Construction being one of the easiest and most straightforward parts of the process says everything you need to know about why there is currently such a housing shortage
Yes, but the default takeaway is that it's zoning and messy politics that are the biggest barrier when (as the video correctly points out), there are so many other factors at play, all of which will turn out to be irrelevant anyways so long as the ROI and shareholder returns don't add up. It's easy to say we need more housing (duh), but the notion that if we just remove regulatory barriers that it's going to unleash the market (the basic YIMBY position) is so incredibly naïve.
@@mandrake4 If development fees and regulatory delays are reduced, the ROI immediately goes up since costs and investment horizon go down, making it so more projects can meet their return targets and thus break ground. There are many factors hindering development, so the easiest ones to reduce should be addressed.
@@GuillemDaFriend If it's really the case that a relatively "easy" hindrance has such an impact, why do you think the combined force of the private real estate industry has been so unable to break this barrier? To answer my own question, I don't think it's as big a barrier as people want to believe it is. The nature of capital markets and all of the non-regulatory stuff is way more important, but it's convenient to blame politics and red tape when something promising doesn't pencil out.
@@mandrake4Real Estate owners don't have an incentive to facilitale construction, that creates competition for their assets. Individuals homeowners don't have an incentive to facilitate construction, it reduces their houses value and adds to traffic. Developers don't decide the zoning and regulations of each municipality. Banks and investment funds can invest in other industries, they're not forced to spend time and resources fighting against municipal governments for one niche asset class to become more profitable. It's no chip off of their shoulder if housing becomes unaffordable, that means their real-estate holdings are more valuable than ever.
@@GuillemDaFriend Yes, exactly. You just perfectly described why private real estate will never solve the housing crisis, which is the default assumption I was responding to in the first place.
Not everybody has the means to own a property and 40% of Americans earn a low wage close to minimum wage of 7.25, but mostly less then 15 or 20 Dollars. Those Developments are not only for and rent some (more likely many because it makes more money) are to buy as a condo. Some Developers even only do single family homes either on large new cites or were a single lot is vacant.
I work I this industry and this is a great intro into the process. In general, the more predicable the process is, the more we can afford to pay for sites from locals and the less profit margin we need to consider a project viable. Honestly, real estate development isn’t that different than running a restaurant, you just “cook” and sell real estate instead of food.
I find myself watching your videos twice. Once on Nebula and once on TH-cam. They have so much information and reviewing it a 2nd time helps me rethink and apply the information to my city.
I watched this video on Nebula, but am commenting here for the algorithm. This was a fascinating dive into all the implications of developers’ incentives. Thanks for shining a spotlight on this under-considered aspect of cities.
[talking about concrete base, wood on top construction] "any sort of common urban apartment in your city is probably this type of building" ... if you live in the US
i would love a video comparing how real estate developments and local and more general governments split the responsibility of installing utilities in different countries. the netherlands, for example, seem to plan decades in advance, and plan with infrastructure such as transport links and school in place - but who pays and who builds? thank you
I'd been researching real estate development and developers a lot recently and it really bothers me to see so many people so vindictive about them and their role in the market. By and large, they are bound like string by the whims of NIMBYs and municipal legislation, are the riskiest ventures in the entire real estate industry, and work off of the impossibly thin margins of modern construction expectations. The fact that it's so common for people to dismiss them or outright call for their disbanding when they are the most critical element of housing is disheartening.
This phenomenon baffles me as well. People scream about housing unaffordability and shortages. And yet will oppose every new real estate project that's put on the table because "it's just greedy developers trying to make more money!"
NIMBYs shouldn't be a problem, local government could easily compile of list of the serial letter writers/phone callers who complain about everything, then blacklist them! I've seen two types of developers in my area: 1. Wanted the zone an entire large lot commercial, got told by the council "no, you have the build half of it houses first" then blocked when they went to build the second half commercial. Had the take the council to court, and won. Taken 10 years to get the traffic lights the developer was going to pay for if the original plans were approved. 2. Submitted plans to retain existing trees, and do some upmarket landscaping. Once approved, bulldozed the trees and put in cheap landscaping when was soon left the die. So yeah, there are good and bad developers, and sometimes the government/NIMBYs mess up plans of the wrong ones. I think the real problem is designing a community and designing a few roads with square plots of land are two different tasks, the former requires more time and money. The NIMBYs might complain less (think some have metal issues) if they got something they could use (shops, parks, community facilities), rather than just more urban sprawl.
@@station240 You've forgotten the geriatrics, who literally have nothing better to do (and losing the city they've supposedly lived their entire lives in is admittedly sympathetic).
Now I want a CityBeautiful boardgame... the mechanics wouldn't quite work as shown in the video but if you gave some thought to the game design that would be top tier merch!
Thank you @CityBeautiful for shedding light on a critical segment of the city building process that gets too little exposure. To go even further into the weeds, how about a video about how mixed use multifamily structures are permitted & built, given the single use zoning that dominates American city planning?
Having worked as a laborer and then operating engineer (aggregate materials recycling) it's hard to explain just how many cogs have to work properly in the process. I didn't appreciate it before these jobs.
Great video on a part of the process that often gets overlooked. As someone with several years of experience managing apartments both in SoCal and Seattle, I'd just like to adjust your baseline for the number of units that you need before getting full-time onsite management. I've worked with plenty of buildings in the 30-70 unit range that featured at least 1 FT manager and 1 FT Maintenance tech. Perhaps 150-200 units is where the tipping point lies between hiring a management company vs managing it yourself, but from about 30 units on up, that management company should ideally be hiring dedicated, full time staff for your property.
It should also be pointed out that researching what is and isn't allowed in a certain zoning district can be surprisingly difficult. It can even be difficult figuring out what the zoning classification is for any specific property. Cities and counties would do well to increase transparency here.
Wondering if there's a community that has tried streamlining according to voluntary building practices like LEED, IFLI, or Passivhaus. Something along the lines of "If you can hit LEED Gold certification, we'll green-light the project" or "if this is being built to Passivhaus standards, we'll exempt you from certain energy-based regulations". It would streamline the paperwork and give developers an incentive to build more sustainably.
Sure it would incentivize building more sustainably, so long as residents can be found who will pay for the increase in cost. LEED buildings cost more and are more complicated to design, yet your investors will still expect the same return on investment. If these factors increase the risk of the project then the required return will increase in kind. Sustainability standards and affordability standards are at odds with one another.
They may be currently but that's not a given in the future, if anything they will align. I would argue that while LEED buildings can be slightly more costly up front, they are almost always far cheaper to run due to the energy efficiency improvements. Creating a different financing model across tenants and investors that takes this into consideration would solve it in the short term. In the longer term, having to build more along these guidelines across a local area should lead to sharing of best practices in that specific area, dropping costs and making it more affordable to build anyway. that aligns with the lower operating costs to give you a much cheaper overall building.
5:27 in North America maybe. I know of exactly 1 wood frame multi family building in my city and that's a new trendy high rise. Everything else is concrete or bricks
I’m a big fan of your videos and love the nuances of the planning side of things. But as a land development engineer I find myself saying “but cities don’t typically build things” in response to a lot of your points (not as a criticism). I’m glad you’ve spent time to talk about the other side. The city sets the rules but the developers play the game and the engineer is their coach
Currently in the MRED+D program at Berkeley and how you describe everything is very informative!! We need more people wanting to create and build more opportunities 😄
Speaking about what could help construction I think the best decision is to just change zoning laws to allow more population density in the cities. Regarding the problem of required parking space I have a question: Can being near a public transportation station like a bus station or a subway station be a good reason to reduce the required parking space?
Transit-oriented development waiving minimum parking requirements is the only way it makes sense. Still enforcing the car-centric minimum parking requirements can kill TOD's success.
I guess this is part of the point, but what struck me as "unrealistic" here was the presence of an already suitably zoned plot, so no need for re-zonning. In my city at any rate, there are plenty of residential developers who want to build, but all the empty lots are either zoned for agriculture or some kind of comercial/business. Now the city is pretty cool with them putting mixed used in those commercial plots, but the developers are all residential specialists so either shy away or try to pull shenanigans were it's mixed use on paper, but not really.
