In Praise of 5-Over-1 Buildings (2019)
commonedge.org
commonedge.org
They have so many other advantages that they don't need to be attractive, and developers hate to pay for anything they don't need.
Also, this moment where they're breaking out and popping up like weeds to fill pent-up demand is an awkward moment, design-wise, because you need a lot of new designs quickly without a long history to look back on and draw from. Compare that to high-rise office buildings or single family homes, where you have a century and more of variations in countless different styles, where you have not only countless iconic examples but decades' worth of reaction to many of them. Some of the 5-over-1 buildings going up now will turn out to be iconic, style-defining precedents. Most will be trash, but will still serve the functional purpose.
Personally, I love seeing these go up near me. It means more housing supply and more businesses near me that cater to foot traffic, in the same package.
Having been to a lot of big European cities, buildings of roughly this size of ~6 stories or so seem to typically be the norm, and they get plenty of density out of it just by having a lot of them. Much taller buildings usually aren't all that common. Hell, even in Tokyo, while there's a lot of high rises, the average building definitely isn't a high rise, it's probably still six stories or less.
That said, much higher density in some areas (e.g. downtown, or right next to subway stations) definitely makes a lot of sense.
In Dublin, we had a building boom which came to a crashing halt in 2008 or so with the financial crisis, and then resumed by about 2016. In the interim, street-level retail space in new apartment blocks on the advancing edge often lay empty, which kind of makes sense, because the density wasn't there yet. As building resumed, and areas filled up, so did the retail space.
In San Francisco SOMA, this is not a "newly densifying area". It is still densifying (converted from automotive workshops, entertainment and light manufacturing prevalence 30 years ago) but there has been plenty of people living there for many years now. And there are supermarkets and other Costco that did take advantage of that mix of still available largish, newish spaces and local population. But no, for SOMA and San Francisco in general, the issue is more likely that "street level retail" was a checkbox you better meet in your permit application. It's largely aspirational. There are some thriving stores in the area (cafés, furniture, specialty retail, supermarkets, private schools, etc). And there is also several times that in apparently empty street level spaces. Many of them are not always empty: they get leased for "cool office space" - but it's kind of the same from the street: frosted or painted glass front at best. The more noticeable spaces are stores that were there for years and finally gave up and closed (indeed café, hardware store, art galleries, furniture, schools, home goods, bakery - that should be at least surviving if population density was the only issue.)
Just because street level retail is aspirational to the city planners of San Francisco, will not be enough to make it happen.
(It was also to my mind a slightly weird example of this sort of "convert obsolete light industry into housing and offices" phenomenon, in that it seemed to be super-patchy. I've no idea if anyone has looked into it, but my suspicion is that people are more likely to walk around the local area and use the retail facilities if it feels like a local area, rather than islands in a sea of old warehouses.)
From a density point of view it's as much as you are likely to find in San Francisco. There is not much point in hoping for much more.
This combination of large supermarkets and combination home goods stores makes it actually an area that other San Franciscans might drive to for groceries! Safeway, Target (a second one with parking lot closed recently), Trader Joes (two, one with free parking lot), Costco (with free parking lot), Foods Co (free parking lot), Rainbow Grocery (free parking lot), Whole Foods (a second one with parking closed recently), spread all around mostly at the periphery of that area. There are enough people to sustain all these stores.
So that I don't think the "still densifying" argument applies. It's been long enough and there are lots of people who live there. Certainly more dense than most other areas in San Francisco.
This is also in the area of San Francisco that is central from a transit point of view. It is very well served. Easy (but slow and certainly not comfortable) to come from other areas by transit.
No, I think mostly there are sooooo many of these empty "street level retail" - and of course more being "required" in new construction. We are not getting there from here.
("sea of old warehouses" - actually no, the area is very walkable. For one, it's fairly flat, for another, it's not all that large, and the weather is nice. And the highest density of street mental health issues is toward the Mission district and toward Market street rather than in the core of SOMA. Even then, many San Franciscan's still walk through the Market area.)
five stories is about the maximum amount of traditional (not-CLT) wood construction tolerated by fire code. also, six and above stories is where you start needing more elevators as a practical matter, which cuts the amount of leasable space on lower floors.
if you look at skyscraper designs one of the most complicated things is elevator layout design, because you need enough capacity so that people don't wait unreasonably long for elevators, but you also don't want to waste so much space on elevator shafts.
They do? I believe I've heard from a friend who lives there that the fire department recently shortened a few planned buildings because they could not guarantee reaching higher than $X meters. (Said $X is over 100, but less than they initially wanted to build.)
I don't have any hard sources tho.
And if it is due to the usual fire brigade ladder height problem, that would be at most 68m currently: https://www.magirusgroup.com/de/en/products/turntable-ladder... (around here in a smaller town, a company got a 50m building permit when they paid for the new fire truck with a sufficiently long ladder).
