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Baronjutter posted:Because I live in reality where numbers and actual policy results are more important than vibes. Because I want people to be housed more than I want to stick it to developers. Well, I for one am sickened by the thought that someone could make money while providing a necessary service. Best we not have that necessary service at all, lest capitalism taint the results.
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Apr 25, 2024 20:33
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PT6A posted:Well, I for one am sickened by the thought that someone could make money while providing a necessary service. Best we not have that necessary service at all, lest capitalism taint the results.  Our entire society, economy, and limits of acceptable philosophical thought are apparently bounded by capitalism tenets. Better things won't be possible until we can break through that wall. Sometimes I get why accelerationism is so appealing to so many.
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Apr 25, 2024 21:17
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Baronjutter posted:Because I live in reality where numbers and actual policy results are more important than vibes. Because I want people to be housed more than I want to stick it to developers. Nothing you wrote would help that.
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Apr 25, 2024 23:16
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Perhaps you missed this paragraph?Baronjutter posted:If we want bigger units we need to stop treating floor space and housing like pollution to be minimized. A great strategy would be to let extra bedrooms ignore floor space restrictions. So a project that would cap out at 200 1br units can suddenly build 200 2br units, because that extra 120sqft per unit is "free" when it comes to the maximum floor space. There's clearly been policies identified that restrict and prevent marginal increases in both unit count and unit size, and alternatives proposed.
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Apr 26, 2024 00:45
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so who in this thread works in real estate development just want to know who isn't vibes-based posting
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Apr 26, 2024 02:16
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I'd rather live on vibes than suck the dicks of real estate billionaires on a dead comedy forum.
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Apr 26, 2024 02:24
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RBC posted:I'd rather live on vibes than suck the dicks of real estate billionaires on a dead comedy forum. same
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Apr 26, 2024 02:25
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oh right i forgot to mention, thread favourite (inclusionary zoning) got introduced to the b.c. legislature a couple of weeks ago: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024HOUS0049-000471
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Apr 26, 2024 02:28
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Baronjutter posted:Bedrooms are the cheapest room to create, kitchens and bathrooms the most expensive. Two 500sqft 1br units costs way more to build than one 1000sqft 3br unit. But because it costs more, it also means it can be sold for more. So if the city says your new building can only have 10,000sqft of space, you're throwing money away by building fewer bigger units rather than as many tiny units as you can fit. They sell for more per sqft. And again it comes back to the floor space restrictions, because cities also like to make sure to limit how much floor space people can build to make sure builders aren't making too much profit, which is bad. It's always a negotiation where the city says you can only build 5,000 sqft, the builder says they want 10,000 sqft for their project. The city then spends a year looking into it at great expenses and planning comes back with a report saying that given current market conditions and construction costs, technically a developer might be able to barely eke out a profit with a 8,000 sqft project, so that will be the maximum they allow. Then they spend another year doing more red tape, during which time construction costs and interest rates go up and now the project doesn't pencil anymore and doesn't get built. But, the community was saved from the horrors of floor space. The other thing about two beds and three beds is that because they're so much more expensive than a tiny 500 sqft apt, relatively few people can buy them and they take a lot longer to sell. And this is problematic because bank financing means and even provincial rules (!!!) mandate that you need to sell a certain amount of units before you can start construction. So this means that it's actually so risky to sell slow to sell, expensive large units that it could sink your entire building. So developers are selling the tiny stuff that moves quickly because it's too financially risky to do otherwise. There was actually an article about this today. quote:Homebuyers Shun New Real Estate in Vancouver, Hurting Builders Baronjutter posted:The other reason we get so many tiny 1br units is something a lot of boomers and trad folks refuse to accept: society has changed. We have more 1 person households than any time in history. There is a massive demand for these sized units because there's a massive amount of 1 or 2 person households where a single bedroom is fine for them. And when the 1br unit is 500k and the 2br unit is 700k, it doesn't really matter what people *want* its what people can afford. This is kind of the main thing really. Why are there so many 1 beds? It's because they're in incredible demand. At some point it would be possible for developers to build too many 1 beds such that single people would be pretty satisfied and there would be more demand for larger units, but given the constraints on construction, we're nowhere near that. Therefore developers keep trying to meet the demand for 1 bedroom apartments, and everyone who needs a 2 bed or more is stuck having to compete with single people for the same product. Hubbert posted:so who in this thread works in real estate development tbh I kind of feel like after posting about housing in this thread for fuckin years and years I could probably walk into some job at a development company and fake it for a fair while.
