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Median list price in Nob Hill: $136,500,000
Avg price per sq/ft: $1,035
Median sale/list price: 104.80%
Boston/Back Bay median sales price: $810,750
Avg price per sq/ft: $867
Philadelphia:
Center City West
Rittenhouse Square
Fitler Square
All average home price greater than $600,000
Average price per sq/ft: $557/441/446
(But you have to live in Philadelphia, which is mostly awful)
Cheapest flat in the 18th Arrondissement (Butte-Montmarte - the picture komeht showed): $543,000
About 450 square feet of living space.
I think I've made my point that real estate in these desirable places is the opposite of affordable. Here's what "affordable" housing generally looks like in Europe:
Paris banlieue:
Moscow suburbs:
Affordable student housing in Amsterdam:
Sorry, but this is really misleading.
I did grad work in Paris and lived and worked in England. Are the most desirable NHs there expensive? Of course. Does everyone who doesn't live there live in crappy, isolated high rise public housing? Of course not. Those places are generally considered a huge public policy mistake. Most people live in NH's that look not dissimilar to the expensive ones but are further out or require some other compromise. There are middle and working class neighborhoods that look like that.
This is the point. Take Mueller or Hyde Park. I'd love to live in one of them. I can't afford it. Why? Because demand greatly outstrips supply. But if we built/build more of them, I would have some options. Would the people with more money still get the close in versions? Yes. But I'd at least have the option.
What is the justification for opposing that option? I really don't understand people's objection. Are you arguing we should only build car-centric pod developments along frontage roads? If so, why? If not, what is your solution, if not allowing diverse forms of housing?
Last edited by tildahat; 05-31-2013 at 07:23 AM..
Reason: Changed non-constructive opening line...
I did grad work in Paris and lived and worked in England. Are the most desirable NHs there expensive? Of course. Does everyone who doesn't live there live in crappy, isolated high rise public housing? Of course not. Those places are generally considered a huge public policy mistake. Most people live in NH's that look not dissimilar to the expensive ones but are further out or require some other compromise. There are middle and working class neighborhoods that look like that.
This is the point. Take Mueller or Hyde Park. I'd love to live in one of them. I can't afford it. Why? Because demand greatly outstrips supply. But if we built/build more of them, I would have some options. Would the people with more money still get the close in versions? Yes. But I'd at least have the option.
What is the justification for opposing that option? I really don't understand people's objection. Are you arguing we should only build car-centric pod developments along frontage roads? If so, why? If not, what is your solution, if not allowing diverse forms of housing?
They won't answer you or mumble something vague about "protecting the character of the neighborhood", which is a bunch of hogwash because most of those neighborhoods largely matured when we didn't have these restrictions and have the mixed use and mix of housing that are now banned and made illegal. By ordinances such as McMansion. And what they won't own up to is that these ordinances are designed for one thing and one thing only - to keep the kind of people they don't want out (lower income) out of their neighborhoods. The banned all the affordable housing options (multifamily, attached homes, rental flats, etc.) as a means to preserve their own wealth and maintain an elite enclave unto themselves.
They have similar form because they were built over a hundred years ago in much smaller cityscapes.
How can you not understand that?
Less pretty, but just as dense, townhouses are put up all over the DC area. And the areas in those pics are less dense than say the Triangle in Austin.
I did grad work in Paris and lived and worked in England. Are the most desirable NHs there expensive? Of course. Does everyone who doesn't live there live in crappy, isolated high rise public housing? Of course not. Those places are generally considered a huge public policy mistake. Most people live in NH's that look not dissimilar to the expensive ones but are further out or require some other compromise. There are middle and working class neighborhoods that look like that.
This is the point. Take Mueller or Hyde Park. I'd love to live in one of them. I can't afford it. Why? Because demand greatly outstrips supply. But if we built/build more of them, I would have some options. Would the people with more money still get the close in versions? Yes. But I'd at least have the option.
What is the justification for opposing that option? I really don't understand people's objection. Are you arguing we should only build car-centric pod developments along frontage roads? If so, why? If not, what is your solution, if not allowing diverse forms of housing?
I stopped responding to this thread because of the irrationality of komeht. There's nothing wrong with mixed-use development, and it would be awesome if builders would build something nice, instead of crap. But the suggestion that NUNA and Hyde Park should somehow be "transformed" into a Back Bay or Nob Hill is a little bit insane. Homeowners in SF-3 neighborhoods have a perfect right to be opposed to the construction of cheap (in all senses of the word) student housing on a spot where a SF bungalow once stood. If actual families were occupying these new duplexes, and they were built with some integrity, it would be a different story.
Currently living in a single family home on W.38th St. We love the house - nice and solid, built in 1917, never been "remuddled". We've spent a good chunk of change on infrastructure in the past few years - new roof, new HVAC, new plumbing (inc. a tankless hot water heater). Our mortgage is nice and affordable. The main problems? No storage, no place for a washer AND dryer (we have a combo and it is less than ideal), and no place for cat litter for our indoor cats.
Option 1 is to add on. We can afford this. We're just worried that the neighborhood is going to become completely overrun by student rentals. We don't know if we have the sustained energy to become neighborhood activists.
Option 2 is to try and find something in Northwest Hills (Far West area). Houses in our price range seem really tatty, and we'd be maxed out by the mortgage such that improvements would be a stretch.
Option 3 is to consider something outside the box for us. We looked at a property in East Oak Hill and the spouse and I thought it was kind of creepy and too suburban.
