Multifamily Performance and Value
Micro-Housing Gets Bigger
Efficiency is important—but it's not just energy efficiency in today's market. “Space efficiency is the name of the game for growing segments of the multifamily market, including very small apartments that range from 250 to 450 square feet,” says Andrew Franz, AIA, principal of Andrew Franz Architect, New York City. “These new typologies are meant to accommodate a growing urban demographic: one- and two-person households, often of young professionals, who need to live more economically in the city.”
In fact, in New York, longstanding zoning regulations were recently waived to allow a city-owned property with 55 micro-units as part of a local pilot. Designed by the architecture firms Monadnock and nARCHITECTS, the project uses prefabricated, modular construction techniques and will rent at $950 to $1,900 per apartment.
In Boston, market-rate developments of similar sizes are planned for the fast-growing Seaport District, including the $100-million Boston Wharf Tower, designed by ADD Inc. (The city allows floor plans as small as a tidy 300 square feet.) Others, such as the luxury high-rise The Kensington, designed by The Architectural Team, include efficient “open one-bedrooms” of about 550 square feet. In San Francisco, the smallest pads ever include 220-square-foot units starting at about $975 per month.1
In fact, micro-units are a new riff on an old and much-maligned idea: single-room occupancy or SRO buildings, many with shared kitchens or bathrooms, which were opposed by building departments in these same cities just a few years ago. Today, leaders including Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and San Francisco's Edwin M. Lee are eager to entice young professionals with more affordable downtown housing options to stabilize neighborhoods.
Unlike SROs, today's market-rate micro-pads are hardly cheap: A 450-square-foot unit might go for $2,200 per month. With pull-out sofas or Murphy beds, small bathrooms, and open or galley-style kitchens, the apartments often come with shared amenities in common zones to allow residents to escape from their confines and socialize with likeminded tenants.
“In these ways, micro-units are starting to resemble assisted-living facilities, an ironic parallel between young professionals and seniors with a certain degree of acuity,” says Michael E. Liu, AIA, NCARB, vice president with The Architectural Team in Chelsea, Mass. “Some developers see an opportunity to convert their micro-unit projects to housing for older, more frail populations as demographics shift.” While the net-to-gross ratio, which compares living unit area against common space, tends to be higher for ALFs, so too are the rents—typically about three times what the apartments command.
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(Pictured: Marselle Condominium, Seattle, WA. PB Architects. Photo by Matt Todd Photography, courtesy of WoodWorks.)
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