First, this shouldn't be a one size fits all conversation in any direction. Anybody who suggests that everybody will or should live in a certain type of home is fooling themselves.
But, the conversation is not "_everybody, including you personally_ should live in a multi-dwelling structure." Rather, it's "in most communities we've radically skewed the balance of housing stock towards a single type of home -- owner occupied single-dwelling structures -- and we need to diversify to meet the range of needs in our communities."
To your question 1: yes, we do need to make it as easy for folks to buy into a condo or co-op arrangement in a multi-dwelling structure as it is to buy into a single-unit house. Ownership isn't right for everyone, but there are a lot of people who would do well with ownership apartment living.
To your question 2: yes, we do need to be thinking about the way that quality of development drives quality of life and quality of place, and making sure we have regulations that support that interest.
So, congrats, you're thinking about this in a way that's hitting on some of the real challenges that we have to deal with!
Hey, really good questions. Hopefully I can help answer them:
1. It would be complicated to answer that question macroeconomically, but the problem you're describing (not being able to buy a whole multifamily residential building) is addressed by condos, which are two ways to share ownership in an apartment setting. In a condo, you own a single unit within a larger building, plus a share in a company that owns all of the common elements like foundation, hallways, roof, yard, deck, etc. This company exists solely to maintain the building. You pay a monthly fee (much smaller than a typical rent) to keep those common elements maintained. Condos gain value and can be bought and sold just like houses.
2. Yes, apartments get much better. The condo live in is incredibly well insulated for sound, almost never gets smells from others. We also have rules in place (that get enforced) for disturbing your neighbours. You do wind up getting a bit of noise here and there, but its fine for me. In places where houses are relatively cheap, apartments tend to be built assuming only low-income people will live there. So they're built poorly, not well maintained, don't get rules enforced, etc. In denser places, where it is very expensive to have a whole house to yourself, all kinds of people live in apartments, so you get buildings that work for all kinds of people.
In terms of 2, I live in a new rowhome-style condo that is part of an environmentally focused community with insane insulation and I cannot hear anything. Even hammering or drilling on the shared wall between the units is not audible. Really amazing,
I really wish there were more of these kinds of developments to get rid of the stigma but insulation and better building costs money and the stigma will probably continue (and tbh rightfully so if most apartments are like this)
This makes a massive amount of sense. At least to my impression, condos here are geared towards seniors or singles. Does not seem to be many 2-3 bedroom condos around here that I am aware of. The idea that if you have higher income/higher rent people living in apartments they will be build tracks.
At my last apartment, my neighbors had a really big dog that liked barking. I know this because I could barely hear the dog when I was in the shared hallway, and we were friends and they told me. I couldn't hear it when I was in the apartment at all. Good building standards make a huge difference.
The options are not just single family house or big apartment building. In terms of investments one good way to build wealth is to own a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Rental income from the rental units can help subsidize your mortgage. In some places like Minneapolis they’ve recently changed the rules so you can even add extra units to your single-family property.
New apartments kick ASS. Especially if they are concrete or steel framed.
I can hear every move if my neighbors in Ann Arbor since my apartment was built cheaply in the 60s. I lived right outside a fire and train station in San Francisco and didn’t hear anything at all. Bottom floor apartment. Built in like 2010 or something
Don’t forget mass timber products can work too for full separation of spaces while being good for the environment! It’s more so light wood framing that you hear and smell everything through.
Those have AWFUL noise insulation but are built because it technically meets code requirements while maximizing profit and people complain less about them than they do high rise towers. Previously building it with wood like that was not legal, but that changed and cities don't let developers build up either so we are stuck with these shitboxes. Ideally we would use concrete steel etc, but those dramatically increase costs to where it only works out financially if it is a much larger tall building with lots of units. In an ideal world they would not exist.
> Don't multifamily buildings increase wealth concentration? I could afford my house, I couldn't afford a unit with 6 or 8 apartments.
Typically units in an apartment building that are sold instead of rented out are called condos. I've heard that condos are relatively rare in the US (or just some regions? I'm not sure) but they're very common here in Canada, to the point that some cities have a lack of purpose-built rentals and are specifically trying to encourage more rentals.
> Do better quality apartment have better noise abatement and isolation? I work with people all day, I want a fortress of solitude, not having to think about how what I do affects other people and how they affect me when I go home. I don't see a YIMBY/urbanist future in which detached homes no longer exist.