Basically, we need about 1,000 more square feet and we want to live in a school district with an exemplary elementary school. Is there something else we should be considering?
Add a mid-sized mud room to the rear entrance for the washer, dryer and litter box. Build some shelves in it for storage. I believe it would seem creepy, as you described it, to go from 38th St to the options you've mentioned.
I stopped responding to this thread because of the irrationality of komeht. There's nothing wrong with mixed-use development, and it would be awesome if builders would build something nice, instead of crap. But the suggestion that NUNA and Hyde Park should somehow be "transformed" into a Back Bay or Nob Hill is a little bit insane. Homeowners in SF-3 neighborhoods have a perfect right to be opposed to the construction of cheap (in all senses of the word) student housing on a spot where a SF bungalow once stood. If actual families were occupying these new duplexes, and they were built with some integrity, it would be a different story.
You say there is "nothing wrong with mixed-use development" - agreed. Then why BAN it and make it ILLEGAL? There is the irrationality. Not me good sir, not me.
I have never suggested turning in NUNA and Hyde Park into Back Bay or Nob Hill - I offer those examples up of wonderful, stately, graceful dense development that we have BANNED. Why?
Homeowners have a right to irrationality it's true. But the city doesn't have to cave in to such absurdity. Let them gripe, and then do the right thing and ignore them.
Hyde Park and NUNA have created the situation they so deplore. They end up with insensible stealth student housing because they have banned sensible student housing. NUNA is ACROSS THE STREET from UT. Hyde Park a few blocks north of that. Students will end up living there. Unless you want to empower a police force to start busting down doors and counting bodies then you will have students living in those neighborhoods.
Those of us with a few ounces of common sense left recognize this fact and then advocate for sensible land use policies that are compatible both with being a lovely and gracious city that one accommodates all sorts of peoples at many different income levels and lifestyles rather than catering to the 1% for a city that is both less interesting and unsustainable.
Irrational? au contraire - I am the most rational poster on this board.
Currently living in a single family home on W.38th St. We love the house - nice and solid, built in 1917, never been "remuddled". We've spent a good chunk of change on infrastructure in the past few years - new roof, new HVAC, new plumbing (inc. a tankless hot water heater). Our mortgage is nice and affordable. The main problems? No storage, no place for a washer AND dryer (we have a combo and it is less than ideal), and no place for cat litter for our indoor cats.
Option 3 is to consider something outside the box for us. We looked at a property in East Oak Hill and the spouse and I thought it was kind of creepy and too suburban.
Basically, we need about 1,000 more square feet and we want to live in a school district with an exemplary elementary school. Is there something else we should be considering?
You might be able to find something in the Cuernevaca area or West Lake Hills (not Westlake) area. Both have some nice areas and could turn up an older house needing only a few improvements or the type of improvements you could live with and tackle over time. There's also Onion Creek (Southeast) with some larger beautiful homes but older; not sure about the school district tho', how about private schools? South Austin is crazy hot right now so I wouldn't recommend it for pricing. Lakeway? Cedar Park?
Let me guess...you're also tired of not being able to find street parking and getting a little worried about stealth dorms in your 'hood? Maybe 35th Street commute to Mopac is driving you nuts? It's pretty hard to fight those types of changes and some things just won't get better--like no freeways running east-west. Stealth dorms are a matter of fighting City Hall and big money developers in a school dominated town crying for more student housing.
You'd get a good price for your house simply because Central Austin houses are harder to find. You might try just talking to a realtor or going on Zillow.com to see what your house might be worth. It could suprise you and give you a bit more money towards your new place.
Hyde Park and NUNA have created the situation they so deplore. They end up with insensible stealth student housing because they have banned sensible student housing. NUNA is ACROSS THE STREET from UT. Hyde Park a few blocks north of that. Students will end up living there. Unless you want to empower a police force to start busting down doors and counting bodies then you will have students living in those neighborhoods.
What "ban" of "sensible student housing"? What, precisely, are you advocating? There's plenty of new MF that has gone up in the area in the last 10 years. Are you advocating that whole areas of SF zoned areas get upzoned to MF? So that's the deal for the neighborhood: either you agree to apartments or we'll break all sorts of city laws and block break your neighborhood with illegal student housing?
What "ban" of "sensible student housing"? What, precisely, are you advocating? There's plenty of new MF that has gone up in the area in the last 10 years. Are you advocating that whole areas of SF zoned areas get upzoned to MF? So that's the deal for the neighborhood: either you agree to apartments or we'll break all sorts of city laws and block break your neighborhood with illegal student housing?
The math on this is pretty simple. 50,000 students go to university immediately adjacent to NUNA/Hyde Park. There will be students in the neighborhoods. Now, you guys can wise up and get sensible about it and allow for well done MF where 1 or 2 students each share apartments and everything is kept nice and quiet for the neighbors (the way Hyde Park actually evolved before the retrograde NIMBYs gained hegemony over common sense), or they will rent SF homes and cram as many students as they can into them with predictably unhappy results. Unless you want the city engaged in house-to-house searches with court orders and warrants, then there is pretty much no way to police that from happening.
I know the 1% want the city to have there back on this. And hey, I benefit big-time from this nonsense. But let's not kid ourselves about what this is - this is you wanting the city to protect the well off and well connected people who want to make already exclusive areas of Austin even more exclusive and more protected.
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