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I've been saying for ages that developers should be able to reduce parking requirements if and only if they put some money into mass transit.
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Feb 27, 2018 05:10
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BlueBlazer posted:poo poo's hosed, I'm just waiting for the next hammer to drop in my neighborhood. There is talk of upzoning the entirety of Eastlake in the next 6 mo. All existing residents longer than 2 years are preparing an exit strategy. Eastlake is very close to Downtown, it needs a significant upzone to make room for more people.
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Feb 27, 2018 06:00
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therobit posted:I'm not sure if we are talking Seattle or Portland but reducing the parking requirements has been terrible in Portland. [citation needed]
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Feb 27, 2018 06:08
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super nailgun posted:[citation needed] They basically only build buildings under 35 units to get around providing parking and then the entire neighborhood has to deal with a lot more cars and no more parking spaces. If you think it's going swimmingly you are free to disagree but it used to be a lot easier to drive and park here. I mean look at Sellwood these days, Christ.
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Feb 27, 2018 06:27
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The city doesn’t want you to drive and park there. It’s a feature.
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Feb 27, 2018 06:30
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HEY NONG MAN posted:The city doesn’t want you to drive and park there. It’s a feature. And that punishes people who have no choice and can't afford to live closer in. The public transit system here sucks unless you are going downtown from specific locations. I don't think we should intentionally pursue policies that make it a nightmare to drive and park here without providing a viable alternative.
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Feb 27, 2018 06:46
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It’s the same “problem” here in Seattle but it’s definitely by design. Near as I can tell they’re using it as a cudgel to force more transit packages through. I’m not a huge fan but we have to do something differently so let’s try this.
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Feb 27, 2018 06:54
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HEY NONG MAN posted:It’s the same “problem” here in Seattle but it’s definitely by design. It does seem to be working, but maybe not as drastically as people are hoping. Year over year we see thousands of new riders but that's probably just a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of commuters.
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Feb 27, 2018 07:15
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HEY NONG MAN posted:It’s the same “problem” here in Seattle but it’s definitely by design. Have they also baaically stopped maintaining the roads there? Portland has!
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Feb 27, 2018 07:15
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Depends where you live. If you live in an area where there’s lots of monied white people who telecommute or live on passive income, the roads are probably fine. If you’re just some rear end in a top hat in a neighbor hood you’re struggling to afford to live in, the roads are probably poo poo.
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Feb 27, 2018 07:18
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Long term residents seem to have this expectation to be able to get any where in like 15 mins. Can one park anywhere in NYC? Is it reasonable to assume you'll get from one side of Chicago to the other quickly at rush hour?
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Feb 27, 2018 07:26
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Yeah poo poo is changing super fast and a lot of folks either aren’t prepared or don’t want to believe it. I sympathize with people who thought they were getting into one kind of city and ended up rapidly getting something else but that’s how it fuckin goes. If you bought a house and you’re that upset with how the city is going, there’s a mountain of cash waiting for you when you sell most likely
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Feb 27, 2018 07:28
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Reducing parking requirements can definitely cause some pain, especially in the short term, but it's also long-term good and progressive since it leads to more walkable, transit-friendly communities.George posted:there's far more supply than demand but we keep doing it anyway. Cicero fucked around with this message at 07:59 on Feb 27, 2018 |
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Feb 27, 2018 07:56
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https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/09/26/apartment-vacancies-seattle-puget-sound-region.htmlquote:At 4 percent, the Seattle market vacancy rate (which excludes new properties that are still being leased up) is up from 3.3 percent in March. The gross rate (which includes new units) is 6.8 percent, up from 5.1 percent. https://seattle.curbed.com/2017/9/29/16386922/seattle-apartment-vacancy-rate quote:A recent study found that more than half of Seattle filers made less than $50,000 last year—a salary that can barely afford the lowest estimates for typical Seattle rent.
