Reply to Overriding local zoning to allow multi-family units in suburban neighborhoods in VA

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No, there's single-family detached (a house in a yard) and a single-family attached (a house attached to another house, side by side).

A duplex is a row of two houses.

If the units are on top of each other in detached housing, they're double-deckers (or triple-deckers) - but you really only find those in Mew England.

If the units are on top of each other in attached housing, they're "stacked townhouses" (if you're the real estate industry) or "two-over-twos" or basically just two-story condos.

Regardless, should somebody be allowed to buy and tear down an $850,000 one-unit property and build a duplex with two units, each $600,000? Yes, I think so.[/quote]

Except in the areas people are focusing on here it would more likely be tearing down a $850K detached SFH and building a duplex with two $1.3M units rather than a new $2.2M detached house. Builders will make even more money; low-income residents will still live elsewhere.[/quote]

Exactly. Let's say I own a home in Burke. Give it a nice round value of $500K. Now the county changes the zoning so that the lot can have a duplex. I know that just around the corner a group of new townhouses sold for $650K each. So I know that if I sold today a builder could grab my lot, stick a duplex on it, and charge around $650K for each unit (probably a little more because they would have to cover the cost of the existing home's demolition). Perhaps if enough people attempted to do this it would apply downward pressure on prices, but the cost involved in the demolition and construction of the new homes means that the price is not likely to make it worth it to a builder to come down too far. And certainly not enough to provide affordable housing without some injection from the government.

[b]Wouldn't it make more sense to look at redeveloping 3 level garden apartments into 6-8 level apartment/condo buildings?[/b] Much larger increase in units, some of which could be set aside for affordable units. And it still is the same zoning - multifamily units. There should be efforts to spread these around the city/county so they don't get concentrated in just a few areas. We might have even over built retail, so that may also be areas where multifamily units could be built during redevelopments.

It just seems to me that we haven't exercised all the more logical options; some people just seem to have it out for single family homes and the people (of all races, creeds, and colors) that live in them.[/quote]

Why not both?[/quote]

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