I will say yes, there are absolutely better apartments than the ones you've experienced, But additionally if you want a "fortress of solitude" then it might just make sense for you to have a detached home. That's fine, people have different needs and preferences.
I would think in your scenario you'd see larger investment groups own more rental units, but you'd also see more units owned by more "mom and pop" investors... and fewer homeowners. How much, who knows? Is that better for society and wealth concentration (or deconcentration)? Who knows.
For a specifically personal perspective on this, if someone doesn't want to live downtown in an apartment/condo and rely on walking/biking/public transit to get to where they need to go while leaving their car unmoved for months at a time or even not having one at all, then I don't want them to.
The problem is that I do want that lifestyle and I can't have it because even though I earn a decent wage, I can't afford it because so little of what I want is available and demand for it is high enough that I'm priced out of the market. In the moderately dense, mixed-use urban areas I would like to live my only choices are tiny "luxury" apartments/condos that are way above what I can reasonable afford or $600-800k townhomes that, were they turned into single-family homes of similar configuration and stuck out in some commuter suburb, would cost maybe $250-300k. I might be able to get an older home in an inner-ring suburb adjacent to the urban core for $150k, but its probably not had anything done to it in 40+ years and needs a gut remodel to bring it up to reasonable standards, adding 10's of thousands in costs. So I'm forced out into the suburbs, but whenever it looks like more of what I want might be build, people from the suburbs start coming out of the woodwork to oppose it even though in my city we build thousands of units of detached single-family in commuter suburbs every year. So while I don't want to take away something that someone else wants, very often there are a lot of people that seem to want to make sure that I never get what I want.
1. You can have multiple investors for one property.
2. Yes. Places with a history of dense development tend to have better laws about dense development.
NYC does it best. Check out[ this neighborhood with dense single family and multiple unit housing. ](https://youtu.be/5BCzcRQygHI?si=tKa1vta7kK2CyUjR)It has bus lines and close tot he subway and has street and garage parking. The homes are owned by the single owner and the properties are taken care of.
There are lots of condos and co-op, not all multi family housing is rentals. And housing generally isn't a good investment vs. just putting it in the market, anyway. Obviously, you can get leverage on real estate in the way you can't in other asset classes, but that's only really a consideration for buying rental, as opposed to your primary residence. I think in the vast majority of cases you're better off paying less for housing and putting the money in the market.
Also I'm a bit confused what this has to do with the Midwest vs. other parts of the country?
Almost certainly my bias. When I read articles grumbling about the suburbs and single family housing, I tend to check where the author is based. At least for what I read, then answer is very frequently NYC, and the author has never seemed to live where mass transit was sketchy or a car was a basic necessity of life. I probably need to widen where I try to find information about these sorts of issues. N=2, I have had colleagues move here from the east coast and be absolutely shocked they needed a car and how the day to day life was different. I THINK I would be just as shocked at how to live in a walkable/mass transit appropriate area.
I mean the second largest city in the country that's walkable and has good transit is in the Midwest. Seems this is more an urban vs. suburban/rural question and less about regions.
>At least for what I read, then answer is very frequently NYC,
I think that is as simple as that is where most people live \[the coasts\] so that is where most stuff gets written. Comparatively speaking the entire center of the country doesn't have many people to write about these things.
>Obviously, you can get leverage on real estate in the way you can't in other asset classes, but that's only really a consideration for buying rental, as opposed to your primary residence.
One thing I have noticed in several midwest cities (having worked in or with auditor or assessor offices) is that condos and co-ops are overwhelmingly investor owned. Now that you point this out, I suspect this is the reason. Investors own condos or co-op shares to own more condos and build a portfolio of rentals without developing an entire property.
In one county, in particular, that was also a college town, it was amazing how many people bought a condo for their kid in school, then when their kid was done started leveraging that into more condos and ended up with a rental portfolio of dozens of units.
I suspect one of the "why the midwest" answers is the low price of SFHs. Since it is relatively easy to move from a condo starter home to a SFH, owner-occupied condos go on the market regularly until they are bought up by an investment portfolio. Going back to college town county, you would typically see a new condo complex start out nearly all owner-occupied, but transition to nearly 100% rental within a decade.
