Austin Contrarian

An infill developer's perspective

I do not have any firsthand experience with the development or permitting process in Austin.   Frequent commenter "Don Johnson," a local infill developer, does.   He left the following comment in response to my entry on Austin's gerrymandered zoning districts.  I think an infill developer's perspective on the development process in Austin is interesting, so I repost it here.

If I may take this opportunity to vent a little more about our subdivision process here in Austin and why central urban infill is so difficult.  The owner of Red Bird is in store for much more than this zoning fight.  Even if they are granted SF3 they can look forward to a subdivision process where they dump about $20k fee-in-lieu of water quality controls and detention if they can't get a waiver.  They will need to hire an engineer.  It boggles my mind that Austin Code currently expects residential lots to make room for detention ponds and water quality controls and how high the fees are to bypass this.  Imagine your residential street actually lined with big pits in every front yard like you see outside of commercial properties.  Not to mention the argument that this piecemeal approach to detention can actually have negative effects on downstream flow.  "Regional" detention and WQ seems more rational; i.e., build a larger facility to serve the neighborhood as a whole (which allows for a more macro design approach).

Then you have the ten subdivision reviewers who seemingly have conflicting goals in what they want to commandeer or impose on the applicant.  You have the ROW reviewer wanting to commandeer 10' of property at the frontage, the transportation reviewer wanting you to build sidewalks to nowhere, the electric reviewer wanting to commandeer another 10' in easements, and heaven forbid you have any trees because you can't build near them or cut them down (although the electric company may cut it down after you try to save it).  Then throw building set back requirements, impervious cover limits, and the McMansion envelope on top of everything.  Your clean palate dwindles down to an unworkable anomaly in the end and hence some of the weird $400k houses around town with single car carports and terrible layouts.  I won’t even go into some of the funny catch-22 scenarios that come up between reviewers leaving the applicant to sort it out in order to move forward.

What you end up with is really difficult use of space, and you are in it for about $20k to $30k in city fees and related expenses as well as 6 months minimum in holding costs before you even start really.  Or maybe you are in for more than that if you were smart enough to include an architect in the process so that you can start heading off the design problems early.  All this for something with such subtle impact as taking a 20,000sf lot and cutting it in half to build two duplexes instead of one (and really with the same exact limits of construction pre and post subdivision, just with an extra two residents).

You would also be amazed at how many lots the city considers "illegal".  Go look at any TCAD plat map and look around for "tildes" that bring portions of lots together.  Or when the lot legal description reads as part of two lots (Examle: W25ft of lot 24 and E25ft of lot 23.)  This would be filed under the "landmine" comment [in this entry -- AC] as well.  This can take you down many an unexpected road due to grandfathering scenarios, and notification issues that are built into code, as well as more carrying costs as it gets sorted out.  I won't get into it, but beware.  Trust me.

It sure is fun I'll tell you what.   The sad part is that by the time you actually start concentrating on the house design and construction, you have used up about 60% of your juice (energy and emotion), and really you need everything you’ve got in construction.

People not involved in this stuff will brush all of this off and paint builders/developers as greedy for complaining, but I'm telling you it is almost impossible to get from old stock to newer up to code stock in a streamlined affordable manner because of our system in Austin.  All the while the neighbors are nipping at your heels on top of this.  And this is why you see trees go down on Saturday.  The builders would love to stay off trees (they add value), but every other code seemingly begs you to cut down trees.  That is simply one negative manifestation, though.

Fixing up central Austin homes

Local realtor Roselind Hejl explains why it is so expensive to renovate and expand central Austin homes.

Eureka!

We now have scientific justification for McMansion regulations:  Infill McMansions: Style and the psychophysics of size, by Jack Nasar, a professor of planning at Ohio State, and Arthur Stamps, a something at the Institute of Environmental Quality in San Francisco.  The abstract (I couldn't find an ungated version):

The number and size of infill oversized houses, or McMansions, has increased in the U.S. and the world. To maintain desirable neighborhood appearances, communities should know what constitutes “too big.” This paper reports six studies that used color simulations of blocks of houses to examine compatibility and visual appeal in relation to attributes of the infill house and its context. Following psychophysical findings, the relative size of the infill house should have larger effects on response than its actual size. The studies confirmed that the infill ratio had more weight than size for perceived compatibility. Compatibility did not always translate into visual appeal. For visual appeal, infill style had larger effects than did size or size ratio, height had larger effects than width, and, for larger sizes and ratios, infill ratio had larger effects than actual size. To maintain visual quality in relation to infill houses, communities should first seek an architecturally compatible style, and then try to control its relative size (the infill façade area). Tests of responses to real infill houses can show how well these findings generalize.