I guess it's the timber-over-concrete that is new and without historical example? Or regardless, the issue is that the historical examples are too expensive to build now. (Why isn't this an issue with residential too? I think it is actually?)
Here's a very typical generic Chicago example, which possibly has had it's ground floor facade replaced at some point in an uninspired way, but you can see the masonry on the upper floors (only 3-over-1) which would be an absolute premium luxury build today, and the building has plenty of character even though it's not being used for especially high-rent purposes at the moment: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9654135,-87.6587315,3a,75y,2...
Here's a new construction (past 20 years anyway) 4-over-1 that is all brick... pretty boring and generic. Would people hate it as much as the timber-over-concrete? I have no idea. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.962424,-87.6661565,3a,75y,26...
Here's a pretty delightful and typical older all masonry 5-over-1, nothing special, tons of buildings like this. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9582377,-87.6528717,3a,75y,8...
There is no lack of great historical examples of mid-rise 5-over-1 residential over retail -- but they probably aren't timber frame over concrete podium.
(And indeed, most new construction single family homes are pretty disastrous too?)
I especially love the architecture of Chicago though, it is a delightful city to be in. Many parts of the city managed to have historical building booms at just the right times to leave us with some amazing infrastructure.
But yeah, the OP is talking a lot about how mid-rise density residential-over-retail is great for livable cities -- and I agree! Chicago demonstrates it. 2-5 stories of residential over a retail ground floor is great for neighborhood "main roads". That isn't the issue, the issue is that we just don't like cost-competitive new construction much, whatever the layout.
That's a good question. I'm not an expert, but I think what was cheap in the 20th century is still generally pretty cheap now. A stick-built bungalow or ranch house with siding was cheap then and is cheap now.
I also think there's more room in the market for not-quite-the-cheapest-thing when it comes to single family homes. Like private automobiles, single family homes can be more expensive than they need to be, if the extra cost allows the buyer express their individual taste or their social status. If someone prefers a brick facade, they might pay extra for it, just like they might pay extra to drive a $60k car that has roughly the same practical utility as a $30k car that is also available in the market.
> the issue is that we just don't like cost-competitive new construction much, whatever the layout
Agree 100%.
Timber is seen as the innovative, climate friendly alternative, but it’s still more expensive than concrete.
West coast USA is an earthquake zone and has a large timber industry in the pacific north west. Not using timber or something else that is flexible is a relative hazard!
Fault line map: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=37a3...
Pouring into forms is by far the most expensive technique because those forms are costly to build and set up. In the US poured concrete is only used in simple or horizontal structures (like foundations) or where the cost of the formwork can be amortized over a lot of repeated structures, like the floors of a highrise.
This should put to lie the idea that 5 over 1s are the only way cost-effective way to build. CMU construction is cheap it's just not quite as cheap as timber frame, and developers will always choose the cheapest technique they're allowed to use.
If you have multiple developers bidding for the same (in demand) land, then the one willing to pay the most will obviously have to choose to reduce construction costs wherever possible to afford.
But at the same time, the fire code and zoning make it pretty rare that a 6-floor building is the right economic choice. You might as well build it to be 10-15 floors. The approval process isn’t going to be more difficult or time consuming, your per-unit costs will be lower, and there’s no shortage of banks willing to finance it. This is also quite different than most other large cities.
The question is -- what are the constraints on what that looks like, what is it exactly that people are saying they don't like about "5 over 1", let's compare to various historical ways of building several stories of residentail over a ground floor of retail, let's look at what the cost factors and constraints are here, let's compare different cities, let's think about what sort of building codes might lead to different designs, etc.
I want that article!
(To be fair, plenty of new construction in Chicago is pretty bad too. I think that second picture I posted above of residential-over-retail is a pretty ugly and street-unfriendly building, although it gives everyone a front-facing balcony that presumably raised the value of those presumably condos. looks like a parking garage. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.962424,-87.6661565,3a,75y,26... )
NM cable (Romex) is not permitted anywhere in Chicago, EMT and wire is used for residences. Armored cable is allowed in some circumstances.
Requiring EMT and copper water supply lines both fit this scenario, as it’s harder to bend EMT and pull wire than it is to install NM cable; and it’s harder to bend and sweat copper pipe than it is to squeeze together the handles of a PEX fitting crimper.
Anyone have some insight into the reasoning behind these weird Chicago building codes?
> The name derives from the maximum permissible five floors of combustible construction (Type III or Type V) over a fire-resistive Type I podium of one floor for "5-over-1" or two floors for "5-over-2", as defined in the United States-based International Building Code (IBC) Section 510.2.[1][4] Some sources instead attribute the name to the wood framing of the upper construction; the International Building Code uses "Type V" to refer to non-fireproof structures, including those framed with dimensional lumber
It’s true since the term became popular people have misunderstood, and it happens to match the number of permissible stories in current code, but that’s not what structural engineers meant when they started using the phrase.
But developers aren't going to pay for design unless they are forced to.