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Apr 26, 2024 03:16
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Hubbert posted:oh right i forgot to mention, thread favourite (inclusionary zoning) got introduced to the b.c. legislature a couple of weeks ago: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024HOUS0049-000471 Still a developing story but saw some tweets about this today that Vancouver is practically bending over backward to protect various neighbourhoods from this. City staff arguing that it doesn't need to apply to like giant parts of RT zoned East Van. Unsure if they're actually ideologically against this stuff or just like trying to spare themselves from the workload of having to change a bunch of poo poo by June. edit: https://x.com/pwaldkirch/status/1783561056079470858 Femtosecond fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 03:18
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Femtosecond posted:Still a developing story but saw some tweets about this today that Vancouver is practically bending over backward to protect various neighbourhoods from this. City staff arguing that it doesn't need to apply to like giant parts of RT zoned East Van. Unsure if they're actually ideologically against this stuff or just like trying to spare themselves from the workload of having to change a bunch of poo poo by June. Through heritage preservation, these homes can be saved and the FAR can be varied. It's entirely possible that it's a city trying to preserve enclaves. It could also be a municipality attempting to set the new zoning rules to ensure that these will be an actual reason to save the heritage home. Heritage has always been based upon the density carrot: save it, and you can build whatever you want.
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Apr 26, 2024 05:12
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Femtosecond posted:The other thing about two beds and three beds is that because they're so much more expensive than a tiny 500 sqft apt, relatively few people can buy them and they take a lot longer to sell. And this is problematic because bank financing means and even provincial rules (!!!) mandate that you need to sell a certain amount of units before you can start construction. So this means that it's actually so risky to sell slow to sell, expensive large units that it could sink your entire building. So developers are selling the tiny stuff that moves quickly because it's too financially risky to do otherwise. Yeah there's kind of a fundamental problem that real estate prices alone don't really convey: even building the shittiest, tiniest condos, and even selling at the current vastly distorted prices, it is borderline impossible to actually make the financials work. And that's a function of land, labour and materials costs. Never mind trying to build housing that people actually want to live in, or at a price that actually matches incomes. And don't even think about trying to do both. And I don't really see a way out of that without something on the scale of the Vienna model. quote:This is kind of the main thing really. Why are there so many 1 beds? It's because they're in incredible demand. At some point it would be possible for developers to build too many 1 beds such that single people would be pretty satisfied and there would be more demand for larger units, but given the constraints on construction, we're nowhere near that. Therefore developers keep trying to meet the demand for 1 bedroom apartments, and everyone who needs a 2 bed or more is stuck having to compete with single people for the same product. I mean, some of this is people who genuinely want one bedrooms, but a lot of it is that it's all they can afford, and they're desperate to stop renting / start climbing the "property ladder". And in the past, it's paid off. A lot of people buying townhouses or actual SFH are using gains from a condo that doubled or tripled in value to bring the price into a range they can afford. The problem is that now, instead of 20-something professionals buying 1BRs, it's 30-something families trying to cram two adults, an infant and a dog into that space, because there is nothing else they can afford.
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Apr 26, 2024 08:05
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https://x.com/moreneighbours/status/1783167915073651171
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Apr 27, 2024 03:12
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There is a whole corner in the lower right completely empty. Why do you have to build here? When you can force developers to stop sitting on that space, driving up prices?
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Apr 27, 2024 04:12
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Hubbert posted:Through heritage preservation, these homes can be saved and the FAR can be varied. Yea it's early days so we'll see. It would be good it is more the carrot approach of enabling reasonable density and granting significant bonuses if the historic structure is retained. With the mansion lots as big as they are in Shaughnessy they could absolutely put some apartments in some of these spaces. Up until this point the approach of Vancouver has been more stick, downzoning properties unless you keep the existing structure.
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Apr 27, 2024 04:19
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MickeyFinn posted:There is a whole corner in the lower right completely empty. Why do you have to build here? When you can force developers to stop sitting on that space, driving up prices? let me help you. that light blue? That’s Lake Ontario. They only build homes for fish on that part.
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Apr 27, 2024 10:07
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zoning changes aren't going to fix boomers sitting in their 3 bedrooms homes until they die. this is just demographics
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Apr 27, 2024 15:05
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Arivia posted:let me help you. that light blue? That’s Lake Ontario. They only build homes for fish on that part. Why are they building homes for fish there and not Canadians? Because Canadians don’t want the kind of density that make developers the most money. There has to be some way to force developers to build housing that is better for Canadians.
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Apr 27, 2024 15:21
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MickeyFinn posted:Why are they building homes for fish there and not Canadians? Because Canadians don’t want the kind of density that make developers the most money. There has to be some way to force developers to build housing that is better for Canadians. Those fish are Canadian citizens and it's kind of discriminatory for you to suggest otherwise and that we should deprioritize their housing needs. This society does not need more homeless fish
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Apr 27, 2024 19:51
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MickeyFinn posted:Why are they building homes for fish there and not Canadians? Because Canadians don’t want the kind of density that make developers the most money. There has to be some way to force developers to build housing that is better for Canadians. It's because Canada's building codes don't require two fish ladders to be built in any unit that is greater than two stories.
