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Every analysis, breakdown and explainer, newest first.
Construction Costs
Cheaper cabinets and counters move the required rent of a new apartment by about $34 a month. Land, parking, building type, fees, time and interest rates move it far more. Here is the scale of each lever.
Interest Rates
A one-point rise in the loan rate adds about $93 a month to the rent our illustrative 120-unit project requires, before investors and construction lenders reprice. We show the arithmetic and the second-order effects.
Development
Is rent high because developers take too much? We trace every dollar of "developer profit" in a $30,000,000 apartment building and find the fee explains $68 of a $2,415 rent, while the cost of capital explains far more.
Affordability
Housing affordability is usually argued as a question of blame. It is better understood as arithmetic: land, construction, money, rules, operations and returns, added up and divided by units.