That being said, a lot of styles we appreciate now were the cheap designs of their day. Those mid-century storefronts in towns that grew up the 50-60s were all cheap to produce.
That's homogeneity, not attractiveness. I think there are a very small number of places where this works, as a cool marker of identity and difference, like (maybe) Santa Fe. Even there I'm not sure if residents like it, or if it's just the tourists who think it's historic and cute. But for most places it just makes things bland and depressing. At first glance it's kinda cool when a university enforces a style guide that visually distinguishes its campus from its environs, but it quickly turns sad when you realize the art museum looks exactly like the biology building, which looks exactly like the business school, which looks exactly like the campus health services.
Around here (and likely across america) you see the same facade features again and again -probably because they are off the shelf and picked out of a catalog. (of course they are, but the degree to which they are is the silly part of it. There is ZERO creativity in them.)
Actually this is to the point where one naive building here went so faaaaar out of their way to look different (while within budget) that it looks absurd. Absurdly, deliberately, gratuitously different - in a way that makes little technical sense.)
Similarly another one a partner lived in, was so well thought out, it attacked your eye. I could not walk through it without seeing the attention to detail. Outstanding designers. Interesting how "interesting" is now so obvious. In a neighborhood that was otherwise boring as hell.
good design doesn't come through legislation. it comes through allowing people the freedom to take risks and do interesting things in their designs, and to have the confidence that the work they put into designing something won't be thrown out at a community meeting because it doesn't fit the neighbourhood character.
If a building is unsafe and beyond cost-effective rehabilitation, it should come down. Undoubtedly, this new generation of buildings will grow old and follow this path, as has everything before.
Risk in style and ornamentation is a different matter, and of secondary concern.
I would far prefer to reside in a stylistically hideous but structurally sound building than anything that places my safety at risk, no matter how elegant.
The general safety issues of buildings tend to increase as they age, as new safety standards come into place, so making it hard to replace old buildings actually tends to decrease safety!
Also they tend to be hidden so anybody at a neighborhood review meeting is not even going to understand what was done unsafely.
I'd actually like see entrepreneurs take a run at that retail space. It would be cool to live in a place with a produce stand on the ground floor and a deli around the corner with a small DMV office in between. It would be nice to see an intelligent analysis on why your area can't seem to fill up that retail space. Ditto some initiative to change the situation.
Sometimes economies of scale seem to favor three giant guitar stores versus 15 small ones. It would be fun to see people who are smart enough to make small neighborhood shops competitive.
Well of course. So would those entrepreneurs. Problem is that rent is usually way too high to for a shoe store or makerspace to break even. Forget plumbing supplies. There usually isn’t easy parking for a truck, and you need lots of room for a plumbing supply store.
These spaces are normally mandated by local regulations, so whether or not they are economically viable is irrelevant.
If they would truly rent these places out at what the market will pay, that would be fine and I'd love to see what ideas people had to use that space. But seeing as how most of it remains vacant, that must not be happening.
It seems obvious that if any retail space could be converted to living quarters and make more money, somebody would pay the commercial rent and do the conversion. Except, of course, where this is barred by government.
You can't reasonably expect personal investment in a venture that directly competes with Amazon. My town is littered with neighborhood grocery stores that have been shuttered longer than I have been alive (and I am nearing retirement).
I have seen food halls that vaguely work in Chicago, and my regional city has business incubators that reduce the cost of starting a business.
That only goes so far, though. Modern commerce has hollowed out much commercial real estate.
If they were less soulsuckingly lifeless nobody would mind them. Also as a result of their soulsuckingness it's hard to imagine treating one as a long-term home, which compounds because they're more soulsucking due to having nobody people treating them as long-term homes. Also they are usually not for sale as condos either so that's another reason they don't feel like long-term homes. (Nor are they able to personalize them significantly).
What I noticed with development patterns when I lived in Munich, is that there were a LOT more "pedestrian plaza" type areas scattered throughout the city compared to US cities.
I think that's what's needed, is any given neighborhood having at least a few plaza areas with some open space, some benches, a fountain, etc.
I'm not sure the culture in the US would lend itself that way.
Parks and public commons areas tend to become the dumping ground for unsolved social issues. Those who've fallen through society's cracks. Those who would abuse the ability to interact with others to interact in uncouth ways. Issues of space size and use density. Even during the height of Pokemon Go when (mostly) nerds were incentivized to visit city parks the mostly polite use was frowned upon as an unwanted crowd interfering with those who'd traditionally use the same public space.
Then there's the more 'accepted' version of gatherings in cities: paying various retail places for the privilege of being there, usually at a markup that reflects the value of being in such a dense area.
Fixing both of those problems, and any others I didn't mention, will take political will and a shift in culture. Programs to connect the unfortunate with the social integration or support help they need, and measures to combat rent-seeking (laws and tax biases) seem like a distant pipe dream.
