{"id":2032,"date":"2011-10-03T23:19:53","date_gmt":"2011-10-04T03:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/?p=2032"},"modified":"2011-10-03T23:19:53","modified_gmt":"2011-10-04T03:19:53","slug":"quick-links-on-rising-rents-density-and-housing-supply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2011\/10\/03\/quick-links-on-rising-rents-density-and-housing-supply\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick links on rising rents, density, and housing supply"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

CC image from Eric Wilfong<\/p><\/div>\n

Some quick notes:<\/p>\n

1. DC rents continue to rise<\/a>:<\/p>\n

While the vacancy rate for the Metro area is indeed low, it is most pronounced among Class A buildings in the District where just 1.6 percent of apartments are vacant. Class A rents in the city in the third quarter averaged $2,582\/month, up from $2,448\/month in September 2010. For Class B buildings, the situation for renters in the city looked a little better; the vacancy rate sat at 2.2 percent (up from 1.8 percent last year), but rents also increased to $1,886\/month from $1,793\/month in September 2010.<\/p>\n

From the report:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026while all submarkets are chronically low [in the area], there is notable vacancy variance among District submarkets. The Upper Northwest submarket posted the lowest stabilized vacancy at 0.5%, while Columbia Heights\/Shaw posted a stabilized vacancy of 2.4%.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2. I’d say there’s some strong demand in this market. Clearly, room for more development, yes? Yet Housing Complex notes<\/a> that some developers are concerned about their new projects all hitting the market at the same time.<\/p>\n

“There is just a ton of supply coming,” he said. “In certain markets, there will be spot oversupply.” Which is developer-speak for holy shit guys slow down so my building will still sell.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3. Payton Chung with some important synthesis of recent growth<\/a> and affordability<\/a> discussions<\/a>, noting the key distinctions between micro and macro levels:<\/p>\n

– as Rob points out, housing is a bundle of goods whose utilities vary for different audiences
\n– housing construction can induce demand, particularly by adding amenities to a neighborhood
\n– housing construction can also remove amenities from a neighborhood, like a low-rise scale, thus changing other intangibles included in that bundle of goods
\n– construction costs don\u2019t increase linearly; rather, costs jump at certain inflection points, like between low- and mid-rise<\/a>
\n– housing and real estate in general are imperfect markets, since land is not a replicable commodity
\n– the substantial lag time for housing construction, even in less regulated markets, almost guarantees that supply will miss demand peaks<\/p>\n

Pro-active planning remains the best and most time-honored way of pre-empting NIMBYs. Get the neighborhood to buy-in to neighborhood change early on, and then they won\u2019t be surprised and upset when it happens.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve often cited Chris Bradford’s short post on filtering<\/a> as a good summary of one of the dynamics at play, but there’s no one thing you can point to for a full explanation.<\/p>\n

As for Payton’s last point about the best offense against NIMBYs being a good defense (or maybe it’s the other way around), I hope to write more about that soon as a part of a more complete response to Ryan Avent’s The Gated City<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some quick notes: 1. DC rents continue to rise: While the vacancy rate for the Metro area is indeed low, it is most pronounced among Class A buildings in the District where just 1.6 percent of apartments are vacant. Class A rents in the city in the third quarter averaged $2,582\/month, up from $2,448\/month in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[448,451,111,464],"class_list":["post-2032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dc","tag-density","tag-economics","tag-nimby"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-wM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2032"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2035,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions\/2035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}