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Apr 27, 2024 19:58
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Ain't no zoning regulation says you can't build a house in the lake.
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Apr 27, 2024 20:46
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McGavin posted:Ain't no zoning regulation says you can't build a house in the lake. loving Aquaman.
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Apr 27, 2024 20:48
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Arivia posted:loving Aqua Bud.
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Apr 28, 2024 02:56
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some catnip for the bubble folks quote:Forget rate relief: Most Canadians are about to see their mortgage interest payments soar Kind of a scary article but tbh 25% doesn't seem that much if you type that into a calculator and try to estimate how much that is in terms of changes to typical monthly payments. Can folks find a few extra hundred dollars a month? I think they can. But ultimately it means that for the next few years, people will be even more house poor and discretionary spending will be even more limited, which seems like bad outcomes for Main St and the broader Canadian economy. Femtosecond fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 28, 2024 19:33
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How long do you think this level of interest, which is curtailing the economic activity of the poor, will continue to work to lower inflation levels? People who pay mortgages are already so broke that some of them rely on food banks, restaurants and commercial businesses are starting to go under, those employees are becoming destitute etc. Eventually maybe if we're lucky (and some people really unlucky) housing prices might correct a bit, but ultimately there is a large group of extremely rich people with a lot of cash right now, waiting for interest rates to drop so they can snap up any assets that are available, which puts us right back into this situation again. Stagflation (as a layman) seems to be the situation we're in - rich people and companies will generate economic activity via buying assets and debt and charging rent, which will fuel inflation, which will prompt interest rates to remain high, while anyone not making passive income slowly get fed into a meat grinder.
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Apr 28, 2024 23:18
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Tangy Zizzle posted:How long do you think this level of interest, which is curtailing the economic activity of the poor, will continue to work to lower inflation levels? People who pay mortgages are already so broke that some of them rely on food banks, restaurants and commercial businesses are starting to go under, those employees are becoming destitute etc. Why can't "people that pay mortgages" sell their properties if they can't pay their mortgages?
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Apr 29, 2024 01:47
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Mantle posted:Why can't "people that pay mortgages" sell their properties if they can't pay their mortgages? they won’t be able to afford to buy another house, and there’s basically no family-sized rental stock in Toronto at least after they sell the house, assuming they aren’t both wfh code gargles, what do they do?
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Apr 29, 2024 01:57
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Subjunctive posted:they won’t be able to afford to buy another house, and there’s basically no family-sized rental stock in Toronto at least Rent the house from the purchaser.
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Apr 29, 2024 02:11
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maybe, if that’s why they’re buying it could be that the buyer has somehow been keeping their powder dry and want to buy a house so that they can move out of their 1-br condo and start a family but man the government is going to make the bank offer concessions somehow and if I had played my cards right all you folks would be buying real estate for me via your taxes
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Apr 29, 2024 02:15
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Mantle posted:Why can't "people that pay mortgages" sell their properties if they can't pay their mortgages? I don't disagree with you, what I was saying is that while they are doing that, the really rich are buying those same houses and increasing their dragon's hoarde of wealth. If someone overleveraged and has to sell, great who cares, but let's not pretend it's going to a first time buyer. The economic activity from the sale and the renovation (if any) and the new renter makes the economy seem hotter than it is, even though we know it's actually a net loss in the long run. This drives inflation up, which keeps the central bank from cutting rates. Rinse repeat.
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Apr 29, 2024 07:07
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gently caress people with mortgages
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Apr 29, 2024 08:49
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Mantle posted:Why can't "people that pay mortgages" sell their properties if they can't pay their mortgages? Usually the reason is because it's still their best option to try and stay. Say a 5-person family is taking it right to the edge to stay in their house. Accumulating debt, food banks, all that. They could sell but what city is there where they could find a rental that's vaguely comparable to their home but also presents a reasonable amount of savings over the mortgage? Moving is an extreme option in these situations. Jobs, schools, family, friends, etc. I can see how in this scenario people will hold on until they're actually forced into a sale. Not to mention banks really don't want to foreclose if they can find any alternative. I imagine we'll continue to see all kinds of stretching of mortgage terms or whatever to prevent that over the next few years.
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Apr 29, 2024 13:54
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That's what really irks me about the cost-of-living discussion. It's driven almost entirely by the cost of housing. I'd be loving broke if I had to pay rent or a brand new mortgage, but as I don't, you know how inflation has affected me? Basically not at all. Do I love paying slightly more for everything? No, but it's miniscule compared to the insane amount people are expected to pay for housing. The drive to keep property values high is nothing short of a widespread criminal conspiracy, morally speaking. It impoverishes people, it forces them into bad situations, it takes money out of the economy; it's absolutely abhorrent. I don't want my dwelling to be worth a lot of money; it only has value for me as a place to live, and the consequences are awful for the entire rest of society.
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Apr 30, 2024 00:14
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