I live in Chicago and everyone goes to the park. I have friends in New York and that's even more true there.
If the park is not sufficiently used by sufficient numbers of “normal” people, then it can quickly get taken over by sketchy people.
I went to this park two weeks ago, because it is one of very (very) few that performs ancient Greek drama in mask every year. This is quite a rare thing.
But that requires planning and time.
You really think none of these 5-over-1 buildings have community amenities like gyms, pools, coworking spaces, party rooms, and other features like that?
I think the truth is that there’s such a deeply ingrained hatred for multi-family buildings in the United States that buildings like this are held to impossible standards, and that’s what you’re doing here.
You could accuse almost any McMansion sub-development of every sin you’ve listed besides having hallways - which is kind of a hilarious accusation to make, that hallways impede communities. Tell me, which McMansion development forces you to walk by your neighbor like a hallway does? It’s really the opposite, you can leave your McMansion home without even stepping food outside your private property - garage to car to road to Starbucks drive thru. No need to get out of your car or interact with anyone.
And the idea that all these developments only have overpriced retail is not only laughable but it still beats out McMansion developments for having zero retail of any kind. But again we are holding multi-family developments to higher standards than single family homes that are so lovingly adored.
What’s wrong with multi-unit buildings that have private amenities? Do you let people into your yard to use your swing set and pool? Aren’t there a lot of single family home communities not have private HOA amenities too?
Once again a higher standard is being applied to multi-family homes because of how much Americans are conditioned to hate them. Anything a multi-family building does is sinful but the God-fearing single family home’s private amenities are sacred freedom-loving private property.
> You really think none of these 5-over-1 buildings have community amenities like gyms, pools, coworking spaces, party rooms, and other features like that?
of course I don't. they have those and suck anyway.
> And the idea that all these developments only have overpriced retail is not only laughable but it still beats out McMansion developments for having zero retail of any kind. But again we are holding multi-family developments to higher standards than single family homes that are so lovingly adored.
yeah, McMansions are worse. If only there were other options besides those two. Oh wait there are tons. Like "all of Europe".
My proof is "I have lived places that didn't suck and it's pretty clear what the differences are". Anyone who has also lived somewhere that didn't suck will also see the difference pretty clearly.
The quintessential Parisian walk up building is basically a 5-over-1.
The only difference is that America has their 5-over-1s built in the middle of heavily car-centric infrastructure, and that America has a majority single family home population that fights against the very idea of multi-unit buildings.
I will go through each one of your complaints and point out how they aren't really unique to America in any way and can be applied to a lot of places with celebrated urbanism.
> with their lifeless corridors and alienating common areas
The only corridor I saw in the Danish walk up apartment I stayed in was an alarmingly steep staircase. I'll take a lifeless ADA-compliant corridor over that any day. Half of the stairs I took in Tokyo were basically outside the building which kind of sucked when it was hot and humid.
> and that the ground-floor retail tends to be (apparently) reserved for overpriced retail chains that come and go every few years, presumably because they charge high rents for large spaces.
Do a Google Maps search for "McDonald's in Paris, France." Wouldn't you know it, McDonald's is in the high-rent central districts of Paris. It's almost as if urban central cities are desirable to live in and command high rents!
> They also tend to not have balcony space for people to decorate so from outside they look completely un-personalized.
Do a street view anywhere in central Paris and there are a bunch of balconies but nobody has decorated them at all. A balcony is not a plus for many people: if you have small kids and pets they can be more of a liability.
> If they were less soulsuckingly lifeless nobody would mind them.
The sameness in architectural design is cool when it comes to Tokyo, East Berlin, Scandinavian minimalism and modernism, Philadelphia's historic row homes, Victorian housing across America, architects like Mies Van Der Rohe, but it's not cool in 5-over-1 in North Carolina. Basically, sameness is everywhere, but you're criticizing it in one application in an arbitrary way.
> Also as a result of their soulsuckingness it's hard to imagine treating one as a long-term home, which compounds because they're more soulsucking due to having nobody people treating them as long-term homes.
Countries with lower home ownership rates than the USA: Sweden, France, New Zealand, UK, South Korea, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Switzerland. Your personal opinion is that renters don't treat their rentals like they are home, but that's an example of derogatory classism if you ask me.
> Also they are usually not for sale as condos either so that's another reason they don't feel like long-term homes. (Nor are they able to personalize them significantly).
They definitely are sold as condos. But okay.
Rules that all units need 2 different staircases really dictate the sort of layout that is physically possible, nearly always resulting in a long central hallway with stairs at either end that feels very impersonal. The resulting units are also not great places to live, with windows on a single wall. Every bedroom needs an egress window, so building 3+ bedroom units almost never pencils out. It's all 1-2 bedroom 'starter' apartments, rather than the types of beautiful 'for life' apartments you'd see in pre-war new york buildings.
Since the staircases are required no matter what, developers are incentivized to stretch the horizontal distance between them as far as possible to amortize the space penalty of the stairs, making the building feel even more impersonal once inside.