@Jacksparrow4986 So far they aren't doing too poorly with the shenanigans. I think the question is whether the city will stand firm and stick to the comprehensive plan. Real estate developers make up the majority of political contributions to City Council.
Great video! This was really interesting. I have a question. I live in Pittsburgh and there are a lot of abandoned houses and empty lots where houses use to stand. What does it take for these left behind parcels to get developed?
i’m no expert, but i think a renewed interest in the urbanism of the rust belt will bring cities like pittsburgh, cleveland, and detroit back into the spotlight. those cities have good pre-car bones for hundreds of thousands more people. also they’re a great place to avoid climate change.
Rents or sales prices need to justify cost of new construction, and many of those markets aren’t there yet. Subsidies can also close the gap. The other part of it is that even if it is viable, developers usually want to “cook” as much as they can at once like a restaurant. So those who can make it work may see those individual lots as not worth their time.
Doesn't matter which city you are, if there are neighborhoods that have been mostly abandoned, the city needs to identify the cause (if not known already) and begin remediation. Is it crime or pollution? Is the area prone to flooding? They need to make the area attractive again. Banks and investors don't like risks, so the city may need to step up in some way to reduce that risk. Could be anything from providing loans directly or tax incentives.
@@JeffreyW67 Causes are pretty simple. People need mortgages to even afford buying a house. AAMOF, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage is now the standard instrument to afford a house in the USA; in spite of the program being a New Deal market intervention to stop so many people with predatorally low credit scores living on the streets. But, sooner or later, the house ceases to either: be financially viable to maintain materials like roofs/siding/etc by the tenants, or is simply not worth the effort due to lost value in the property because it is old. Then, like locusts, people move elsewhere as it is always cheaper to build housing on the edge of town than it is to maintain housing inside of town. Leaving 'blight' in its wake. The problem being...this is a markets-caused problem. And how does one fix this? No one has come up with an answer. Which is why the problem has been going on for decades with no real solution--other than outright gentrification. Calling in a developer to buy up the blighted lots to bulldoze them and rebuild them--into something locals who used to live there can never afford. Cutting taxes to even zero won't solve it, loans only help to people who can repay them and if the property is worth the effort--which leaves grants, and when a reno of just a bathroom will cost $15,000 each as a baseline there isn't enough money anywhere to afford that.
You forgot the solution where cities could take over as a developer for non-market housing and development of other projects necessary for the city but not appealing to organizations paid to be shortsighted
Great video. It really gives some good insight into what work a developer does even before a project becomes public knowledge. I would be very interested in hearing more about the difficulties that can arise between developers and cities. I have recently reviewed a proposed development where the developers wanted to bend a lot of the standards the city has in place in order to allow for more homes to be built. The project is still being studied before the city council votes on it but many worry about the precedent it could set. If the city is willing to waive some of its requirements for this development, what about others in the future.
I suppose that depends on whether the requirements are reasonable in the first place, or if they're nonsense that Dave has covered before like parking requirements or single family dwellings with no duplexes allowed.
I wonder how this process works for mixed use-buildings like often found in Europe. Does this require separate contractors for both sections or a contractor specialised in both? How does the bureaucracy handle the regulations for both uses? And so on.
With the explanation of 3 over 1 building, is it not allowed in your city to build the entire building out of concrete? I ask as European apartment buildings are concrete or bricked which I believe is what helps reduce noise from neighbors. Is it concrete building that cost prohibitive? As well as underground parking is common in new construction. Is that also not allowed due to utilities?
As you said, construction entirely of concrete is relatively cost prohibitive and actually has somewhat of a negative connotation in the states. You *can* see many concrete and especially brick apartments, but they’re associated with governmental housing projects and generally less affluent areas whereas 5 over 1s and the majority of new construct happens in… well not there. Underground parking is generally significantly more expensive and rarely useful for developers. Most developers are mandated to provide a certain number of lots for tenants+ a portion for non-tenants (let’s say, 1 spot for tenants plus .25 spots for non-tenants, so 1.25 spots per tenant.). Surface parking or parking garage structures are generally more economically viable and expedient than cutting-and-covering a chunk of land to turn into underground parking. The only areas where it *is* applicable are areas where space comes at a premium, either because it is expensive or because the land around the construction cannot be redeveloped for one reason or another so the development is constricted into a certain amount of space.
I was friends with a developer in Canada who builds large apartment buildings for rentals. I asked him if he ever did any market studies before starting a new project and he said no. If he is able to get the loans, he builds. I found it bizarre but he is very successful so I guess it works for him.
Rentals are a lot easier because you can just hold onto them until they're profitable, and depending on the market rents can be incredibly high. The reality is that apartment buildings are moderately cheap to build per unit compared to what it would cost to buy in it's own. Look into buying apartment buildings in your city for example. You'll find 20 unit apartment buildings for sale for like $5m-$6m which is super cheap per unit. If you rent all 20 at market rent, you're easily covering the mortgage (most commercial buildings require 40%-50% down payment) and utilities and maintenance can be covered too. Often tenants pay their own electricity, which if electric heat, saves you the owner a ton of money.
@@PSNDonutDude I guess this is where the expression "turning $10,000 into $12,000 is difficult, but turning $10 million into $12 million is inevitable" comes from.
I mean, have you read Canadian news? The media is doing the research for them; there is a housing crisis. No need to do much research beyond that and building in a growing city.
Market studies can mean very different things. Developers will boast that they know their local market but they still run the numbers. Banks won’t loan them the money if there wasn’t a reasonable due diligence performed
This really illustrates how inefficient and ridiculous the market system is, especially in regards to housing. So many people have to get their profit cut in this system, instead of the local government building housing as needed.
This can be really helpful as long as the local government has the money do to it. In some places likes AZ and NV a lot is getting build new, While in New york city even the Up take and maintance is expensive. That they aren't even able to renovated units which forces them to sell those. A huge issue is that rent have not keept up with costs for labour an Material like wood timber and installations like AC or heating, and new electric Installations.
Zoning codes with arbitrary height limits are so horrible for housing affordability. So you can only build a multifamily building on 10% of the land, and then within that 10% you can only build 4 stories? THIS is why there is a housing shortage. If the builder recognizes there is demand for 200 homes but the height limit caps that to 100 homes, then the city is denying homes to 100 families, which is just awful.
@@logans3365 Here are my three rebuttals to that: 1) All new housing is marketed as "luxury" it doesn't mean anything. An apartment costs less than a single-family house, so which one is the true "luxury" home? 2) If there are lots of apartments on the market, landlords need to lower prices to compete with each other. So the more housing that gets built, the lower the rent is. 3) New housing always costs more than old housing, all else equal. In 30 years those brand new apartments are going to be old and they will be very affordable. But we need to build NEW housing today in order to get more OLD (and cheap) housing in the future. The problem is that for the last 50 years we didn't build anything at all in a lot of places. That's why there's a shortage of cheap housing today.
@@mariusfacktor3597 there is a big difference between an apartment built as luxury, and an apartment built to house people as affordably as possible, the latter never gets done. Apartments should be sold not rented, another huge issue is greedy landlords holding onto properties and profiting off of them for decades. Idk about where you are, but here there is not a huge difference between new and old properties, they are both unaffordable, usually the older ones are built better anyway.
@@logans3365 The best way to get back at greedy landlords is to build more housing. Landlords raise prices when they have dozens of applicants vying for their vacancy. But if there are 600 other apartments on the market, then instead of applicants competing, landlords will need to compete. And the way landlords compete for tenants is by lowering prices.
It might not be as extrem but it is very difficult. Hight and lot coverage rules or often very strict because they require community involve to get changed. (Which rarely is granted).
Could you do a video about the housing policy of Singapore? It's something so completely different from how it's done in North America and I'd love to hear your take on it!