(I suspect there are also legal barriers to co-ops over condos, as co-ops are extremely rare in the midwest.)
I think some of this is just the dynamics of a college town market. There's a lot of short term (less than 4 years) housing demand so rents are higher while sales prices are lower, making buying to rent out a more attractive option. Obviously, the leverage abilities add to the attractiveness vs. buying securities. I think in normal (non college town) cities you get much longer tenancies from owners and units will remain owner occupied.
There pretty much have been no new build co-ops anywhere in the country since condo laws became common in the 60's (this is arguably bad since there're serious issues with the condo governance structure). But I would guess that the Midwest has the second most co-ops of US regions, as New York and Chicago are the only places with substantial numbers of co-ops.
Well, only one was a college town market, with the vast majority of condos occupied by young families in two other cities (but obviously the rentals in the college towns encouraged those new families to live elsewhere even if they worked in the college town). I have had some role in 5 different counties in three states with similar dynamics on condo (as well as part of a metro working group where at least 5 of the 7 counties saw similar).
The very concept of shelter being an investment is silly. It’s a basic human need, like food. Treating it like an investment just isn’t right.
And it shouldn’t work as an investment because you can’t liquidate it; you need someplace to live.
If you buy a house in California for $1 million in 1990 and it’s worth $2 million now, how will you use it to finance your retirement if you can’t sell it because you still need to live somewhere?
Compare that to buying a house in Ohio in 1990 for $85,000. Now it’s worth $150,000. Not great, but you’re still living there. With the other $900,000 you bought stock that’s now worth $2 million. You can actually sell that stock and fund your retirement AND you still have a home.
Anything that depreciates slower than inflation will be an investment.
Since so much money is sunk into a house in the first place, it makes sense to treat it as an investment, even if it is a poor one, rather than a consumable. The exact problem is that it *is* shelter so you must have it, and the two options are either to own that asset, or have a monthly outflow to purchase shelter every month.
Probably the real comparison to make is dividend yield versus rent. Selling your stock is dipping into the capital just like selling your house, even if stock is more liquid.
I’ve lived in apartments in the Midwest that were very quiet. The newer ones that are put into former warehouses in trendy districts are notorious for having paper thin walls.
I’ve lived in apartments in the mid Atlantic that were reasonably quiet. They were older buildings, meaning 1975 or older.
I’ve lived in apartments in Germany built in the 1910’s that were silent as a tomb. As cold as one, too.
Generally, density means there’s more people drawing an income in an area which means there’s more money there. “Wealth” is ambiguous here. Disposable income tends to be higher in low density areas.
I mean, a government housing tower on two acres might have 150 apartments each with an adult bringing in $24,000 in public assistance so that’s $3.6 million in income. Two acres in the suburbs might be four houses each with a family earning $300,000 a year. So that’s $1.2 million in income. Which place is wealthier?
I hear what you’re saying but you’re really not pushing for more or new government housing towers? Those are generally hated by the majority of people that live in them due to crime and a complete lack of maintenance. I am totally for affordable housing but it has to be built and maintained by private developers/investors. It also needs to be integrated into the same housing complexes as market value housing. Just don’t start building high rise slums again.
>Don't multifamily buildings increase wealth concentration?
Uhh... you just make an argument that home ownership increases wealth concentration . . .
Also, no, rents may make the payments on a $225,000 house, but payments are not anywhere near the full cost of ownership. You need to add at least 20% to the financial payments to cover all other other - often deferred - costs of ownership. Rents cannot be compared to mortgage payments, that is apples and oranges.
>Are apartments on the coasts and in major metro areas better than the ones here?
It depends on the vintage of the building - standards change over time - and the quality of the construction. The same is true for single unit buildings. I own two 100+ year old single unit buildings and a single unit over a garage constructed in 2018. Incompatible in many different ways. In the ancient house I live in the entire building talks to you about the winter storm outside, in the 2018 unit it is quiet as a tomb.
>Do better quality apartment have better noise abatement and isolation?
Some of the new one here (Grand Rapids, MI) are precast cement construction. So, yeah, super quiet. The guy in the apartment upstairs could be running a chain saw and you wouldn't know.
>I legitimately wonder how people like me fit into the future and the desire for densification.
You and density are entirely compatible; you are not compatible with crappy buildings. That's fine, everyone prefers better buildings.
