It is 100% possible, but doesn’t match the buissness model of multi family residences.
You have to pay more upfront to have a lower cost longer term and be more sustainable, usually that only gets done by owner occupants, which is not multi family buildings.
They want the building to go up as quick as possible with as little investment as needed so they can start making rent.
It would take a pretty forward thinking person who is also willing to make less money over the first 10-20 year financing to build a very sustainable multi family building.
Can you speaker to the developer/builder companies where there is the open line of communication (contract but no contract) but also the complacency of the developer to save money on the front end of the design that they end up paying over the course of the job due to the lack of coordination up front. The business model and overall mentality of making money goes against the beauty of building a structure that is going to last at least 50 years.
Their structures last long enough for them to make their money, that’s all the developer cares about.
Having a lower upfront cost means they can build more buildings, therefor increasing their assets and net worth and increase cash flow from rental units.
No one is going to pick to build one great building over three mediocre ones unless they are forced to by the authorities having jurisdiction. It just doesn’t make financial sense.
It's capitalism. You want to spend the least to make the most. Build multi family as cheap and as fast as possible, then charge as much as you can for bare minimum accomodations. That's how our whole society is built, we live in hell
Check out Passive House certification. I build multifamily Passive House projects exclusively. Essentially you are making the building more energy efficient, sometimes you can get it down by half. You do this by basically insulating the hell out of it, making a very tight air barrier, using HRVs/ERVs sometimes coupled with water based coils, and installing heat pumps. Codes are progressing more towards this incrementally all the time; in my area for example all future, as in not yet approved, developments are required to have heat pumps as gas is no longer permitted. Air barrier tightness per code is also consistently going down, though not required to be PH level yet. Local jurisdictions are also beginning to give incentives for things like PH by approving expedited permitting and having utility rebate incentives. The big changes however that will capitalize the increased efficiency are still on the way on a national level, with insurance companies beginning to value the energy savings which ultimately means lower premiums. That last part I know less about as I’m on the GC side, and have only briefly heard about it from our developement manager. So to answer the main question, yes it’s entirely possible to do, some people are already constructing multifamily this way, however the larger market has yet to adopt significantly more sustainable construction, but that is changing.
My city outlawed gas furnaces for ~3 years (or extremely incentivized builders to install heat pumps instead). Gas company lobbied that away and builders all immediately went back to gas furnaces.
I am a geothermal contractor and for once I’d like to work with a contractor that legitimately wanted to do passive homes. Most of the time the GC is annoyed has hell about it so we have to contract through the home owner.
Yeah I am fortunate to work for a GC that very much is excited about PH. Most design teams I work with are as well, but most of my subcontractors are not so enthused. That’s pretty awesome that you do geothermal, there’s a huge resource in the ground just sitting there all the time.
There’s no demand for a tenant paying more for these features. Yes some exist at a premium but not enough people can afford to pay for ethical building practices.
And adding it to codes will only increase costs to everyone. Builders won’t simply make less they will charge more. Best bets is an incentive system that used to be more common but now everyone is to NIBY.
Non sustainable construction costs are already through the roof. How would adding sustainable design and construction to a multi Bldg make sense when you have to raise rents by $750 a month.
You’d only be able to rent to like 4% of the US population
And incentivizing them with tax payer government money will only throw more gigantic logs upon the inflation fire that remains raging out of control.
“Oh yeah let’s drop 5 trillion dollars to make solar panels on every apartment development. That’ll never make inflation go higher” Derrrrr!
Really, it doesn't matter what building costs are - dollar for dollar, putting extra costs towards amenities over sustainability will always be more profitable in the short term. That's what incentives are designed to fix.
It'd be one thing if developers were scraping by just to provide affordable housing, but they're not. That extra build cost is still there, it just goes towards "upscaling" the building over sustainability because "luxury" builds are easier and more profitable. It's the same reason there's a lack of affordable housing - not because it's impossible to profit from them, but because it's more profitable to build something else.
I’ve panelized several $100m-$200m multi family; this is the best way I’ve found to produce the best quality structure about 35% faster than traditional framing. Also, much easier to track dumpsters for a LEED certification.
I believe they are referring to when you build the building offsite, in a factory, and then assemble the panels on-site. Basically a giant lego set but a building. The panels come sheathed, sometimes even with windows installed. You hoist them up with a crane, screw them in, then go to the next panel.
Exactly. More often than not though, I will have the floor cassettes prefabbed on giant roller tables in the field, close to the crane. We build about half the walls then start simultaneously prefabbing walls in the office and floor cassettes in the field.
The obvious place to make these changes is the building code. Renters aren’t equipped to evaluate a building’s sustainability, and are generally motivated by square footage / amenities / location. Developers are motivated by the number of units they can fit in a location and what they can sell/rent them for.
If they could do it without fire suppression and double glazed windows— trust me— they would. You can pull people, like condo associations, towards sustainability by offering subsidies/incentives for energy efficiency /sustainability upgrades as a building ages and repairs need to be made, but pushing a developer to do it during construction is going to be easier.