The point, ostensibly, is to make buildings more uniform in a given area--so that you don't end up with an odd eclectic mix of building styles. Setbacks and lot coverages and height requirements are all death by a thousand cuts that work together to make all of the USA's housing stock suburban blah and utterly soulless and unmemorable. Of course the fundamental point of Euclidean zoning ordinances was actually to make it so only rich people could build big (read nice) houses in a given place. Laws forbid making racist housing laws--but classist zoning laws like Euclid are fine because they're simply classist.
It's largely about reducing the building footprint for environmental concerns (i.e. you don't want to cover the whole parcel with impervious surfaces and mess up the stormwater management planning). Can also be a way to manipulate density in combination with floor space index/floor area ratio requirements. And then beyond that it can have to do with setbacks, neighbourhood character, etc
Coverage, setbacks, green space minimuns etc are used as ways of controling the shape, so to guarantee environmental aspects to the buildings and the public space surrounding - sun, shadow, ventilation, water drainage and so on. althought in reality it is a big more complex than just giving a % for all buildong types, functions and places :/
@@ZeroGravitas187Just... wow. The origin of zoning was to separate incompatible land uses -- Primarily, keeping housing away from smokestack industries.
@@colormedubious4747 This is partially true, but zoning in many instances had more to do with protecting property values rather than land use compatibility. You also have to factor in that Euclidean zoning in the States emerged alongside redlining, restrictive covenants, and real estate agents advising not to sell properties to black people in white neighbourhoods. A large part of zoning had to do with keeping undesirable people out of neighbourhoods, not just undesirable land uses
I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about a 3/1 or 4/1 building. 5/1 usually means it's Type V - Ordinary Construction over Type I - Non-Combustible Construction. The number of floors doesn't really matter. It's construction types that do matter.
This is correct. There's some confusion about this out there, mainly because a lot of these buildings end up being 5 Type V floors over 1 Type I floor because that's the max that pencils out without having to switch to all Type I high-rise construction. One additional wood frame floor wouldn't be approved in most places. Plenty of V over I buildings with fewer floors, but I've never heard 3/1 or 4/1 either. There are some V over I buildings with two floors of concrete (Type I) because of parking needs, and nobody would call them "5 over 2" buildings because Type II is something different.
along with private developers, there should be a well funded state or federal owned housing development company in the united states if we ever want to end the housing shortage. the profit motive alone won’t end homelessness.
@@idontknowwhatahandleisohwell i think you’re misunderstanding me. i think we need both non market and market rate housing at this point in time. ideally housing wouldn’t be a commodity and the state would build it, but we’re clearly nowhere near at that point in america
That may well be the most insane idea ever posted on any Urbanist's TH-cam channel. You're clearly a teenager who is totally unfamiliar with 20th Century American history. Federal government policies contributed to the total destruction of dozens of functional working-class neighborhoods in every major city in the nation. They created employment vacuums, lack of retail stores, and food deserts, and stacked impoverished people like firewood in massive, Brutalist housing projects that only succeeded in concentrating violent crime into superblocks of despair. Do you WANT another Cabrini-Green? Do you WANT another Pruitt-Igoe? Governmental meddling is how you get those horror shows. Snap out of it, kid.
I work for a construction company that mostly builds garden-style and podium-style apartments. Sometimes I'm tasked with doing ADA remediation work on poorly-designed pedestrian access features. I once asked a client, rhetorically I thought, why the sitework was designed so negligently, and he told me that there are companies that scout out potential sites for apartments, then use cheaply-done aerial topographic surveys to prepare a conceptual site plan. If a developer decides to proceed, they need to hire a civil engineer to tidy up the site plan including making sure it's ADA compliant, but often they don't see the benefit in doing that. As a result, I've seen parking areas with metal handrails between the sidewalk and the parking spaces, forcing tenants to walk in the roadway to reach their apartments, and I've built plenty of crosswalks that function as annoying speed bumps because the road design led to excessive cross slope on the sidewalks. So there's always something else to think about.
Developers should be forced(or rather enticed) to build schools and parks (and similar public amenities), especially those developers that buy up land in middle of nowhere just to add to the sprawl. Give them tax breaks and things like that but if developers are buying cheap land outside of cities, they should be building all the things that new community will needs (schools, stores, public spaces, sidewalks, possibly public transit, etc).
We need to take away responsibility from private property developers, not give them more. You can never trust someone who’s goal is profiting to do things in the best interest of the community. I don’t think anything inside city limits should be private development, it’s a space shared by everyone and so should be run by everyone.
@@logans3365 Completely disagree with you. Fully public owned land will never work unless you only segregate all rich people in one place to fund it with taxes.
@@yuriydee the poor pay more taxes than the rich. Why would funding be an issue? We haven’t lost any of the resources needed to build things, all the workers are still able bodied, it sounds like the only thing holding us back are greedy bastards who are butt hurt that they can’t exploit the process for personal gain.
City Beautiful should do a video on the roadblock/huddles skyscrapers face. It's tragic that these incredibly space efficient buildings are so heavily regulated and restricted throughout the world.
tbh in most cases I'd argue against that in favour of medium density development. the missing middle is often one of the bigger reasons things like mass transport, walkable cities and reduction of car traffic don't work out. I get the initial instinct behind your thoughts, skyscrapers just aren't always the ideal option and shouldn't be the first option either
I still think that until housing is removed from the profit cycle and treated more as the necessity it is, the over analyzing and cost drive up from investors grubby hands will still contribute to housing shortages.
Asking a real estate agent whether you should buy a home right now is like to asking an alcoholic whether they think you should have a drink lol. Homes in my neighborhood that cost around $450k in sales in 2019 are now going for $800 to $950k. Every seller in my neighborhood is currently making a $350k profit. Simply unreal. In all honesty, deflation is what we require. The only other option is for many people to go bankrupt, which would also be bad for the economy. That is the only way to return to normal.
Home prices will come down eventually, but for now; its best to offset some of your real estate investments and get into the financial markets or gold. The new mortgage rates are crazy, add to that the recession and the fact that mortgage guidelines are getting more difficult. Home prices will need to fall by a minimum of 40% (more like 50%) before the market normalizes. If you are in cross roads or need sincere advise on the best moves to take now its best you seek an independent advisor who knows about the financial markets
Personally, I can connect to that. When I began working with "Julie Anne Hoover," a fiduciary financial counsellor, my advantages were certain. In these circumstances, I would always advise getting professional help so they can steer you through choppy markets and just give you indicators and strategies for knowing when to enter and exit the market.
@@jeffery_Automotive I greatly appreciate it. I'm fortunate to have come upon your message because investing greatly fascinates me. I'll look Julie up and send her a message. You've truly motivated me. God's blessings on you.
Great video! I've been falling deeper and deeper into the urbanism rabbit hole, and the more I research the more I am disgusted by stuff like this where basic necessities like "housing" become "real estate" or something to speculate on and can only be a means to make money. Maybe I'm just naïve but I think there needs to be some sort of separation between church and sta- wait, I mean housing and corporations that seem to have their profit goggles glued to their faces, somehow showing them a world where anything is ok as long as the big man up top makes way too much money in the end.
Has anyone ever watched school of life video “how to build an attractive city” it’s the only city planning video the ever done so I suspect it was a recap of a book. I would appreciate it if someone could tell me that videos original source material so I could read it
Hi Elizabeth, I have also seen that school of life video and was interested in finding it's sources for a while. In line with other School of Life videos, the video was based on the narrator's perception of what an attractive city might look like based on philosophical ideals, and nothing really grounded in reality. School of Life is otherwise unrelated to city planning / real estate and generally focusses on selling its own philosophical material for profit. For more information about the ideal city, a book on the history of suburban development might interest you, as that space has long been filled with dreamers of "the perfect city."
If profit is your motive then you shouldn’t become a property developer. But if you are in it to provide quality affordable properties to those who need them then I wish you luck.
@@logans3365 thanks. I'm hoping to be able to contribute to walkable neighborhoods. Money will come regardless if you know what you are doing. I'm not worried about that.
