Reply to Arlington "missing middle"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

Good bye to all old, affordable SFHs. Developers will outbid everyone. They will all get ripped down to house for singles and people without kids.[/quote]

You don’t seem to have a problem with the fact a hundred seventy older houses are being replaced with Mcmansions every year.[/quote]

A big claim of MMH was that families wanted to live in these leafy SFH neighborhoods and send their kids to the schools there. The duplexes and triplexes are going to be more expensive than the houses that are being torn down. Developers are going to maximize profit by building small apartments and all the families that wanted to buy in Single FAMILY neighborhoods will be priced out.[/quote]
This is correct and the only way that it’s profitable in those neighborhoods. As a result, it will have zero impact on affordability but may encourage someone that works in Arlington to choose to accept some limitations to live in Arlington if they can be in boundary for Yorktown that otherwise may have chosen Fairfax or Montgomery County where they could get good schools and better housing choices at the same price but less convenience to work. To be clear, this is a very, very niche market.

The only other use case would be to generate more smaller rental/condo units. However, it is against principles of urbanism to add that residential density outside of transit corridors and there’s a reason for that. Usually that kind of low-amenity MFH is associated with lower income tenants, which doesn’t make sense in the Arlington context. [/quote]

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