Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I find this interesting, because in the Syracuse area, you can find apartments in the suburbs that run the gamut from some that actually accept Section 8 to a degree to some in planned communities with HOA's. Here is an apartment guide for the area: Apartments for Rent in Syracuse, NY - Syracuse Apartment Rentals
Age and perhaps location may play a factor, but generally, you can get at least a solid apartment for around $800, give or take. Keep in mind, that some that say Syracuse, are actually outside of city limits.
Sometimes I get a little annoyed after studying chapters from books that make Master's degrees a complete joke. The thing that annoys me is when I see a blatant disregard for logic and economics.
They built the minimum number of parking spots so they... could get the highest return on their investment. One of those factors was creating an artificial shortage of parking. Do you really think only 15% of students have a car? Do you believe that every single person living there has purchased a parking spot? You absolutely, 100% believe that if those parking spots were ten cents per month they would still only have 36 cars? If you don't believe the last statement, then the problem is that they over-priced the parking spots, not that there wasn't demand. They could easily sell all the parking spots, and several more, at the market clearing price. They decided not to charge the market clearing price, most likely because they have a monopoly. Because they have a monopoly, it may be more profitable to exploit those 36 students than to sell 58 parking passes at the significantly lower market clearing price. Or, the employees may be able to use those parking spots as long as they are not sold. If parking is phenomenally expensive there, the employees have a large interest in establishing a very high price so they have some protected parking spots. Now you might think they would only need 5 or 10, but wouldn't you want a margin of safety? How much would an employee (NOT AN OWNER) actually gain from renting out the extra spots? Not much. They would gain a very real benefit from using it themselves.
It's a shame that piece of crap college isn't giving out educations that would allow people to do this analysis for themselves.
My sister and her 4 other room mates live in an SFH with a driveway, i.e. free parking. Not a single one of them have a car, and they live in a more car-dependent part of the college town. The building I live in now has 10 students (actually 1 is a teacher) and only 1 of them has a car even though there's room for two. There's also a scooter. Previous place I lived in had 10 people, 3 of which had a car (again free driveway parking) and before that it was 5 people with 2 cars (free parking). So anecdotally, 6 cars for 30 people, or 20%. A little over 15%, but that's with free parking. There's actually a cost to supply parking, especially in higher density higher demand areas, which I'd expect to be at least $10,000, maybe as much as $30,000 if it's underground. So then why should the parking cost 10 cents per month? If it you sell something for less than what it costs to provide, I call that underpriced. And yes, a retail business might be more willing to pay the cost of parking (i.e. $10,000+ not 10 cents) so that it's available to employees and customers, hence why the building owner decided to convert space to retail.
And I don't think there's a monopoly either, there's several student buildings (usually over a dozen) going up at any given time, and the neighbourhood still has hundreds of single family homes owned by a wide variety of small investors with free driveway and on-street parking. However, it doesn't seem like this is stopping students from choosing to live in these low-parking apartments instead. Despite the relative lack of parking, the rooms are renting out at a significantly higher price than in the SFHs.
The on street parking isn't very highly utilized either. While parking is relatively expensive, so is owning a car, especially if you're a student which means very high insurance rates (especially here). Pretty much everywhere a student here goes to is within 1 mile, sometimes just 1/2 a mile, so perfectly manageable by foot, bike or bus (runs until 11pm to 2am, every 5-30min depending on the route and time). For the odd trip to the mall, that's a little further, about 2 miles, or a 15 min bus ride. I'm sure once the students graduate and get a full time job, car ownership will increase as more of them will have to travel several miles on a daily basis (mainly commuting). However, they're pretty unlikely to stay in the student buildings when that happens, they'll just move out to other buildings, where there's probably going to be more parking. Also I still think a certain number of them will be car free while they're living alone, with cars per household going up as they find a partner and start a family.
Btw my education is not in urban planning, real estate or architecture, it's just something I'm interested in.
Sometimes I get a little annoyed after studying chapters from books that make Master's degrees a complete joke. The thing that annoys me is when I see a blatant disregard for logic and economics.
They built the minimum number of parking spots so they... could get the highest return on their investment. One of those factors was creating an artificial shortage of parking. Do you really think only 15% of students have a car? Do you believe that every single person living there has purchased a parking spot? You absolutely, 100% believe that if those parking spots were ten cents per month they would still only have 36 cars? If you don't believe the last statement, then the problem is that they over-priced the parking spots, not that there wasn't demand. They could easily sell all the parking spots, and several more, at the market clearing price. They decided not to charge the market clearing price, most likely because they have a monopoly. Because they have a monopoly, it may be more profitable to exploit those 36 students than to sell 58 parking passes at the significantly lower market clearing price. Or, the employees may be able to use those parking spots as long as they are not sold. If parking is phenomenally expensive there, the employees have a large interest in establishing a very high price so they have some protected parking spots. Now you might think they would only need 5 or 10, but wouldn't you want a margin of safety? How much would an employee (NOT AN OWNER) actually gain from renting out the extra spots? Not much. They would gain a very real benefit from using it themselves.