Translation:  Relative size matters more than absolute size; architectual style matters more than either relative size or absolute size; and height matters more than width.  (Based on these "findings," Austin's McMansion ordinance regulates the wrong things.)

McDuplex

Frequent commenter Don Johnson, an infill developer, sent me the picture below, which nicely illustrates how the McMansion regulations actually encourage the construction of massive duplexes.

 

Requiring the units to share a common wall guarantees a massive structure.  The building envelope eliminates any interesting architectural variation and forces every structure to the middle of the lot.  Mandating side-wall articulation means a jagged, jumbled design.

The worst provision is probably the common-wall requirement.  The developers I've spoken to say they'd prefer to separate the units, using the garage as the connection.  (Many pre-McMansion duplexes have this form.)  This would result in two smaller units rather than one giant structure.  But the McTask Force apparently felt developers were circumventing our anachronistic lot-size requirements, so they decided to stick us with these hulking structures -- duplexes guaranteed to clash with the existing stock.

Thanks, Task Force.  Thanks a lot.

Duplex update.

I spoke with a local AIA architect in order to get a better grasp of last night's amendments to the McMansion and duplex ordinances.

Some good news and some bad news (or some bad news and some good news, depending on your perspective.)

The duplex ordinance amendment was not as dire as I had feared because of changes to the ordinance originally proposed by the Task Force.  As I discussed here, the Task Force had recommended that the common wall between two duplexes be perpendicular to the front lot line.  This essentially would have mandated that all duplexes sit side by side or on top of one another (the latter, an unpopular choice), thereby banning duplexes on long, narrow lots.

The ordinance language as enacted, however, omits the perpendicular-to-the-front requirement and permits the common wall to be articulated in 4-foot segments.  A skilled architect can use this provision to fit a longer common wall (two times as long) within the same amount of space.  This will allow duplexes to be placed front-to-back on a long, narrow lot.  While the lot might not have enough space from one side to the other for a straight common wall, it might be wide enough for this articulated common wall.

The neighborhood types wanted to eliminate this "zipper" provision because, I assume, they don't want duplexes aligned from front to rear.  City staff pushed for the zipper provision, which made it into the version adopted by Council.

Good.

The "bad" relates to basements.  Basements that meet certain requirements do not count against the maximum floor-to-area ratio.  One of the requirements is that the basement be below a certain "grade."  The Task Force recommended (and Council approved) a requirement that the basement be below both "natural grade" and "finished grade."  Others (including the AIA) wanted to stop at "natural grade."

Here's the issue, as explained to me:  Requring a basement to be below natural grade provides sufficient protection.  Natural grade is the land's undisturbed state; a developer can't build a "pedestal" by pushing dirt around to sneak in an above-ground third story.

But requiring that the basement also be below "finished grade" precludes a "walk-out" basement.  Even if the basement is below natural grade, if you make a cut in the natural grade to create a separate entrance to the basement, you are now below the "finished" grade.  This means that "walk-out" basements will not be eligible for the FAR exemption.

I don't think basements are very common today because of their expense, so I'm not sure how big a deal this is.  However, they may become more common in the future as developers and homeowners turn to them for otherwise verboten floor space.  This amendment will preclude their use as separate apartments.

The duplex vendetta.

Someone must have decided that the City is "soft" on duplexes. That's the only conclusion one can draw from an ordinance that the City Council is scheduled to consider tonight.  This ordinance will make it next to impossible to build dupexes on long, narrow lots.

Duplexes are one of the last affordable options for central Austin. The McMansion Task Force nevertheless did its best to discourage them by drastically curtailing the allowable footprint and mass of structures on central Austin lots.