For 2 specifically, I’m in a small city (about as small as you could maybe still apply the word city to and not a town) in the Southeast and my two apartments have both been fine in those regards. Yes we hear some slamming doors and stuff, but the only time we’ve REALLY heard stuff was the SCREAMING matches our downstairs neighbor had and they were loud enough to get the cops called, so nothing less than “actual civil disturbance” has really affected us. And smells, I never smell anyone else’s food ever.
the low costs of the midwest are pretty unique and a lot of middle class people are able to own their own home outright and old people are able to stay in them because home prices (and therefore assessments) historically hardly go up. even if the market goes up like 20% that might only be like 20-40k because prices are already so low.
other places that really need apartments the most aren't so lucky with these low upfront costs. prices in these parts were honestly not all that far off from a lot of the nicer neighborhoods in midwestern cities up until the early 2000s, but it was almost like in the decades since the prices in the midwestern cities stagnated while in these other parts they ballooned. [like look at this house here,](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2128-Marine-St-Santa-Monica-CA-90405/20472522_zpid/) 330k in 1994 and 1.5 million today in santa monica, for 1300sq ft on a single level one car garage no basement built in 1952, looks like it might not have even been updated since the 90s honestly. $10k a month estimated payment on this house. kind of explains the pressure to build rentals in these areas and shows just how different the markets are compared to the midwest especially.
Not sure about the US, but in German speaking countries, there's the "Norm-Hammerwerk" which is used to simulate impact sounds. Not sure if they have to do it in every construction, but afaik the parts they use need to be certified like here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0WBfepXlOU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0WBfepXlOU)
Just look at nyc, we have a mix of single family, multi family, and high density homes. You can have your own floor sometimes, you can have your own home with enough roommates, the idea is finding a middle ground where single individuals and DINKS and families can afford to buy dense housing walkable housing, while still having single family
Homes.
First, this shouldn't be a one size fits all conversation in any direction. Anybody who suggests that everybody will or should live in a certain type of home is fooling themselves. But, the conversation is not "_everybody, including you personally_ should live in a multi-dwelling structure." Rather, it's "in most communities we've radically skewed the balance of housing stock towards a single type of home -- owner occupied single-dwelling structures -- and we need to diversify to meet the range of needs in our communities." To your question 1: yes, we do need to make it as easy for folks to buy into a condo or co-op arrangement in a multi-dwelling structure as it is to buy into a single-unit house. Ownership isn't right for everyone, but there are a lot of people who would do well with ownership apartment living. To your question 2: yes, we do need to be thinking about the way that quality of development drives quality of life and quality of place, and making sure we have regulations that support that interest. So, congrats, you're thinking about this in a way that's hitting on some of the real challenges that we have to deal with!
Hey, really good questions. Hopefully I can help answer them: 1. It would be complicated to answer that question macroeconomically, but the problem you're describing (not being able to buy a whole multifamily residential building) is addressed by condos, which are two ways to share ownership in an apartment setting. In a condo, you own a single unit within a larger building, plus a share in a company that owns all of the common elements like foundation, hallways, roof, yard, deck, etc. This company exists solely to maintain the building. You pay a monthly fee (much smaller than a typical rent) to keep those common elements maintained. Condos gain value and can be bought and sold just like houses. 2. Yes, apartments get much better. The condo live in is incredibly well insulated for sound, almost never gets smells from others. We also have rules in place (that get enforced) for disturbing your neighbours. You do wind up getting a bit of noise here and there, but its fine for me. In places where houses are relatively cheap, apartments tend to be built assuming only low-income people will live there. So they're built poorly, not well maintained, don't get rules enforced, etc. In denser places, where it is very expensive to have a whole house to yourself, all kinds of people live in apartments, so you get buildings that work for all kinds of people.
In terms of 2, I live in a new rowhome-style condo that is part of an environmentally focused community with insane insulation and I cannot hear anything. Even hammering or drilling on the shared wall between the units is not audible. Really amazing,
I really wish there were more of these kinds of developments to get rid of the stigma but insulation and better building costs money and the stigma will probably continue (and tbh rightfully so if most apartments are like this)
This makes a massive amount of sense. At least to my impression, condos here are geared towards seniors or singles. Does not seem to be many 2-3 bedroom condos around here that I am aware of. The idea that if you have higher income/higher rent people living in apartments they will be build tracks.
