# Why aren't really small apartments more common in the US? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 27, 2022, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807 "2022-03-27T23:43:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2022, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/41 "2022-03-28T16:55:05Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > A 300-400 sq ft apartment takes up an inordinate amount of interstitial space for occupied area I’m hoping you have time to expand on this. Should I be imagining cutting up a single story of a building into a bunch of efficiencies vs larger units? It does seem like that’s a lot more hallways, bathrooms, walls, etc. with more, smaller units. ---
**Author:** ![JaneDoe42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/janedoe42/32/14104_2.png) [@JaneDoe42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JaneDoe42)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2022, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/42 "2022-03-28T17:13:44Z")
No worries, this certainly isn’t important enough to discuss any further. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2022, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/43 "2022-03-28T17:32:40Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > I’m hoping you have time to expand on this. Should I be imagining cutting up a single story of a building into a bunch of efficiencies vs larger units? It does seem like that’s a lot more hallways, bathrooms, walls, etc. with more, smaller units. I think it’s more of an issue in multistory buildings, which almost always require elevators, so you end up with long main corridors that are interconnected so you can get to the elevators and stairs from everywhere. A walkup building only needs vertical circulation, but it’s very difficult to provide accessibility. Even if you can meet code just by making the first floor accessible, there’s a price penalty for units more than a few floors up without an elevator. Once you have an elevator, now you need vertical AND horizontal circulation, and the more units you have the larger those circulation paths need to be. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2022, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/44 "2022-03-28T19:30:16Z")
But you need those corridors and elevators whether the building is made up of tiny apartments or larger ones. I think that what’s being referred to is that larger apartments can be laid out in a way that requires a minimal amount of space to be devoted to hallways. My sister-in-law has a two bedroom apartment - with the dining room, living room and kitchen, that’s a total of five rooms. The only sort-of hallway in her apartment is one that is three feet or so long and mostly serves to keep the bathroom door from opening directly into the living room. The door to one bedroom opens off that tiny hallway and the door to the other bedroom opens off the living room. The dining room opens into the living room and the kitchen opens into both the dining room and the living room. If you were to try to convert that space into four tiny apartments, you would have to add bathrooms and also a hallway because the living room would no longer exist to serve as a hub to the other rooms. I know of other layouts where there is a short hallway from the apartment entrance to the living room. The bathroom and kitchen open off the hallway and the bedrooms open off the living room. Another layout in fairly old buildings has a short hallway that passes the bathroom and ends in the kitchen ( or sometimes the bathroom door is _in_ the kitchen). Once you are in the kitchen , you have to got through each room to get to the next as there is no interior hallway. Which does mean there is little privacy as you will invariably have to go through one bedroom to get to the next. Converting those layouts to multiple tiny apartments would similarly require the addition of a hallway. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2022, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/45 "2022-03-28T19:36:12Z")
Beyond hallways, having more individual apartments in a given space will also require more individual bits of infrastructure. Every apartment is going to need its own plumbing and access to a stack for its kitchen and bathroom. Each apartment will likely need its own electrical meter and circuit-breaker box. If the apartments use natural gas for heat and cooking, then they need gas lines. And, depending on how the HVAC is done in the building, they may each need individual furnaces and air conditioners. If you take the same amount of space on a floor of an apartment building, and instead of offering 800 square-foot one-bedroom, one-bath apartments, you offer twice the number of 400 square-foot, one bedroom, one-bath tiny apartments, you’re going to need two times the infrastructure (which does take up some amount of space in the building). ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2022, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/46 "2022-03-28T22:19:53Z")
