I was wrong. There is a property that satisfies the challenge to find a lot that had been or could conceivably be purchased for (around) $900K and converted to two $1.7 million “luxury” condos: 23 White Ave. Spoiler alert: the example proves that the candidate raising the concern ignores or fails to comprehend the larger point.
To refresh, a candidate’s web site (and a mailer) include their opposition to more multi-family zoning in Newton. Specifically, they write:
A developer buys a $900,000 home, tears it down, and replaces it with two luxury townhouses that sell for $1.7 million each. This is already happening in our city, and would happen even more frequently under a proposal being considered by the City Council to eliminate single family zoning within ½ mile of an MBTA station. This proposal is unacceptable as it will reduce our inventory of affordable homes and create more expensive homes.
I wrote that I thought a developer buying a lot for $900K and turning it into two $1.7 million condos was unlikely to impossible and challenged readers to find a property where that was conceivably true. A reader pointed to a house up the street from me to show me that I was wrong (but not on what matters). Also, technically it doesn’t meet the “[t]his is already happening” criterion.
23 White Ave., before 2020
At the end of 2019, the current owners bought 23 White Ave. for $940,000, a premium of more than $120K over assessed at the time. Close enough to the candidate’s $900K example to qualify for the find-a-lot challenge. The property is 15,290 sq. ft. in an SR3, so the applicable FAR is .38, which yields an allowable building size of 5,805 sq. ft. Call it 6,000 sq. ft. with possible bonuses.
One could easily imagine two 3,000 sq. ft. or nearly 3,000 sq. ft. condominiums on the site. And, based on what’s on the market, $1.7 million per condo is a reasonable estimate for a 3,000 sq. ft. condo. So, it is a lot that likely meets the candidate’s criteria, if the zoning were changed to allow multi-family.
I’d suggest some caution drawing too broad conclusions from this lot. A 15,000+ sq. ft. lot is a lot of lot for under $1 million. The previous owner might (should?) have been able to do better. The purchase price might reflect there are some grade and water table issues that require some engineering to solve and make this a risky lot for development.
23 White Ave., now
23 White Ave. listing
Whether or not this is a widely applicable example, it is absolutely not a story of affordable housing. At $940K, it wasn’t an affordable home. Had it been zoned multi-residence, we might have gotten two luxury condos. Instead, construction is well underway on a 5,800 sq. ft. home, that is on the market for $4.295 million! If it gets that price, which I seriously doubt, it will be worth more than $2 million more than any home within blocks (on this side of Route 9). Something more reasonable and it will probably still be at least a million more than all but a handful of homes in the neighborhood.
Regardless of the sanity of the asking price, it’s a nearly 6,000 sq. ft. home. Multi-family zoning is not what’s preventing this lot from being preserved as naturally affordable.
Opponents of more multi-family housing — or at least opponents of making multi-family housing legal in significantly more of Newton — will argue, one imagines, that they don’t just want to prevent two luxury condos on sites like this, they also want to prevent the current, 5,800 sq. ft., $4.2 million, seven-bedroom, seven-and-a-half bath outcome, too. They promise to more strictly regulate single-residence districts to prevent a “naturally affordable” home from being torn down and replaced with a home that’s twice the size of nearly all the other homes in the neighborhood. Fine. But, if opponents of more multi-family housing have a plan and the legislative wherewithal to strictly regulate the development of single-family homes, they are capable of allowing and strictly regulating the development of multi-family homes.
You can’t both promise to reduce or eliminate the teardown-to-McMansion/McMinium cycle and also raise the spectre of gigantic condos spreading like wildfire if we expand multi-family housing in Newton.
I have one that is close, but also old. In 2013, 1615 Centre Street was purchased for $745K. It’s a great location near the corner of Centre and Walnut (though a little traffic-y). It was developed into 2 units which were each sold for about $1.3-1.4M each. Again – the exception that proves the rule (and doesn’t even meet your criteria).
There was a small house on Webster Street that sold for only $400,000 in 2018. In its place went a two family home that barely fits in the yard with each unit being over 3000 sq feet. This would have been a nice location for a triple decker! As you know, I love triple deckers.
