Assemblages are growing in popularity due to the lack of land for new development. The key is to find a set of adjacent properties that all have high development multiples. Then negotiate these properties with their respective owners. It is preferable to find assemblage opportunities with the same owner. Depending
Chicago has 604,319 properties under the Chicago Zoning Map. Today we looked into which ones have development potential using the development multiple calculations. For example, we’d like to filter sites where the total buildable area is ten times the existing building area. We narrowed it down to three sets. The
Yesterday we got the news that commercial real estate data giant, Lightbox, acquired the zoning data company PZR. Along with the acquisition, Lightbox now has more than 223,000 digitized property zoning reports. This acquisition is a great validator of all the work we’ve been doing for the past five years.
You are not alone. The Chicago zoning map is currently the most analyzed among all metropolitan cities. We looked into it, and it makes sense; Chicago is amidst a dozen mega development projects. The size of these developments has a significant impact on the surrounding properties. Everyone is looking to
The easiest way to find development opportunities for multifamily is to canvass the city based on units allowed. Deepblocks has built a city-wide search in which every parcel already has all its zoning rules baked in; that way, they are searchable. Searching by units allowed is most straightforward in cities
Total buildable area is the ultimate zoning value because it can be used to compare all parcels across a city. Total buildable area normalizes parcels and allows us to compare how much we can build, apples to apples. At the city scale, this metric gives us an instant snapshot of
A development multiple tells us how much development potential there is on any given property. It is an abstraction of how much room is available for development. At scale, development multiples tell us how much a city region can grow. We divide the total buildable area by the existing building
Shorter delivery times are a general demand. If products need to be closer to the people, one option is to bring the warehouses into the city, which I explored in last week’s post. A second option would be to build cities over warehouse districts. Think multilayered Chicago, in which elevated
It is inevitable and the only way to fulfill the expectations of nearly instant delivery times. The only way to speed up delivery times is to bring the warehouses closer to our homes. I recently purchased an exercise machine for my home gym. I could have ordered it on Amazon,
Miami Girls Foundation and Design District Miami present 2022 Miami Founders Award to recognize top 30 companies and women-founders behind them. To celebrate the legacy of Miami as the only major American city founded by a woman, Miami Girls Foundation in partnership with Design District Miami will recognize 30 leaders,
What are the goals of our cities? Conserve and replenish natural environments Inclusivity and support for social interaction Attract private investments Our cities result from geometric urban design in collision with the economics of real estate development. Shaping a city is not trivial. Architects and urban planners mostly do this
During my time at Singularity, in a lecture by Pascal Finette, I had one of my career’s most important epiphanies—humans can’t predict exponential growth. They say live in the moment, trust the process, be open-minded. That is as good as it gets, at least regarding the future. What is exponential