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Feb 27, 2018 08:55
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So, this is a little late but w/e. I'm not 100% sure what the radio program mentioned earlier with commercial real estate (CRE) was referring to. In CRE lending the major underwriting standard is Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSC/R). DSC/R is typically defined as annual Net Operating Income (NOI) divided by your annual required Principal and Interest payments (DSC/R = annual NOI/annual Payment). Net Operating Income is the landlord's net income plus depreciation and amortization plus interest expense. Banks typically require a DSC/R of 1.20:1 or 1.25:1. (These are de facto targets but not de jure, although regulators may look askance at anything below this.) Any vacancy expense is associated with a lower net income, and therefore lower NOI, and lower DSC/R. Numbers below 1.20 or 1.25 can make it harder to refinance loans without principal paydowns or concrete plans to increase DSC/R. If you don't currently meet targets, and need to make changes or spend money to bring the property into compliance you better have a decent amount of money or the Bank may not be amenable to this. Ideally this creates an incentive to rent the property out, rather than leave it vacant if you need to refinance. This gets a little harder with construction, because you are counting on an appraiser accurately judging market rents and what the developer could potentially get in rents when the project is complete in the future. Furthermore construction loan rates are typically higher than "permanent" financing, and you aren't eligible for conversion to permanent financing until the building is fully leased up or "stabilized" so again, it behooves you to rent the units out because you save money on your P&I payments. Vacancy rate is up, but nationwide in Q4 2017 it was at 6.9% so we are still well below the nationwide rate. (You shouldn't look at the gross rate, because it does take some time to lease up new properties). source: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf Source: I work at a community bank as a commercial credit analyst. This is my job.
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Feb 27, 2018 15:56
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tumblr hype man posted:So, this is a little late but w/e. Thanks for this, it's s nice and understandable summary.
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Feb 27, 2018 16:12
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Yeah, thanks tumblr hype man still haven't been able to find it again.
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Feb 27, 2018 17:06
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tumblr hype man posted:So, this is a little late but w/e. And I'll bet it wouldn't take nearly as long to lease up new properties if the property owners were getting hit with a tax for not filling them up faster.
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Feb 27, 2018 17:26
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FRINGE posted:https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/09/26/apartment-vacancies-seattle-puget-sound-region.html Jesus Christ. How do people stand for this?
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Feb 27, 2018 17:31
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I've been doing some accounting stuff for Seattle Parks (nothing sexy, just processing invoices for AP), and there's a lot of money just being spent on safety equipment for encampment "clean-up". We had a meeting a few years ago where representatives from the City Council and SPD told all of P&R that we were the city's homeless strategy. It's a loving disgrace, and we're spending gobs of parks money that could easily go to real solutions.
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Feb 27, 2018 18:30
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The Seattle Times front page is telling people to call the governor and tell him to veto the public records disclosure Bill so now I'm torn if it's a bad Bill or not because the Seattle Times.
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Feb 27, 2018 20:10
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RuanGacho posted:The Seattle Times front page is telling people to call the governor and tell him to veto the public records disclosure Bill so now I'm torn if it's a bad Bill or not because the Seattle Times.
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Feb 27, 2018 20:42
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left wing and right wing media gladly band together against bills that reduces their journalistic access, which that records law definitely will do if it passes inslee's desk
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Feb 27, 2018 21:38
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They are in serious jeopardy of having to go out and do journalism
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Feb 27, 2018 22:20
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KingFisher posted:Eastlake is very close to Downtown, it needs a significant upzone to make room for more people. Cool, maybe something to help with current residence? Because just the property tax increase from that alone is gonna cause a drastic uptick in rents. I understand the argument you need more housing for more people to keep supply up and hopefully drive rents down. But its not happening. The more housing stock that comes online in the neighborhood the more rents go up, every new development goes 10% higher than the next to out luxury each other causing every local landowner to salivate to get in on the action. Nah, just gotta move out of the way of the development train I guess. I'd be a little less pessimistic if there was even anything near affordable within the city limits. 3 years has made a huge difference in terms of affordability, even if I make a pretty decent salary, I've not got income increases(none) necessary to offset the year over year rent increases. I'm bitching because its painful, and I feel powerless to do anything about it; keep in mind I've written letters I've gone to meetings. It doesn't do jack poo poo since my money isn't enough to tip the scales. Gonna go start shopping for a camper van now.  still plenty of parking down off the lake.
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Feb 27, 2018 22:51
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Property taxes barely affect rent. Rent is driven by what people will pay.
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Feb 28, 2018 01:08
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Peachfart posted:Property taxes barely affect rent. Rent is driven by what people will pay. I don't know that this is true everywhere, but it definitely seems to be true in Seattle. Unless you want to argue that cost of ownership for rental properties has gone up 57% in the last six years.