Joshua,
The town homes you mention are worthy contenders. Both over 3,500 sq. ft., though they originally sold for $1.1 and 1.3 million. I think they aren’t quite as extreme as the candidate’s example, but it is striking how much more the town homes are, combined, then the original house.
It also illustrates, for me, the folly of preserving single-family homes for the sake of preserving single-family homes. If people are willing to pay over $1 million for a condo, it suggests that the market no longer thinks your own detached home with a yard is a fundamental necessity of home ownership.
MMQC,
Please share the house number, if you go by soon.
I have a contender, I think. I live near a single family home that is on a 15,000 sq foot lot. It was sold to a developer for $850,000 and there is plenty of room, if not for the single home zoning, for at least 2 luxury condos.
So far, nothing in these 2 related posts gives any evidence that allowing N-family housing will provide affordable housing. In fact, just the opposite.
I live in R3. If the whole town becomes R3 it’s ok with me. But it won’t do diddley/squat to create affordable housing.
It seems the point of the posts was to call out a potentially exaggerated set of numbers by a candidate. As if that’s news.
Greg, can you come back and run this site? It wasn’t nearly as monotone when you ran it.
Good find that shows how warped the housing market has become. With different zoning the same ~6,000 sqft of living space could be 4x~1500 sqft homes (maybe rowhouses, or a 3decker with ADU). 1500 sqft is about the square footage of the mythical naturally affordable single family homes where I live in West Newton and have been selling in the the $800-900k range.
Every one of these new giant houses that gets built is fuel for the climate crisis. How much energy do you think the new owners will use cooling and heating that much space. Residential buildings are the single largest cause of Greenhouse Gasses in Newton (35%*), and single family homes use more energy on a per-sqft and per-unit basis. How are we ever going to get to net-zero by 2050 if this is what our new construction looks like?
* see figure 8 in the newton climate action plan: https://www.newtonma.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/39649/637335412898900000
Rick:
Absent the larger projects with the affordable set-asides, the only way truly affordable housing will be built in Newton is very small projects using large local/state/federal subsidies (the CAN-DO model) or opportunities like the Armory property on Washington street where the land is already owned the the City or gifted to the city.
More supply in Newton when our neighboring communities limit supply doesn’t do that much for affordability. You can’t have this discussion in an honest way and not admit that. Prices are just going up too fast and limits on size, teardowns, or additions won’t have much affect. It might damper some of the prices, but it won’t make Newton affordable, absent other subsidies. 4 bedrooms homes are going for 2 million to 3 million. 15 years ago they were going for 1 million. One city’s policy can’t counteract that.
And to be honest, the folks who push “natural affordable” aren’t being honest either for the same reason. Even with teardown restrictions or limits on size, it is rare for these natural affordable homes to sell and be maintained as such, absent a deed restriction. Folks upgrade kitchens and baths, and then the house resells to market, or rerents at market. When rents are as high as they are, and sales are as high as they are, natural affordable will be drastically reduced in 20 years. No matter what you do or legislate. On my street there used to be around 30% older homes or less desirable homes (smaller lots, older kitchens and baths). Every house on my street except for 2 have now upgraded kitchens/baths, put on a small addition, and/or redone their outside area. Many have doubled in value. One of the last holdouts just sold to a developer, who isn’t tearing it down, just doing a simple expansion up a level I’m told. It still sold for close to a million.
Not sure where that leaves us, but the above is how I view where we are.
Sir Figgie,
A typical (for you) thoughtful, well-reasoned comment.
A few quibbles:
* We’ve got to be precise about what we mean by “affordable.” I know of no housing advocate who thinks that simply adding multi-family housing in Newton is going to create housing that is affordable to households who would otherwise qualify for subsidies. You’ve correctly identified the tools to do that. Many of us believe, however, that adding smaller (800 to 1,500 sq. ft.) units in multi-family homes will create housing that is more affordable to folks who would like to move to Newton, do not qualify for subsidies, and would otherwise be priced out of Newton. You are correct that, ultimately, if Newton and the rest of the region don’t add housing to keep up with demand, even those units will become pricy. See, Palo Alto, CA.