It's a shame that piece of crap college isn't giving out educations that would allow people to do this analysis for themselves.
At the college I went to that would be an accurate number. Also less than 50 % of the staff drove to work. Having a car was inconvenient and expensive. If the university had to build more parking lots, they have less space for students, classrooms and researchers. We rarely charge the market price for parking, our rules incentivize making it fee or cheap.
I live about 3 miles from my college town now when I go, most if the time I bike or take transit in the areas near and adjacent to the campus. Unless it is summer, spring or winter break.
I think a lot of the housing affordability problem here comes from the habit of local authorities of subsidizing demand rather than liberating supply.
Was checking the Silicon Valley area on Google Earth and found a low density area that coincides with Atherton city limits. The general plan from 2002:
The minimum land area per dwelling is one acre. Up to 5 acres if the terrain is hilly.
Atherton is an uber exclusive burb. The average home price is likely around $4M. It is where Silicon Valley executives live. No regular single family homes there. It is also a small place. The problem is most of its neighbors encourage jobs in transit disconnected office parks and build zero housing units.
The second part is precisely accurate. I would strongly oppose having studio apartments placed next to my suburban neighborhood. With small and cheap apartment comes a much higher volume of drug activity and crime. It is a very clear correlation that has been seen over hundreds of years in several environments. Residents that don't care about the area and don't have a mindset of buying nice things for the future tend to trash the area. I don't want to live with that for the next decade, and I don't want to move to the other side of the town and eat the costs of realtor fees and loss of property value because all the capable buyers wanted to avoid it unless they got a large discount.
I wouldn't consider that a conspiracy. I don't want things that will destroy my property value. Do you ever encourage people to pee on your building or spray paint it? Why not? You don't want them damaging your things.
People who live in studios are criminals and drug dealers? Wow. Renters don't want nice stuff or neighborhoods?
Where are your stats over hundreds of years to support these ridiculous claims?
So two cases in ONE state is "a lot of suburban municipalities around the country"? That's not the case in my suburban city, nor the suburban cities directly north, south, east or west of me! I've got you beat!
Does this need to be a competition? I gave examples of restrictive zoning in suburbs (common in the Northeast) and city propers in an earlier post. I'm not interested in making a comprehensive list.
Sometimes I get a little annoyed after studying chapters from books that make Master's degrees a complete joke. The thing that annoys me is when I see a blatant disregard for logic and economics.
They built the minimum number of parking spots so they... could get the highest return on their investment. One of those factors was creating an artificial shortage of parking. Do you really think only 15% of students have a car? Do you believe that every single person living there has purchased a parking spot? You absolutely, 100% believe that if those parking spots were ten cents per month they would still only have 36 cars? If you don't believe the last statement, then the problem is that they over-priced the parking spots, not that there wasn't demand.
Structure parking (non-surface) is expensive to build, it's also a waste of money for a parking space to sit empty with no revenue attach to it. The parking requirements also make it clumsy to build housing on small or akwardly-sized lots, driving up costs. Don't you think a student actually lives in that area might know a bit more of what's going on? A solution for student areas would be unbundle parking from rental buildings, so the student who have cars can buy parking separately. For the non-car owners, the parking requirements are a bit of nuisance that just add to the housing expense.
I know Ithaca had a big fuss over building an apartment building in a student area without parking, the site location made it difficult to provide parking and the idea was to use the first floor for a grocery store. There wasn't much street parking available nearby anyway, so few students with a car would choose such a place. If they did, I'm not sure why it's the city's problem. The zoning board turned it down, but the result afterwards was removing the parking minimums for (some?) of the city.
Does this need to be a competition? I gave examples of restrictive zoning in suburbs (common in the Northeast) and city propers in an earlier post. I'm not interested in making a comprehensive list.
I wasn't quoting you. And no, I'm not interested in a comprehensive list, either, but two examples in one state does not make the case that it's going on in suburban municipalities around the country. Even a couple more examples in another state don't make that point.
I wasn't quoting you. And no, I'm not interested in a comprehensive list, either, but two examples in one state does not make the case that it's going on in suburban municipalities around the country. Even a couple more examples in another state don't make that point.
I know you didn't quote me, I didn't say you did. I made a post on the subject with more information that you could refer to. If a couple more example doesn't make the point, that what else be sufficient besides a comprehensive list. Two examples are better than zero.
Maybe the person who posted this fallacious information in the first place could support his argument with real data instead of anecdotes. We can all give anecdotes till the end of time.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I made a post on the subject with more information that you could refer to. If a couple more example doesn't make the point, that what else be sufficient besides a comprehensive list. Two examples are better than zero.
