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Andrew Burleson's avatar

It seems like the cap on house size is also a salient feature for Durham’s reform, but the effects of that are hard to guess. I feel pretty sure that if there wasn’t the 800/1250 sf cap you’d see larger townhomes going on those lots, because those would maximize builder returns — the small lots would still make them cost competitive with similar sized houses on larger lots.

Suppose a developer has an option on an acre … what does the math look like? I feel like the scenario model of “more lots but with house sizes” vs “fewer lots but with uncapped house size” is pretty interesting — how do you decide which pencils better?

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Aaron Lubeck's avatar

Indeed. People are doing this math all the time in Durham. It's rarely about maximizing dollars and is often driven by other factors.

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Ryan Kreager's avatar

I'm a little confused by the numbers here. In the first section, you argue that starter home production has collapsed, showing that the sub-200k market is tiny compared to 20 years ago. However, the zillow screenshot for new construction shows only 300k+ prices.

Am I missing something? Aren't these homes still unaffordable, just on smaller lots?

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Aaron Lubeck's avatar

Well, Durham (from which the screenshot is from) is one of the few booming cities still delivering new detached urban housing at those price points, which is remarkable. Peer cities aren't delivering any, and Durham has the small lot code. So there is a correlation.

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Ryan Kreager's avatar

Makes sense, thank you for the clarification! I would love to see more small lot homes here in South Bend, Indiana. The city has experimented with them in the past, mainly after tearing down abandoned homes, but nothing at scale.

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Aaron Lubeck's avatar

I was just there two weeks ago. I was impressed with some of the incremental infill!

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Lotline's avatar

Couldn't agree more.

An interesting phenomenon in Toronto and the surrounding suburbs is that one is more likely to find an affordable detached house in the downtown core.

Speaking relatively of course. Any "relatively affordable" detached house in the Greater Toronto Area will still cost around $1mil CAD. Sometimes you can find sub $1m houses in Toronto. But in the suburbs, basically impossible.

A big part of this is because Toronto has more pre-sprawl small lots and houses. And another part of it is the age and condition of the houses.

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