* You are right that Newton, as a single municipality, has limited impact on what is ultimately a regional problem, but that shouldn’t constrain us from doing what we should. Other communities, like Watertown and Boston, are adding much more housing — proportionally — than we are. And, with any luck, our adding housing will help get the other foot draggers moving. Doing nothing more than we’re doing now should not be on the table as an option.
With those small, friendly amendments, I couldn’t have said it better (and I keep trying to).
Newton’s self prescribed housing advocates are great at talking about how much more housing needs to be built; how much denser our communities need to be…
… from their $1m+, 4+ bedroom single family homes, in single family zoned neighborhoods, and 2+, non-electric vehicle households.
Hard to move forward faithfully about housing and zoning, until its leaders walk the walk of credibility.
Thanks Sean. My concern on the smaller houses would be the land costs eating into the cost per unit, combined with the recent increase in construction costs, effectively pushing the new home construction past the point of construction financing. Lenders typically require loan to value of at most 75%, absent a HUD program or other mortgage insurance program. But I’ve got no objections to smaller homes, or townhomes, or 3 families.
But your first point is one I should have added to my post, and is the most important. What does it mean to be affordable? I think it depends on the housing product being examined. If the project uses low income housing tax credits or major subsidies, I’d expect a degree of deep targeted affordability across a large percentage of units. If it uses 40B or negotiated special permit, I’d expect 80% of AMI to 120% of AMI, with a range of unit sizes, with the number of affordable units up for negotiation and subject to floors. If it is just market rate units made smaller, I’d expect limited affordability under the previous standards, but “affordable” in comparison to the larger single family units in many neighborhoods, but not affordable for someone making less than $100,000 a year. Not an easy question to answer and one that won’t please everyone when I answer it…
Matt, you’ve posted something similar a few times over the years. It is a straw man argument in my view.
1) Newton’s housing is largely single family. So it is not surprising that many housing advocates live in single family homes. Perhaps if we built more than 10% affordable in our housing stock, you’d get more housing advocates living in affordable units…
2) You attach arbitrary values to single family homes in your straw man argument. I’d love additional space, so I’m thrilled you’ve given me a few additional bedrooms. I could use more than one full bath and some additional home equity if you don’t mind as well… 😉
3) And let’s say every housing advocates lives in a big beautiful house. You ask them to walk the walk of credibility. But in my view that wouldn’t be moving out of that big beautiful house, the more appropriate question would be whether that housing advocate would object to more density IN THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD. In other words, if a multifamily townhouse was built next to them would they object? Would they sue? Would they rally neighbors against the increase in density on their street or in near proximity to their house? Some of the most vocal folks against zoning reform have done exactly that! The fact that someone owns a big house only tells you one small piece of the puzzle. And since I’m confident all of the housing advocates would not object to that increase in zoning/density in their own neighborhood, I think your straw man falls apart. The issue is not whether some folks like more space/land in their personal holding, it is whether those same folks object to increased density when it directly impacts their lives or homes. IF they did, they would be hypocrites. The fact that they bought a big house doesn’t make them hypocrites, it makes them wealthy, or lucky enough to buy long ago. I don’t need them to move to an apartment in a multi-family to prove they support needed density. Effectively you are saying no one should listen to a housing advocate unless they sell their house, build more dense housing on that land, and move their families into a denser community. By that standard, we wouldn’t listen to anyone on poverty issues unless they were low income (or gave away their money to become low income), or environmental issues unless they drove a Tesla and had a heat pump installed (and transformed their lives to be carbon neutral), or health care issues unless they had lived through the particular disease in question.
So to turn your phrase around, hard to move forward faithfully about housing and zoning when opponents of reform use straw man arguments to stifle debate due to accusations of hypocrisy. (the classic “we don’t have to listen to global warming concerns because John Kerry and Al Gore occasionally take a private jet”)
What you really seem to be objecting to from prior discussions is the idea that folks in wealthy neighborhoods seem to be dictating density in less affluent neighborhoods by voting for the proposals of the housing advocates while pushing for zoning limitations be maintained on their housing stock. But that isn’t the housing advocates fault, I don’t see the housing advocates like Sean advocating for zoning limitations in their single family neighborhood…
@fig – as always (or mostly ;-)) your points are well thought out and more importantly, we’ll articulated. Perhaps what I was trying to articulate myself is that perhaps housing advocates need not self-brand themselves as housings advocates; with an endlessly verbose stream that’s equal parts, “we need more housing” and “look what a great person I am….” (along with from their single family home and SUVs….yada, yada, yada…) with a healthy does of, “you’re a bad person if you don’t agree with me.”