This makes it pretty clear that the market, that is the private profit driven system we have, actively discourages building more housing, keeping it affordable, historic preservation, environmental considerations, and hiring union or pervailing wage labor. While cities should remove or reduce parking mins, lot requirements, and so on, they also need to become their own developers building social and public housing locally. They, like the for-profit companies they do it instead, can then collect the rent as additional revenue streams instead of just taxes and fees to further support rehabilitation, planned future development, other city services, all while keeping thats far more affordable because the profit motive no longer exists. They are looking to maintain and help the community, not become Bill Gates.
Appreciate you making this video. City planners and urbanists can legalize housing all they want, but we need a developer to come in and actually build it.
It's very simple. We need to let developers build without constraints on coverage ratios, parking minimums, and most importantly, let them build by-right, that is, not letting NIMBYs get in the way and delay the process for years.
I wish there was a lot more affordable housing that are ADA friendly. There are a lot of families out there that also take care of their elderly parents/grandparents with mobility issues or just have at least one disabled family member regardless of age. At least 1 in 10 families are in that situation. This number jumps higher for non-white population
Quite the opposite in my part of the world, huge estates of housing with hardly any local shops/businesses, all the businesses in the CBD and nearby suburbs. Huge long commutes between the housing workers can afford and the jobs, then business complain they can't get workers. Having said that, there is still a shortage of housing, developers are doing stupid things like building one street at a time, to keep supply low and prices high. Everything is too inefficient, and hence housing is too expensive.
@@gustavsorensen9301 I don’t believe in your God. If you think God will punish you for vulgarity feel free to abstain from using those words. But I have no interest in what you think your God wants me to say.
My favorite is developers that plan an amazing project but then hold it hostage until they get a government grant, and multi-year local tax incentives. If they don't get someone else to pay for it they're perfectly happy to sit on the empty urban lot. Or they turn it into a gravel parking lot instead when "negotiations fall through". Outside investors don't want to see anything other than luxury apartments. Government wants a mix of housing. Developers want to build whatever as long as someone else pays for it to be built. Healthy urbanism often falls out of focus during all of this.
From what I gathered developers will want to build the cheapest option that will make them the most money. If this comes out to "luxury housing", well then clearly there is a problem with the laws in that area or just not enough demand for cheap housing (and lol lets be real here there is always housing demand nowadays).
@@yuriydee what gets built is cheaply constructed but marketed as luxury. Most are wood framed construction. $3000 for 800sq ft apartments. Maybe 10% of the units are subsidized to meet government requirements. The haggling goes back and forth for a decade so by the end the buildings are massive and occupy whole city blocks, with half the area being private parking. They rarely improve or mesh with the neighborhood they're built in. Just feels like an isolated building with a moat of parking.
Basically, capitalist housing ensures near total dependency on the wealthiest people and institutions and their discretion of profitability and personal interest. And then developers build what's cheapest to charge the most to chase after what's trending in a market. And near the whole of our built environment comes from this gambling. How does anyone who's not wealthy support feudalism?
Borrowing money from all the investors makes development %40 more expensive than design and construction cost. That’s right. If the project costs $100M, only $60M goes to design and construction. The rest are ‘Soft Costs’. People ought to build Co-Op condos 🏬 if they want quality building at cost. Developers aren’t solution. If you worked with any of them, you know they are the problem.
Seems to me the city would be the first port of call. What land is available? Guess that is the European thing to do. The second thing: What is the city planning.
For all the whinging and whining planners do about the built environment and how evil developers are, it shocks me how few of them understand development or the fact that developers are the ones that actually make the built environment. When I was going through grad school (for urban planning), I took a real estate development course offered by the business school that was a pretty even mix of MBA students, architecture students, and planning students. The prof had what he called the Circle of Risks, a series of 15 things that could completely scuttle a development project (and if you made it to the end/beginning point of the circle you had a successful development and were in a position to start again on a new one). Of the 15 things in that circle, he made a point of highlighting the fact that there were *three* things of the 15 that planners had any influence over, and those didn't come up until 7, 8, and 9 in the circle. The places with planners that understand the whole development process and the potential pitfalls tend to be successful places. The ones that don't find themselves consistently passed over by developers as "hard to work with."
No problem, the developer can externalize that cost through free on-street parking which people will defend to their death because they have no parking on the lot ;)
Ok, now I will be waiting for this same video for poor countries, and with the "non-market" strategies too. In either case, developers dont look good as described here.
They are not good, in fact they make urban planning significantly harder because you have to cater to their whims. Ultimately they only serve to take from people by exploiting their basic needs.
Everything the government touches goes to shit (Education, housing, insurance) Imagine if we had to have food insurance for example, think about how expensive your food would be.
@@counterfit5 Yes, the history of the world is people learning from each other and putting their own spin on it. I guess that is why Americans typically eat their style of pizza with their hands.
So this is so funny. I follow your channel and I work in Urban Planning myself for a major US city. Well two weeks ago I quit my job and in two weeks I will be going back to school full time to get a masters in Real Estate Development! I keep telling people how I've realized that the people who get things done are the developers.
Unfortunately this is true, I’m getting into urban planning and was hoping to build a non profit property development company to aid my city planning. Don’t suppose you are interested in changing the world? Or at least one city before we die.
Dude, in-unit washer and dryer is a quality of life thing. Granite countertops is a wasteful show of money. Please don't combine the two in such a dismissive way.
The materials vary because areas of the country differ from another. A southern California home would need to be built differently from one located in Minnesota and would be different from that in Louisiana. You also have to factor in the local weather and potential weather hazards. Wood is an abundant resource in the US/Canada, so that is a common material. But brick, stone, concrete, and other materials are also used frequently -- just depends on where you are.
Construction being one of the easiest and most straightforward parts of the process says everything you need to know about why there is currently such a housing shortage
Yes, but the default takeaway is that it's zoning and messy politics that are the biggest barrier when (as the video correctly points out), there are so many other factors at play, all of which will turn out to be irrelevant anyways so long as the ROI and shareholder returns don't add up. It's easy to say we need more housing (duh), but the notion that if we just remove regulatory barriers that it's going to unleash the market (the basic YIMBY position) is so incredibly naïve.
@@mandrake4 If development fees and regulatory delays are reduced, the ROI immediately goes up since costs and investment horizon go down, making it so more projects can meet their return targets and thus break ground. There are many factors hindering development, so the easiest ones to reduce should be addressed.
@@GuillemDaFriend If it's really the case that a relatively "easy" hindrance has such an impact, why do you think the combined force of the private real estate industry has been so unable to break this barrier? To answer my own question, I don't think it's as big a barrier as people want to believe it is. The nature of capital markets and all of the non-regulatory stuff is way more important, but it's convenient to blame politics and red tape when something promising doesn't pencil out.
@@mandrake4Real Estate owners don't have an incentive to facilitale construction, that creates competition for their assets. Individuals homeowners don't have an incentive to facilitate construction, it reduces their houses value and adds to traffic.
Developers don't decide the zoning and regulations of each municipality. Banks and investment funds can invest in other industries, they're not forced to spend time and resources fighting against municipal governments for one niche asset class to become more profitable.
It's no chip off of their shoulder if housing becomes unaffordable, that means their real-estate holdings are more valuable than ever.
@@GuillemDaFriend Yes, exactly. You just perfectly described why private real estate will never solve the housing crisis, which is the default assumption I was responding to in the first place.
the fact you use a Monopoly board as a way to represent all this is super funny, given the game started as a critique of the rent system
Subsequently flopped, got acquired by Hasbro (MB?), and repackaged as the game we all know and hate today.
Typical American, he removed all the railroads!
@@nunyabidness3075as an American, that hurt, please send help
hyperreality
Not everybody has the means to own a property and 40% of Americans earn a low wage close to minimum wage of 7.25, but mostly less then 15 or 20 Dollars.
Those Developments are not only for and rent some (more likely many because it makes more money) are to buy as a condo.
Some Developers even only do single family homes either on large new cites or were a single lot is vacant.
I work I this industry and this is a great intro into the process. In general, the more predicable the process is, the more we can afford to pay for sites from locals and the less profit margin we need to consider a project viable.
Honestly, real estate development isn’t that different than running a restaurant, you just “cook” and sell real estate instead of food.
Actually, there are exactly zero similarities between real estate development and "running a restaurant."