If single stairs plus a sprinkler or other fire suppression was allowed multifamily buildings could be set on much smaller lots, with more corner units that have windows on 2 sides or even small, skinny apartments with half or the full floor dedicated to 3-4 bedroom units. The interiors would have far more light and the buildings would be much more human-scale, all contributing to things feeling a lot more personal. There could also be a lot more green space and gathering space scattered in smaller parcels, breaking up the hulking 5+1s we have all become used to.
In my experience, living in a multistory stick framed building usually means absolutely zero sound isolation from neighbors which can lead to some really frustrating situations. It was night and day better when I moved into an apartment building from the 60s with the levels made of concrete.
It seems like a weird US thing from what I've seen online that new buildings are still just a frame and drywall. I don't get why though, sure building costs initially are slightly lower but a concrete building will last much longer, it's easier to insulate against weather, and they can charge higher rent for the sound isolation as well
The rest of the building (outside walls and floors) are from brick, though.
They are actually terrible for bikes. Mine and the rest in the rack in the garage were stolen and management was not helpful at all and didn’t produce security tapes. Bike thieves know following a car in to one of these is an easy way to steal bikes.
Without doxxing myself, I'll say that I was among the first group of residents of a 5-over-1 that made local news for the safety problems associated with its cheap construction. Non-functional smoke detectors, incorrectly installed fire walls, flood markings in the concrete basement, paint smears on the cabinets, doors with massive and varying gaps underneath, the whole 9 yards. In a brand new building. Truly a remarkable exercise in corner-cutting.
Seattle is full of Sears catalog Craftsman homes that are not at all climate appropriate, and while they are historic and beloved today that was not always the case. If you buy one of them today they're probably moldy.
I guess that traces back to your "the problem is the builder, not the building" argument. You're right, but I think it's okay to dislike a blatant symbol of half-assedness.
As a general example, New York's iconic brownstones were also complained about in their era because they were prone to crumbling and flaking, and yet now they are beloved pieces of city history worth millions of dollars. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/nyregion/saying-goodbye-t...
They're simple and modern, which many people I know hate at the moment, but I really enjoy the ground-level retail they've brought along with them.
Now more than ever, we can't really be picky about our housing. It looks fine, it's fairly inexpensive to build, and it provides mixed use.
It fostered such a sense of being in the middle of something alive and it spread out for miles in every direction. It was so easy to find my way around the hotel because the sights were familiar but unique, but once I moved a little bit away it was all a labyrinthine mish mash of the same. I loved it and I love the 5 over 1
The stores are rarely successful and I'm sure that the companies building all these things just factor in the cost of building these as a cost of doing business in that town.
Most of the kids that rent these "luxury apartments" (which is how they are always described) are from cities with much higher cost of living so they can charge a ton of money and mom and dad will still think it is reasonable. This ends up recreating housing crises of big cities because people that live and work in the town are getting priced out of living there.
One of the things you see people complaining about in cities like Seattle or SF is higher commercial rent prices pushing out all the "cool" but not particularly profitable businesses.
And how do you get lower business rents? There's a thing called supply-and-demand that might be helpful here.
It's part of it for sure, but there are lots of commercial vacancies that sit empty for years because landlords often keep storefronts vacant on purpose. It's a confluence of reasons and it depends on the locale -- sometimes there's a tax break if it's vacant, sometimes there's a tax increase if rent hits a certain threshold and the landlord wants even more to make up for the new tax, sometimes the mortgage is guaranteed by the rent price in some way and lowering the rent would cause the holder to pay back the difference immediately, etc.
There are tons of empty storefronts in NYC at the moment, for example, so more supply isn't really the issue here, often it's a web of really bad policy.
And I'm sure this is the place where people start saying Land Value Tax.
The loans that they got to build the building were underwritten assuming X square feet of retail space would be rented at $Y per square foot.
If they were to rent the spaces at lower rates, the bank would need to reassess the building, taking the lower rental rate into consideration. Then the Loan-to-Value would be higher, making it harder and more expensive to refinance after the 5 to 10 year term of the loan. The bank doesn't want that either, as long as the payments are coming in on time.
Strangely, keeping the space vacant doesn't require the bank to reassess the space as though it's renting for $0.
So, the financial incentive for the borrower and bank is to keep the space vacant at $Y than rent it for less.
So simple. Effective. No side effects at all. Everyone does that. /s
* Banks must re-evaluate the loan once a year based on the average real lease rate for that year OR the next year's contractually committed income. (Not the 'we would love to least it at X' fabrication.)
