My small-ish city put through a phased rezone of a portion of the city to increase density around the future light rail station. When phase 2 goes into effect in 2021, multi-family buildings up to 4 stories will be allowed up to our next door neighbor’s back yard and our side yard. Right now everything in my general area is single-family, ramblers and 2 stories. Single family will be non-conforming. We’ll have to sell before then. This is the house Where I grew up and where I raised my own children. The larger, open lots in the phase 1 area are being filled with “urban-style” townhouses (think metal and multi-colored siding), not something I want looming over me.
H works with someone who bought a house for $700K+, tore it down, and is replacing it with that urban style valued at over $2M.
Building with thought given to existing structures has gone out the window.
Most builders who build “on spec” (no buyer until house goes on market later in build cycle) and most land owners who hire architects to design their new homes will maximize the size of home based on local zoning laws/regulations. I personally have never known anyone to build a house smaller than what current zoning laws would allow. I’m sure building a smaller home than what zoning allows does get built somewhere, but I haven’t met nor heard of them. More SF means a higher resale value to most buyers.
There are areas in Silicon Valley, where tech executives will purchase an older home on a big lot for 3,000,000-$10,000,000+, just to demo the old single story home and build a mansion, plus a separate 1,500- 2,000 +/- SF “pool house”, for even more millions. The OP’s situation is quite normal in the SF Bay Area.
An OOS couple bought an old house (1890s) in the NW section of town a few years back. Lots of nice architectural features and they paid a fair penny for it (> $1.3 mil.) They’d planned to tear it down and build a nearly 6000 sq ft home on the city lot. Quite the uproar ensued and some neighbors banded together and offered the couple more $ than they’d paid. The couple accepted the $; old house saved.
Up the street from me in the SW section of town sat an empty lot. The empty lot used to have a largish Mediterranean style home on it (not at all typical of the style of the neighborhood.) When it came up for sale about 20 years ago, the neighbor next to it bought the house and tore it down because he hated it so much. The grassy lot sat there for the better part of the 15 years I’ve lived here.
Our neighbor sold the empty lot last year to the above OOS couple. Their nearly 6000 sq ft dream home has been under construction for over a year. I think he put a height restriction on the property when he sold it, but folks around the new house will have more privacy than the couple building the new house. It’s all glass. It’s gonna be a fishbowl. An architecturally cool fishbowl.
High end tear downs of perfectly good homes are typical of our neighborhood. If we ever sell, it’s quite likely that someone will raze our home to build something larger. But large lot sizes (half acre minimums) keep things from being too squished. Infill in the city proper is a big issue- and I’m glad that our lot size buffers us from all that.
"I personally have never known anyone to build a house smaller than what current zoning laws would allow. I’m sure building a smaller home than what zoning allows does get built somewhere, but I haven’t met nor heard of them. "
You’re definitely influenced by what you are seeing in your region where the real estate market is super hot and super expensive. It happens all the time in other parts of the country.
Old neighborhoods that presently are enjoying boom times are targeted for new plans that call for increased density. Family friends in my parents old neighborhood sold their home and retired out of state. It’s a large lot and the new owner promptly erected a small contemporary style multi-story condo building next to the existing home. I guess we were supposed to be thankful that he didn’t tear down that graceful old Queen Anne house, but the condo looks very out of place next to it.
@doschicos you’re correct, my experience is with CA only.
@Cardinal Fang, for example, there’s plenty of old housing stock on both smaller and large lots in the cities of Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Atherton, Portola Valley, Woodside, where you can’t find a decent lot for less than a few million.
We have friends with an even worse problem. Their modest 1960s split level has a backyard that borders on the back yard of a large, historic (although not particularly beautiful) house. A bunch of trees and a slight hill in their neighbor's yard pretty much shield them from any view of the house. Except now the owner wants to build a five-story condominium unit right on the property line . . . about 30 feet from my friends' hot tub, maybe 70 feet from their bedroom window. It will completely loom over their house. It needs a zoning variance, but some powerful forces are in favor of that, both because it will create a fund to preserve the historic main house, and because many of the powerful forces would love to do something similar with their properties.
I am convinced our house will be that teardown. My whole neighborhood was owned by one couple, who subdivided their lower 40 and started selling it off lot by lot around 1950, one lot every two or three years, until the wife died, and then the last four lots were sold by her estate. The wife had very particular ideas about design, and she would not approve a sale until she had approved the architectural plans, but there were no deed restrictions. She and her husband lived on the block. She liked small houses on large lots, lots of setback, with no fences. No house taller than two stories, and no second-story windows visible from the street. (Her house, built into the side of a hill, actually has three full stories, but only the middle story is visible from the street.) So we have a 2,800 square foot, two-story house on an acre+ lot adjacent to a park. The (smaller) lots sold after the wife died have 5,000-7,000 sq. ft. houses on them. The last time someone sold a small house on our block, a developer bought it, gutted the house, took the roof off, and stuck a new second story and attic on what was formerly a one-story house, added a huge garage, and completely re-landscaped. Our neighbors will be lucky if only one McMansion gets built on our lot when we sell.
Yes, your zoning folks either need to get on the ball or the people need to try for changes.
When a prominent aspect of the health of the economy is ‘housing starts’ and trade employment, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Onesie-twosie homes may be a small part, but as we’re saying, they change the flavor of neighborhoods.
We fought a condo project with one parking spot per unit, on a street with limited spaces and no overnight parking. A 3 unit/3 story rental got approved because the owner swore he’d live in one unit. Not. Luckily, that’s at the commercial end of our sub neighborhood.
I went to a few committee meetings and in this case, they’re rough. Grumpy board members barely tolerating a packed, sweaty room. You’re there among others asking for or against all sorts of issues. Later decisions made in private. But you have to decide whether to engage or not. We did get the condo project reduced from 16 units to 11. The irony is it took the investors 5+ years to sell out.
In our area there is a fight going on about density. The city (politicians bought and paid for by developers) want to put up high rise apartments and condos along public transportation corridors. People who bought when single family was the norm want low density. No one wants to be the house who is shadowed by a looming four story building with lots more traffic and noise. Yet this is somehow called NIMBYism and elitism and such.
My point was that $3 million is not enough to buy a large lot in one of those areas. Tech executives might want to "purchase an older home on a big lot for 3,000,000-$10,000,000+, just to demo the old single story home and build a mansion, plus a separate 1,500- 2,000 +/- SF pool house,” but the $3 million lower limit is too low. You can’t buy a lot big enough to build two houses for only $3 million in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Atherton, Portola Valley or Woodside, I don’t think.
Houses in Silicon Valley cost as much as they do precisely because all the NIMBYs are fighting any kind of sensible re-zoning to allow denser housing in city centers. This is one reason homelessness is so high in Silicon Valley. Every proud fight to prevent neighborhoods from putting in condos and apartments is another few dozen people who can’t find anywhere to live. There’s always room for more office buildings, but heaven forfend we upzone to allow condos.
This isn’t just northern California. It’s been happening in the richest parts of greater LA for decades. And there, we aren’t talking just grandma bungalows. It can be large existing mansions.
@“Cardinal Fang” I missed your point, I thought you were saying the opposite. But I’ll stick to my lower end figure of $3,000,000 for a 7,500 to 1/4 acre lot in Menlo Park. At the high end like Atherton, many lots can easily exceed $10,000,000.
If you’ve got the business density, you’ve got the traffic, even if you prohibit housing starts. People have to get to work, and if they have to drive from Stockton to Mountain View to do it, some will. And some who can’t find housing will live on the streets of Mountain View. Does having people live in RVs on your street lower the property values? I’d say yeah, it does.