But the McMansion ordinance apparently didn't do enough to dampen duplex construction.  Architects and developers are still managing to fit duplexes on narrow lots while complying with the McMansion ordinance's strict "building envelope" and floor-to-area ratio limits.

We should be saying, "Bully for the architects and developers."  Instead, the Residential Development Regulations Task Force (a/k/a the McMansion Task Force) has proposed redefining "duplex" to require the units to sit either side by side or on top of one another.  Developers will no longer be permitted to put one unit at the front of the property and one unit at the rear.

(Two units technically form a "duplex" when they share a common wall or floor/ceiling along 50% of the building's depth.  Today that depth can be measured either from the front to the rear of the lot or from one side of the lot to the other.  The ordinance will mandate that the common wall be perpendicular to the front lot line.  In other words, the units must sit side by side or be stacked, which is more expensive and less desirable to prospective owners/tenants.)

It is impossible to put duplex units side-by-side without a sufficiently wide lot.  Consider a 60-foot lot.  With, say, 10-foot side setbacks, that leaves just 20 feet of width per unit -- and the code-mandated garages/carports alone will require almost all of that space.  (Just in case someone could manage to sneak in a garage and front entrance, though, the Task Force is also recommending that the front entrance have a "porch," presumably to leave less room for the garages/carports.)

The Austin chapter of the American Institute of Architects has politely pointed out that this ordinance is a bad idea.  It put together some nice diagrams illustrating the proposal's impact, which I am putting below the jump.

Swamped

Really, really swamped.

It's frustrating because the Residential Development Standards Task Force is recommending some blog-worthy amendments (pdf) to the McMansion ordinance.

I can only muster the energy to quote.  My favorite recommendation will close that loophole for "massive" carports:

ISSUE

Parking area open on two or more sides:  Currently, if an applicant is proposing to construct a carport, they are allowed to take up to 450 sq ft from the FAR [floor-to-area ratio] calculation.  A carport is defined as a parking area that iS open on two or more sides, but the definition does not specifically state of [sic] how large the opening may be.  Many proposed carports have only partial openings which contribute mass to the structure.

TASK FORCE RECOMMENDATION

Give a specific measurement (percentage) of the opening of the carport.  The ordinance should state that in order to get the carport/parking exemption, the open sides of a carport must be clear and unobstructed by any materials for a minimum of 80% of the area measured below the top of the top wall plate to the finished floor of the carport.  RDCC can waive up to 25% of the required opening (80% can go to 60%).  (Section 2.8.1)

Want to put up a tasteful lattice on the side of that carport?  Nope, not even the RDCC can authorize it.  Get a bigger lot or build a smaller home.  We Austinites evidently prefer clear and unobstructed views of the neighbor's 1977 Gremlin to a little "mass" (a/k/a "a screen"). 

The McMansion ordinance's impact

Today's Statesman (Feb. 18) has an interesting article on the McMansion ordinance's impact.

A couple of quick reactions.  First, the article implies that the McMansion ordinance has not affected property values:

The predictions were dire.

Rules designed to limit the sizes of new houses in almost 50 Central Austin neighborhoods would lead to plummeting land values, vanishing nest eggs and far fewer modern houses for buyers to choose from, warned Austin home builders and property owners opposed to the regulations.

But 16 months after the Residential Design and Compatibility Standards were put in place to limit the impact of large new houses on adjacent homes and the character of neighborhoods, and though concerns about the overall rules linger, property values haven't dropped, and construction activity has increased.

In fact, median prices of single-family homes in neighborhoods such as Hyde Park, Tarrytown and Travis Heights increased in 2006 and 2007, and the city issued 2,452 permits for new houses, additions and remodels in the affected neighborhoods last year, 455 more than in 2005.

For what it's worth, I never believed the McMansion ordinance would hurt the value of lots across the board.  I thought (and still think) the McMansion ordinance has or will hurt the value of small lots relative to large lots.  Given sufficient rising demand, the value of small lots may not have dropped.  But they should have appreciated more slowly than larger lots.