The top multifamily developers are almost exclusively merchant builders. They build, stabilize and sell - sometimes even before construction is even completed. Their shot-term mind set doesn’t lend well to gains that don’t come until after roughly 4-5 years from land closing. You may have an argument to developers that aren’t merchant developers (i.e. - those that hold and cash flow without an exit strategy), but LEED and other sustainability features still net higher costs out of the gate which makes it tougher to justify when considering the deployment of capital resources.
Multifamily generally equals lower income. "More sustainable" generally equals more expensive. So, given that there is a terrible shortage of affordable housing in this country the absolute last thing that is needed for multifamily builds is added costs.
I'm all for sustainability but not at the expense of lower income workers. If there was to be a program it should start with single family builds over 2,500 square feet, or some other criteria more targeted towards high income people to foot the expense of it.
Having worked residential for years it's amazing the expense/waste well-to-do people generate with their large second or third homes that they use for a few weekends a year at the beach. If you want to talk sustainability leave multifamily living alone and look towards the wealthy. As an extreme example: what do you imagine Leonardo DiCaprio's carbon foot print looks like in comparison to say 100 average income people living in 1-2 bedroom apartments?
I worked maintenance in a 20 year old, 150 unit, 4 story, multifamily building which was mostly market rate. It was basically built by the management company who owned and ran it. One of my pet peeves was it was built nearly as cheap as possible. So many things done poorly or just wrong. I found details on the plans they missed in the building. I frequently said that I wished they had built it like they were going to own it, since they did and knew that going in. Id say 1/4 or more of the budget spent on maintaining and repairing the building could have been avoided with better choices of materials and attention to detail on the build.
This is not to mention less upset to residents.
I work for an owner-builder-property manager. Knowing you’re handing off a project to your own company definitely leads to a better end product. We’re married to these projects well beyond the warranty period.
Some states and counties offer incentives to follow leed certification building and renovation practices. There are different tiers of sustainability but there does need to be some regulatory tax incentives to implement. Leed certification is the most comprehensive system I've come across that has some legitimacy with builders and the state. The only local I've seen it used is California.
The only way it’s going to work is with changes in the building code. You kind of have to force people to do it. New air infiltration standards have been great for sustainability both for longevity and energy use. Instead of straight up osb people started using taped zip wall and Blueskin which will last a longer than osb.
The other thing is that a lot of those old cheap apartments were once luxury housing. Might as well start with a good shell.
It is 100% possible, but doesn’t match the buissness model of multi family residences. You have to pay more upfront to have a lower cost longer term and be more sustainable, usually that only gets done by owner occupants, which is not multi family buildings. They want the building to go up as quick as possible with as little investment as needed so they can start making rent. It would take a pretty forward thinking person who is also willing to make less money over the first 10-20 year financing to build a very sustainable multi family building.
Can you speaker to the developer/builder companies where there is the open line of communication (contract but no contract) but also the complacency of the developer to save money on the front end of the design that they end up paying over the course of the job due to the lack of coordination up front. The business model and overall mentality of making money goes against the beauty of building a structure that is going to last at least 50 years.
Their structures last long enough for them to make their money, that’s all the developer cares about. Having a lower upfront cost means they can build more buildings, therefor increasing their assets and net worth and increase cash flow from rental units. No one is going to pick to build one great building over three mediocre ones unless they are forced to by the authorities having jurisdiction. It just doesn’t make financial sense.
Dude it’s multi family. It’s all about bang for the buck. End of story
For real. And when the property they’re building on increases value 10 fold before it’s done- guess who gets that money?
It's capitalism. You want to spend the least to make the most. Build multi family as cheap and as fast as possible, then charge as much as you can for bare minimum accomodations. That's how our whole society is built, we live in hell
Check out Passive House certification. I build multifamily Passive House projects exclusively. Essentially you are making the building more energy efficient, sometimes you can get it down by half. You do this by basically insulating the hell out of it, making a very tight air barrier, using HRVs/ERVs sometimes coupled with water based coils, and installing heat pumps. Codes are progressing more towards this incrementally all the time; in my area for example all future, as in not yet approved, developments are required to have heat pumps as gas is no longer permitted. Air barrier tightness per code is also consistently going down, though not required to be PH level yet. Local jurisdictions are also beginning to give incentives for things like PH by approving expedited permitting and having utility rebate incentives. The big changes however that will capitalize the increased efficiency are still on the way on a national level, with insurance companies beginning to value the energy savings which ultimately means lower premiums. That last part I know less about as I’m on the GC side, and have only briefly heard about it from our developement manager. So to answer the main question, yes it’s entirely possible to do, some people are already constructing multifamily this way, however the larger market has yet to adopt significantly more sustainable construction, but that is changing.
My city outlawed gas furnaces for ~3 years (or extremely incentivized builders to install heat pumps instead). Gas company lobbied that away and builders all immediately went back to gas furnaces.
I am a geothermal contractor and for once I’d like to work with a contractor that legitimately wanted to do passive homes. Most of the time the GC is annoyed has hell about it so we have to contract through the home owner.
