Posts Tagged ‘real estate’

Land use and zoning roundup

  • “NEPA Reforms a Big Step toward Correcting Worst Abuses of Environmental Permitting Process” [CEI on White House Council on Environmental Quality release of proposed revamp of National Environmental Policy Act]
  • Developer, relying on NYC’s own interpretation of zoning rules, puts up 668-foot tower. City: whoops, we’ve decided that wasn’t a good interpretation, here’s a new one. Judge: now lop off nearly half the building. What’s wrong here? [Rick Hills, City Journal] “Mom-and-pop shops ‘blindsided’ by de Blasio’s sign crackdown” [Melanie Gray, New York Post]
  • Challenge to Ohio town’s zoning ordinance limiting number of unrelated persons who can live together [Cato Daily Podcast with Maurice A. Thompson]
  • Tradeable rights for NIMBY objectors? [Peter Van Doren]
  • “Why the ‘Used Housing’ Market Should Be Like the Used Car Market” [Scott Beyer last summer]
  • “How California Environmental Law Makes It Easy For Labor Unions To Shake Down Developers” [Christian Britschgi, Reason] NIMBYs keep In-N-Out Burger out of Rancho Mirage [same]

“L.A. leaders weigh a new idea to halt rent hikes: Force landlords to sell their buildings”

Los Angeles council members propose using eminent domain to seize apartment buildings to prevent rent hikes. The complex was built under a deal that required the developer/owner to hold rents below market levels for thirty years, and that period has now expired. [David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times; Christian Britschgi, Reason]

I think the scheme is premised in part on sponsors’ knowing that the city could proceed to make a low-ball offer premised on some combination of 1) uncertainty about whether judges would in fact award a fair market value sum that reflected actual market values, 2) the expected cost of litigation, and 3) other leverage the city might be able to bring to bear on the owners. Gideon Kanner, emeritus professor at Loyola L.A. Law and land use expert, has had a running feature for years at his blog called “Lowball Watch” with many examples of the low-ball offers routinely made in eminent domain proceedings.

Tougher regulation of homebuilding makes developers more powerful

“Making big developers ‘give back’ to the community by running a gauntlet of concessions and fees seems like it should weaken their clout. Here’s why it actually does the opposite.” [Daniel Herriges, Strong Towns via Arnold Kling]

Alas, “the number of veto points over new construction is increasing,” reports Tyler Cowen on a new NBER paper. From the abstract: “the housing bust [after 2006] …did not lead any major market that previously was highly regulated to reverse course and deregulate [building] to any significant extent. Moreover, regulation in most large coastal markets increased over time.” [Joseph Gyourko, Jonathan Hartley, Jacob Krimmel, National Bureau of Economics Research via Marginal Revolution]

ADA and disabled rights roundup

July 31 roundup

Land use and zoning roundup

  • NYC landmark decree will strangle famed Strand used bookstore, says owner [Nancy Bass Wyden, New York Daily News, Nick Gillespie, Reason, earlier] NIMBY resistance to Dupont Circle project behind Masonic Temple insists on preserving views that weren’t there until fairly recently [Nick Sementelli, Greater Greater Washington]
  • “Barcelona city hall has finally issued a work permit for the unfinished church designed by the architect Antoni Gaudí, 137 years after construction started on the Sagrada Família basilica.” [AP/Guardian] At least they’re not in one of the American towns and cities that would make them tear down work outside the scope of permit before proceeding;
  • FHA lending tilts heavily toward detached single-family housing over condos, encouraging sprawl [Scott Beyer]
  • “San Francisco’s Regulations Are the Cause of Its Housing Crisis” [Beyer]
  • “What Should I Read to Understand Zoning?” [Nolan Gray, Market Urbanism]
  • I think we can all guess which union was not cut into a share of the work in this Bay Area housing development [Jennifer Wadsworth, San Jose Inside (Laborers union files CEQA suit), Christian Britschgi, Reason]

Dodgy deeds in Philadelphia, cont’d

Last July we noted (“How To Steal a House In Philadelphia”) some remarkable journalism by Craig R. McCoy for the Philadelphia Daily News about the theft of real estate through forgery and other skullduggery. Now he’s back with more amazement: “In at least seven deals involving [the protagonist] or his associates, there’s a simple reason to be sure that the deeds were forged. In each case, the ‘signers’ were dead at the time. At the most extreme, someone forged the name of a woman who had died 36 years before.” [Craig R. McCoy, Philadelphia Daily News]

Related: “Man Charged After Allegedly Stealing 6 Philadelphia Homes From ‘Poor, Elderly, And Deceased,’ DA Says” [CBS Philadelphia]

How Hudson Yards connects to Harlem

What an amazing story: “Manhattan’s new luxury mega-project [Hudson Yards] was partially bankrolled by an investor visa program called EB-5, which was meant to help poverty-stricken areas.” The far West Side of lower Manhattan, not far from Tribeca, the Village, and Chelsea, is hardly known for its poverty, but creative subsidy seekers carved out an “area” that connected the Hudson Yards site, gerrymander style, through midtown and Central Park to public housing projects in Harlem. And presto: access to benefits meant to revive high-unemployment urban areas. [Kriston Capps, CityLab]

Reader David Link writes:

It’s only bad if you think the point of the Poverty/Industrial Complex is designed to alleviate poverty, rather than just being a set of white collar jobs programs. This gerrymander is a visual example of the usual, multiple links between poverty/social justice/community improvement rhetoric and the people who ultimately benefit. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like a good step for New York, and the only excess cost is to those who aren’t skeptical enough to accept the rhetoric.

Buying a home? Feds want to know your identity

Another valued little piece of financial privacy being lost: in the name of enforcing money laundering and know your customer regulations, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has expanded a program the effect of which is to require disclosure of your identity if you buy a home in some parts of country [Kathleen Pender, San Francisco Chronicle]

Related: British financial regulators adopt new approach of “shifting the burden of proof onto foreign investors; they must now prove their wealth is legitimate.” [Jeffrey Miron, Cato]