As a planner working as a Real Estate Analyst, you did amazingly at explaining the process
As someone who is an expert in this field (I've got over 5k hours in cities skylines), you hit this right on the nail.
I almost lol’d at this
I find myself watching your videos twice. Once on Nebula and once on TH-cam. They have so much information and reviewing it a 2nd time helps me rethink and apply the information to my city.
CSL?
I watched this video on Nebula, but am commenting here for the algorithm. This was a fascinating dive into all the implications of developers’ incentives. Thanks for shining a spotlight on this under-considered aspect of cities.
[talking about concrete base, wood on top construction] "any sort of common urban apartment in your city is probably this type of building"
... if you live in the US
i would love a video comparing how real estate developments and local and more general governments split the responsibility of installing utilities in different countries. the netherlands, for example, seem to plan decades in advance, and plan with infrastructure such as transport links and school in place - but who pays and who builds? thank you
I'd been researching real estate development and developers a lot recently and it really bothers me to see so many people so vindictive about them and their role in the market. By and large, they are bound like string by the whims of NIMBYs and municipal legislation, are the riskiest ventures in the entire real estate industry, and work off of the impossibly thin margins of modern construction expectations. The fact that it's so common for people to dismiss them or outright call for their disbanding when they are the most critical element of housing is disheartening.
This phenomenon baffles me as well.
People scream about housing unaffordability and shortages. And yet will oppose every new real estate project that's put on the table because "it's just greedy developers trying to make more money!"
NIMBYs shouldn't be a problem, local government could easily compile of list of the serial letter writers/phone callers who complain about everything, then blacklist them!
I've seen two types of developers in my area:
1. Wanted the zone an entire large lot commercial, got told by the council "no, you have the build half of it houses first" then blocked when they went to build the second half commercial. Had the take the council to court, and won. Taken 10 years to get the traffic lights the developer was going to pay for if the original plans were approved.
2. Submitted plans to retain existing trees, and do some upmarket landscaping. Once approved, bulldozed the trees and put in cheap landscaping when was soon left the die.
So yeah, there are good and bad developers, and sometimes the government/NIMBYs mess up plans of the wrong ones.
I think the real problem is designing a community and designing a few roads with square plots of land are two different tasks, the former requires more time and money.
The NIMBYs might complain less (think some have metal issues) if they got something they could use (shops, parks, community facilities), rather than just more urban sprawl.
@@station240 You've forgotten the geriatrics, who literally have nothing better to do (and losing the city they've supposedly lived their entire lives in is admittedly sympathetic).
"I want more housing, and I want to make sure someone loses money building it!"
Now I want a CityBeautiful boardgame... the mechanics wouldn't quite work as shown in the video but if you gave some thought to the game design that would be top tier merch!
I love the board game. The space NIMBY's lose a turn is funny, and sad at the same time.
Thank you @CityBeautiful for shedding light on a critical segment of the city building process that gets too little exposure.
To go even further into the weeds, how about a video about how mixed use multifamily structures are permitted & built, given the single use zoning that dominates American city planning?
Having worked as a laborer and then operating engineer (aggregate materials recycling) it's hard to explain just how many cogs have to work properly in the process. I didn't appreciate it before these jobs.
Great video on a part of the process that often gets overlooked.
As someone with several years of experience managing apartments both in SoCal and Seattle, I'd just like to adjust your baseline for the number of units that you need before getting full-time onsite management. I've worked with plenty of buildings in the 30-70 unit range that featured at least 1 FT manager and 1 FT Maintenance tech.
Perhaps 150-200 units is where the tipping point lies between hiring a management company vs managing it yourself, but from about 30 units on up, that management company should ideally be hiring dedicated, full time staff for your property.
It should also be pointed out that researching what is and isn't allowed in a certain zoning district can be surprisingly difficult. It can even be difficult figuring out what the zoning classification is for any specific property. Cities and counties would do well to increase transparency here.
Wondering if there's a community that has tried streamlining according to voluntary building practices like LEED, IFLI, or Passivhaus. Something along the lines of "If you can hit LEED Gold certification, we'll green-light the project" or "if this is being built to Passivhaus standards, we'll exempt you from certain energy-based regulations". It would streamline the paperwork and give developers an incentive to build more sustainably.
Sure it would incentivize building more sustainably, so long as residents can be found who will pay for the increase in cost. LEED buildings cost more and are more complicated to design, yet your investors will still expect the same return on investment. If these factors increase the risk of the project then the required return will increase in kind. Sustainability standards and affordability standards are at odds with one another.
They may be currently but that's not a given in the future, if anything they will align. I would argue that while LEED buildings can be slightly more costly up front, they are almost always far cheaper to run due to the energy efficiency improvements. Creating a different financing model across tenants and investors that takes this into consideration would solve it in the short term.
In the longer term, having to build more along these guidelines across a local area should lead to sharing of best practices in that specific area, dropping costs and making it more affordable to build anyway. that aligns with the lower operating costs to give you a much cheaper overall building.
5:27 in North America maybe. I know of exactly 1 wood frame multi family building in my city and that's a new trendy high rise. Everything else is concrete or bricks
In the Southeastern US it’s the opposite almost every new apartment building is wood
I’m a big fan of your videos and love the nuances of the planning side of things. But as a land development engineer I find myself saying “but cities don’t typically build things” in response to a lot of your points (not as a criticism). I’m glad you’ve spent time to talk about the other side. The city sets the rules but the developers play the game and the engineer is their coach
Currently in the MRED+D program at Berkeley and how you describe everything is very informative!! We need more people wanting to create and build more opportunities 😄
Speaking about what could help construction I think the best decision is to just change zoning laws to allow more population density in the cities.
Regarding the problem of required parking space I have a question: Can being near a public transportation station like a bus station or a subway station be a good reason to reduce the required parking space?
Transit-oriented development waiving minimum parking requirements is the only way it makes sense. Still enforcing the car-centric minimum parking requirements can kill TOD's success.
I guess this is part of the point, but what struck me as "unrealistic" here was the presence of an already suitably zoned plot, so no need for re-zonning.
In my city at any rate, there are plenty of residential developers who want to build, but all the empty lots are either zoned for agriculture or some kind of comercial/business.
Now the city is pretty cool with them putting mixed used in those commercial plots, but the developers are all residential specialists so either shy away or try to pull shenanigans were it's mixed use on paper, but not really.
Sounds like those developers need to go with the flow or drown.
@Jacksparrow4986 So far they aren't doing too poorly with the shenanigans. I think the question is whether the city will stand firm and stick to the comprehensive plan. Real estate developers make up the majority of political contributions to City Council.
It's pretty cool that the city is pretty cool with mixed use, and pretty sad that the developers can't adapt.
We need a national program to build more high-density cities in every state.
Answer: Promote land value tax.
Maybe deforestation tax
Great video! This was really interesting. I have a question. I live in Pittsburgh and there are a lot of abandoned houses and empty lots where houses use to stand. What does it take for these left behind parcels to get developed?
i’m no expert, but i think a renewed interest in the urbanism of the rust belt will bring cities like pittsburgh, cleveland, and detroit back into the spotlight. those cities have good pre-car bones for hundreds of thousands more people. also they’re a great place to avoid climate change.
Rents or sales prices need to justify cost of new construction, and many of those markets aren’t there yet. Subsidies can also close the gap.
The other part of it is that even if it is viable, developers usually want to “cook” as much as they can at once like a restaurant. So those who can make it work may see those individual lots as not worth their time.
Doesn't matter which city you are, if there are neighborhoods that have been mostly abandoned, the city needs to identify the cause (if not known already) and begin remediation. Is it crime or pollution? Is the area prone to flooding? They need to make the area attractive again.
Banks and investors don't like risks, so the city may need to step up in some way to reduce that risk. Could be anything from providing loans directly or tax incentives.