My take on **Stranger’s** comment was this: If you cut a pizza into four slices or 12, you don’t lose any pizza (a functionally zero [kerf](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kerf)). If you cut a piece of lumber with a standard table saw blade, you lose 1/8" per cut you make (to sawdust). That can add up – particularly over lots of cuts over lots of board feet of lumber or high-priced exotic lumber. 2x4 interior stud walls that are sheathed with on both sides with 1/2" drywall are at least 4-1/2" thick. The more of those interior walls that you put in to divide apartments into smaller square footage units, the more living space you lose on the floor and/or in the building. In commercial real estate, square footage (and, therefore, the rent you pay) is often calculated to the middle of any shared walls, so you pay for halfway into the stud wall (ie, you’re paying for space that you really can’t use). It’s not so simple in **[apartment square footage](https://www.hotspotrentals.com/the-truth-about-apartment-square-footage/)**. But in aggregate, you do wind up with fewer total ‘real’ square feet of living space the more times you divide it up (the “interstitial space”). If residential doesn’t work like commercial, then developers/landlords would have to be sure they’d get an acceptable price (rent/sale) relative to the gross area of the building. This probably depends more on what the market will bear than on ‘accurate’ descriptions of the **[square footage](https://www.xmeasures.com/helpDesk/readMe/bomaMultiResOverview.php)** of a unit. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/47 "2022-03-29T00:19:48Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > It’s not allowed. Oh, it might _theoretically_ be legal if you read the zoning code in isolation, but good luck going into a city and telling them you want to build a lot of small apartments. Everyone will find some objection to _that_ . Ain’t that the truth. I live in a town that land area-wise is less than 5 square miles smaller than Boston, and has fewer than 10,000 residents. The smallest build-able lot that can be approved is 2 acres, and you can only build 1 home on a lot that “small.” If someone suggested building a bunch of 300 square foot apartments, people on the town council would have an attack of the vapors. ---
**Author:** ![MagicEyes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@MagicEyes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MagicEyes)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/48 "2022-03-29T03:52:54Z")
I live in a university town, and it’s more common to rent a room in a house or larger apartment. Studio apartments are rare, and there aren’t many one bedroom apartments that are affordable. Too many people have horror stories about bad housemates. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/49 "2022-03-29T04:15:24Z")
> My point was that, as soon as people had the means to get out of cities, they jumped at it. Which is why there are no cities anymore? My experience may or may not be typical, but I live in exactly the kind of neighborhood you’re talking about, that was farmland until they ran streetcar tracks here from downtown and then got built up real quick (around the turn of the last century). But there are hardly any detached single-family buildings here, it’s almost all multi-unit buildings. My building was erected in 1908 as an eight-unit apartment building, and has since been renovated to four units. I think real suburbanization only came with the rise of the private automobile. With streetcar-based development, most people aren’t going to want to live anywhere that’s more than a short walk from the station, so you’ve still got a fairly small area to fit a lot of potential buyers into. But if everyone has their own car, there’s no impediment to sprawl. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/50 "2022-03-29T04:19:52Z")
I was apartment hunting recently and was actually interested in considering a studio because rent prices are out of control here, and I figured I didn’t need that much space if I could get a significant savings. Turned out the savings, though, compared to a normal 1 bedroom apartment were almost nothing. Now I know some studios are expensive because they’re in high demand areas, but I found apartment complexes that had a mix of studio, 1 bedroom, and 2 bedroom apartments. The prices usually broke down like this: Studio, 300-400 SqFt, $1050 per month 1 Bedroom, 700-1000 SqFt, $1150 per month 2 Bedroom, 900-1200 SqFt, $1250 per month Not all of them were in that price range, but the 8-12% difference between a studio and 1 bedroom was pretty consistent. With the choice of getting double or triple the space with a 1 bedroom for only 10% more cost, I don’t know why anyone would rent a studio in a place like that. It also seems wrong to me that the price difference should be that small and it doesn’t really make sense to me. ---
**Author:** ![LivingGhost371](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b9e5f3/32.png) [@LivingGhost371](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LivingGhost371)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/51 "2022-03-29T14:10:51Z")
Seems to me that while serving as an investment, condos combine some of the worst elements of apartments- a tiny living space that probably only has windows on one or two sides, having to put up with sharing a common wall and not having a private yard, with the elements of having to come up with a down payment and having to deal with selling if you want to move of buying a detached house. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/52 "2022-03-29T14:27:34Z")