* In addition to Land Value Tax and any applicable income tax, all not-leased units and spaces would be taxed as if any asking price over comparable units within a reasonable distance, like a 12 city block or mile square centered on that unit, were booked income. Example: Studio apartments currently leased within 20% that units size within the 1 mile square average 1000 USD/mo, a vacant apartment which asks for 950/mo has a taxed rate of 0, while an apartment asking for 1200/mo would be taxed as if they had rented that space for 200 that month, even though there was 0 income. The goal is to apply a small downward pressure to rents and also directly reward renting beneath the mean average within the area. Maybe it should even be at a higher rate, like taxed as if 50% or even the full asking rate had been earned. Of course the highest possible rate (E.G. renting for one single smallest unit of time every time) would be utilized, including any one time fees for background checks, etc.
This already happens.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dscr.asp
yesfitz’ comment is not correct, and lenders do care about their collateral experiencing insufficient cash flow. They do not care about specific empty spaces, but if revenue is not as expected, then obviously risk of default is higher, and they will notice.
I appreciate your expansion on my statement though: "The bank doesn't want that either, as long as the payments are coming in on time."
But Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR) looks at Net Operating Income, not just the collateral property's rents. DSCR is recalculated at intervals based on the lender's policy. That policy varies from bank to bank.
All banks' policies are examined by regulators, so it's not as though banks can totally ignore DSCR, but there are ways to mitigate policy exceptions that range from business as-usual to "Extend and Pretend"[1] that's been common since the Federal Reserve rapidly raised rates in 2022.
1: https://www.loopnet.com/learn/why-extend-and-pretend-may-be-...
In theory there is. But the reality is that ground level lingers empty, or is occupied by some cool office space - and seemingly never needs to come down in price.
Building less in those areas certainly would not help. But it's also unlikely that enough can be built to preserve space for all existing residents in any realistic time-frame without subsidies and active efforts (which some cities do better than others).
As for why booming areas don't build enough: exclusionary zoning, burdensome processes, NIMBYism in local meetings, and learned government helplessness.
Things like redlining are no longer legal, but the desire by people to exclude people that they do not want their kids to end up like remains. One legal way to do this is to make the cost of living sufficiently high that it guarantees your neighbors conform sufficiently to society's standards that they were able to accumulate wealth.
Here's a podcast episode on the particular issue if anyone wants to explore more
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/3/18/benjamin-herol...
What's happening is two things 1) that people in detached homes in the middle of town the who aren't willing to live in apartments are seeing costs go up (because their land is more valuable) and 2) more people from the town are working it the city.
Of these two thing, I'd say that #2 is generally bad, but also orthogonal to building apartments. It just happens to be that they often happen together.
The only ways to prevent this would be deliberately trash the neighbourhood to make it unappealing, or a hukou system like china
Here is research that contradicts this assertion.
"We ultimately conclude, from both theory and empirical evidence, that adding new homes moderates price increases and therefore makes housing more affordable to low- and moderate-income families. "
https://furmancenter.org/files/Supply_Skepticism_-_Final.pdf
Adding supply is important but it’s also not enough.
Calling apartments "luxury apartments" is just a marketing standard. It's like when Taco Bell says their food is "delicious." It's not the end of civilization.
I don't like the idea of stores I don't care about inviting increased traffic around my house, but i would happily have increased traffic if it meant at least some stores I care about are just downstairs.
Yes, it works pretty much anywhere if the retail in question is the relatively useful/high traffic sort (e.g. grocery stores, bakeries, coffee shops, restaurants/cafes, etc). And it doesn't have to just serve the people of that exact building, if there are a bunch of other 5-over-1's or similar in the immediate area.
Honestly, this sounds like a bit of a stereotypical American question: "Can <thing that the rest of the world already does> actually work at all?"
Edit: I should add that of course there can be other variables at play. For example, if the general street design of the area is more pedestrian friendly, that's helpful to this style of zoning/building, and if the street design is hostile to pedestrians, then these things won't work quite as well.
Or in other words, it’s good against cars :)
The area has downsides, but it is doing well economically.
Yes. I live in a 4-over-2 and will go to stores that are relevant.
Now, with my second kid going to school (public) I have to drive (it's literally 1 mile). It has changed the whole schedule. That single drive! Annoys me as hell. It's hard to imagine how convenient it is when you don't have to drive anywhere, even school, day care, etc. This makes a huge difference.
A better angle would be biking the kid to school, but it's possible/probable that the route isn't good for bikes.
in NYC, for example, this is probably one of the most common methods of getting to school.
children are learning but they are not dumb. They can generally recognize dangerous situations and exercise good judgment, and shocking crimes like stranger abduction are incredibly rare. they can, if services exist, go to the playground and the school unassisted, but unfortunately we now live in a society where even if you trust your kids, someone else might call child services on you.
And no affordable parking for people to come and visit you. It's fine. They won't.
These parking meters go wild with what electronic meters allow. The hourly cost changes depending on time of day and events (there are 3 very large event venues that could be served or could abuse this parking area) from perhaps 50 cents (truly cheap for a meter, except no free hours if I remember right) to over 10 dollars (eye watering). And there are no signs showing the current cost or cost schedule - you have to let each meter tell you. And most of these spaces are still full - There is certainly money to be extracted there.