@@JeffreyW67 Causes are pretty simple. People need mortgages to even afford buying a house. AAMOF, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage is now the standard instrument to afford a house in the USA; in spite of the program being a New Deal market intervention to stop so many people with predatorally low credit scores living on the streets. But, sooner or later, the house ceases to either: be financially viable to maintain materials like roofs/siding/etc by the tenants, or is simply not worth the effort due to lost value in the property because it is old. Then, like locusts, people move elsewhere as it is always cheaper to build housing on the edge of town than it is to maintain housing inside of town. Leaving 'blight' in its wake.
The problem being...this is a markets-caused problem. And how does one fix this? No one has come up with an answer. Which is why the problem has been going on for decades with no real solution--other than outright gentrification. Calling in a developer to buy up the blighted lots to bulldoze them and rebuild them--into something locals who used to live there can never afford. Cutting taxes to even zero won't solve it, loans only help to people who can repay them and if the property is worth the effort--which leaves grants, and when a reno of just a bathroom will cost $15,000 each as a baseline there isn't enough money anywhere to afford that.
@@JeffreyW67most of the rust belt had people leaving after various major industries move things to other states, move offshore, or close entirely
You forgot the solution where cities could take over as a developer for non-market housing and development of other projects necessary for the city but not appealing to organizations paid to be shortsighted
Great video. It really gives some good insight into what work a developer does even before a project becomes public knowledge. I would be very interested in hearing more about the difficulties that can arise between developers and cities.
I have recently reviewed a proposed development where the developers wanted to bend a lot of the standards the city has in place in order to allow for more homes to be built.
The project is still being studied before the city council votes on it but many worry about the precedent it could set. If the city is willing to waive some of its requirements for this development, what about others in the future.
I suppose that depends on whether the requirements are reasonable in the first place, or if they're nonsense that Dave has covered before like parking requirements or single family dwellings with no duplexes allowed.
As a builder of civilizations with many centuries of experience, I must say this video is on point.
I wonder how this process works for mixed use-buildings like often found in Europe. Does this require separate contractors for both sections or a contractor specialised in both? How does the bureaucracy handle the regulations for both uses? And so on.
With the explanation of 3 over 1 building, is it not allowed in your city to build the entire building out of concrete? I ask as European apartment buildings are concrete or bricked which I believe is what helps reduce noise from neighbors. Is it concrete building that cost prohibitive? As well as underground parking is common in new construction. Is that also not allowed due to utilities?
As you said, construction entirely of concrete is relatively cost prohibitive and actually has somewhat of a negative connotation in the states.
You *can* see many concrete and especially brick apartments, but they’re associated with governmental housing projects and generally less affluent areas whereas 5 over 1s and the majority of new construct happens in… well not there.
Underground parking is generally significantly more expensive and rarely useful for developers. Most developers are mandated to provide a certain number of lots for tenants+ a portion for non-tenants (let’s say, 1 spot for tenants plus .25 spots for non-tenants, so 1.25 spots per tenant.). Surface parking or parking garage structures are generally more economically viable and expedient than cutting-and-covering a chunk of land to turn into underground parking. The only areas where it *is* applicable are areas where space comes at a premium, either because it is expensive or because the land around the construction cannot be redeveloped for one reason or another so the development is constricted into a certain amount of space.
Building quality buildings is not the goal of property developers, profiting is, all we get in America is the bare minimum.
It is called 5 over 1 because it is the type or class of building.
5 meaning wood frames 1 meaning concrete base
I was friends with a developer in Canada who builds large apartment buildings for rentals. I asked him if he ever did any market studies before starting a new project and he said no. If he is able to get the loans, he builds.
I found it bizarre but he is very successful so I guess it works for him.
Rentals are a lot easier because you can just hold onto them until they're profitable, and depending on the market rents can be incredibly high. The reality is that apartment buildings are moderately cheap to build per unit compared to what it would cost to buy in it's own.
Look into buying apartment buildings in your city for example. You'll find 20 unit apartment buildings for sale for like $5m-$6m which is super cheap per unit. If you rent all 20 at market rent, you're easily covering the mortgage (most commercial buildings require 40%-50% down payment) and utilities and maintenance can be covered too. Often tenants pay their own electricity, which if electric heat, saves you the owner a ton of money.
@@PSNDonutDude I guess this is where the expression "turning $10,000 into $12,000 is difficult, but turning $10 million into $12 million is inevitable" comes from.
The banks and investors need to make their due diligence, so why redo whar they did? That's what I guesa he is thinking.
I mean, have you read Canadian news? The media is doing the research for them; there is a housing crisis. No need to do much research beyond that and building in a growing city.
Market studies can mean very different things. Developers will boast that they know their local market but they still run the numbers. Banks won’t loan them the money if there wasn’t a reasonable due diligence performed
This really illustrates how inefficient and ridiculous the market system is, especially in regards to housing. So many people have to get their profit cut in this system, instead of the local government building housing as needed.
+
This can be really helpful as long as the local government has the money do to it.
In some places likes AZ and NV a lot is getting build new,
While in New york city even the Up take and maintance is expensive. That they aren't even able to renovated units which forces them to sell those.
A huge issue is that rent have not keept up with costs for labour an Material like wood timber and installations like AC or heating, and new electric Installations.
Zoning codes with arbitrary height limits are so horrible for housing affordability. So you can only build a multifamily building on 10% of the land, and then within that 10% you can only build 4 stories? THIS is why there is a housing shortage. If the builder recognizes there is demand for 200 homes but the height limit caps that to 100 homes, then the city is denying homes to 100 families, which is just awful.
They would just build luxury apartments so they can make the most profit anyway. The systems screwed through and through.
@@logans3365 Here are my three rebuttals to that:
1) All new housing is marketed as "luxury" it doesn't mean anything. An apartment costs less than a single-family house, so which one is the true "luxury" home?
2) If there are lots of apartments on the market, landlords need to lower prices to compete with each other. So the more housing that gets built, the lower the rent is.
3) New housing always costs more than old housing, all else equal. In 30 years those brand new apartments are going to be old and they will be very affordable. But we need to build NEW housing today in order to get more OLD (and cheap) housing in the future. The problem is that for the last 50 years we didn't build anything at all in a lot of places. That's why there's a shortage of cheap housing today.
@@mariusfacktor3597 there is a big difference between an apartment built as luxury, and an apartment built to house people as affordably as possible, the latter never gets done.
Apartments should be sold not rented, another huge issue is greedy landlords holding onto properties and profiting off of them for decades.
Idk about where you are, but here there is not a huge difference between new and old properties, they are both unaffordable, usually the older ones are built better anyway.
@@logans3365 The best way to get back at greedy landlords is to build more housing. Landlords raise prices when they have dozens of applicants vying for their vacancy. But if there are 600 other apartments on the market, then instead of applicants competing, landlords will need to compete. And the way landlords compete for tenants is by lowering prices.
It might not be as extrem but it is very difficult.
Hight and lot coverage rules or often very strict because they require community involve to get changed. (Which rarely is granted).
Could you do a video about the housing policy of Singapore? It's something so completely different from how it's done in North America and I'd love to hear your take on it!
What exactly is the point of a building being limited in the percentage of the parcel it can physically cover? (4:06)
The point, ostensibly, is to make buildings more uniform in a given area--so that you don't end up with an odd eclectic mix of building styles. Setbacks and lot coverages and height requirements are all death by a thousand cuts that work together to make all of the USA's housing stock suburban blah and utterly soulless and unmemorable.
Of course the fundamental point of Euclidean zoning ordinances was actually to make it so only rich people could build big (read nice) houses in a given place. Laws forbid making racist housing laws--but classist zoning laws like Euclid are fine because they're simply classist.
It's largely about reducing the building footprint for environmental concerns (i.e. you don't want to cover the whole parcel with impervious surfaces and mess up the stormwater management planning). Can also be a way to manipulate density in combination with floor space index/floor area ratio requirements. And then beyond that it can have to do with setbacks, neighbourhood character, etc
Coverage, setbacks, green space minimuns etc are used as ways of controling the shape, so to guarantee environmental aspects to the buildings and the public space surrounding - sun, shadow, ventilation, water drainage and so on.
althought in reality it is a big more complex than just giving a % for all buildong types, functions and places :/
@@ZeroGravitas187Just... wow. The origin of zoning was to separate incompatible land uses -- Primarily, keeping housing away from smokestack industries.