Case in point, I’ve even had a sitting city councilor comment at me on FB last Spring that I need to, “stop gaslighting this city and donate and volunteer more” (along with other choice words, without knowing a thing about me, where I donate or how I spend my time). She even tried to egg on other commenters to join her in attack. Do-good self branding….yet mean as a snake.
On a side note, just read this article in the Globe. If South Korea can force juggernauts Apple and Google to accept third-party payments on their apps, surely Newton can have greater sway with developers give up a little profit for more affordable and attainable housing.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/31/business/south-korea-force-google-apple-allow-third-party-in-app-payments/
@mattlai. How would you describe your behavior on Social Media? What other term besides gaslighting would describe your unhealthy obsession with the Ward 6 Councilors? You make an effort to start threads or continue threads regarding the councilors, spread half truths regarding housing & zoning to try and “get” and demean the councilors.
You are on Facebook, V14, NextDoor Newton, the Google groups, Twitter etc and at times all at once, posting negatively about the Ward 6 councilors – that is Trumpian behavior.
How does your behavior and name calling “e.g. snake” contribute to the divide and hatred in the city?
As for your donations, let’s talk about that. You highlighted a Ward 6 challengers website on a FB group and proclaimed to donate to the campaign despite being in Ward 5 person. The problem is that your donation was never recorded in OCPF. Did you stretch the truth to make your post a little more compelling because you dislike the current Ward 6 city councilor? That is truly effd up. – yes, as of today there is still no record of your donation.
At some point we do hope that you move on from continually going after the Ward 6 councilors.
I don’t think donations show up in OCPF immediately, do they?
We live a few houses away from this White Ave monstrosity. How on Earth did the builders get permission to erect this absurd, humongous structure?? The zoning/exceptions process in Newton must be a hideous joke. Just check it out — the house looks like a supervillain’s lair next to the neighboring houses.
Oh Jackie….one of my faves. Did not mention any names, just making a point, so enjoy your anger party of one. Also, OCFP does post immediately (thank you @mmqc) and I can’t control when a candidate posts, but i will forward the ActBlue receipt to your email account.
Lastly, I’m not the only one that feels this way about all progressive Alex Joneses in Newton social media, last March’s special election supported that. Hoping the momentum carries into November.
Matt,
You are very brave using your real identity to ask questions and challenge elected officials.
Some of these progressives are the most vindictive, intolerant, petty, cancel-culture loving people you’ll ever meet
Hopefully the November elections will end the bickering and name calling
The thing about Matt is that he is not (ever) wrong.
Jackie Morris = “Ami Friedman” from the Civic Action group?
@MMQC You mean the vanishing Ami Goldberg who mysteriously disappeared after being exposed as a fake account designed to berate Amy S. and push their own agenda? That Ami Goldberg?
Matt,
The housing problem in Newton is not, at least right now, that people live in 4-BR homes. The problem is, as fignewtonville nicely framed it, that too many people who live in 4-BR homes also insist that their neighbors live in 4-BR homes.
Walking the walk as a housing advocate means, again as fignewtonville explained, that you accept multi-family housing next to our near your own 4-BR home. There is a special permit application pending for a 12-unit apartment building a 1/2-mile from my home. I appeared at the public hearing and enthusiastically expressed my support. If someone proposes one closer, I’ll support that one, too. If either of my next-door neighbors wants to build a triple-decker, they can count on my support.
There may come a time when Newton has a rich array of multi-family housing options and an argument can be made that living in a standalone single-family home frustrates our climate goals or our housing goals. When we get there, feel free to call me a hypocrite for living in my 3-BR, 2,106 sq. ft. home.
Can we please move this conversation back in the direction of the original post? Just because I challenged Matt’s strawman argument did not mean I wanted to challenge Matt personally, and I’m not sure I fully understand all of these posts at this point anyway.
@sean – it’s not hard to see that your heart is in the right place and I know at times my frustration can get the best of me. I’m sure at a neutral forum, over beers, we’d get along great.