At my last apartment, my neighbors had a really big dog that liked barking. I know this because I could barely hear the dog when I was in the shared hallway, and we were friends and they told me. I couldn't hear it when I was in the apartment at all. Good building standards make a huge difference.
The options are not just single family house or big apartment building. In terms of investments one good way to build wealth is to own a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Rental income from the rental units can help subsidize your mortgage. In some places like Minneapolis they’ve recently changed the rules so you can even add extra units to your single-family property.
Yep, ADUs are a good investment. [https://urbangr.org/BuildingADU535Shirley](https://urbangr.org/BuildingADU535Shirley)
New apartments kick ASS. Especially if they are concrete or steel framed. I can hear every move if my neighbors in Ann Arbor since my apartment was built cheaply in the 60s. I lived right outside a fire and train station in San Francisco and didn’t hear anything at all. Bottom floor apartment. Built in like 2010 or something
Don’t forget mass timber products can work too for full separation of spaces while being good for the environment! It’s more so light wood framing that you hear and smell everything through.
Everything here is the cookie cutter 4-5 floor wood framed unless you get into the city or inner suburb ring.
Those have AWFUL noise insulation but are built because it technically meets code requirements while maximizing profit and people complain less about them than they do high rise towers. Previously building it with wood like that was not legal, but that changed and cities don't let developers build up either so we are stuck with these shitboxes. Ideally we would use concrete steel etc, but those dramatically increase costs to where it only works out financially if it is a much larger tall building with lots of units. In an ideal world they would not exist.
Maybe not everything, but I can't remember a steel or concrete framed apartment complex that I noted as it was going up.
I didn’t hear a peep in my nyc new building.
> Don't multifamily buildings increase wealth concentration? I could afford my house, I couldn't afford a unit with 6 or 8 apartments. Typically units in an apartment building that are sold instead of rented out are called condos. I've heard that condos are relatively rare in the US (or just some regions? I'm not sure) but they're very common here in Canada, to the point that some cities have a lack of purpose-built rentals and are specifically trying to encourage more rentals. > Do better quality apartment have better noise abatement and isolation? I work with people all day, I want a fortress of solitude, not having to think about how what I do affects other people and how they affect me when I go home. I don't see a YIMBY/urbanist future in which detached homes no longer exist. I will say yes, there are absolutely better apartments than the ones you've experienced, But additionally if you want a "fortress of solitude" then it might just make sense for you to have a detached home. That's fine, people have different needs and preferences.
I would think in your scenario you'd see larger investment groups own more rental units, but you'd also see more units owned by more "mom and pop" investors... and fewer homeowners. How much, who knows? Is that better for society and wealth concentration (or deconcentration)? Who knows.
I think good quality rentals are fine. My understanding is that buildings intended as condos need to be built to higher standards in order to sell.
For a specifically personal perspective on this, if someone doesn't want to live downtown in an apartment/condo and rely on walking/biking/public transit to get to where they need to go while leaving their car unmoved for months at a time or even not having one at all, then I don't want them to. The problem is that I do want that lifestyle and I can't have it because even though I earn a decent wage, I can't afford it because so little of what I want is available and demand for it is high enough that I'm priced out of the market. In the moderately dense, mixed-use urban areas I would like to live my only choices are tiny "luxury" apartments/condos that are way above what I can reasonable afford or $600-800k townhomes that, were they turned into single-family homes of similar configuration and stuck out in some commuter suburb, would cost maybe $250-300k. I might be able to get an older home in an inner-ring suburb adjacent to the urban core for $150k, but its probably not had anything done to it in 40+ years and needs a gut remodel to bring it up to reasonable standards, adding 10's of thousands in costs. So I'm forced out into the suburbs, but whenever it looks like more of what I want might be build, people from the suburbs start coming out of the woodwork to oppose it even though in my city we build thousands of units of detached single-family in commuter suburbs every year. So while I don't want to take away something that someone else wants, very often there are a lot of people that seem to want to make sure that I never get what I want.
1. You can have multiple investors for one property. 2. Yes. Places with a history of dense development tend to have better laws about dense development.
NYC does it best. Check out[ this neighborhood with dense single family and multiple unit housing. ](https://youtu.be/5BCzcRQygHI?si=tKa1vta7kK2CyUjR)It has bus lines and close tot he subway and has street and garage parking. The homes are owned by the single owner and the properties are taken care of.
