As a housing supplier, it is in my financial interest for the government to continue to block development of new housing at a scale commensurate with demand. However, as an American who loves cities, in general, and Los Angeles, in particular, I am strongly in favor of loosening restrictions on development. More housing equals lower
Want to give you some insight into why, exactly, its so hard for LA to add more housing. Here’s a perfect example: We own a big, R3 lot in an improving area, bordered by two alleys. This ought to be a super easy lot to develop and, indeed, we are in the process of obtaining
Love this article in today’s NY Times. For the lazy: The article makes the case that America doesn’t have boomtowns anymore, because the cities with the most economic opportunity have put in place land0use restrictions that keep housing prices very high, blocking new workers from coming in. Now, as a developer with a growing property
Everyone should read this article in today’s NY Times, which goes into great depth about the problems associated with in-fill development in coastal CA. My experience with the ground-up deal we just completed was similar. No lawsuits, but it did take nearly a year to get permits to add four units to an existing duplex,
At this point in the cycle, when we consider a new deal, we spend a lot of time thinking about leverage. Mainly, we’re looking at how our pro forma unlevered yield (eg the cap rate we’re trying to hit post renovation) compares to the projected interest rate on the refinance we’ll do at that point.