And if you’ll indulge, I can further simply my argument….
If the Newton’s Big 4 (Austin St., Trio, Northland and Riverside) were all condos…hell, even some condos…providing lower footprint (and therefore more attainable) home ownership opportunities, I would gladly be in support. Instead, asking Newton to give up (or rather, accept) greater density – just to line the pockets of a few developers (one in particular just bought a WNBA team) – just does not compute.
That said our opposing arguments are closer than ever before. Perhaps soon we’ll be on the same page.
PS. We may list as a 4br, but our living space is less than 1,500 sq ft
PPS. Thanks to those who provided kind words of support and neighborly love.
Matt, I don’t understand the objection to rental apartments. Developers can get a large return on investment on condo sales as well. And it certainly makes the affordability component far more complex and less impactful.
You (and others) also keep making the argument that the greater density serves only to line the pockets of the developer. I’m not denying the developer makes a healthy profit, but there is major risk there as well. In addition, but making our city’s development process so difficult, we are pricing in that risk (and that success quotient) into development deals. I’m not crying for any of the developers in question, but the idea that developers shouldn’t make a profit after a multi-year development process strikes me as wanting to have your cake and eat it too, you get to insist on an extremely lengthy permit process, including the right of a small minority to object and require a city wide referendum, and you also get to decry the profit taken by the developer if they make it through this risky, time consuming and expensive process.
In the end I don’t think it is about the developer’s profit at all. Someone made a profit on every house ever built in Newton, either single family or multifamily. It is that the developer isn’t building what YOU want and what YOU think is appropriate for Newton, and in doing so is making a profit larger than you deem seemly. But mostly about the former. Ask yourself this: If the developer was a non-profit housing developer focusing on a large mixed used project with higher affordability but much increased density, would you object then? I think you would. And I think many of the folks against these project would as well. The complaints would change, but the objections would remain in total.
Developer should be allowed to profit. What they should NOT be able to do is purchase land/house knowing the existing zoning rules and then lobby to have the rules changed to build more units.
This exponentially increases the developer profits and is akin to treating land parcels as lottery tickets.
@Fig – should a developer profit? Absolutely!! Should we help to shovel the bills and coins into their war chests indiscriminately? No.
And I don’t object to apartments. They serve a critical need in the overall ecosystem of housing. But the arguments supporting the Big 4 were that we needed housing, we needed more affordable housing, they will add more diversity. With 2 of the 4 (Austin St and Trio) now online, housing is neither more affordable, nor is our community any more diverse.
Now, if some/many of those units were say…2 and 3 bedroom condos, at apartment sized square footages and reasonable price per sq ft, they would be attainable starter homes, and provide new or small and diverse families a path to home ownership and wealth accumulation.
It’s a developers right to profit as much as possible (just like we do not goto work for free), it is also a community’s right to determine what can be built – a social contract of checks and balances; supply and demand. And so long as Newton remains a desirable destination, we have some leverage to meet our needs, not just a developer’s wants.
It’s not about apartment vs condos Fig, but rather which better fulfills the American Dream of home ownership that many of us enjoy. I believe it is our obligation to help make that happen, and to delay the journey via the expensive rents the Big 4 have and will be asking for, is not the correct path forward.
Ultimately, what the housing market…THIS housing truly needs are more starter homes, not luxury apartments (nor million plus duplexes). Would gladly support some added density for the prior, but not the latter.
PS. Checked our Nero a couple of weekends ago. Nice place! Have always been a Starbucks guy, but now have something to really think about. Maybe I’ll unintentionally bump into you there sometime, Fig.
Even with added density the cost of land and construction in Newton doesn’t make new homes much less expensive. Take 429 Cherry St in West Newton which is a three story development with 14 condos. Based on Zillow a 1,140 sq ft two bed unit sold for $775k with a mortgage at 3% and 20% down the total monthly cost including HOA and taxes is still over $3,500 a month. The larger 1,498 sq ft two bed sold for over $1m.
So here is a real world example of added density and it still doesn’t make housing much more affordable. In fact the added density requires additional costs including under ground parking, fire sprinklers, elevator and more.
