't like the smoke and smells?

I lost a beautiful private little wooded area years ago dirt bike trails booters good ole place they bulldozed aspen groves and built multi million dollar homes it was a bummer to lose that plot of land

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Same thing happened here in my former 'hood. Kids used to build little dirt tracks on the parcel of land. Then some big developer came in and bought, threw some cash at the local city council, and magically got it rezoned. Except they didn't quite build multi-million dollar homes. But they built enough houses per acre to make it multi-million dollars worth of homes per acre.

House up the road from here, nice place, could use some updates, not amazing but it does have a killer view, went up for $2.5M and apparently was under contract in a day. I figured it was at least half a mil overpriced. At least. So, I dunno.

https://www.compass.com/listing/1919...8917264598481/

And a septic that doesn't cover all buildings on the property.

Million-dollar view I guess.

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Originally Posted by ötzi

House up the road from here, nice place, could use some updates, not amazing but it does have a killer view, went up for $2.5M and apparently was under contract in a day. I figured it was at least half a mil overpriced. At least. So, I dunno.

https://www.compass.com/listing/1919...8917264598481/

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Nice looking property and lot. Not surprised it would go for that much. Location, location, location.

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Originally Posted by AdironRider

To be fair, while NIMBYism is certainly an issue in and of itself, there are some notable downsides to just forcing housing in places.

1) It is pretty damn expensive to build worker housing in HCOL areas, which means inherently fewer units get built which doesn't solve the problem.

2) In a sort of reverse NIMBY mentality, there is a very high level of entitlement for the quality of worker housing in HCOL areas. Anyone who has lived in a ski town knows what I'm talking about. If it isn't a 4 bed, 3 bath detached on acreage in a prime location for 1k a month that also allows their rescue pitbull to roam around you get gripes, or even in some instances no takers. There needs to be a certain level of understanding that subsidized housing is going to be a tradeoff, and that tradeoff is most likely going to be location and size.

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I think working in the right direction is helpful, even if [when viewed in a vacuum] your cost per sq ft is inefficient compared to other markets. You can't really change that imbalance unless you have If you have funding sources that are ongoing and sustainable. In APCHA's case: a tax on sold free-market houses that goes into a large fund to continuously build housing.

#2 is certainly not an issue here. You have 30-70+ families in a lottery for any unit that comes up in the system. Out of 1652 owned units in APCHA, ~1200 are condos with shared walls, etc. Sure - we all want a SFH eventually but even subsidized here they are $500k-$2M. We paid $262k last year for our 1700sq ft 3bd/2ba. It's been a huge help for our family and I doubt we'll really be able to "move up" from it as time goes on.

Doesn't this subsidized housing in ski towns just cause even more people to want to move there? That would be pretty sweet to get a condo in Aspen for $262. That same place in Seattle would go for $700k plus. The subsidized housing is great for people who score it, but sucks for everyone else. Also, how do we really know the people who get this subsidized housing really need it? What if they inherit money or have a trust? What if they listen to LeeLau and get rich in the stock market? Do they periodically have to resubmit proof of their poorness? There are ways rich people can make themselves appear poor on paper.

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Originally Posted by altasnob

Doesn't this subsidized housing in ski towns just cause even more people to want to move there? That would be pretty sweet to get a condo in Aspen for $262. That same place in Seattle would go for $700k plus. The subsidized housing is great for people who score it, but sucks for everyone else. Also, how do we really know the people who get this subsidized housing really need it? What if they inherit money or have a trust? There are ways rich people can make themselves appear poor on paper.

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Possibly but unlikely. In Aspen at least you have to be employed by a business registered in Pitkin County for at least 4, (or is it 5?) years before you are even eligible to enter a lottery. Then, as alpinevibes noted, you're competing against 40-60 other people in every lottery. It's not like you can just move here, start work and they hand you a subsidized condo. And the program does have income verification process. But you are correct, there are (and will always be) some people who manage to hide their money well enough and game the system. That may just be the cost of doing business with a program like this, you won't ever catch every scammer.

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Originally Posted by altasnob

Doesn't this subsidized housing in ski towns just cause even more people to want to move there? That would be pretty sweet to get a condo in Aspen for $262. That same place in Seattle would go for $700k plus. The subsidized housing is great for people who score it, but sucks for everyone else. Also, how do we really know the people who get this subsidized housing really need it? What if they inherit money or have a trust? There are ways rich people can make themselves appear poor on paper.

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There is an argument for that, but I don't think in the RFV's case it's drawing people in to move here when they build housing. You have hundreds/thousands of people hoping to win a unit here already.

And yes, very good deal. My twin brother was shopping a starter home in N Seattle at the same time we won our 3bd unit. He was planning to spend $600-800k, but ended up getting a "cottage" house in Shoreline for $425k.

There are pretty lengthy hoops to jump through to get approved to bid on housing here. It's a complex system that is trying to be fair and well policed, but it's far from perfect. They fell behind on compliance and proactive enforcement for years, but they're working to improve a lot of components of it and from my decade of owning/living in the system I would say most the people in the system are legit. Additionally, the appreciation is typically capped at 3% or CPI, so most people with "real" money are not incentivized to try to cheat and get next-to-nothing for their investment.

Lottery SFH is cool if you win. I know two in a rich ski town. They both still work. Raising families. Happy for them.

Market rent rental apartment makes more sense. Sure the rich ski bums could force your rent up. But market is market. I think STR are more of a problem. Where I live people used to couch surf with friends in high season and then have a real two bed house for nine or ten months. Between STR and WFH and courts not evicting people that signed a nine month lease and refuse to move out the off season leases have dried up.

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Originally Posted by Toadman

Nice looking property and lot. Not surprised it would go for that much. Location, location, location.

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FWIW the map of it they have on there is the wrong house, this one doesn't go down to the water. https://westportma.mapgeo.io/dataset...3_59_0&zoom=18

Can you airbnb a room, or just long term rent a room, in your subsidized condo? Seems like an easy way to cash in on the true valley of that subsided condo.

I don't like subsidized housing in general for the arbitrary winners and losers in creates. My cousin in law is a techy in San Francisco who has founded a few companies and has stock options worth millions. He went several decades refusing to move from his rent control apartment. He legitimately needed rent control when he started (I guess, but his Dad is a doctor). I don't know if he had to continue to prove he was poor but even if he did, he would just craft his salary in stock options rather than cash to keep himself poor enough to qualify. It seems like such a flawed system. Rent control is illegal in WA.

My preference is just to build, build, build market rate housing. Any housing. Eventually, the supply should be so high that demand goes down.