What's the deal with "missing middle" housing?

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I mean, LA doesn't have any rustbelt-style urban prairies anywhere. Where are these 20,000 vacant lots?

At least a couple of thousand of them are in Pacific Palisades. And a good portion of the 20,000 in the city are probably never-developed hillside lots that are unbuildable or too expensive to build on. I can't imagine there are too many actual abandoned residential properties in the flats around here.

Want some cheap land in the Hollywood Hills? Here's an unpaved city street and a bunch of empty lots:
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1184646,-118.3257258,220m/data=!3m1!1e3.

Hundreds of undeveloped hillside lots in northeast LA:
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0813861,-118.1983397,150m/data=!3m1!1e3

[badrunner]

Just did a zillow search on property type: lot/land for sale and as expected most of them are in the hills and the burn areas. I noticed before while house hunting that there are a lot of suspiciously cheap lots for sale in very expensive neighborhoods.

[Steely Dan]

^ That's all very intersting info, thanks. Maybe LA really does have 20,000 vacant lots?

But I think we can all agree that their arrangement is vastly diffferent form Chicago's 30,000 vacant lots, which tend to cluster in heavily "bombed-out" areas that look like they met the business end of German bombers during WWII.


LA has nothing like this: Washington Park, Chicago

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ That's all very intersting info, thanks. Maybe LA really does have 20,000 vacant lots?

But I think we can all agree that their arrangement is vastly diffferent form Chicago's 30,000 vacant lots, which tend to cluster in heavily "bombed-out" areas that look like they met the business end of German bombers during WWII.


LA has nothing like this: Washington Park, Chicago

Well, I mean, right now it does . . .

https://maps.app.goo.gl/4d9BVHrmHQugC51s7

[Steely Dan]

^ oh, touche!

Google AI days Pacific Palisades lost ~6,000 homes in the fire, so yeah, thats a huge % of the 20K right there.

Now lets wait and see if that area still looks like that 5 decades from now.

5 bucks says it won't.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ oh, touche!

Google AI days Pacific Palisades lost ~6,000 homes in the fire, so yeah, thats a huge % of the 20K right there.

Now lets wait and see if that area still looks like that 5 decades from now.

5 bucks says it won't.

Oh, for sure. The reason why Pacific Palisades is full of vacant lots differs significantly from why Washington Park is full of vacant lots, and I do think that PP be fully repopulated in the years to come. I hope that is true of WP as well, but I don't know the trajectory there.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by craigs

I hope that is true of WP as well, but I don't know the trajectory there.

Washington Park was one of the very hardest hit CA's in the entire city in terms of population loss/abandonment, going from 56,856 in 1950 and bottoming out at 11,717 in 2010 (-79%). In a happy turnaround, census 2020 showed that the neighborhood had grown to 12,707 (+8.4%), as part of the larger south lakeshore population rebound last decade.

But even with all of that insane population decline, the neighborhood still has halfway decent population density because it's so small, with the inhabited part of the CA being only 1.0 square mile (the adjacent namesake park takes up the other 0.5 square mile). Infill has been slow to Washington Park (Nearby Woodlawn and the brand new Obama Center are sucking a lot of the oxygen out of the room at the moment), but it is starting to seep in, as evidenced by last decade's growth. It will obviously never come close to sniffing 57K again, but even if it could infill itself back to 20K, that would be a HUGE win, and there is ample vacant land available to accomplish that without anything super dense.

<fingers crosssed>

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ oh, touche!

Google AI days Pacific Palisades lost ~6,000 homes in the fire, so yeah, thats a huge % of the 20K right there.

Yeah. . . I was about to mention that. . . but as far as underutilized - abandoned - properties ala Washington Park, Los Angeles really doesn't have anything remotely resembling that. . .

. . .

