The McMansion ordinance's impact

Today's Statesman (Feb. 18) has an interesting article on the McMansion ordinance's impact.

A couple of quick reactions.  First, the article implies that the McMansion ordinance has not affected property values:

The predictions were dire.

Rules designed to limit the sizes of new houses in almost 50 Central Austin neighborhoods would lead to plummeting land values, vanishing nest eggs and far fewer modern houses for buyers to choose from, warned Austin home builders and property owners opposed to the regulations.

But 16 months after the Residential Design and Compatibility Standards were put in place to limit the impact of large new houses on adjacent homes and the character of neighborhoods, and though concerns about the overall rules linger, property values haven't dropped, and construction activity has increased.

In fact, median prices of single-family homes in neighborhoods such as Hyde Park, Tarrytown and Travis Heights increased in 2006 and 2007, and the city issued 2,452 permits for new houses, additions and remodels in the affected neighborhoods last year, 455 more than in 2005.

For what it's worth, I never believed the McMansion ordinance would hurt the value of lots across the board.  I thought (and still think) the McMansion ordinance has or will hurt the value of small lots relative to large lots.  Given sufficient rising demand, the value of small lots may not have dropped.  But they should have appreciated more slowly than larger lots.

(There's some anecdotal evidence this is true, incidentally:  Steve Crossland compared the rate of appreciation of small homes and large homes in 2006 (see comments to Steve's post).  He found that large homes appreciated 50% faster than small homes (14.63% to 9.65%) in 2006, the year the McMansion ordinance took effect.  This is odd, because normally one would expect small homes to appreciate more rapidly, since most of the value is in the right to build, rather than in the size of the lot.  This statistic is thus consistent with my claim, but hardly proof -- we used home sizes as a proxy for lot sizes, and did not control for the quality of the existing homes.  Also, the numbers flipped in the first quarter of 2007.)

Second, it looks like I was right that the design review commission would become a vehicle for regulating aesthetics.  Here's the article:

Home builder Glenn Reynolds of Cool River Custom Homes said that he isn't opposed to size restrictions but that the rules as written will ultimately lead to cookie-cutter homes.

"We're not a builder that goes out and says we want to take a 5,400-square-foot lot and put a 4,000-square-foot home on it. That's ridiculous," he said. "When it comes to things like 45 percent impervious cover and 40 percent (floor area ratio), those types of items I'm in complete agreement with. What scares me is the review board is taking that a step farther and is basically starting to determine the aesthetic effect for every single home."

The rule that has caused the most frustration for builders requires them to include design features to prevent a "billboard effect": huge, plain side walls looming over nearby houses. To follow that rule, many builders are breaking up the side wall by making the second story narrower than the first, one example of the kind of formulaic design that they say the ordinance has led to.

Builders and architects also complain that the design review commission that was set up to hear appeals regarding the new rules gives too much weight to the opinions of neighboring property owners.

"They have given power unduly to the residents in the neighborhood," architect Dean Rose of PFA Design Group said. "It's now a vigilante committee."

Here's what I wrote back in October 2006:

Anyone who's seen enough zoning hearings knows what this will degenerate into.  The neighborhoods will use the waiver request to impose their taste.  (They will quickly detect how far they can go before the owner decides the costs aren't worth the benefits of the waiver.) These hearings will rarely be about just massing, scale or compatibility.  Owners who want a side articulation waiver will be told they should be using wood siding rather than stone, or stone rather than wood, or brick rather than stone.  Or they'll be told to get rid of some windows on their proposed second story ("it's too intrusive").  Or they'll be told to add some windows ("it's too monolithic").  We'll hear complaints about roof pitch.  Placement of porches.  Design of the garage.  Any design feature that can cause the slightest annoyance will be fair game.  Neighbors can expect a sympathetic audience from the RDCC.

More later.  Maybe.

Comments

[M1EK]

My next-door neighbors keep vacillating about their plans - last I heard they were going to build a one-story addition to the back of the house, because they still have some impervious cover to play with. They originally wanted to do a 2-story design on something like the current footprint of the house, but supposedly the amount of usable space they'd have left over after the stairwell was too little to be worth it.

