A housing question to Californians

[Az]

umm, homeless people?

Anyway, in judging the worthiness of an appartment, the interior counts for much more, plus, there are much better high-rise designs out there. Personally, I dislike the 'wall' types, in general. I prefer the towers.

[Spiffor]

A project of high-end buildings near my home:



Typically the kind of things where well-off middle class can want to go. Very well connected, comfortable, and well protected from brown people

[Az]

That's not really highrise. It is an appartment building, which is nice, already.

[VetLegion]

Anyway, in judging the worthiness of an appartment, the interior counts for much more,

I agree.

plus, there are much better high-rise designs out there

Post one!

[Spiffor]

Considering we're talking about California, high rises just can't happen. It would require, like, a state intervention in favour of the poor, man. CAN'T BE DONE!

The second best is thus letting the private investors build apartment buildings, that would increase the amount of available high-end buildings close to the city, thus reducing the price of faraway houses. Maybe the poor will be able to cough up the price of a house located 3 hours away from the centre. Even if they can rent only on tuesdays, it's a progress dammit!

[C0ckney]

having lived in a london highrise i can say that you'd be mad to want to live in one if anything else was available.

[C0ckney]

the real scandal in britain is that more than a million properties are lying empty, meanwhile we carry on building on greenfield sites

[Asher]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Well it's going to have to be high rise and it's about time your government started pulling it's finger out on this issue and doing it. My country has been moving backwards and I still think that what has been the basic withdrawal of council property has landed us in a lot of trouble which we have at the moment. I don't earn a bad wage and I can't see how I could afford to buy a property. However I need to save up a deposit first before I start diving in anyway...

Why don't they do what the NDP in British Columbia thought was a good idea -- just place rent controls on prices!

[Asher]

The latest trend in Calgary are high-rise condos downtown.

[Dinner]

Re: A housing question to Californians

Originally posted by Spiffor
If I understand correctly, Californbia's population has boomed and has now reached 30 million. In the meantime, housing prices have also skyrocketed. It seems pretty srtaightforward from my perspective: booming population = booming demand = booming price.

However, my question is about how the offer adapts to this new demand. And more specifically, are there apartments being built, or is the individual house still the normal kind of housing, from the poorest to the richest parts of society?

If apartments are being built, are they luxury apartments (easily as costly as houses, if not more), or are they cheap and aimed at the working man?

Thanks for the answers

Yes down in San Diego most new starts have either been apartments/lofts or they've been ultra luxury mansions but not much inbetween. The few "middle priced" units (meaning $500,000-$700,000) being built are town houses which have one or two common walls with their neighbor but with private garages and stuff. Basically now days if you want a single family detached home in a beach city you buy an older house (1950-1980's vintage) or you are ultra wealthy and can pay several million dollars.

On the cost the aprtment buildings being built are only about 3 stores tall due to height restriction to prevent blocking the view for people further back from the coast but downtown they're building high rise towers between 10-50 stores which, by regulation, have everything from 1 bed/1bath up to pent house sweets taking up a whole floor (several thousand square feet).

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Asher
The latest trend in Calgary are high-rise condos downtown.

That's the way most west coast cities are going. Building up instead of out so that the city can be designed for density sufficent to support enlarged mass transit infastructure.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Oerdin
That's the way most west coast cities are going. Building up instead of out so that the city can be designed for density sufficent to support enlarged mass transit infastructure.

They're doing both here.

But they did recently make the decision not to enlarge roads to the downtown core, and instead buy more trains, improve the schedule, and plan for the launch of more train routes for mass transit downtown.

[mrmitchell]

I think LA does itself in. IIRC every building downtown has to be built with 0.6 parking spaces per every resident, a huge encouragement for cars.

[Dinner]

The closest area where single family homes are still being built is southern Riverside county which previously avoided urbanization since it is further inland and gets hot. Murreitta Hot Springs is still halfway reasonable with houses going for the $400k ranged for a 4 bed 3 bath 2k sq ft home. That is 2 hours north (if traffic is good) and when traffic is not good (which is typical) then it can be much longer.

The sprawling outward model of development does not work and we have given up on new outward developments here due to urban planning concerns. Now it is all up not out though the last 60 years have lead to a great deal of sprawl but not as much as in other places. Luckily, 50% of the county is protected parkland so there are still many wild places left even if the growing population means more and more people are found in those parks.

[Dinner]

The scary **** is the population of the state is supposed to reach 45 million by 2020 which means a million new people per year for the next 15 years on average.

GO HOME YOU OUT OF STATERS!