[JManc]

Originally Posted by craigs

Well, I mean, right now it does . . .

https://maps.app.goo.gl/4d9BVHrmHQugC51s7

I fell down the rabbit hole and spent about a half hour on Google earth comparing the before and after photos of that area.

[Notonfoodstamps]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Well, there's also the caveat here that not everything we call a rowhouse/townhouse would even technically be considered a single building. Older city neighborhoods are full of blocks where houses were constructed individually, but have zero setback with one or more of their neighbors. And as modern infill is patching the "missing teeth" new ones are being built as well.

I mean, is something like this multi-family housing? It's just one house, built between two other houses.

Sure, but then one could equally argue a rowhome in Philly, Baltimore or DC thats been converted into bar/nightclub/restaurant or has 2 stacked apartments on top would be missing middle, despite being an structurally identical.

Case in point Baltimore's Locke Landing. The buildings in the foreground are 2 over 2 condo's, whereas the 4-story units in the background are traditional town/rowhomes.

Originally Posted by eschaton

That's still way, way more than any form of small-scale multifamily. Again, outside of a few cities new build up/down flats are just not built at all.

2-9 unit structures make up about 13-14% of US housing supply (from last estimate).

2-unit structures (Duplexes): ~3.6%–4.0% of housing stock
3-to-4 unit structures (Triplexes/Quadplexes): ~4.1%–4.6% of housing stock
5-to-9 unit structures: ~4.7%–5.0% of housing stock

I'd imagine the vast majority of attached townhomes/rowhomes and or 2-9 unit housing stock is centralized in and around the Bos-Wash corridor, Chicago/Rustbelt or West Coast.

Originally Posted by eschaton

Yes, but the suburban townhouse complexes are built very similarly to suburban subdivisions. In both cases, what they most closely resemble is other nearby areas of similar vintage filled with single-family housing, not multifamily.

Don't disagree but then every suburban garden-style apartment development should get the same subdivision flak.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Notonfoodstamps

Don't disagree but then every suburban garden-style apartment development should get the same subdivision flak.

Way ahead of you there

The Suburban Apartment Complex: defeating the whole point of multi-family housing

[LA21st]

LAs. vacant lots are sround but theyre so scattered you don't really see it as a problem.
I think most people assume it will be filled by something later.
Its rare to see them bunched up together.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Notonfoodstamps

2-9 unit structures make up about 13-14% of US housing supply (from last estimate).

2-unit structures (Duplexes): ~3.6%–4.0% of housing stock
3-to-4 unit structures (Triplexes/Quadplexes): ~4.1%–4.6% of housing stock
5-to-9 unit structures: ~4.7%–5.0% of housing stock

I'd imagine the vast majority of attached townhomes/rowhomes and or 2-9 unit housing stock is centralized in and around the Bos-Wash corridor, Chicago/Rustbelt or West Coast.

Indeed, but my point is outside a few markets, you just don't see new versions of this being built. Either it's legacy house typologies from 100+ years ago or chopped up single-family homes.

Locally, even in areas zoned R2/R3 (where small multi-units are permitted by right, but larger multifamily is not) you don't see this typology other than for a handful of affordable units. The market-based infill just goes with townhouses or detached SFH.

Originally Posted by Notonfoodstamps

Don't disagree but then every suburban garden-style apartment development should get the same subdivision flak.

True enough, though at least this typology seems pretty dead now. You still see townhouse rental communities being built in the suburbs, but it seems like higher unit densities now do five over ones which wouldn't look out of place in a city (other than how they're configured on their lots/ample surface parking.

[mhays]

Apartments with surface parking aren't great, but they're understandable. "How can we build a pretty high density cheaply, and rent at low but profitable price point."

