• 4 Posts
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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: March 18th, 2024

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  • I didn’t mean to imply that denser housing was being built illegally, only that the availability of it is a product of zoning codes forbidding it in most places. I don’t expect dollars per square foot to scale linearly in either case, and in my personal experience, when I ran the numbers about 7 years ago, moving from suburbia to a dense city ended up costing me almost exactly the same, because I no longer need a car here. You think differently about how much space you actually need when your social space is no longer a back yard or a living room and is instead a park or a nearby bar or something.





  • Building like that on those lots is often against zoning code. About 3/4 of all residential lots in the US are zoned for single family homes only, and though this is changing, you’re correct that it’s not fast enough. I’d be happy to get less than what my parents bought, when I’m ready to buy. As empty nesters now, they’ve easily got 4 times as much house as they actually need or use, and my mom in particular refuses to move. Friends of mine bought a place at the market rock bottom back in about 2012, and with no kids themselves, they also have far too much house, but that’s what was available.