Urbanexus Update - Issue #138
This selection of economic, real estate and community development news and information comes to you via H. Pike Oliver. He is co-author of Transforming the Irvine Ranch: Joan Irvine, William Pereira, Ray Watson, and THE BIG PLAN. Some items in this complilation may be behind a paywall.
The economy
Did NIMBYs cause the great recession?
What if the standard narrative of the Great Recession—in which a nationwide housing bubble, fueled by easy credit, newfangled financial shenanigans, a silly assumption that home prices could never decline, and excessive homebuilding tanked the entire economy—is wrong? What if, instead, the ultimate cause was that some of the country’s most prosperous metro areas didn’t have enough housing, which led to numerous negative consequences and policy overreactions? That’s the provocative thesis of Kevin Erdmann’s Building from the Ground Up: Reclaiming the American Housing Boom, which summarizes and builds on the Mercatus Center scholar’s work in several papers and his previous book Shut Out: How a Housing Shortage Caused the Great Recession and Crippled Our Economy.
Master-planned communities
Disney to develop planned communities — www.theverge.com Disney has announced a new business venture to develop planned communities for superfans who want to live, breathe (and die?) Disney. The company’s new "Storyliving" venture expands upon its previous real estate ambitions, with a first community, Cotino, planned for California.
Pioneering planned community grapples with change
The planned community of Columbia, Maryland where development got underway in the 1960s, is trying to add urban-style density, without losing its suburban soul — or its founder's utopian ideals.
Residential
73-story apartment high-rise in Chicago
CHICAGO — Co-developers Time Equities Inc., JK Equities, and Oak Capitals plan to soon begin vertical construction for 1000M, a 73-story apartment high-rise in Chicago’s South Loop district. 1000M was originally conceived as a for-sale condominium tower but during a pause in construction during the COVID-19 pandemic, the co-developers decided to reposition the asset as a 738-unit rental residential tower. Construction recommenced following a $304.5 million loan from Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank Wealth Management.
Investors bought up a record share of homes in 2021
An analysis of 40 major metro areas revealed varying levels of investor activity, with southern cities and Black neighborhoods disproportionately affected.
4 bed, 3 bath, no garage door — www.nytimes.com Supply-chain complications are giving the industry and buyers fits.
Hospitality
Extended stay hotels and the pandemic Extended stay hotels have weathered the Covid-19 downturn better than other hotels, as more travelers seek extra space and longer stays; investors like the plush profit margins.
Airbnb or not to Airbnb You might love them or you might hate them, but as small-scale developer Bernice Radle reveals, short-term rentals can be a very nuanced discussion.
Industrial
Record industrial leasing — www.worldpropertyjournal.com
According to areport by CBRE, the U.S. industrial & logistics market hit new highs for leasing activity in 2021, recording more than 1 billion sq. ft. of transactions.
Regional and metropolitan dynamics
Metro costs of living and domestic migration: 2010-2020
Since 2010, migration from more costly US metropolitan areas to those with lower costs increased. This developing dispersion is indicated in net domestic migration among the nation’s 384 metropolitan areas from 2010 to 2020.
Spokane is no longer the next affordable city. In Spokane, Wash., home prices jumped 60 percent in the past two years. The increase is fueled by buyers fleeing the boom in cities like Austin. Who will have to flee next?
Resilience and sustainability
Change our buildings, save our planet
Andrew Himes’ 2021 TEDxSeattle talk is an impassioned plea for buildings that help solve climate change instead of contributing to it. With a sense of hope, Andrew asserts that working together to solve the climate crisis gives us the opportunity to “regain a sense of our shared humanity.”
As Andrew explains, the materials used in construction, the movement of those materials, and the current massive building boom combine to make the buildings in which we live and work one of the leading causes of carbon emissions. The good news is that we already know how to create buildings that store carbon and help heal the planet. We can reuse and improve buildings instead of tearing down or using new materials, and we can all demand that the buildings in our community are built to protect us instead of harm us.
Construction
Funding a construction tech platform
Mosaic Building Group, a Phoenix-based construction technology platform, has raised $44 million in series B financing with plans to expand its services from northern Arizona into Phoenix and Tucson. Mosaic broadly describes itself as a digital general contractor, and the company’s co-founder and CEO Salman Ahmad said Mosaic provides “construction as a service” that handles the infrastructure behind the scenes so its customers can focus on their core business of land acquisition, architecture, and sales.
Real estate leadership
Randall Lewis provides ULI with $10 to promote sustainability in real estate — www.commercialsearch.com
Randall Lewis of the Lewis Group of Cos. contributed $10 million to support Urban Land Institute's sustainable land use programs. It is the largest single donation in ULI's 86-year history.