Just completed an infill. While your totals are about right, some adjustments. Design fees can be done for 1/2 of that. Construction costs are 30-50% higher. City fees are triple yours. Finance costs are much higher without full collateral. CACs, well they told me they would "probably" be waived. They were imposed anyway. Then there's all the extraneous costs, new underground hydro service, sewer rebuild with separations (pray that you can do gravity), water was free but now meters, and timing - good luck with that. 3 years, not 3 months for permitting, 18 months not 9 months for construction, if you're lucky. Any change, any question, can add months of resubmissions, rechecking each department etc. I could write a book. And code requirements. Don't get me started.
I was at the webinar as well. If you can get six homes on a 50-foot lot, about 1000 square feet each, I think the market price would be comparable to a townhouse (i.e. about $1M). As I understand it, the builder can either (1) make two of the homes permanently affordable at a lower price, or (2) just pay a fixed fee to the city (CAC) that then goes into paying for social housing and/or local infrastructure. You can find some pro formas in this report from Small Housing BC: http://www.smallhousingbc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/PAH-report_final.pdf
Thanks for your comments. As the mayor offered no pro Formas and declined to answer any questions about, well, almost anything other than “isn’t this a cool idea,” I stand by my analyses. I think you read way more into what he said than what he actually said. He was unclear about building types, floor areas, site areas, fees, costs, CACs, DCLs-I’m sure I’ve missed some of what he missed. Small Housing BC is an excellent resource but the mayor did not say that’s what he was basing his program on. He needs to be specific so council and voters know what he’s proposing and can judge accordingly
As I understand it, the vote on Tuesday is for city staff to provide a detailed set of recommendations. After that, city council will then need to decide whether to approve those recommendations or not.
I was curious myself about the feasibility of the proposal, which is how I discovered the Small Housing BC report. I found that Michael Andersen at Sightline did a write-up when Kennedy Stewart first introduced the idea. Andersen talked to Darrell Mussatto of Small Housing BC about feasibility: "Last year Mussatto’s organization released a 70-page report, complete with detailed cost estimates, that seems to have become part of the basis for Stewart’s proposal. Its examples go up to five homes rather than six, and most provide one permanently below-market home on each lot rather than two. But the basic concept is the same: attached, stacked or closely nestled homes ranging in size from 900 to 1,080 square feet each. The market-rate homes would sell for around $1 million each. The below-market homes, for around half of that." https://www.sightline.org/2020/09/16/good-news-vancouvers-six-homes-per-lot-proposal-could-work/
Just completed an infill. While your totals are about right, some adjustments. Design fees can be done for 1/2 of that. Construction costs are 30-50% higher. City fees are triple yours. Finance costs are much higher without full collateral. CACs, well they told me they would "probably" be waived. They were imposed anyway. Then there's all the extraneous costs, new underground hydro service, sewer rebuild with separations (pray that you can do gravity), water was free but now meters, and timing - good luck with that. 3 years, not 3 months for permitting, 18 months not 9 months for construction, if you're lucky. Any change, any question, can add months of resubmissions, rechecking each department etc. I could write a book. And code requirements. Don't get me started.
Are you in Vancouver? If so I’d like to talk with you about your experience. More City Conversations about affordable housing are planned
Yes. Email me and we can get together to chat.
mine is bpalmquist@shaw.ca, don't have yours
I was at the webinar as well. If you can get six homes on a 50-foot lot, about 1000 square feet each, I think the market price would be comparable to a townhouse (i.e. about $1M). As I understand it, the builder can either (1) make two of the homes permanently affordable at a lower price, or (2) just pay a fixed fee to the city (CAC) that then goes into paying for social housing and/or local infrastructure. You can find some pro formas in this report from Small Housing BC: http://www.smallhousingbc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/PAH-report_final.pdf
Thanks for your comments. As the mayor offered no pro Formas and declined to answer any questions about, well, almost anything other than “isn’t this a cool idea,” I stand by my analyses. I think you read way more into what he said than what he actually said. He was unclear about building types, floor areas, site areas, fees, costs, CACs, DCLs-I’m sure I’ve missed some of what he missed. Small Housing BC is an excellent resource but the mayor did not say that’s what he was basing his program on. He needs to be specific so council and voters know what he’s proposing and can judge accordingly
As I understand it, the vote on Tuesday is for city staff to provide a detailed set of recommendations. After that, city council will then need to decide whether to approve those recommendations or not.
I was curious myself about the feasibility of the proposal, which is how I discovered the Small Housing BC report. I found that Michael Andersen at Sightline did a write-up when Kennedy Stewart first introduced the idea. Andersen talked to Darrell Mussatto of Small Housing BC about feasibility: "Last year Mussatto’s organization released a 70-page report, complete with detailed cost estimates, that seems to have become part of the basis for Stewart’s proposal. Its examples go up to five homes rather than six, and most provide one permanently below-market home on each lot rather than two. But the basic concept is the same: attached, stacked or closely nestled homes ranging in size from 900 to 1,080 square feet each. The market-rate homes would sell for around $1 million each. The below-market homes, for around half of that." https://www.sightline.org/2020/09/16/good-news-vancouvers-six-homes-per-lot-proposal-could-work/