Arlington… the missing beauty.
An ugly hellscape of hardscrabble unplanned, uncoordinated domiciles. |
Most households aren't families. To begin with, 28% of households are single-person households. Another 35% of households have 2 people. Among households that are families, only 40% have their own children under 18 living at home. Is there something wrong with increasing rental market supply? |
It's insulting to me you think single people want to live in shabby attached rental properties. |
Likewise there will be someone else who can't afford to pay $800K for a townhouse but can afford to pay $600K for a nice townhouse condo that by nature is slightly smaller. Viola - that is what is meant by missing middle. |
Don’t worry, they will drag down the property value of the surrounding properties so much they those condo loans will be upside down in no time…it’s the buyers after the flight of wealth that will get the real deals! This is not going to be an urbanized pocket with young people gentrifying…it’s going to be the effective end of nice neighborhoods. |
Oh, those developers who are going to make huge profits building unaffordable luxury housing while also driving down property values and ruining nice neighborhoods! |
It's weird you think your experience living in one particular townhouse community is representative of an entire demographic of middle income families. I'm in Arlington and I can assure you that there are many kids here living in townhouses and condos in that middle range. |
Hi! DP who lives in Arlington in a townhouse at a similar price point. This is what we could afford (we bought it for about half of what we could sell it for now). We wanted to live in Arlington and a townhouse was how we could make that happen. I think there are plenty of people who would pay $750K for a townhouse in Arlington. |
NP here. I think families will choose to live in duplex and triplexes. And I support this type of infill. But the 4, 6, 8 plexes are very likely to be purchased by a single (wealthy) owner who will rent out each unit. These larger buildings are not going to create meaningful home ownership opportunity. Because who else would essentially buy a condo in the middle of a suburban neighborhood? Most condo dwellers sacrifice on space for amenities like metro, bus, coffee shops, etc. This plan should at the very least have tapered density (I say this as someone within .3 mi of a metro station so my street would be okay for larger multi family). But there are a lot of parts of the county I’m just no envisioning this being good except for the already rich developers and landlords. |
Aren’t the townhouses projected to go for over $1m (I think I read like $1.2 -1.5). It’s the smaller units that will be more like 600-700k. |
I thought a big part of missing middle was to help people priced out afford to buy in the county because the current housing is unaffordable to most buyers. Creating more landlords doesn’t necessarily seem like a worthwhile venture. |
How about, afford to LIVE in the county? Creating more housing people can rent doesn't seem like a worthwhile venture? |
If we all just recognize this as a developer handout, rather than some legitimate government program, it's the only way it makes sense. Developers have always owned politicians in this area, and this is no different. One of the Arlington developers even got his 20-something daughter to write an article in some Washington magazine about how great MM would be. It was posted a while back in the Real Estate forum. |
I’ve been through 3 complexes, and everyone the families leave by 4th grade of the oldest. |
Who is handing what to developers? Please explain. |