Street parking in Mission Bay is a traumatizing experience :-)
I've read that this design isn't ideally suited to many retail establishments but the details escape me.
If you require the retail space, this is probably a non-issue, because there's only so many national corporate chains that will want to open a store in a given area; if you have a LOT of 5-over-1s in a neighborhood, there should be enough space left over for independent stores too.
Sometimes they seem to attract high end medical and beauty/spa businesses. There's nothing wrong with the businesses individually, but a glut of them isn't useful for the neighborhood (nobody needs eight cosmetic dentists). And replacing a strip of walk-in businesses (groceries, cafes, hardware stores, affordable clothing shops) you use regularly with mostly appointment-based services businesses you use occasionally if at all isn't great.
The downside, when they're new, is the rent for the commercial floors is only affordable by mid to upper market merchants. 30 years hence, we could see "gentrification" where thin margin businesses can survive. Like, you can have a grocery store, but it'll be an expensive grocery store with higher mark-ups and fancier food. The coffee shop will be one with thoughtful art pieces and not recycled-trash-cum-art, etc.
People walk a few blocks for groceries, to the bakery/cafe, or a restaurant. Other common businesses are pharmacies, drug stores, clothing (separately fashion, thrift, tailor, seamstress, etc), book stores, appliance stores, hardware stores (like Ace not Home Depot), etc.
Where it gets ugly is when the buildings get too big, either vertically or horizontally. I would argue that 5 over 1 is actually the sweet spot.
- 4 grocery stores, including a small turkish one - a café - 2 fast food places - a nail studio - 2 hair salons - a school - 3 bars (4 if you include an ice cream place that has bar nights in the winter sometimes) - a tailor - a smokeshop
I'm sure more that I don't frequent. My building itself doesn't have a shop at the bottom, but most buildings around me do. The only necessities that I have to go further at all for are a pharmacy and a hardware store, and they're not far.
I wouldn't say I live in the middle of the city either, kind of on the edge of the "high density" area. As in where I am there are only apartments and businesses but if you go 2 blocks further away from the city center there are also single-family homes. And they benefit from the amenities provided by us apartment-dwellers as well.
> In 2012, Forte Living, an apartment complex in Melbourne, Australia, became the tallest plyscraper framed with CLT alone. The building has 10 stories and stands just over 32 m tall. The 759 CLT panels necessary for the project were manufactured in Austria using European spruce that was grown and harvested there.[31]
https://www.sarakulturhus.se/en/303172/The-Wood-Hotel-by-Eli...
"In the 20-story wooden house, there are 205 modern hotel....."
> The hotel’s not without any metal, though. Generators and heating/cooling units on the fifth and sixth floors are supported by a steel truss. There’s also concrete atop the hotel to minimize sway. But for the most part, the Wood Hotel is a marvel of white wood and forest aromas, like living in a life-sized doll house designed for the 2020s.
Obviously much, much less than a typical tall building though.
There remains a concern about fire safety during construction, before the sprinklers are activated. There have been serious fires and deaths of construction workers while these buildings were going up.
> The 284-foot (87 meter), 25-story high-rise is the world's tallest mass timber structure, edging out Norway's Mjøstårnet. It features 259 luxury apartments, retail space, an elevated pool with operable window walls, and a sky-deck.
> aesthetics consistently get the highest priority for architectural decisions
You get more vibrant street levels thanks to the commerce floor, and you can get much more comfortable housing than "commie blocks" or apartment high rises that get stuffed in the middle of unfavorable locations.
It's also not anti-family like some people seem to think it is. They are often bigger than units or apartments, and being close to the things you need is very pro-social.
Of course, nothing is more pro-family and just generally pro everyon, than affordable housing. The investment-real estate economy is a blight on many of our societies.
One of the issues, though not directly related to 5-over-1, is the inability (that I've seen) of cities to construct neighborhoods. Most places where these are going up are not "neighborhoods," even in places were urban neighborhoods are very natural, like Greater Boston. Instead, there is sometimes some attempt at a retail space on the bottom of these buildings, but the streets are too wide, not walkable enough, and the retail opportunities are not designed for corner shops/bodegas/other cheap places that help create a neighborhood.
I don't know how to create a neighborhood from whole cloth, but somebody has been thinking about it, I'm sure, and I wish cities would try to learn from their lessons.
> but the streets are too wide, not walkable enough
Right, but this is fixable. You can always go and reduce the car/parking lane space and make the sidewalk wider and/or add a bike lane.
> Amsterdam used to be a car-dominated hellscape not totally dissimilar from American cities
You can find pics of what it was like in their cities. Not exactly the same as US ones necessarily, but close. There's a couple pics here: https://www.distilled.earth/p/how-the-netherlands-built-a-bi...