This came out this morning. While it’s not _exactly_ on-topic, it really isn’t off-topic either. I’ll quote a few of the more germane bits: > **[There's never been such a severe shortage of homes in the U.S. Here's why](https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089174630/housing-shortage-new-home-construction-supply-chain)** > > Home prices rose nearly 20% last year, in large part because the U.S. is several million homes short of demand. Builders say the pandemic is partly to blame, but the problem goes deeper than that. > [@](#): > > There’s another very big roadblock to home construction. > > “Land,” says Claus. “I was just trying to buy a piece of land to build five homes on it. Unfortunately, that land went to somebody else that may put one or two on it.” > > Claus says he wants to build more attached townhouses, or smaller homes on less land. That’s what many first-time homebuyers can afford to buy. But in many places, zoning rules won’t let you buy land and divide it up — you can only build one house with a big yard. > > Overly restrictive zoning is a big problem nationally, says Robert Dietz, the chief economist with the National Association of Home Builders. “In certain neighborhoods you simply cannot build townhouses.” > > “You have to build single family units on lots that are bigger than the market wants,” Dietz says. “This is not a free market choice. It’s a government-imposed rule.” > > He says that in many parts of the country, the classic NIMBY (not in my back yard) opposition stops higher-density units from being built. Existing homeowners who don’t want more traffic and more homes in their neighborhood keep what he says are outdated, exclusionary zoning rules in place. [Mods: if this ran afoul of Fair Use, please feel free to modify] ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/53 "2022-03-29T14:38:01Z")
Not necessarily. I suppose it depends on your local housing stock, but most of my neighbors live in condos, and in this neighborhood they’re almost all one unit per floor, so no shared walls and windows all around. You do have to deal with the people on the ceiling. Not everyone cares about having a yard at all, much less a private one. (I now wish we had a bigger yard for the kid, but we have a nice spacious private deck and pre-kid I rarely set foot on the lawn). In many cases condo ownership can be less hassle and responsibility; a larger building may have a dedicated handyman to deal with home repairs. And if some major disaster happens (roof caves in, basement floods), the financial blow is spread out over several families. On the other hand, you give up control over a lot of basic decisions; if the other owners vote to “save money” by slashing the association dues until there’s no reserve available to deal with those roof/basement situations, or to raise dues in order to maintain an elaborate topiary sculpture of Donald Trump in the front yard, you’re stuck dealing with the consequences of their poor decisions. Having said all that, I think for most people it comes down to a price decision. Given the choice, we would have preferred a single family home, but that simply wasn’t affordable in the neighborhoods we were interested in. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/54 "2022-03-29T14:41:10Z")
It should be noted that we have a housing crisis in the UK even with the greater proportion of smaller apartments. So I don’t think it’s really an issue of apartment size. Most US cities have a lot of space (compared to similar populated cities in Europe). The housing crisis is likely due to similar factors as in the UK, like zoning restrictions and inadequate planning permissions granted, plus pandering to the NIMBY crowd. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/55 "2022-03-29T15:11:28Z")
Even outside of incorporated cities, where zoning isn’t as much of a factor, I don’t see that many apartment complexes - what I see are single family subdivisions that don’t have sidewalks, storm sewers or other amenities that many of us take for granted. Since younger generations don’t seem as attached to the house/yard/picket fence ideal, I’ll be interested in seeing whether the tiny house fad actually turns into a trend, or stays on the fringes. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/56 "2022-03-29T15:13:46Z")
“Condo” is a form of ownership and while I’m sure most condos are apartments , there are also townhouse condos and even detached condos that look no different from non-condo townhouses and detached single family houses. But even in just talking about apartment-style condos, it’s not at all uncommon for there to be only two units per building (similar to a two-family house) which doesn’t have shared walls and has windows on all sides . And as far as “tiny” goes , that depends on what you are used to - you might think a 1400 sq foot 3 bedroom apartment-style condo is “tiny” but I don’t , since my 3 bedroom single family detached house is under 1200 square feet. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/57 "2022-03-29T15:28:54Z")
