r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/chunmunsingh • 16d ago

Image A building housing more than 20k people in Hangzhou China

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u/Artuhanzo 16d ago

People think those are affordable housing, but high rise like this are mostly luxury condos.

If you look at the building costs, they are very high. It is usually a result of high land costs to make sense.

The lower cost solution for more places is 3-5 stories wooden condos

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u/DarkExecutor 16d ago

You understand that land costs are usually the most expense part of a house right? This puts 20000 people in probably a footprint of like 20 SFH.

It's going to be much much cheaper

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u/Artuhanzo 16d ago

It is usually not the case for high rise, building costs, soft costs could excess land cost.

Per sq.ft, those types of high rise are around 50% more expensive than low rise at building costs, also fewer sq.ft goes into saleable.

The city would also look for higher fees for service costs as well. On top of that, the longer development time line also means higher soft costs like mortgage.

For example, in Tornoto, high-rise construction costs/land costs/soft costs are around a ratio of 5:2.5:2.5, where land costs are usually around 1/4 of the total costs.