This is the opposite of a city that's designed for cars, and trying to turn it into a people city. Wide streets can get wide sidewalks planted with pretty trees, but that doesn't necessarily turn it into a "neighborhood" the way you might see in a city like Amsterdam.
Your presumption is incorrect.
I mean, originally it wasn't designed for cars obviously, but eventually the streets were redesigned around cars, which caused it to become a car-dominated hellscape, yes. You can find a few transition photos here: https://exploring-and-observing-cities.org/2016/01/11/amster...
Compared to an average US city, it was probably still a bit more pedestrian-friendly even then, but nowhere close to as walk- and especially bike-friendly as it is now.
> Wide streets can get wide sidewalks planted with pretty trees, but that doesn't necessarily turn it into a "neighborhood" the way you might see in a city like Amsterdam.
Adding/having density and pedestrian- or bike-friendly design is exactly how you get neighborhoods like in Amsterdam.
The streets may have been "redesigned around cars," but the distance between the buildings remained the same. And the buildings were built for small-scale stores on the bottom. This is what makes it feel like a neighborhood.
The conversion back to a pedestrian/bike heaven was natural, because the size of the streets was made for exactly that.
Compare to a modern neighborhood built around 5-over-1s [1], [2]. The streets are 5x as wide -- often four lanes of traffic and two lanes of bike lanes. And the ground floor is often built for a single store, like a large clothing department store. There's no reason to walk down this street, except to get from point A to point B.
Even if you decided to eliminate cars, the streets simply wouldn't make sense as a pedestrian area. They're too big, too exposed. It would feel like walking in an industrial zone.
It's not strictly the way 5-over-1s are designed, it's the way the streets are designed, and the way commercial space is designed.
1. https://commonedge.org/in-praise-of-5-over-1-buildings/
2. https://commonedge.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/mid-rise-w...
Sure, but again, that's all fixable. You seem laser focused on "the streets are too wide" but that's not actually too hard to fix. You can reduce car lanes, make the sidewalk wider, add more greenery, add islands in the middle of the street like SLC*, you can allow street vendors in front of the buildings, there's all kinds of things you can do to make it feel more human scale if you want to.
The key here is that Amsterdam had become a car-dominated hellscape and then there was the political will in the Netherlands to reverse course and change. I'm sure you're right that it'd be harder in the US in some ways -- but on the other hand, the US is also richer than the Netherlands, we have more money around to spend on such things, if we really care.
I see these sorts of changes as complementary. Having more 5 over 1's tends to increase density and retail availability in a way that makes a place feel more like a neighborhood, and yeah you might also need some other changes depending on the city, but none of this is unfixable, and having the 5 over 1's and the road diets are solid steps towards having that neighborhood feel.
Hell, if you're building an entirely new building there, one thing you could do is literally just narrow the street, let the new building jut into what's currently the street there.
* https://www.archpaper.com/2016/01/salt-lake-city-wants-put-b...
There's only so much that planning and zoning can do (developers will only build and lenders will only lend for what's deemed profitable), and fully building out these neighborhoods will take decades. But lots of people are thinking about this and seeking ways to make it work. Municipalities have an incentive to get it right. Maintaining the tax base relies on attracting new residents, many of whom are seeking walkable urban(ish) neighborhoods.
Every single "iconic" architecture looked stale in its era.
Video: Why North America Can't Build Nice Apartments (because of one rule)
And yet... there is a kind of tedium to them. Some of that is just efficient use of space, they tend to go up in very rectangular blocks. Maybe that's just the inevitable reaction to the most common new structure of our time.
Are those things being built outside a few high-demand areas such as the SF bay area?
5-over-1s are being built across the country because almost every metro area has high housing demand.
NIMBYs can’t seem to imagine someone choosing to live in a multi-family home. They’d rather the middle/lower middle/working class stay out of their town entirely and keep their inflated property values for their single family home.
Fun fact: one condo building generates the same/more property tax income than a square mile of single family homes.
So if you like low taxes in your city you’ll welcome 5-over-1s with open arms. Single family homes alone basically can’t sustain city coffers because they generate so little revenue per quantity of land, even lower than trailer parks.
Some NSFW language I’m sure. Lots of rambling. It’s a journey.
5-over-1 refers specifically to the wood construction of the top 5 floors. You can have a soft story building that is not built out of wood and even more vulnerable to earthquakes.
> The name derives from the maximum permissible five floors of combustible construction (Type III or Type V) over a fire-resistive Type I podium of one floor for "5-over-1" or two floors for "5-over-2", as defined in the United States-based International Building Code (IBC) Section 510.2.[1][4] Some sources instead attribute the name to the wood framing of the upper construction; the International Building Code uses "Type V" to refer to non-fireproof structures, including those framed with dimensional lumber
From the article: "5-over-1 construction—so called because it frequently combines up to five floors of inexpensive wood-framed construction over a concrete podium—is popular primarily because it is a cost-effective means to build, especially here in timber-rich Oregon."
It's a mostly new style.