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0 pointsllamaimperative1y ago0 comments

So 1) yes construction costs are a huge, huge factor (especially right now), but 2) land is about $1.5MM/ac in Burlington VT. A few miles outside of it, land is about $150,000/ac.

Consider a 2 acre project:

$3MM in land costs inside Burlington

$300,000 in land costs right outside Burlington

What projects would could you do on the $300,000 lot that you can't possible do on the $3MM? Basically all of them!

Regarding the UVM project: they should sell that parking lot to bring the $1.5MM/ac costs closer to $300k/ac so people can build stuff instead of a place to store asphalt :)

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greenie_beans1y ago

are you googling your cherry picked facts? nice debate win! (might help to have local context)

regardless, why do you think land in burlington is expensive?

llamaimperativeOP1y ago

No, those are real numbers spot-checked from Zillow. I was on my phone and, ya know, it's an Internet argument, so they're definitely ballparked, but they are from real actual land sales inside Burlington and then a few miles outside of Burlington.

I suppose the delta is surprising to you?

It's expensive because it's productive. The marginal productivity of living/working in Burlington means the market can sustain higher costs, ergo the costs go up.

This is more problematic than every other good because 1) they cannot add more land inside Burlington and 2) the land doesn’t actually have higher carrying costs by virtue of being more expensive (unlike roughly every other asset).

greenie_beans1y ago

i look at zillow multiple times per day so i'm well aware of the local market, so no it's not surprising me. zillow doesn't give the full picture of what is happening locally. zillow list price for vacant land doesn't consider all the vacant lots held by people who aren't building for various reasons nor does it consider the surrounding suburbs etc. or the land uvm holds but doesn't develop (who they gonna sell to? they have more money than anybody). there are a lot more variables than just zillow!

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0 pointsllamaimperative1y ago0 comments

So 1) yes construction costs are a huge, huge factor (especially right now), but 2) land is about $1.5MM/ac in Burlington VT. A few miles outside of it, land is about $150,000/ac.

Consider a 2 acre project:

$3MM in land costs inside Burlington

$300,000 in land costs right outside Burlington

What projects would could you do on the $300,000 lot that you can't possible do on the $3MM? Basically all of them!

Regarding the UVM project: they should sell that parking lot to bring the $1.5MM/ac costs closer to $300k/ac so people can build stuff instead of a place to store asphalt :)

0 comments

greenie_beans1y ago

are you googling your cherry picked facts? nice debate win! (might help to have local context)

regardless, why do you think land in burlington is expensive?

llamaimperativeOP1y ago

I suppose the delta is surprising to you?

It's expensive because it's productive. The marginal productivity of living/working in Burlington means the market can sustain higher costs, ergo the costs go up.

greenie_beans1y ago

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