@@colormedubious4747 This is partially true, but zoning in many instances had more to do with protecting property values rather than land use compatibility. You also have to factor in that Euclidean zoning in the States emerged alongside redlining, restrictive covenants, and real estate agents advising not to sell properties to black people in white neighbourhoods. A large part of zoning had to do with keeping undesirable people out of neighbourhoods, not just undesirable land uses
I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about a 3/1 or 4/1 building. 5/1 usually means it's Type V - Ordinary Construction over Type I - Non-Combustible Construction. The number of floors doesn't really matter. It's construction types that do matter.
This is correct. There's some confusion about this out there, mainly because a lot of these buildings end up being 5 Type V floors over 1 Type I floor because that's the max that pencils out without having to switch to all Type I high-rise construction. One additional wood frame floor wouldn't be approved in most places. Plenty of V over I buildings with fewer floors, but I've never heard 3/1 or 4/1 either.
There are some V over I buildings with two floors of concrete (Type I) because of parking needs, and nobody would call them "5 over 2" buildings because Type II is something different.
Yeah that's correct.
I was shocked and disappointed too by what he said.
This video was so helpful! Probably not getting the attention it deserves but long term, it will be a great teaching tool
along with private developers, there should be a well funded state or federal owned housing development company in the united states if we ever want to end the housing shortage. the profit motive alone won’t end homelessness.
repealing the faircloth amendment would be a good start
it's almost like you didn't even watch the video
oh yea nothing fixes a government created problem like more gov lol
@@idontknowwhatahandleisohwell i think you’re misunderstanding me. i think we need both non market and market rate housing at this point in time. ideally housing wouldn’t be a commodity and the state would build it, but we’re clearly nowhere near at that point in america
That may well be the most insane idea ever posted on any Urbanist's TH-cam channel. You're clearly a teenager who is totally unfamiliar with 20th Century American history. Federal government policies contributed to the total destruction of dozens of functional working-class neighborhoods in every major city in the nation. They created employment vacuums, lack of retail stores, and food deserts, and stacked impoverished people like firewood in massive, Brutalist housing projects that only succeeded in concentrating violent crime into superblocks of despair. Do you WANT another Cabrini-Green? Do you WANT another Pruitt-Igoe? Governmental meddling is how you get those horror shows. Snap out of it, kid.
Wow, what a solid explanation of a complex process. Great video
City planning: *exists*
India: We don't do that here
I work for a construction company that mostly builds garden-style and podium-style apartments. Sometimes I'm tasked with doing ADA remediation work on poorly-designed pedestrian access features. I once asked a client, rhetorically I thought, why the sitework was designed so negligently, and he told me that there are companies that scout out potential sites for apartments, then use cheaply-done aerial topographic surveys to prepare a conceptual site plan. If a developer decides to proceed, they need to hire a civil engineer to tidy up the site plan including making sure it's ADA compliant, but often they don't see the benefit in doing that. As a result, I've seen parking areas with metal handrails between the sidewalk and the parking spaces, forcing tenants to walk in the roadway to reach their apartments, and I've built plenty of crosswalks that function as annoying speed bumps because the road design led to excessive cross slope on the sidewalks.
So there's always something else to think about.
This is probably the most important video you’ve done.
Agreed
7:34 Lol at the stock footage of the contractor dropping his square 😅
just one more lane
One more lane will fix the traffic.
Just one more
Developers should be forced(or rather enticed) to build schools and parks (and similar public amenities), especially those developers that buy up land in middle of nowhere just to add to the sprawl. Give them tax breaks and things like that but if developers are buying cheap land outside of cities, they should be building all the things that new community will needs (schools, stores, public spaces, sidewalks, possibly public transit, etc).
We need to take away responsibility from private property developers, not give them more.
You can never trust someone who’s goal is profiting to do things in the best interest of the community.
I don’t think anything inside city limits should be private development, it’s a space shared by everyone and so should be run by everyone.
@@logans3365 Completely disagree with you. Fully public owned land will never work unless you only segregate all rich people in one place to fund it with taxes.
@@yuriydee the poor pay more taxes than the rich.
Why would funding be an issue? We haven’t lost any of the resources needed to build things, all the workers are still able bodied, it sounds like the only thing holding us back are greedy bastards who are butt hurt that they can’t exploit the process for personal gain.
I thought they were called "5 over 1" because wood frame construction is type 5.
City Beautiful should do a video on the roadblock/huddles skyscrapers face. It's tragic that these incredibly space efficient buildings are so heavily regulated and restricted throughout the world.
tbh in most cases I'd argue against that in favour of medium density development. the missing middle is often one of the bigger reasons things like mass transport, walkable cities and reduction of car traffic don't work out.
I get the initial instinct behind your thoughts, skyscrapers just aren't always the ideal option and shouldn't be the first option either
The idea and execution of the monopoly board were fantastic 🎉
Where do I get that Real Estate version of Monopoly?
Great video! Though concise, the concepts and process is clear.
I still think that until housing is removed from the profit cycle and treated more as the necessity it is, the over analyzing and cost drive up from investors grubby hands will still contribute to housing shortages.
Love this channel ❤
Asking a real estate agent whether you should buy a home right now is like to asking an alcoholic whether they think you should have a drink lol. Homes in my neighborhood that cost around $450k in sales in 2019 are now going for $800 to $950k. Every seller in my neighborhood is currently making a $350k profit. Simply unreal. In all honesty, deflation is what we require. The only other option is for many people to go bankrupt, which would also be bad for the economy. That is the only way to return to normal.
Home prices will come down eventually, but for now; its best to offset some of your real estate investments and get into the financial markets or gold. The new mortgage rates are crazy, add to that the recession and the fact that mortgage guidelines are getting more difficult. Home prices will need to fall by a minimum of 40% (more like 50%) before the market normalizes. If you are in cross roads or need sincere advise on the best moves to take now its best you seek an independent advisor who knows about the financial markets
Personally, I can connect to that. When I began working with "Julie Anne Hoover," a fiduciary financial counsellor, my advantages were certain. In these circumstances, I would always advise getting professional help so they can steer you through choppy markets and just give you indicators and strategies for knowing when to enter and exit the market.
@@jeffery_Automotive How can I reach this adviser of yours? because I'm seeking for a more effective investment approach on my savings
Julie Anne Hoover maintains an online presence that can be easily found through a simple search of her name on the internet.
@@jeffery_Automotive I greatly appreciate it. I'm fortunate to have come upon your message because investing greatly fascinates me. I'll look Julie up and send her a message. You've truly motivated me. God's blessings on you.
6:12 lit footage
Great video! I've been falling deeper and deeper into the urbanism rabbit hole, and the more I research the more I am disgusted by stuff like this where basic necessities like "housing" become "real estate" or something to speculate on and can only be a means to make money.
Maybe I'm just naïve but I think there needs to be some sort of separation between church and sta- wait, I mean housing and corporations that seem to have their profit goggles glued to their faces, somehow showing them a world where anything is ok as long as the big man up top makes way too much money in the end.
Has anyone ever watched school of life video “how to build an attractive city” it’s the only city planning video the ever done so I suspect it was a recap of a book. I would appreciate it if someone could tell me that videos original source material so I could read it
Hi Elizabeth, I have also seen that school of life video and was interested in finding it's sources for a while. In line with other School of Life videos, the video was based on the narrator's perception of what an attractive city might look like based on philosophical ideals, and nothing really grounded in reality. School of Life is otherwise unrelated to city planning / real estate and generally focusses on selling its own philosophical material for profit. For more information about the ideal city, a book on the history of suburban development might interest you, as that space has long been filled with dreamers of "the perfect city."
I want this City Beautiful version of Monopoly now
Im hoping to become a developer one day. Im just starting my real estate career.
If profit is your motive then you shouldn’t become a property developer. But if you are in it to provide quality affordable properties to those who need them then I wish you luck.
@@logans3365 thanks. I'm hoping to be able to contribute to walkable neighborhoods. Money will come regardless if you know what you are doing. I'm not worried about that.