There’s also the whole idea that if people will move into these schmancy condos it will leave the smaller, older homes available for a lower price. Is that *really* happening in Newton, though? We live in an old small house that for sure will get torn down whenever we decide to move. It will become something bigger and nicer and $$$$$. Then we’ve lost a small, more affordable home and replaced it with luxury apartments or condos, most likely.
MMQC, I’ve never thought that was one of the advantages except on a regional scale. It does make a difference somewhere (or at the very least makes the annual increases in smaller home values/rents less to some extent).
Absent price controls, your small house is likely to get bought by someone who will improve it in some fashion, and you will also sell it based on the home’s potential for resale. Price controls (through zoning, through permitting, through size controls, pick your poison) will have some marginal effect on pricing. But to have a major impact, you are going to have to explain to all the older owners who were counting on their home to fund a large portion of their retirement, since if you are restricting what the home can be used for, you are restricting value, especially in some of the more beaten down homes. That ranch that sold in my neighborhood for around 1 million would have sold for far less. Far far less. That’s great that someone acquired a lower cost home in my neighborhood, although they’d need to put in hundreds of thousands to make it modern livable. But that’s a direct loss of value to the owner. I have generally found most folks opposed to large development on the political side use these types of restrictions as a stalking horse proposal, but back off quite quickly once hundreds of older residents object to the zoning/permitting changes necessary that directly reduce value to the current owner. Now you can make the case that the current owner has been the beneficiary of a unfair windfall based on the massive increase in the value of their homes, but they don’t tend to see it that way, and they also have come to rely on it, AND pay property taxes for decades based on such increased value.
As for the rest of it, with Trio/Austin street, the main benefit in my view were those dozens of affordable units, locked into affordability for the life of the project. That represents a lot of the community benefit provided by the developer. That benefit keeps getting glossed over by opponents, or they lie about the rent amounts. Those units proved incredibly popular and leased up immediately.
As for the American Dream of home ownership, with all due respect Matt, that might be your American dream, and I respect that, but it is not the dream of every person/family. Times have changed, homeownership is out of reach, and frankly folks tend to hold out homeownership as a golden ring (especially once they’ve achieved it) but it isn’t right for every family, every family can’t afford it or maintain it, and that dream in many communities ends up acting like a weight pulling a family down instead, especially during a downturn (or a pandemic). And in a region with major housing shortages, my view is focus first of overall housing needs and affordability concerns first, ownership second.
“American dream” may be a phrase from generations past, but ask Millenials if they see their future in home ownership or renting, most that I have spoken with choose ownership and those who say renting….do so with the belief that home ownereshlp will never be an option. How sad is that?
Fig, I agree about what seems to happen to older homes. We really need to understand what happens to them over time. In my experience, when new people move in they want to improve them. If their family grows, the tightness of the Newton housing market and factors like staying in the same school zone mean that people often have no choice but to modify or add on to their homes. That makes the house less affordable for the current and future owners. It’s very hard to freeze that through legislation in a way that’s fair, practical, and maintains the quality of the housing stock. Houses need investment, especially older and more modest structures, and our expectations of and needs for housing changes over time.
Co-op housing is one model that’s intriguing to me because it separates the investment and housing aspects of residential real estate. It’s shared housing with no expectation of unbounded rate of return. And people move in with the knowledge that’s the model, rather than having surprising changes occur mid-ownership. It is the only model I know of that has a proven track record of resisting market forces.
MMQC,
There’s a progression of outcomes for a small home.
1. The property owner could tear it down and build a McMansion or McMinium©. Obviously, that it is almost certainly going to make the home less affordable, usually substantially so. This is what the “preserve naturally affordable housing stock” folks want to discourage through zoning changes.
2. The property owner could decide it wasn’t worth tearing down, because the new home couldn’t be sufficiently larger to justify the investment. But, that property owner may be able to add to the home. A larger house is, all else being equal, a more expensive house. So, again, the house will be less affordable. There’s little chance that the right to add on will be regulated away.
3. The property owner could upgrade the house — cosmetically or deeper — without increasing the size. More expensive, but not by as much as #1 or #2. This is what I have called the jewel boxes, like 9 Walter St., a 1,311 sq. ft. home that sold for $975K. There’s virtually no way to regulate away improvements that don’t increase the size of a house.