Townhouses in small walking towns, especially in walking distance of a train stations are getting really popular in Central Jersey at least. Housing of any sort is very expensive here and young professionals are fine with not having a yard, or a really tiny one. Starter homes have been rare to find in the last 3 years and townhouses are an excellent alternative. We also had a lot of people come down out of NYC and North Jersey urban areas to this area. They’re over-paying for anything basically turn key. Houses of all sizes and townhouses. ---
**Author:** ![LivingGhost371](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b9e5f3/32.png) [@LivingGhost371](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LivingGhost371)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/58 "2022-03-29T16:11:41Z")
Yeah, I think the whole “zoning doesn’t allow them” is a red herring. If people actually wanted to live in apartments you’d see more of them where they _are_ allowed, you’d see a lot more pressure to change the zoning, etc. Right now on Reddit there’s this thinking that the whole suburbia thing is a conspiracy by the government and big oil, rather than there being something inherently desirable about having your own detached house and your own yard that’s not right next to a 10 story apartment tower, noisy bar that’s open until 2 AM, or toxic waste landfill and that given the choice everyone would live in a tiny apartment. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/59 "2022-03-29T17:16:16Z")
> [@LivingGhost371](#): > > Yeah, I think the whole “zoning doesn’t allow them” is a red herring. If people actually wanted to live in apartments you’d see more of them where they _are_ allowed, you’d see a lot more pressure to change the zoning, etc. I’m not so sure that’s accurate. My state’s governor recently withdrew a proposal that would have allowed multiple dwellings within a certain distance of railroad stations and required localities to permit accessory dwelling units ( apartments in basements, garages, attics or cottages on the same property as a single family house ). She withdrew it because of opposition from county and local lawmakers and state legislators - who of course represent the people who already live in those areas, not those who would be willing to live there if apartments were available. That group can’t pressure politicians who don’t currently represent them - I mean they can try, but it won’t work. For the most part, the people who already live there don’t want the zoning changed - even though I’ve seen more than one person (both in interviews and in real life) say in one breath that they are opposed to _any_ multiple dwellings \* and in the next breath complain that their children have to move away/ are still living with their parents into their thirties because the adult children can’t afford to live on their own where they grew up. As if the lack of apartments is completely unrelated to the zoning. \* Not just huge apartment complexes - they are opposed even to a single basement/attic/garage apartment being added to single-family houses. Which might not even really increase the potential number of occupants on the property - there’s really no difference in occupancy between building an apartment in the basement and renting it to two people and having grandma and grandpa move into the house without building the studio. In fact, I’m sure there are plenty of people who would like to build that separate apartment and move the grandparents or their daughter and her kids out of the existing house and into the apartment. But I’m also sure a lot of them would be opposed if it meant their neighbors could do the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807/60 "2022-03-29T17:31:09Z")
I tend to believe that – depending strongly on how you define your terms, and how you limit the discussion to either particular geographic areas or ‘municipalities’ that meet certain narrow criteria – zoning policy _does_ influence supply, and – therefore – price. But it’s a very complicated beast to pin down in the aggregate. For those interested, here is a [**70 page PDF**](https://www.huduser.gov/periodicals/cityscpe/vol8num1/ch3.pdf) titled “The Effects of Land Use Regulation on the Price of Housing: What Do We Know?” Their TL;DR is simple: > As we have documented, despite many careful and thorough empirical analyses, drawing firm general conclusions about the linkage between local regulations and housing prices is not possible. > Perhaps the most important reason why empirical research is not definitive is the difficulty of measuring the regulatory environment facing households and builders in a satisfactory manner. > Accordingly, we believe that the most promising strategy for improving our understanding of the economic effects of zoning and land use restrictions would be to devote resources to measuring regulatory conditions systematically in a large cross-section of cities and metropolitan areas. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-really-small-apartments-more-common-in-the-us/961807.md?page=4)