This is awesome - thank you!!!
I need a Kickstarter campaign to make this CityBeautiful board game a reality. Or even CB-themed Monopoly!
I think he should sell a poster that explains the same thing as this video.
I'd buy it!
@@deanc9453 Yes!!!
I see the conjoined triangles of success!
This makes it pretty clear that the market, that is the private profit driven system we have, actively discourages building more housing, keeping it affordable, historic preservation, environmental considerations, and hiring union or pervailing wage labor. While cities should remove or reduce parking mins, lot requirements, and so on, they also need to become their own developers building social and public housing locally. They, like the for-profit companies they do it instead, can then collect the rent as additional revenue streams instead of just taxes and fees to further support rehabilitation, planned future development, other city services, all while keeping thats far more affordable because the profit motive no longer exists. They are looking to maintain and help the community, not become Bill Gates.
I like vacant lots
Appreciate you making this video. City planners and urbanists can legalize housing all they want, but we need a developer to come in and actually build it.
but can i buy the city beautiful city planning game?
Great visuals with the board game
Reminds me of not just bikes pickup truck video except I fear this is not a joke?
This video is a very good way to convince those in San Luis Obispo to agree to add a multi-family development.
I hope it happens 😀
It's very simple. We need to let developers build without constraints on coverage ratios, parking minimums, and most importantly, let them build by-right, that is, not letting NIMBYs get in the way and delay the process for years.
Parks and Rec! "You just got jammed!"
I wish there was a lot more affordable housing that are ADA friendly. There are a lot of families out there that also take care of their elderly parents/grandparents with mobility issues or just have at least one disabled family member regardless of age. At least 1 in 10 families are in that situation. This number jumps higher for non-white population
Ha, SLO. I was just there last weekend trying to convince my wife we should move there . . . .
In before the HOA decides to regulate my gardens.
Excellent explanation
"A city of quite a few jobs, but not enough housing" could be the fucking state motto!
God doesn’t like it when people curse
Quite the opposite in my part of the world, huge estates of housing with hardly any local shops/businesses, all the businesses in the CBD and nearby suburbs. Huge long commutes between the housing workers can afford and the jobs, then business complain they can't get workers.
Having said that, there is still a shortage of housing, developers are doing stupid things like building one street at a time, to keep supply low and prices high.
Everything is too inefficient, and hence housing is too expensive.
@@gustavsorensen9301 I don’t believe in your God. If you think God will punish you for vulgarity feel free to abstain from using those words. But I have no interest in what you think your God wants me to say.
Well, here there are not enough jobs or housing! So consider your self luck.
The profit model is preventing the generation of affordable housing. Austria, Vienna’s Social Housing Model is what governments should be enacting.
My favorite is developers that plan an amazing project but then hold it hostage until they get a government grant, and multi-year local tax incentives. If they don't get someone else to pay for it they're perfectly happy to sit on the empty urban lot. Or they turn it into a gravel parking lot instead when "negotiations fall through". Outside investors don't want to see anything other than luxury apartments. Government wants a mix of housing. Developers want to build whatever as long as someone else pays for it to be built. Healthy urbanism often falls out of focus during all of this.
From what I gathered developers will want to build the cheapest option that will make them the most money. If this comes out to "luxury housing", well then clearly there is a problem with the laws in that area or just not enough demand for cheap housing (and lol lets be real here there is always housing demand nowadays).
@@yuriydee what gets built is cheaply constructed but marketed as luxury. Most are wood framed construction. $3000 for 800sq ft apartments. Maybe 10% of the units are subsidized to meet government requirements. The haggling goes back and forth for a decade so by the end the buildings are massive and occupy whole city blocks, with half the area being private parking. They rarely improve or mesh with the neighborhood they're built in. Just feels like an isolated building with a moat of parking.
Basically, capitalist housing ensures near total dependency on the wealthiest people and institutions and their discretion of profitability and personal interest. And then developers build what's cheapest to charge the most to chase after what's trending in a market. And near the whole of our built environment comes from this gambling. How does anyone who's not wealthy support feudalism?
the 🐐
Any developers want to comment on how planning can make this process hard?
THANK YOU FOR ACKNOWLEDGING
WE BUILT THIS CITY
ON ROCK AND ROLL
Borrowing money from all the investors makes development %40 more expensive than design and construction cost. That’s right. If the project costs $100M, only $60M goes to design and construction. The rest are ‘Soft Costs’. People ought to build Co-Op condos 🏬 if they want quality building at cost. Developers aren’t solution. If you worked with any of them, you know they are the problem.
Seems to me the city would be the first port of call. What land is available? Guess that is the European thing to do. The second thing: What is the city planning.
For all the whinging and whining planners do about the built environment and how evil developers are, it shocks me how few of them understand development or the fact that developers are the ones that actually make the built environment.
When I was going through grad school (for urban planning), I took a real estate development course offered by the business school that was a pretty even mix of MBA students, architecture students, and planning students. The prof had what he called the Circle of Risks, a series of 15 things that could completely scuttle a development project (and if you made it to the end/beginning point of the circle you had a successful development and were in a position to start again on a new one). Of the 15 things in that circle, he made a point of highlighting the fact that there were *three* things of the 15 that planners had any influence over, and those didn't come up until 7, 8, and 9 in the circle.
The places with planners that understand the whole development process and the potential pitfalls tend to be successful places. The ones that don't find themselves consistently passed over by developers as "hard to work with."
This entire video just reaffirms my belief that capitalism will never be able to (or even want to) solve the housing crisis
But what about the parking?? 🥴
No problem, the developer can externalize that cost through free on-street parking which people will defend to their death because they have no parking on the lot ;)
This is a really cool video! I'd love to see more like this!
Ok, now I will be waiting for this same video for poor countries, and with the "non-market" strategies too. In either case, developers dont look good as described here.
They are not good, in fact they make urban planning significantly harder because you have to cater to their whims.
Ultimately they only serve to take from people by exploiting their basic needs.
Do not like seamless transition into the ad at the end. It's actually jarring to realize suddenly that the content of the video is over.
Didn’t know that there are 3-story buildings made from wood in the US
You cannot let developers decide parking limits. You will end up parking at Walmart and walking home
Everything the government touches goes to shit (Education, housing, insurance) Imagine if we had to have food insurance for example, think about how expensive your food would be.
I like the idea of a board game.
Pizza with a fork?
Snickers with a fork = classy
That’s how Italians eat pizza in Naples - the people that invented the pizza. 😀
@@barryrobbins7694they sto-, er, *borrowed* it from Greece anyway
@@counterfit5 Yes, the history of the world is people learning from each other and putting their own spin on it. I guess that is why Americans typically eat their style of pizza with their hands.
why would you want connections to brokers? they're broke...yuck
So this is so funny. I follow your channel and I work in Urban Planning myself for a major US city. Well two weeks ago I quit my job and in two weeks I will be going back to school full time to get a masters in Real Estate Development! I keep telling people how I've realized that the people who get things done are the developers.
Unfortunately this is true, I’m getting into urban planning and was hoping to build a non profit property development company to aid my city planning.
Don’t suppose you are interested in changing the world? Or at least one city before we die.
@@logans3365 may I ask, what city do you live in?
Dude, in-unit washer and dryer is a quality of life thing. Granite countertops is a wasteful show of money. Please don't combine the two in such a dismissive way.
I am baffled the kinds of materials American buildings can be made out of and that be considered up to code
Do you mean wood?
@@christophertaylor87 American homes are of lower quality compared to other developed nations like Germany, this is due to a variety of factors.
The materials vary because areas of the country differ from another. A southern California home would need to be built differently from one located in Minnesota and would be different from that in Louisiana. You also have to factor in the local weather and potential weather hazards. Wood is an abundant resource in the US/Canada, so that is a common material. But brick, stone, concrete, and other materials are also used frequently -- just depends on where you are.
What's wrong with wood? It works for hundreds of year old trees.
Who wants their city developed like a Monopoly game? Not me.
Why does government throw so many obstacles in the way
Public employee cartels?
inb4 they redact 6:12 lol