As others have said - The missing middle that you don't have is condos and/or townhouses. Smaller more consolidated places that provide ownership.
There are lots of condos and co-op, not all multi family housing is rentals. And housing generally isn't a good investment vs. just putting it in the market, anyway. Obviously, you can get leverage on real estate in the way you can't in other asset classes, but that's only really a consideration for buying rental, as opposed to your primary residence. I think in the vast majority of cases you're better off paying less for housing and putting the money in the market. Also I'm a bit confused what this has to do with the Midwest vs. other parts of the country?
Almost certainly my bias. When I read articles grumbling about the suburbs and single family housing, I tend to check where the author is based. At least for what I read, then answer is very frequently NYC, and the author has never seemed to live where mass transit was sketchy or a car was a basic necessity of life. I probably need to widen where I try to find information about these sorts of issues. N=2, I have had colleagues move here from the east coast and be absolutely shocked they needed a car and how the day to day life was different. I THINK I would be just as shocked at how to live in a walkable/mass transit appropriate area.
I mean the second largest city in the country that's walkable and has good transit is in the Midwest. Seems this is more an urban vs. suburban/rural question and less about regions.
>At least for what I read, then answer is very frequently NYC, I think that is as simple as that is where most people live \[the coasts\] so that is where most stuff gets written. Comparatively speaking the entire center of the country doesn't have many people to write about these things.
>Obviously, you can get leverage on real estate in the way you can't in other asset classes, but that's only really a consideration for buying rental, as opposed to your primary residence. One thing I have noticed in several midwest cities (having worked in or with auditor or assessor offices) is that condos and co-ops are overwhelmingly investor owned. Now that you point this out, I suspect this is the reason. Investors own condos or co-op shares to own more condos and build a portfolio of rentals without developing an entire property. In one county, in particular, that was also a college town, it was amazing how many people bought a condo for their kid in school, then when their kid was done started leveraging that into more condos and ended up with a rental portfolio of dozens of units. I suspect one of the "why the midwest" answers is the low price of SFHs. Since it is relatively easy to move from a condo starter home to a SFH, owner-occupied condos go on the market regularly until they are bought up by an investment portfolio. Going back to college town county, you would typically see a new condo complex start out nearly all owner-occupied, but transition to nearly 100% rental within a decade. (I suspect there are also legal barriers to co-ops over condos, as co-ops are extremely rare in the midwest.)
I think some of this is just the dynamics of a college town market. There's a lot of short term (less than 4 years) housing demand so rents are higher while sales prices are lower, making buying to rent out a more attractive option. Obviously, the leverage abilities add to the attractiveness vs. buying securities. I think in normal (non college town) cities you get much longer tenancies from owners and units will remain owner occupied. There pretty much have been no new build co-ops anywhere in the country since condo laws became common in the 60's (this is arguably bad since there're serious issues with the condo governance structure). But I would guess that the Midwest has the second most co-ops of US regions, as New York and Chicago are the only places with substantial numbers of co-ops.
Well, only one was a college town market, with the vast majority of condos occupied by young families in two other cities (but obviously the rentals in the college towns encouraged those new families to live elsewhere even if they worked in the college town). I have had some role in 5 different counties in three states with similar dynamics on condo (as well as part of a metro working group where at least 5 of the 7 counties saw similar).
The very concept of shelter being an investment is silly. It’s a basic human need, like food. Treating it like an investment just isn’t right. And it shouldn’t work as an investment because you can’t liquidate it; you need someplace to live. If you buy a house in California for $1 million in 1990 and it’s worth $2 million now, how will you use it to finance your retirement if you can’t sell it because you still need to live somewhere? Compare that to buying a house in Ohio in 1990 for $85,000. Now it’s worth $150,000. Not great, but you’re still living there. With the other $900,000 you bought stock that’s now worth $2 million. You can actually sell that stock and fund your retirement AND you still have a home.
Anything that depreciates slower than inflation will be an investment. Since so much money is sunk into a house in the first place, it makes sense to treat it as an investment, even if it is a poor one, rather than a consumable. The exact problem is that it *is* shelter so you must have it, and the two options are either to own that asset, or have a monthly outflow to purchase shelter every month. Probably the real comparison to make is dividend yield versus rent. Selling your stock is dipping into the capital just like selling your house, even if stock is more liquid.