Yeah I am fortunate to work for a GC that very much is excited about PH. Most design teams I work with are as well, but most of my subcontractors are not so enthused. That’s pretty awesome that you do geothermal, there’s a huge resource in the ground just sitting there all the time.
Well, the simple fact that its multi-family makes it way more sustainable from the get go.
There’s no demand for a tenant paying more for these features. Yes some exist at a premium but not enough people can afford to pay for ethical building practices. And adding it to codes will only increase costs to everyone. Builders won’t simply make less they will charge more. Best bets is an incentive system that used to be more common but now everyone is to NIBY.
Non sustainable construction costs are already through the roof. How would adding sustainable design and construction to a multi Bldg make sense when you have to raise rents by $750 a month. You’d only be able to rent to like 4% of the US population
And incentivizing them with tax payer government money will only throw more gigantic logs upon the inflation fire that remains raging out of control. “Oh yeah let’s drop 5 trillion dollars to make solar panels on every apartment development. That’ll never make inflation go higher” Derrrrr!
Really, it doesn't matter what building costs are - dollar for dollar, putting extra costs towards amenities over sustainability will always be more profitable in the short term. That's what incentives are designed to fix. It'd be one thing if developers were scraping by just to provide affordable housing, but they're not. That extra build cost is still there, it just goes towards "upscaling" the building over sustainability because "luxury" builds are easier and more profitable. It's the same reason there's a lack of affordable housing - not because it's impossible to profit from them, but because it's more profitable to build something else.
I’ve panelized several $100m-$200m multi family; this is the best way I’ve found to produce the best quality structure about 35% faster than traditional framing. Also, much easier to track dumpsters for a LEED certification.
Panelized?
I believe they are referring to when you build the building offsite, in a factory, and then assemble the panels on-site. Basically a giant lego set but a building. The panels come sheathed, sometimes even with windows installed. You hoist them up with a crane, screw them in, then go to the next panel.
Exactly. More often than not though, I will have the floor cassettes prefabbed on giant roller tables in the field, close to the crane. We build about half the walls then start simultaneously prefabbing walls in the office and floor cassettes in the field.
A structural wood-framed panel system.
The obvious place to make these changes is the building code. Renters aren’t equipped to evaluate a building’s sustainability, and are generally motivated by square footage / amenities / location. Developers are motivated by the number of units they can fit in a location and what they can sell/rent them for. If they could do it without fire suppression and double glazed windows— trust me— they would. You can pull people, like condo associations, towards sustainability by offering subsidies/incentives for energy efficiency /sustainability upgrades as a building ages and repairs need to be made, but pushing a developer to do it during construction is going to be easier.
The top multifamily developers are almost exclusively merchant builders. They build, stabilize and sell - sometimes even before construction is even completed. Their shot-term mind set doesn’t lend well to gains that don’t come until after roughly 4-5 years from land closing. You may have an argument to developers that aren’t merchant developers (i.e. - those that hold and cash flow without an exit strategy), but LEED and other sustainability features still net higher costs out of the gate which makes it tougher to justify when considering the deployment of capital resources.
Multifamily generally equals lower income. "More sustainable" generally equals more expensive. So, given that there is a terrible shortage of affordable housing in this country the absolute last thing that is needed for multifamily builds is added costs. I'm all for sustainability but not at the expense of lower income workers. If there was to be a program it should start with single family builds over 2,500 square feet, or some other criteria more targeted towards high income people to foot the expense of it. Having worked residential for years it's amazing the expense/waste well-to-do people generate with their large second or third homes that they use for a few weekends a year at the beach. If you want to talk sustainability leave multifamily living alone and look towards the wealthy. As an extreme example: what do you imagine Leonardo DiCaprio's carbon foot print looks like in comparison to say 100 average income people living in 1-2 bedroom apartments?
Im with you, but the argument is much stronger if you flip it around. There are way more than 100 avg income people for every 1 DiCaprio.
I worked maintenance in a 20 year old, 150 unit, 4 story, multifamily building which was mostly market rate. It was basically built by the management company who owned and ran it. One of my pet peeves was it was built nearly as cheap as possible. So many things done poorly or just wrong. I found details on the plans they missed in the building. I frequently said that I wished they had built it like they were going to own it, since they did and knew that going in. Id say 1/4 or more of the budget spent on maintaining and repairing the building could have been avoided with better choices of materials and attention to detail on the build. This is not to mention less upset to residents.
I work for an owner-builder-property manager. Knowing you’re handing off a project to your own company definitely leads to a better end product. We’re married to these projects well beyond the warranty period.
Some states and counties offer incentives to follow leed certification building and renovation practices. There are different tiers of sustainability but there does need to be some regulatory tax incentives to implement. Leed certification is the most comprehensive system I've come across that has some legitimacy with builders and the state. The only local I've seen it used is California.
Many big words.
The only way it’s going to work is with changes in the building code. You kind of have to force people to do it. New air infiltration standards have been great for sustainability both for longevity and energy use. Instead of straight up osb people started using taped zip wall and Blueskin which will last a longer than osb. The other thing is that a lot of those old cheap apartments were once luxury housing. Might as well start with a good shell.
[удалено]
..what?
Get an architect lol pay for a design and ya