{"id":13329,"date":"2024-10-10T20:06:03","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T20:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=13329"},"modified":"2024-10-10T20:11:54","modified_gmt":"2024-10-10T20:11:54","slug":"hot-demand-for-houses-runs-into-dane-countys-land-of-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=13329","title":{"rendered":"Hot demand for houses runs into Dane County\u2019s Land of No"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/hot-demand-for-houses-runs-into-dane-countys-land-of-no\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Many things can stymie development, but there are pathways to yes<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n

If a home in Madison, Wisconsin\u2019s most rapidly growing metropolis, is increasingly hard to afford\u2026<\/p>\n

And it is:<\/em> The median single-family home sold in metropolitan Madison, which went for $470,800<\/a> this spring, cost well over five times the median household income<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"Image<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u2026 And if most young families really do prefer a single-family house \u2026<\/p>\n

Which <\/em>they do<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> in survey<\/a> after survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2026 And if metropolitan Madison is surrounded by flat, buildable farmland, what\u2019s the problem?<\/p>\n

Why not build enough houses to satisfy buyers?<\/p>\n

One reason is that it\u2019s so easy for people who are not in the business of building houses and not in the market to buy them to say no.<\/p>\n

\u201cHousing dies the death of a thousand cuts,\u201d said Kurt Paulsen, who teaches urban planning at the University of Wisconsin and helps practice it as a member of the Middleton Plan Commission. A lot of those wounds happen at the very local level \u2014 when municipal plan commissions put conditions on developments that make for fewer, costlier houses.<\/p>\n

Sure, regulations affect the cost of building houses, \u201cbut there\u2019s not some faceless bureaucrat imposing 10,000-square foot lot sizes,\u201d he said. That\u2019s local officials, listening to local residents who want less traffic and ritzier neighbors, if neighbors they must gain.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t want to grow<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s hard enough to build. To make a subdivision of a cornfield, a developer must borrow to buy the land, borrow more to grade it into buildable sites, borrow to install roads, sewers and parkland that he will gift to the municipality, and borrow to pay up-front municipal planning fees. Higher interest rates can kill a project. So can being told that all those costs, eventually paid by home buyers, must be spread over fewer houses on larger lots.<\/p>\n

That happens regularly. \u201cThere are communities that have decided they just don\u2019t want to grow,\u201d said Chad Lawler, who heads the Madison Area Builders Association. He diplomatically refrains from naming them, but there are communities that \u201ctry to find a way to get to no instead of how to get to yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this is atop an ongoing shakeout in home builders after the Great Recession and shortages of skilled labor. Builders are funding trades apprenticeship programs, but they still face the bright lines drawn on maps in municipalities\u2019 comprehensive plans.<\/p>\n

These, redrawn once a decade by statute, sometimes sooner if a community wants, specify the boundaries in which new development can be considered<\/em>. Outside the boundaries? It\u2019s not getting developed \u2014 unless a municipality redraws the plan.<\/p>\n

Usually, the people who show up at public meetings are nearby residents who prefer green space and nature to new neighbors. Most often, said Lawler, the objections seem to be that new houses will bring more traffic and maybe crime. So the boundary stays put, and even within it, development can be quashed.<\/p>\n

But metropolitan Madison remains attractive: For 20, maybe 30 years, Paulsen points out, job growth has exceeded home construction. And while the City of Madison has arguments about apartment construction<\/a>, that discussion is separate from the market for single-family homes. People will find those somewhere. Say no on fields adjacent to the city, said Paulsen, and \u201cyou\u2019ll start building in Cross Plains. And if you can\u2019t build it there, you\u2019re going to build it in Mazomanie.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are ways to \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Middleton greenlighted a subdivision<\/a> of single-family homes, two-flats and apartments on 128 acres of farmland. The houses, on lots of a size you\u2019d see in Milwaukee, are priced in the $400s, but as Paulsen puts it, \u201cAny bit of supply helps in a stuck market.\u201d If someone moves in, it may open up their older, cheaper house in Middleton, a process called \u201cfiltering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Countering interests<\/h4>\n

But that works only if enough new places get built, and, he says, Dane County\u2019s been seeing only about 5,000 new houses a year when the market\u2019s been clamoring for 7,000.<\/p>\n

Paulsen hastens to say he\u2019s not impugning people\u2019s motives. Your house is usually your biggest asset, and \u201cyou cannot insure it against its value going down\u201d because the woods nearby become a subdivision. Residents have an interest in telling the plan commission to say no, while future residents are wholly hypothetical, are never there to say yes.<\/p>\n

He suggests a way around, pointing to the new subdivision of starter-priced houses being built in Sheboygan County<\/a> by a consortium of manufacturers who want employees to be able to move in. The houses, owned by residents, can be sold to anyone working in the county and not just to those working for the sponsoring employers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s innovative, said Paulsen, because someone with an interest in there being enough houses intervened to make it happen.<\/p>\n

This could help elsewhere, he said \u2014 businesses telling plan commissions they\u2019re having a hard time finding workers. It can counter the natural tendency toward \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Chamber of Commerce is there saying, \u2018Yes, yes, yes,\u2019\u201d he said, \u201cthat gives growth some support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n

Any\u00a0use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written\u00a0permission.\u00a0To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at\u00a0mike@badgerinstitute.org<\/a>\u00a0or 262-389-8239.<\/em><\/p>\n

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