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Feb 28, 2018 01:11
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Thanatosian posted:I don't know that this is true everywhere, but it definitely seems to be true in Seattle. You make a good point. In the rest of the country, property taxes may make up a large chunk of rent cost, but that sure as hell isn't true in Seattle. It is just deflection to keep you mad at the government and not the people who have money.
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Feb 28, 2018 04:27
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Cicero posted:lol no there isn't. Vacancy rates in Seattle and Portland are still low, giving landlords more leverage over renters. They've been rising dramatically over the past couple of years in both cities. Anecdotally, I seem to ride past an absolute fuckton of vacant high-cost rental buildings with obviously newish construction in Portland. Weirdly, this does not get better as you go out to areas like Beaverton. The rent for a studio just off Beaverton Town Square is just as high as ones a block from Providence Park when I was hunting for a place.
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Feb 28, 2018 04:41
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BlueBlazer posted:Cool, maybe something to help with current residence? Because just the property tax increase from that alone is gonna cause a drastic uptick in rents. I understand the argument you need more housing for more people to keep supply up and hopefully drive rents down. But its not happening. The more housing stock that comes online in the neighborhood the more rents go up, every new development goes 10% higher than the next to out luxury each other causing every local landowner to salivate to get in on the action. I understand that frustration, I was on the community feedback process for the HALA MHA-R/C process for about 18 months, it was a waste of my time. The real question we should be asking is why won't the city upzone enough to produce enough supply to keep up with demand? Or *shudder* drive down rents, the answer is simple: most of the people who vote in the city own a single family home, it is their largest investment and it would be political suicide to do anything that would lower the cost of housing in this city. The wealthy, white, old, racist, classist single family home owners are hoarding the cities land with thier suburban style proto mansion housing and the people's right of way by demanding parking for thier cars and car first infrastructure investments. In fact it's my belief that the reason the city switched to a 7 district 2 at large system was to specifically break up the emerging renter political majority. If you look at the map downtown Seattle is clearly split 3 ways to gerrymander the part of the city with the most renters into 3 different districts. This prevents renters from having the political power needed to enact zoning changes to radically increase the amount of rental housing. We won't see change in this city until renters get a majority in 3 council seat districts and control the 2 at large seats, even then we need a mayor who isn't afraid to stand up to single family home owners. Remember just a few years ago when they freaked out about the idea of having duplexes and triplexes in thier neighbourhoods? Those same groups (26 or so under the name SCALE) are now suing the city to stop the impotent upzone which will only effect about 6% of all SFH zoned land in the city. Just simple math, the city claims the HALA plan will produce 6k units in 10 years. Since we actually need 10x that. 10k housing first units for the homeless etc. And 50k units for the people who pay 50% of income as rent. Even using a high estimate (10%) for the rate of new affordable being housing produced using the MHA program this would mean we need to add/rebuild 600k units in the city to actually solve the problem. Since that is more units than the city currently has we know HALA MHA-R/C is not a serious proposal to solve the problem. The "Paris" solution is to legalize cross laminated timber construction to 12 stories and upzone the entire city to neighborhood commerical 125. This would produce mixed use and mixed income development all over the city. This would spread the development around the city increasing density broadly and ignoring the the "urban village" pan which is what we have now to focus most development into the 26 urban villages. The current development plan "protects" the single family zoned parts of the city by not requiring they contribute to making room for more people. The "Singapore" solution which doubles down on the urban village model: The city should upzone everything within a 10 minute walk of a light rail station, or rapid ride stop to 550 feet and fund construction of 1000 unit mixed income (I.e 25% affordable) residential towers at each light rail station and at the major Rapid Ride stops. The city should use eminent domain to take the land and build 1 block worth of towers at each stop per year until we get those 60k units of low income housing we need. This would also add 180k market rate units to the city as well which would absorb all new housing demand and drive down rents. To improve the Rapid Ride it should be given right of way in physically separate lanes, and run every 10 minutes. If we have to take away all street parking along these routes then that is a small price to pay. These lines would eventually be supplemented with light rail. "Singapore" is probably more politically viable as it would not impact any of the SFH areas of the city and would concentrate development away from the liberal racists who don't want poor people living near them. It would however run counter to the historical development patterns in this country. There are no large cities in the US with a density greater than 10k people per square mile that have more than 25% of it's housing as single family homes. Seattle is at about 8,655 people per square mile now and 50% single family homes. We will hit the 10k per square mile at 840k people which will happen about 2022-2025. If we follow the existing patterns for denser cities in the US that means about 50% of all SFH lots will see a significant upzone. This would leave 25% of the city SFH, we all know which parts it would be: Queen Anne, Magnolia, Madison Park, Windermere, etc. My rule of thumb is if you live in an SFH but can't see the water, you'll be upzoned. People with water views in Seattle donate at rate 70x what the non-water view people donate to local politics. /Rant off KingFisher fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Feb 28, 2018 |
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Feb 28, 2018 09:50
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KingFisher posted:that would mean we need to add 600k new units to the city to actually solve the problem. I followed most of that except for this. I mean Seattle is only a little over 600k people right now isnt it? Or do you mean the entire "Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue, WA Metropolitan Statistical Area" from Everett to Olympia? (Which is 3.7mil according to wiki.)
