Left out of this equation is perhaps the most important number to buyers: price. All of these numbers show us how much more efficient it is to serve households in urban environments, and how much more tax revenue it yields for governments -- but that is not passed along to buyers.
For example, the suburban house that I paid $350K for 15 miles away from downtown would cost a $1M if I wanted a similarly appointed condo in the city. And that excludes the additional taxes, building fees (which can be substantial), and parking costs.
I think the article starts with the assumption that all other things are equal, ie comparing a $350K home in the city to a $350K home in the suburbs. Both homes will pay the same in property tax, but the home in the suburb requires vastly more infrastructure (roads, water, sewer, gas, electricity, telecommunications, etc) to support it for the simple reason that it suburbs are more spread out. Those costs are hidden from the homeowner, the city must absorb them. In the scenario where the home in the suburb is much less expensive than the one in the city, this problem is only exasperated because now the suburban house pays even less in property tax.
I think the idea is to get a smaller house in the city.
I've been reading a blog called McMansion Hell lately (highly highly recommended), and it has a great article detailing some of the pitfalls of large, affordable suburban homes [1].
How so? Maybe other aspects of city properties are desirable and drive up the price, but the efficiency gains still apply and without them it would be even more expensive.
Maybe you could get an even bigger house than your suburb one in a third world country for even cheaper.
van Mises wrote: "if a man has been run over by a car, it doesn't help to run it back over him in the opposite direction"
Laws have supported the current norms in urban architecture for half a century. It is therefore the case that there are many more suburban homes and fewer city homes than the market would bear under a different regime. Changes to the regulatory situation would mean that a great deal of capital must be reallocated, and the costs will be absorbed by homeowners, i.e. innocent people. Urbanists must keep this in mind: what works in the long term will hurt in the transition.
Higher density would mean the costs would come down. The $350k house doesn't cost that much because it's 15 miles from downtown, but because it's the 225,000th (made up number) closest house to downtown.
Imagine you could miraculously cut 5 yards from the length of every city block. Your house would suddenly be a mile closer to downtown. But – assuming no reaction from the outside world – the competition for housing and the relative competitiveness of your house wouldn't change.
I think if you think about it it is obvious that tax revenues per square foot are going to be much higher for a many-story apartment complex than for a single-family home. Less than clear is who would be compelled by that information to move to a city center.
I am a bit surprised to see tax revenues for a Walmart are lower than even the home; it seems to me like that would be a more interesting angle to explore.
Well, that was written more to say that municipal governments should allow more apartment complexes, than to say you should move in to them.
That said, if you prefer your 2 acres far out of town, be aware that the bill for sprawl can come due in the worst possible ways. It's pretty nasty to find out that since your city hall couldn't afford to keep up with repairs on your sewer main, they didn't. It's especially bad to find out by a raw seweage backup in your cellar. Perhaps that would compel you?
And compact development produces on average about 10 times more tax revenue per acre.
So the author of this article is trying to sell this approach based on the "benefit" of tax revenue per acre? Is that (should that be) the primary goal of a city's design... to squeeze out as many tax dollars as possible from every square inch of space?
The main problem with compact development (my observation) is the HOA fees that tend to be baked into owning in one of these "compact" developments. These fees are very often ostentatious and do not map out to actual costs of building or maintaining shared infrastructure "compactly". And let's not even get into the pitfalls of CCRs that disallow pet ownership, fine members for paint colors, etc.
A city shouldn't strive to maximize tax revenue, but they should definitely strive to make sure the revenue is at least a few cents higher than the cost of maintaining the roads, water and sewer hookups, police & fire, et cetera.
For many cities it's simply a matter of selling a few parking lots to developers and letting them put up condo complexes. Old timers will scream and yell about the loss of parking, but those condos will mean the water mains get maintained on time.
HOAs enjoy all kinds of wild quasi-governmental powers without the same level of accountability as a real government; I think they're a tremendous downside to ownership in both condos and new developments.
Why would you live in a HOA controlled area? At least in the Pacific Northwest they are viewed as scum of the earth, and are not a common burden most people will encounter.