They still happen (usually the "garden" variety) in the Seattle area, just usually in cheaper suburbs. Expensive suburbs get almost exclusively urban type buildings with parking below-grade.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Woodlawn and the brand new Obama Center are sucking a lot of the oxygen out of the room at the moment

After typing that message a week and a half ago, I've since gotten commissions from 3 different builders for:

- 7 new 2-flats in Woodlawn
- 2 new 3-flats in Woodlawn
- 3 new 3-flats in Grand Boulevard

That's 29 new housing units of non-subsidized small-scale MFH neutralizing 12 more stupid vacant lots on Chicago's south lakeshore!

And I thought the construction of the Obama Center was blowing shit up down there before, but damn, now that it's officially open......




Unfortunately, the authorities down in Cincinnati have determined that absolutely none of this can be real because "no one builds small-scale MFH anymore because no bank will finance it".

Apparently, my entire existence is but an illusion.

Holy shit, the Matrix was a freaking documentary!!!!

[mr1138]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

After typing that message a week and a half ago, I've since gotten commissions from 3 different builders for:

- 7 new 2-flats in Woodlawn
- 2 new 3-flats in Woodlawn
- 3 new 3-flats in Grand Boulevard

That's 49 new units of non-subsidized small-scale MFH neutralizing 12 more stupid vacant lots on Chicago's south lakeshore!

And I thought the construction of the Obama Center was blowing shit up down there before, but damn, now that it's officially open......




Unfortunately, the authorities down in Cincinnati have determined that absolutely none of this can be real because "no one builds small-scale MFH anymore because no bank will finance it".

Apparently, my entire existence is but an illusion.

Holy shit, the Matrix was a freaking documentary!!!!

You know, it's funny. It's almost as though banks will make different decisions about what they can finance depending on the local real estate economics and whether the underlying land use regulations fundamentally make it difficult or expensive to build small-scale MFH in the first place.

I get the feeling that maybe Chicago is doing something right and other cities should pay attention.

[Steely Dan]

^ No.

You must be wrong.

No bank will finance small-scale MFH.

Reality stands zero chance against The Great Real Estate Oracle of Cincinnati.

He survived the "Twitter Wars".

He hath spoken!

[Steely Dan]

Check out this photothread from Chicago forumer Jstane056 of new small-scale MFH being built in Chicago's Washington Park and Woodlawn community areas on the south lakeshore.

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showpost.php?p=10641316&postcount=380




Jstange056 is clearly pretty good with the AI, cause none of those images can be real, because "no bank will finance small-scale MFH anymore".

[niwell]

Map that was posted on reddit for new multiplex construction in Toronto: https://malcolmkennedy.com/to-multiplex-map/

The City legalized 4 units as-of-right in 2023 and this was upped to 6 units in Wards that have opted-in. Which basically encompass Old Toronto and one in Scarborough. Laneway and garden suites were legalized a bit earlier. On top of this the City has waived development charges on multiplex construction. Coupled with a drop in housing prices these are becoming more viable, particular on busier streets and properties that would be teardowns. Just anecdotally from walking around as a planning nerd who always checked building permits when I see construction / renovation near me the needle has moved from almost all SFH renos to 50/50 that and multiplex conversion.

While the number of units isn't much compared to big highrise projects it's growing exponentially. And perhaps more importantly the units created tend to be significantly larger than what you'd find in a highrise and very well suited for couples and families. The vast majority are rental but a few are condo tenure - it's much harder in Ontario to do this for small projects with our condominium corporation legislation. That's something I'd like to see increase as we are hoping to buy in the city in the next year or two and it would be a great option as we don't need a huge place (no kids).

[benp]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Check out this photothread from Chicago forumer Jstane056 of new small-scale MFH being built in Chicago's Washington Park and Woodlawn community areas on the south lakeshore.

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showpost.php?p=10641316&postcount=380




Jstange056 is clearly pretty good with the AI, cause none of those images can be real, because "no bank will finance small-scale MFH anymore".

So what is the range of construction costs and sold prices for the typical 2 and 3 flats in Chicago? Are they owner occupied, or mainly built solely as all rentals? How do the prices and costs compare to new row or townhomes?