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Feb 28, 2018 11:42
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That's a loving great post, KingFisher  Reene posted:They've been rising dramatically over the past couple of years in both cities. also nitpick: Seattle recently crossed over 700k people.
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Feb 28, 2018 12:06
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Christ, gently caress NIMBYs.
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Feb 28, 2018 15:31
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Peachfart posted:Property taxes barely affect rent. Rent is driven by what people will pay. Property taxes as well as borrowing interest rates absolutely have an effect on real estate investment/speculation.
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Feb 28, 2018 16:33
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FRINGE posted:I followed most of that except for this. I mean Seattle is only a little over 600k people right now isnt it? Or do you mean the entire "Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue, WA Metropolitan Statistical Area" from Everett to Olympia? (Which is 3.7mil according to wiki.) Seattle's population is at about 725k today. But my point is that the city needs 60k units of affordable housing, the current plan only makes that at a rate of 10% of each new building built. So to get the number of units we need (60k) the city would need to practically double or be entirely rebuilt I.e 600k units would need to be built. This shows the cities plan to produce 6k units over 10 years is not meant to solve the housing problems we have. It exists to make Seattle liberals feel like we are doing something, but not enough to make them uncomfortable (rezone where they live) or fix the problem (build 60k units). KingFisher fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Feb 28, 2018 |
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Feb 28, 2018 17:17
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To be fair, Portland's average rent cost is flat YoY, so it has that going for it.Reene posted:They've been rising dramatically over the past couple of years in both cities. Yeah I and my co-workers notice this too. I believe that they have been reducing prices at least. Now studios start at the low price of $900!
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Feb 28, 2018 17:29
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KingFisher posted:Seattle's population is at about 725k today. Rezoning is good and all, but as people have pointed out, there is already a lot of empty housing. Up zoning a lot of land and then letting the "market" dictate the housing that gets built will not solve the problem. We need public control of what is built.
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Feb 28, 2018 17:31
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DevNull posted:Rezoning is good and all, but as people have pointed out, there is already a lot of empty housing. Up zoning a lot of land and then letting the "market" dictate the housing that gets built will not solve the problem. We need public control of what is built.
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Feb 28, 2018 17:42
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DevNull posted:Rezoning is good and all, but as people have pointed out, there is already a lot of empty housing. Up zoning a lot of land and then letting the "market" dictate the housing that gets built will not solve the problem. We need public control of what is built. Public control of what is built is why we have zoning and a system of permits from the development department. If we wanted different things being built we would have elected different politicians to implement different regulations. The point of my entire post was that the city government has no intention solving the problem. If you want more public housing you should see my proposal above about 1k units mixed income public housing buildings being located along the light rail.
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Feb 28, 2018 17:45
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twodot posted:I don't think you'll find anyone in favor of upzoning that is opposed to public housing. There are a lot of "YIMBY" types that think we just need more market rate housing. KingFisher posted:Public control of what is built is why we have zoning and a system of permits from the development department. If we wanted different things being built we would have elected different politicians to implement different regulations. The city government had no intention of raising minimum wage, but we forced them to support it. They "supported" it only so that they could take credit for what was really a watered down version of what people were demanding. I'm not the type to say we should call our city council members and beg them for housing. If we build a large enough public demand instead, they will have no choice but to concede.
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Feb 28, 2018 17:58
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