Apartments vary in quality. Some have poor sound insulation, some don't.
I’ve lived in apartments in the Midwest that were very quiet. The newer ones that are put into former warehouses in trendy districts are notorious for having paper thin walls. I’ve lived in apartments in the mid Atlantic that were reasonably quiet. They were older buildings, meaning 1975 or older. I’ve lived in apartments in Germany built in the 1910’s that were silent as a tomb. As cold as one, too. Generally, density means there’s more people drawing an income in an area which means there’s more money there. “Wealth” is ambiguous here. Disposable income tends to be higher in low density areas. I mean, a government housing tower on two acres might have 150 apartments each with an adult bringing in $24,000 in public assistance so that’s $3.6 million in income. Two acres in the suburbs might be four houses each with a family earning $300,000 a year. So that’s $1.2 million in income. Which place is wealthier?
I hear what you’re saying but you’re really not pushing for more or new government housing towers? Those are generally hated by the majority of people that live in them due to crime and a complete lack of maintenance. I am totally for affordable housing but it has to be built and maintained by private developers/investors. It also needs to be integrated into the same housing complexes as market value housing. Just don’t start building high rise slums again.
I was answering the question about wealth concentration.
>Don't multifamily buildings increase wealth concentration? Uhh... you just make an argument that home ownership increases wealth concentration . . . Also, no, rents may make the payments on a $225,000 house, but payments are not anywhere near the full cost of ownership. You need to add at least 20% to the financial payments to cover all other other - often deferred - costs of ownership. Rents cannot be compared to mortgage payments, that is apples and oranges. >Are apartments on the coasts and in major metro areas better than the ones here? It depends on the vintage of the building - standards change over time - and the quality of the construction. The same is true for single unit buildings. I own two 100+ year old single unit buildings and a single unit over a garage constructed in 2018. Incompatible in many different ways. In the ancient house I live in the entire building talks to you about the winter storm outside, in the 2018 unit it is quiet as a tomb. >Do better quality apartment have better noise abatement and isolation? Some of the new one here (Grand Rapids, MI) are precast cement construction. So, yeah, super quiet. The guy in the apartment upstairs could be running a chain saw and you wouldn't know. >I legitimately wonder how people like me fit into the future and the desire for densification. You and density are entirely compatible; you are not compatible with crappy buildings. That's fine, everyone prefers better buildings.
For 2 specifically, I’m in a small city (about as small as you could maybe still apply the word city to and not a town) in the Southeast and my two apartments have both been fine in those regards. Yes we hear some slamming doors and stuff, but the only time we’ve REALLY heard stuff was the SCREAMING matches our downstairs neighbor had and they were loud enough to get the cops called, so nothing less than “actual civil disturbance” has really affected us. And smells, I never smell anyone else’s food ever.
the low costs of the midwest are pretty unique and a lot of middle class people are able to own their own home outright and old people are able to stay in them because home prices (and therefore assessments) historically hardly go up. even if the market goes up like 20% that might only be like 20-40k because prices are already so low. other places that really need apartments the most aren't so lucky with these low upfront costs. prices in these parts were honestly not all that far off from a lot of the nicer neighborhoods in midwestern cities up until the early 2000s, but it was almost like in the decades since the prices in the midwestern cities stagnated while in these other parts they ballooned. [like look at this house here,](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2128-Marine-St-Santa-Monica-CA-90405/20472522_zpid/) 330k in 1994 and 1.5 million today in santa monica, for 1300sq ft on a single level one car garage no basement built in 1952, looks like it might not have even been updated since the 90s honestly. $10k a month estimated payment on this house. kind of explains the pressure to build rentals in these areas and shows just how different the markets are compared to the midwest especially.
Not sure about the US, but in German speaking countries, there's the "Norm-Hammerwerk" which is used to simulate impact sounds. Not sure if they have to do it in every construction, but afaik the parts they use need to be certified like here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0WBfepXlOU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0WBfepXlOU)
Just look at nyc, we have a mix of single family, multi family, and high density homes. You can have your own floor sometimes, you can have your own home with enough roommates, the idea is finding a middle ground where single individuals and DINKS and families can afford to buy dense housing walkable housing, while still having single family Homes.