(There's some anecdotal evidence this is true, incidentally:  Steve Crossland compared the rate of appreciation of small homes and large homes in 2006 (see comments to Steve's post).  He found that large homes appreciated 50% faster than small homes (14.63% to 9.65%) in 2006, the year the McMansion ordinance took effect.  This is odd, because normally one would expect small homes to appreciate more rapidly, since most of the value is in the right to build, rather than in the size of the lot.  This statistic is thus consistent with my claim, but hardly proof -- we used home sizes as a proxy for lot sizes, and did not control for the quality of the existing homes.  Also, the numbers flipped in the first quarter of 2007.)

Second, it looks like I was right that the design review commission would become a vehicle for regulating aesthetics.  Here's the article:

Home builder Glenn Reynolds of Cool River Custom Homes said that he isn't opposed to size restrictions but that the rules as written will ultimately lead to cookie-cutter homes.

"We're not a builder that goes out and says we want to take a 5,400-square-foot lot and put a 4,000-square-foot home on it. That's ridiculous," he said. "When it comes to things like 45 percent impervious cover and 40 percent (floor area ratio), those types of items I'm in complete agreement with. What scares me is the review board is taking that a step farther and is basically starting to determine the aesthetic effect for every single home."

The rule that has caused the most frustration for builders requires them to include design features to prevent a "billboard effect": huge, plain side walls looming over nearby houses. To follow that rule, many builders are breaking up the side wall by making the second story narrower than the first, one example of the kind of formulaic design that they say the ordinance has led to.

Builders and architects also complain that the design review commission that was set up to hear appeals regarding the new rules gives too much weight to the opinions of neighboring property owners.

"They have given power unduly to the residents in the neighborhood," architect Dean Rose of PFA Design Group said. "It's now a vigilante committee."

Here's what I wrote back in October 2006:

Anyone who's seen enough zoning hearings knows what this will degenerate into.  The neighborhoods will use the waiver request to impose their taste.  (They will quickly detect how far they can go before the owner decides the costs aren't worth the benefits of the waiver.) These hearings will rarely be about just massing, scale or compatibility.  Owners who want a side articulation waiver will be told they should be using wood siding rather than stone, or stone rather than wood, or brick rather than stone.  Or they'll be told to get rid of some windows on their proposed second story ("it's too intrusive").  Or they'll be told to add some windows ("it's too monolithic").  We'll hear complaints about roof pitch.  Placement of porches.  Design of the garage.  Any design feature that can cause the slightest annoyance will be fair game.  Neighbors can expect a sympathetic audience from the RDCC.

More later.  Maybe.

Update on the fight over the McMansion ordinance in Central East Austin (updated)

Dee Copeland at Texas Realty Blog has a nice update on OCEAN's attempt to repeal the McMansion ordinance's minimum floor-to-area ratio for Central East Austin homes.  Quite predictably, OCEAN is getting pushback from the small lot owners who would be hurt by this change.

The opposition is being spearheaded by "Hollywood" Henderson.  You can read his "Dear Neighbor" letter/petition at Dee's blog.

Update:  City Council denied the amendment unanimously.

Marx on McMansions, and "No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart"

A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence.  But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut.  The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.

That's Marx from Wage Labour and Capital, as quoted in Tom Slee's No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart.  McMansions evidently were getting people worked up as far back as 1849.

By the way, if you want an enjoyable, leftist-ish critique of markets, I recommend Slee's book.  It's an attack on "MarketThink," his vaguely Orwellian term for the belief that markets and consumer choice always produce the best result.  (The title of the book is ironic -- the people who say such things are his targets.)  His main point is that everyone's choices are tangled together, so that each person's choice affects everyone else.  As a result, there's no guarantee that even perfectly rational individual choices will make you happy.

Slee sets up his share of straw men.  Still, his book is a clean, elegant exposition of different types of market failures.  Some of them are almost trite, such as the "tragedy of the commons"-type market failure that causes congested roads and littered parks.  Others are fresher.  When buyers can't get reliable information about product quality until they buy the product, low-quality products may drive high-quality products out of the marketplace.  This, he claims, explains why fast-food restaurants, with their predictable but mediocre food, drive higher-quality local restaurants out of business.  Network effects may force consumers to choose sub-optimal products -- e.g., business people use Microsoft Word because everyone else uses it, not because it is necessarily very good word processing software.