If you are thinking of moving and plan to live in an apartment, Marietta, Georgia or Tallahassee, Florida would be good places to consider. The average apartment in both cities is more than 1,000 square feet, and new apartments are even larger than that, according to a new report from RentCafe, a web site that focuses on apartment life.
Many people in high-tech cities such as San Jose and Seattle are working at home, but it is hard to fit a home office into a studio apartment. Photo by Charles & Hudson.
On the other hand, unless you are a claustrophiliac, West Coast cities are terrible places to search for an apartment. Seattle apartments average less than 700 square feet and apartments built in the last 10 years are even smaller. Worse, apartments now under construction in Seattle average just 430 square feet; only San Jose is building tinier apartments at an average of 423 square feet. Portland and Los Angeles also have smaller-than-average apartments and the ones being built in those cities tend to be tiny: 553 square feet in L.A. and 606 in Portland.
In general, RentCafe found that studio and one-bedroom apartments are shrinking while two- and three-bedroom apartments are growing. New studios have shrunk from an average of 499 square feet in 2014 to 445 square feet in 2023 while new three-bedrooms have grown from 1,328 to 1,347 square feet. Moreover, the composition of apartment markets is changing: in 2014, more than half of all apartments had two or more bedrooms while 54 percent of apartments built in the last decade were one-bedroom or smaller. Of course, cities like San Jose and Seattle are building mainly studios while cities like Marietta and Tallahassee are mainly building larger apartments.
One alternative to renting an apartment is renting a house. New single-family homes built for rentals tend to be largest in Florida and Texas. Rental homes built in the last ten years in Pensacola, Florida average 1,949 square feet while new Jacksonville rentals average 1,640 square feet. Construction of single-family homes costs less per square foot than multistory apartments, so renting a house can cost less than an apartment in places that haven’t used urban-growth boundaries to create artificial land shortages.
“Construction of single-family homes costs less per square foot than multistory apartments … ”
Thats a surprise to me — economies of scale and all that. Unless that doesn’t include the cost of the land/lot.
Economies of Scale has several meanings.
Houses are built of wood.
Apartments are also built of wood, however ANY thing above 3 stories usually means a fireproofing core, elevators which raise price of building housing. Also Urban land prices are average 6x greater than outer suburbs, meaning to make profit, you have to have several stories. Or sell units; what few you have at much higher price/rent.
Also in the News…
Seattle in large bind to fulfill 700 losses due quitting of it’s police forces, Washington’s largest city has just 913 cops to serve its 750,000 people after losing 725 officers in the last five years. To fulfill quota by hiring Illegal migrants. This of course will be a disaster as migrants from Mexico and Afro-centric regions have even in entry level jobs have high attrition rates due to inability to follow directions. We all remember stereotype turn of the century Irish immigrant police-man twirling his baton, and rampant corruption, but said problem largely declined because Irish were Educable.
Average Hispanic iQs are in the mid 80s. It has been tracked for 4-5 generations, (and proven via high-school dropout rates)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316324951_THE_LATINO-AMERICAN_BELL_CURVE_IQ_EDUCATIONS_AND_INEQUALITY
and is effectively permanent. Only less than 3% of Whites and 2% Asians score that low. You can’t hand reigns of civilization (or guns and legal perview to use them) over the bottom 3% of ANY race and expect long-term positive outcomes or well thought out decision making in stressful environment. Then watch news when they start shooting suspects…..
The US military recruitment problem is entirely due to white men no longer joining. US Military been testing IQ since WWI, UK Air Force has been testing IQ since WWII. Afterall, if you’re gonna give someone a Mine, they need know what “Front Toward Enemy” Means.
The UK Royal Air Force; uses aptitude tests for recruits.
A recent Freedom of Information request made the data for 2015-2020 available, and it looks like this:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/15/black-applicants-significantly-likely-fail-raf-selection-tests/
While Psychopathy often ranks on High IQ scale (dramatized in movies/TV of cultured, well educated serial killers), Sociopathy, is often test severe cognitive issues. Sociopaths are attracted to military service, wanting to serve in infantry units where they can see violent action. While most all infantrymen are motivated by the excitement of combat and the accomplishment of the mission, sociopaths are motivated by the chance to cause death and destruction. They can be identified by the wild-eyed excitement they show when talking of how they plan to kill the enemy. Another sign is a love of knives and violent movies. This behavior is usually dismissed as dark humor or enthusiasm, but it may be sign of trouble. While sociopaths make “Excellent” soldiers, they make terrible cops. Many rookie cops are fired for bad temperament, often after shooting someone for no reason. Police departments do not try to retrain them knowing that sociopathic behavior is difficult to control.
It’s odd that people live in smaller units in denser cities everywhere in the world. Must be because of urban growth boundaries in the US.
Asian megacities you have tiny countries with huge populaces.
Europe was run by kings and queens for 1500 years so gentry owned majority land.
China theres virtually NO private property schit for brains. Yet before 80s most in China lived I’m rural areas in housing and houses.
That “Middle housng” was called tenements, & sucky/filthy places. Hell with Jane Jacob’s Read Jacob Riis.
With gentrification density DECLINES these building housed 1 family per room, then per floor, today per building
AP has found himself baffeled his entire life that anyone would willingly live in a smaller housing in Seattle, San Jose or New York when they could live in larger housing in Talahassee, Florida or Marrietta, Georgia. It literally is incomprehensible to him why someone would want to live that way. I mean, why would it matter WHERE your housing is, as long as it’s bigger INSIDE?
We can address issues in Lack affordable housing all while dealing issue of parking in neighborhoods. While I”m not well versed on all law/zoning, typically ANY building; espeically residential that’s above 3 stories requires a litany of various codes, namely to comply with fire, evacuation, emergency codes etc and economics.
Anything above 3 stories usually requires an elevator or it; if that’s LAW? I don’t know, but practicality wise, few people even physically fit wanna huff it 4 flights of stairs and back again. But economics of taller “Mid-Rises” came question of Safety. As Antiplanner Mentioned.
“in the 1890s, fire departments began to question the construction of wooden mid-rise buildings. Although wood was a strong enough material to support five-story buildings, those buildings could easily become fire traps,….. Soon, fire codes were written to require concrete floors as fire barriers, and the extra weight of the concrete meant that mid-rise buildings required more steel. Add that to the cost of elevators and developers stopped constructing mid-rise buildings.”
That can be mitigated, fairly new building material called “Hardie Board” which is a mixture cement, cellulose and sand and sawn into boards to replace conventional siding. By adopting a thin layer to protect Interior beams, WOoden housing higher than 3 stories can effectively be fire proofed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNTOxdgHOdY
For the people who Just don’t get it, the urbanist playbook or developers pitch for density is that it’s more financially resilient as a result of economies of scale. If I’m building a Water/sewage Pipe 10 feet wide accommodate 100,000 People in several dozens of buildings, it’s advantageous I need less pipe? There fore money is saved…. Right, No.
The evidence, however, points to the opposite, that the physical and social infrastructure costs of density always overtake the economies of scale.