Austin Business Journal writes, "Even with a ballooning population and pushes for increased density, Austin has shied away from townhome development.
There are about 570 active single-family projects in Austin, and 40 of them are townhome developments, said Keith Hughes, vice president of sales at housing analytics company Zonda. And that’s keeping in track with other Texas cities, according to Zonda’s National Outlook report, but lagging behind other metros across the country.
Zonda defines townhomes as multilevel, single-family residential units sharing a common wall with another similar structure. These homes are typically built in series or rows.
Zonda's data shows that, while townhome deliveries have slowed since the pandemic in many markets, Atlanta has the most townhome projects, numbering just north of 140. Seattle, Charlotte and Washington, D.C., are boasting about 100 townhome projects each, and even Minneapolis — which has actually shown a nearly 150% surge in townhome construction since 2019 — has about 90 ongoing projects.
Texas cities that are among the most popular for single-family residential construction don't make the top markets for new townhomes. In Austin, townhomes have historically been less than 5% of all new builds, Hughes said.
Dallas, the only major Texas metro to post growth in new townhomes since 2019, has just north of 60 ongoing projects. In Houston, where the product type is reputedly popular, there are fewer than 40 projects underway, which is a 64% decline since 2019. Austin has a similar project count, but that translates to a moderate 6% decline in project count for the city. San Antonio, on the other hand, has maintained a flat pace of new townhome starts over that same period, with an average of about 10 ongoing projects annually.
There are several factors keeping townhome construction down in Texas cities, Hughes said. One is the general availability of wide, open spaces in the state where people prefer single-family detached homes.
Instead, townhomes are more common in densely packed cities like Seattle, where high land costs mean it makes sense to pack more housing onto a single parcel.
When moving into denser cities, townhome development becomes difficult because developers need to find suitable infill locations or demolish existing structures prior to building, which can add considerable expenses and time to the development process.
Outside of infill locations, one place townhomes will more often be seen is in larger, master-planned subdivisions, where townhome development is planned from the start."
Source: Austin Business Journal
Written by: Ramzi Abou Ghalioum & Cody Baird
Published: August 21, 2024
Posted by Grossman & Jones Group on
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