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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the title is supposed to be "Boomers and Real Estate Developers plan to ruin Arlington"

"Missing Middle: in ARL you need 1.5 for an MM unit"[/quote]

It’s boomers who seem to be most against missing middle.

What costs more: a $500,000 condo in a six plex, or a fancy new $2,000,000 Mcmansion?[/quote]

There’s no real shortage of 500k condos in Arlington, but I guess the idea is some people would prefer to live in a non walkable neighborhood?

https://www.redfin.com/VA/Arlington/1021-N-Garfield-St-22201/unit-235/home/11281195[/quote]
This just proves that these things are not going to pencil out for developers. This condo unit is approx. 800 sq ft selling at $500k. Montgomery County did a missing middle study that determined that for a 6-unit apartment structure on a SF lot would generate 800 sq ft max unit size. That means that a developer will need to cover the costs of land, regulatory/fees, labor, materials, marketing, and risk adjusted profit within a total of $3m in anticipated revenue. The only areas where they can cut costs are on land and materials, so they will be targeting the cheapest houses and building them to the lowest quality standards and even then it is not clear that the risks would meet the rewards.[/quote]

I think duplex and triplexes are going to be the most common form of missing middle. Simplexes will be rare, especially since they kept parking minimums.

Apparently the other cities that allowed for missing middle didn’t legalize sixplexes so I guess a big part of that push was to allow the county board members to be FIRST!  The now abandoned eightplex plan also allowed to claim with a semi straight face there would be actual “affordable” units.

I think the net result is that missing middle 2.0 is going to be about ways to aggressively encourage 4+ housing - e.g., limiting single family house square footage, allowing multifamily to higher lot coverage/build taller.  I guess we’ll see what happens! [/quote]
The Montgomery County study concluded that the profitability gets worse the fewer units are generated.

Minneapolis allows up to tri-plexes and they have only generated about 100 housing units in four years city-wide.

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