Some notes:
* If the “preserve naturally affordable housing stock” folks are successful in changing zoning in a way that reduces the incentive to tear down and build new, that will reduce the value of the property. That doesn’t just hit developers. Owner occupants who sell to developers get some premium based on development potential. Take away the development opportunity, the developers will pay less. What the “preserve naturally affordable housing stock” folks are proposing is a regulatory taking of home value.
* If someone has the means to tear down and build new, add onto, or upgrade a home, they almost certainly have the means to outbid someone who does not. Newton’s single-family homes are just not going to go to people of modest means.
* All else being equal, a single-family home gets a premium over a unit in a multi-family building. All else being equal includes size in sq. ft., bedrooms, condition, location, &c. So, it is extremely unlikely that with similarly sized homes and condos, the condo will sell for more.
Which brings us to the virtue of reasonably regulated multi-family homes. The option to build a duplex or triplex on my property preserves my property value, similar to the option to build a McMansion. If the units are reasonably sized, under 1,200 to 1,500 sq. ft., there’s a chance that they will be available to folks of modest means, particularly if there’s decent supply. A win/win. Trade the development opportunity of a McMansion for the development opportunity of a duplex or triplex and limit unit size to prevent McMiniums.
Sean and what do you think a 1,500 sq ft new construction unit in a triple decker would sell for if the land costs $1m? I gave a real world example above of a 1,500 square foot condo selling for over $1m and that was with 13 other units sharing the burden of the land and other fixed costs.
Kyle,
Ultimately, the cost of a condo will depend not on the price of the land, but what the market will bear. There’s not a lot of comparables on the market right now, but there is a 1,449 sq. ft. unit on the market for $639K.
I would say that, as a rough rule of thumb, a condo in a triplex would sell at a 15-20% discount against a similarly sized stand-alone home. Maybe even a little less.
Your math doesn’t work. Any single family home with enough land to build either two condos or a theoretical triple decker will be at current market prices around $1m. You stated your goal is not to hurt the existing home owners premium.
The developer will look at the opportunity and say I can either build two units or three units. Let’s assume the total sizes of the buildings are similar and the two units will sell for $1.5m each. There is no way the developer will choose to build three units unless the individual units sell for more than $1m each.
To think that a developer could deliver a 1,500 sq new construction unit for $650k is not even close to reality.
The price in Newton is ultimately determined by prices in brookline, boston, watertown, waltham
It doesn’t matter if the developer lists the mythical 1500sqft NEW build for 650k if a similar NEW unit in Brookline is $1M.
It would be instantly bid to 800k
If you want lower market prices then pray for a recession or increase in crime & deterioration of schools in Newton.
Or do we want micro apartments similar to Asia where family of 4 will live in 500sqft?
@StupifiedbyPermittingStupidity The developers didn’t have to ask for permission. They didn’t need a special permit.They built just what the current zoning code allows. This is why we need to change the code!
It’s on a large lot so with the current FAR system, they were allowed 5,805 sf. The architectural plans put the new house at 5,794 sf. Typically developers build to very close to the max that is allowed — no special permit needed.
This size lot, over 15,000 sf, could have had two or three units on it instead of just one massive house. Seriously, who needs 7 BRs and 7.5 BAs. If there were 3 units, they might sell for $1.5 million each instead of $4.3 million for just one house. That’s a huge difference in price. Still expensive but it’s a very different price range.
It would be much better for our climate to have three families in smaller units vs one family in a huge house. Smaller units = less materials used to build a home plus less AC and heat per unit = better for our climate.
Also, it would allow two more families to live less than a mile from Newton Centre or Newton Highlands and right next to an elementary school and not far from the middle and high school. All this could mean much less driving for those families. Less driving = less carbon emissions = better for our climate.
Of course a developer should profit but when the motive is to create the absolute maximum profit at the expense of the neighborhood and direct abutters, something is wrong. Go look at White Ave where the grading was changed about 8 feet to accommodate a basement with higher ceilings that wouldn’t be counted against the FAR. Increasing the total living area maximized that developers profits, shut off most of the next door neighbors sunlight and created major drainage issues for neighbors down the street. All to maximize profit.