The urban home discount

As I've mentioned before, I live in a small neighborhood of urban homes in south Austin, about 2.5 miles south of Town Lake.  The homes are a decent size for central Austin; most have between 1,600 and 2,400 square feet.  What marks them as "urban" is the lot size.  They are very small.  Ours is one of the larger ones and it's only 4,400 square feet.  Most of the lots are under 4,000 square feet.  (This is roughly the size of the small yard-home lots at Mueller.)

Some people don't want to bother with a yard. My neighborhood might be an attractive choice for them.  But if you want a real yard, pass on my neighborhood.  At my house, we've only got room for a patio, a sandbox, and a strip of grass.

Of course, that postage-stamp yard might start to look better when you consider what a larger yard costs.  Some recent MLS listings give us a pretty good idea.  Homes in my neighborhood list for roughly $175 per square foot.  (Here's one at $173 psf (2,200 sq. ft.) and another at $178 psf (2,000 sq. ft.))  Meanwhile, just down the street, a house of the same vintage and roughly the same size -- but on a 7,500 sq. ft lot -- is listed at $227 psf, and the owners already are taking backup offers.  That works out to a $100,000 premium for the yard, or an extra $850/month when you factor in taxes.  (In fact, the premium may be even larger than that; the "yard" house does not have a garage, while the two listings in my neighborhood have two-car garages that back out onto an alley.  On the other hand, the "yard" house probably has a nicer finish-out.) 

I'm not complaining about the price difference.  My house was cheaper than other stuff in south Austin when we bought it back in 2001; that's how we could afford a good-sized house in south Austin back then.  My point is that it is possible to mitigate central Austin's sky-high home prices.  (Note, I use "mitigate" because $175 psf is hardly cheap, even if it's a lot cheaper than $225 psf.)  In fact, one of the affordable housing task force's draft recommendations was to make it easier to build small-lot homes in SF-3 neighborhoods. 

Needless to say, the enemy of urban neighborhoods is not the market; it is the run-of-the-mill neighborhood activist.  NAs fight small-lot zoning tooth and nail.  For example, at one of Brewster's VMU roadshows, one of SLNA's officers openly pressed Brewster to guarantee that there would be no more "urban neighborhoods" -- small-lot zoning -- in SLNA.  You know, as a quid pro quo for tolerating VMU. 

Council should give this type of objection short shrift.  Urban neighborhoods house almost twice as many households at a much lower cost per household.  Considering all the hand-wringing over home prices and density, you'd think Council would jump at the chance to add more of them.   

 

Comments

[el_longhorn]

Same thing seems to be going on in Windsor Park...the knee jerk opposition to more intense development. Apparently, some folks are starting a "Responsible Growth for Windsor Park" group, although I don't know what their goals are. Windsor Park is about to get a neighborhood plan, which seems OK to me (although I would loosen up the development rules along Berkman more). Below is an email from the neighborhood listserv about this. However, I caution that the author of the email supports "protecting the neighborhood" by limiting development to its current usage - no duplexing or mixing retail and residential:

Re: [windsorpark] "Responsible Growth" Flyer

susannacohen2006, on or near 5/1/2007 9:55 AM, wrote:
> I haven't seen a lot of discussion about this group.
> I was curious about some of the wording in the flyer.
>

I was sent a copy of the flyer by a neighbor that received it. From what
little I know, it's from a group opposed to the University Hills Windsor
Park Neighborhood Plan (a city process that area residents have been
involved with) that is about to go before the Planning Commission and
City Council in May. The group is certainly playing off the
now-fairly-high-profile name of Responsible Growth for Northcross (RG4N).

I'm hoping (encouraging) that one of at least two people responsible for
the flyer and the group's formation, at least one of whom I know is also
on this e-mail list, will respond to your e-mail and explain their
group's position and reasoning in this public forum. I personally
believe the information on the flyer is not representative of the truth
and generally inflammatory in nature. But that is my personal opinion
and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, including those opposed
to the plan. I won't be able to attend their meeting because I'm going
to a conference on that same date that is oriented around building
community capacity (for more information, see www.neighboraustin.com).

Personally, I believe the Neighborhood Plan has the potential to protect
the neighborhood -- especially the single-family portions -- as the city
grows and our neighborhood grows. That's why I, along with others in UH
and WP neighborhoods, each spent hundreds of hours involved in this
plan. And this group's organizers believe that we need a plan, too.

I was in a meeting a couple weeks back where two of the organizers of
this group were also in attendance, and at the very least we all agreed
that we needed a neighborhood plan to help protect the neighborhoods in
the future related to land-use decisions. Instead of zoning requests
being done willy-nilly without an overall vision for the neighborhood
and basis for decisions like the recent one on Berkman Dr incongruent
with the neighborhood plan and neighborhood desires, the neighborhood
plan will be a basis and vision for such decision-making noting where
our neighborhood desires additional density, businesses, and such, and
how we envision our neighborhood growing over the next 20 years or so.
The plan also strives to focus on sustaining, improving and increasing
our quality of life, parklands and green spaces, multi-modal
transportation capabilities, businesses, and such.

BTW, I have been involved as a citizen on the plan, have watched
neighborhood planning since 2002, and recently wrote another article for
the newsletter that was posted on this group. You can find it at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/windsorpark/message/3462 or look for it in
the upcoming May Window on Windsor.

Got more questions about the neighborhood plan? Ask away or come to the
May 12th WPNA meeting.

Best regards,

Mark