Living in an area with a thriving housing market, and almost owning a mcmansion myself, I find the concept interesting. What they really should be preventing is the merging of two smaller housing lots to build a larger single house on (my neighbor did this... pisses me off to no end) a now larger lot. what once was two large single family homes, is now an ugly monstrosity (or 90% of being an ugly monstrosity) it's a shame really
It's happening a lot in the area of London where I used to live - except that rather than merging two homes to build one large home, they're knocking down 2-4 large, wonderful, old homes with character and building faceless, same-ish apartment blocks instead. The argument is that people can't afford to live in these large homes any more (tell that to the neighbours), forgetting the fact that most of the apartments are sold as luxury properties, costing almost as much as the original homes they replaced! I'm sure there must be some kind of incentive from the London Assembly, because there is a shortage of housing in London. It's an interesting idea, not sure how feasible it is, nor how long the contract is binding (for those that give up their development rights). At the end of the day, it all boils down to available space - something like this would be useful in the UK, where space is at a premium. In the US, outside of the major cities, I'm imagining space is not such an issue - is Boulder County really that heavily populated? But I think the real issue is one of aesthetics - it's not so much the size of the house, it's more that they're all butt-ugly. And that's not something that's as easy to police...
5000sqft in the hills for 875,000. Where do I sign?! The 900sqft house torn down next to me sold for 400,000 and the 3100sqft house built on the lot sold for 987,000. I have about the same house but 800sqft bigger and I paid half just 5 years ago. I think the problem with solve itself with the slow down in the market, rising interest rates and runaway new home prices.
They've been saying that in the UK for the last 5 years, and it hasn't really happened yet. Even outside of London, the average price for a 2-bed terrace is something like £120k (about $250k). First-time buyers are priced out of the market.
