Housing Affordability

Housing affordability. That's what the Bisnow panel in Seattle yesterday was about. If I may sum it up for you:

Also serving on the panel with me:

Lisa Nitze from Nitze-Stagen & Company, Inc.,

Conor J Hansen from SRM Development,

Michael Mathews of Assemblage, and

Dave Wellings of the Seattle Housing Authority.

Over 300 in attendance! 🤯

Including my good friends and old classmates Meaghan Bullard, AIA, WELL AP and Marissa Brown!

Barriers to housing production:

❌ Financing and interest

❌ Labor availability and cost

❌ Material cost

❌ Operational costs

And perhaps most significantly discussed:

❌ ❌ ❌ Regulatory obstacles!

I.e., zoning, permitting, regulatory admin and conditions.

Regulatory obstacles affect everything front and back in development.

🔘 Significant gaps remain between available private funding for housing production and the margins necessary to make housing projects viable.

Microsoft and Amazon have stepped in to offer financing programs for housing as a major private sector actor in the Puget Sound region.

🚫 But this largess is not a sustainable model for housing development in other market geographies.

📉 Continued decreased housing production, which appears inevitable for the foreseeable future, means increased cost of housing for the foreseeable future.

In other words: housing will become LESS affordable. 🤑🤑🤑

This relates to our previous post on housing affordability, and this more detailed one by our customer and developer Backyard Development.

Barring large changes. Like market operations (see 2008).

Lots of calls for public-private partnerships to address this gap in production/financing/regulations. 🎺🎺🎺

But few concrete proposals. 🏗

UrbanForm's perspective?

Increased clarity around zoning benefits public and private side interests and increases the confidence and certainty necessary for housing development.

Love being a part of these discussions. 😍

Thanks to everyone involved 🙏