There’s also the cost to build this, which won’t be cheap for the developer.

Everyone is always pissed at the greedy evil 1980s movie villain developer, but the reality is that they’re not necessarily making a killing (at least right away) on a new build $2500/month 1BR.

Don’t get me wrong, plenty of developers are greedy bastards. But that this sub thinks the market will magically produce “affordable” housing on its own is a joke - everyone building this new housing needs to get paid, or it’s not going to get built. That’s going to set some kind of floor on how low the rents / sale prices can realistically be on these new buildings, unless the government steps in to help reduce costs.

Assuming that 1BR is ~900sf, and a sf cost of ~$300, it’s about $270k to build. At $2500/month that’s ~ 9 years for the developer property manager to get their money back on the unit. Over a decade, then, from when they made their initial investment in the property pre-construction. They can reduce that $300/sf cost, of course, to pull those numbers down - my point is simply that this isn’t the magical money printing machine for the developers and property managers that everyone seems to think it is.

If it was there would be more multi-family housing being built, zoning and NIMBY problems or not. You find ways through those things if the money is right (look at all the lab space we’ve built).