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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Condos mean more people in a given area. Which means more bars and restaurants. Which means more people want to live there. Which drives up the prices of those condos. Which drives up the prices of houses developers need to buy and tear down in order to build more condos. Which means even more people in a given area. Which means more bars and restaurants, which means more people want to live there, which drives up the prices even further.

People understood intuitively before we changed the term “gentrification” to “upzoning.”[/quote]

[b]There isn’t a coherent explanation of how changing zoning laws reduce housing prices. [/b]Typically the opposite happens — prices go up, by a lot. [/quote]

There is, and it's based on supply and demand. Just like "gentrification" and "upzoning" are different things, so "there is no explanation" and "I don't like the explanation" are different things, too.[/quote]

So what’s the explanation? [/quote]

https://googlethatforyou.com?q=housing%20zoning%20supply%20demand[/quote]

‘If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.’ —Albert Einstein[/quote]

Very weird that no one can explain how upzoning reduces housing prices[/quote]

If upzoning doesn’t reduce housing prices, then what is the point of upzoning?[/quote]

DP. Upzoning is good because the market will redevelop some land into denser housing where it makes sense for the developer. That will lead to growth, which will grow the tax base as well provided that the council doesn’t decide to subsidize the developers. [/quote]

I predict the opposite. A decline in the tax base.  Owners of SFHs tend to be richer, and they pay the bulk of the income taxes.  People who buy SFHs want a neighborhood of SFHs.  DMV has plenty of options, and with remote work many of those who want a SFH will simply move.  I fully expect MoCo will lose upper income taxpayers.  Note that roughly 50% of MoCo residents pay no income taxes.  MoCo as with CA and NY are heavily reliant not only on upper income taxpayers but top 5%.   They have options and more so today with remote work.

[/quote]

You'll get more tax revenue from upzoned land than from R-60 or R-90.[/quote]

The folks buying into a 3-4 unit building are not likely to be paying much in income taxes.  They easily could be costing the County money, particularly if they have children.   The owner of that former SFH likely pays income taxes, as that owner is likely in income bracket.  Perhaps, property taxes from that 3-4 unit building are higher than from the former SFH, but I doubt the County makes a profit from those higher property taxes given the increased services that need to be provided.  [/quote]

Density also means less linear feet of county roads, utilities, etc needed.[/quote]

Yes that is true, but around 85% of the MOCO's operating budget is attributable to expenses that largely scale with population size. Only around 15% of the county's operating budget is due to things like (bond servicing and transportation, etc) where expenses might see significant economies of scale. If quadplex residents are half as costly for this portion of county expenditures that only saves MOCO around $474 per quadplex resident each year. The hypothetical cost savings (directly attributable to MOCO) from these efficiencies would mean that the quadplex costs the county $65,490 each year(rather than 70,646 in the previous example). In the most optimistic scenario, the property tax revenue from a quadplex ($28,750-32,000) will fall short by $33,000. Property taxes only cover around half of the expenses from the new quadplex residents. Income and sales taxes will not fully cover the rest and the county will lose money on overage for each additional plex unit. [/quote]

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