So in their case, assuming this ends up being the choice, the MMO led to an increase in impervious cover.

[AC]

You gotta love unintended consequences.

[el_longhorn]

Who cares about the single family homes? Its the duplexes that got screwed, and that is hurting affordability. That was my beef with McMansion.

[AC]

I thought there were only two Austinites who cared about the McMansion ordinance (me and M1EK). I'll put you down as a .5.

[M1EK]

EL,

I agree that the impact on duplexes & garage apartments is the primary concern - my next-door neighbor is sort of the latter (they have a garage apartment where the 3 kids' aunt lives which is responsible for the fairly small amount of additional square feet they have to work with).

So far, they haven't explored tearing down the apartment, at least.

[William Bay]

My biggest bone with the whole thing is the name "McMansion Ordinance."
It's proper name is the "Residential Design Guidelines." And just about every city has them. I've worked on houses as an Architect in many cities and FAR requirements are typically the norm as well as vertical and horizontal articulation of the elevations.
It really throws me for a loop that people are opposed to this, and I am an occasional home investor!

The second item that really gets me though is that when they signed this new ordinance into effect they made it a requirement that only licensed Architects, and Engineers could sign off on the elevations and site plans of a house or remodel. This eliminated the possibility of someone like myself, who isn't licensed yet, to design a house and have it built... Which is my right to do in every state in America.
I found out that this was attributed to the city review staff not knowing the requirements and therefore relying on someone with a stamp to sign off on it.
I know a handful of the city review staff, They're not that dumb...

Sorry had to purge about this debacle.

[AC]

Just curious: What other cities have vertical and horizontal articulation requirements? I know subdivisions frequently have them written into the covenants, but I thought city regulations were rare, particularly among big cities like Austin.

And I don't know that FAR limits are all that common, particularly FARs as low as .4. But I'm certainly interested in hearing from those more knowledgeable.

Oh, and how many cities have you seen with Austin's ridiculous "building envelope"?

[William Bay]

It depends on the city of course, and while the articulation is more common in commercial applications, there are cities that will control, to some degree, some level of design parameters. This does happen in an absence of a sub-divisions or HOAs.

40% is pretty common. There aren't too many cities anymore that mirror the row-house/brownstone style architecture where you are right up on your neighbor.
The other consideration is the amount of Impervious Cover on your site, which closely mimics FAR.
A lot of states in the west, (think expansionist real estate mindset), have concerns with the amount of rain runoff from housing developments. And that 40% seems to be commonplace there too.

I've seen envelopes before, it's not all that uncommon, but it is a bit extreme, and a bit confusing if trying to figure it out.
Leave it to Austin to make something so complex that the people designing and the people reviewing can't make heads or tails of it.

[David]

I am against the McMansion ordinance because it's anti-density, anti-family, backs a specific set of aesthetics, and ignores the potential for positive change as urban Austin grows. And yes, I'm personally invested: I'm a Travis Heights homeowner (10 yrs) who got married and we recently had twins. We're now four in an 1800 sq ft. home and have been contemplating adding a second story, despite the hassle of construction. However, the McMansion ordinance severely limits our options such that moving -- and thus incrementally creating more sprawl and traffic -- is becoming the only real option to significantly add space. I’d also like to mention that that Texas homes typically don't have basements or useable attics (too hot!) such that we have much less storage space than most North American homes. I've read a lot of blog opinions of what seem to be young, single people saying things like that "one room is enough", attempting to shame others for wanting more space. But many of these folks seem not to be empathetic to people with other life parameters. Also, when I bought my TH home in 1998, I assumed I'd be able to expand if needed (original plans accommodated a full second story) and I was really surprised that previous owners weren't allowed a grandfather exemption to the ordinance. Finally, in Travis Heights it seems like it’s been dominantly spec developers who are the most egregious violators of size and style (if you want to consider the latter-I don’t). There are many large, nicely done homes in TH that have been built/remodeled by neighborhood homeowners whereas it's mostly the developers who created ugly, giant “boxes", sold them and quickly vanished. Perhaps the ordinance could be modified to target developers and not long-time residents with changing life parameters? Otherwise, I predict that many families -- including mine -- will have little choice but to add to Austin’s exurban sprawl.