Except it doesn't... developers skip the urban infill for the burbs because the gross costs (entitlement fees) are way higher. Sure, it cost less per lot for urban infill when you only consider lot costs for sewer, water, etc (in-tract) but older municipalities are so fucked with decaying tax bases and overhead that they try to extract it all in taxes and fees (mellow-roos and in-lieus) that they make single family development cost-prohibitive anywhere but the outermost rural areas. To compare condo to single-family cost is just stupid: the cost of building multiple units is - only - justifiable when the prices are sufficiently high: in urban areas that are already built up. First world problems.
Eh, utilities aren't the main showstopper, zoning is. So much land in cities is zoned for 2 to 3 story single family detached homes, and upzoning it after homes are built on that land is hard to do, and its even harder to find a block that is all willing to sell to one developer. Hence why the edges of gullies and ravines become where high density buildings are built, since low density housing is very hard to uproot.
What this causes is more low density urban infill, which is much more destructive. Where one older home was before, 2 cheap as chips 3000sqft concreteboard boxes will be built as cheaply and quickly as possible. Builder errors like forgetting to put eaves on the house will be fixed by nailing an overhang on afterwards, only to leak 4 or 5 years down the line.
If high density development was easier in urban cores, there would be much less incentive to build shoddy detached housing. As it stands there is a ton of pent up demand, and tons of zoning to block development.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|9 years ago|reply
For example, the suburban house that I paid $350K for 15 miles away from downtown would cost a $1M if I wanted a similarly appointed condo in the city. And that excludes the additional taxes, building fees (which can be substantial), and parking costs.
[+] [-] thescriptkiddie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] et1337|9 years ago|reply
I've been reading a blog called McMansion Hell lately (highly highly recommended), and it has a great article detailing some of the pitfalls of large, affordable suburban homes [1].
[1] http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/150597521816/mcmansions-10...
[+] [-] cma|9 years ago|reply
Maybe you could get an even bigger house than your suburb one in a third world country for even cheaper.
[+] [-] scythe|9 years ago|reply
Laws have supported the current norms in urban architecture for half a century. It is therefore the case that there are many more suburban homes and fewer city homes than the market would bear under a different regime. Changes to the regulatory situation would mean that a great deal of capital must be reallocated, and the costs will be absorbed by homeowners, i.e. innocent people. Urbanists must keep this in mind: what works in the long term will hurt in the transition.
[+] [-] someguydave|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt4077|9 years ago|reply
Imagine you could miraculously cut 5 yards from the length of every city block. Your house would suddenly be a mile closer to downtown. But – assuming no reaction from the outside world – the competition for housing and the relative competitiveness of your house wouldn't change.
[+] [-] emodendroket|9 years ago|reply
I am a bit surprised to see tax revenues for a Walmart are lower than even the home; it seems to me like that would be a more interesting angle to explore.
[+] [-] ocschwar|9 years ago|reply
That said, if you prefer your 2 acres far out of town, be aware that the bill for sprawl can come due in the worst possible ways. It's pretty nasty to find out that since your city hall couldn't afford to keep up with repairs on your sewer main, they didn't. It's especially bad to find out by a raw seweage backup in your cellar. Perhaps that would compel you?
[+] [-] shawnee_|9 years ago|reply
So the author of this article is trying to sell this approach based on the "benefit" of tax revenue per acre? Is that (should that be) the primary goal of a city's design... to squeeze out as many tax dollars as possible from every square inch of space?
The main problem with compact development (my observation) is the HOA fees that tend to be baked into owning in one of these "compact" developments. These fees are very often ostentatious and do not map out to actual costs of building or maintaining shared infrastructure "compactly". And let's not even get into the pitfalls of CCRs that disallow pet ownership, fine members for paint colors, etc.
[+] [-] davidw|9 years ago|reply
http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
[+] [-] ocschwar|9 years ago|reply
For many cities it's simply a matter of selling a few parking lots to developers and letting them put up condo complexes. Old timers will scream and yell about the loss of parking, but those condos will mean the water mains get maintained on time.
[+] [-] emodendroket|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sxates|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trome|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sAuronas|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trome|9 years ago|reply
What this causes is more low density urban infill, which is much more destructive. Where one older home was before, 2 cheap as chips 3000sqft concreteboard boxes will be built as cheaply and quickly as possible. Builder errors like forgetting to put eaves on the house will be fixed by nailing an overhang on afterwards, only to leak 4 or 5 years down the line.
If high density development was easier in urban cores, there would be much less incentive to build shoddy detached housing. As it stands there is a ton of pent up demand, and tons of zoning to block development.