4 ms·

> It began by necessity; most places near metropolitan areas have zoning ordinances that mandate large (often very large) houses Really! do you have an example

> It began by necessity; most places near metropolitan areas have zoning ordinances that mandate large (often very large) houses Really! do you have an example I could go look up? I'm curious. You might be a map nerd, but I'm turning into a public policy nerd. :-)

SwellJoe 9y ago
Nearly all of the sub-cities around Austin and Dallas, and Austin and Dallas themselves, for instance, have minimum interior area requirements spanning from 1200 to 2000 square feet. Red Oak, just south of Dallas, is particularly egregious. The smallest house you can build anywhere in the city of Red Oak is 1650 square feet (and there are only a couple of small pockets where even that is OK). The other zoning areas mandate 1800 and 2000 square feet. It's a nice area, with some nice property for sale, but the rules are absurd. Here's the zoning categories in Red Oak (left menu allows choosing the various zoning categories; notice that even agricultural land requires a 2000 sq ft house, and prohibits all "temporary" structures, like mobile and manufactured homes): http://www.redoaktx.org/380/Generally http://www.redoaktx.org/380/Generally There's also a huge amount of (cheap) land in Bastrop and Lago Vista, to the east and west of Austin, respectively. Same basic story; mandates a very large traditional house, no mobile homes, no manufactured homes (ruling out a "tiny house on wheels", which is how some folks get around zoning or at least evade code enforcement for a while). Even worse, natural building techniques are ruled out by the aesthetic requirements; they'll often mandate brick/stone/stucco, etc. front. Houston seems like it should be a breath of fresh air, as the city itself has no zoning laws. But, there are often deed restrictions that convey with the property. And, because the deed restrictions are effectively private zoning laws, enforced by the city, they can be harder to track down if the seller doesn't tell you about them in their ad. In some ways, Houston is nicer; deed restrictions often date back before the McMansion phenomenon, and so they very rarely mandate large houses (though I've seen 800 sq ft minimums, quite a bit, which is still pretty big), but may impose other restrictions that are onerous. On the plus side, the enforcement in Houston is reportedly complaint driven, so I think one could probably get away with building small in Houston, as long as you're up to safety codes and on good terms with your neighbors. But, more research would be needed; I've mostly settled on either being near Dallas or Austin if I end up buying in Texas, as I have more friends in both of those cities than Houston. What's interesting about a lot of places with these rules in Texas is that people seem to buy the land and stick mobile homes on them anyway. I guess they do it without getting a permit (the land I'm looking at is somewhat isolated, so I can see how one might get away with that for a while). Browsing Google maps reveals tons of examples of mobile homes in neighborhoods that clearly aren't zoned for them. The Bastrop example is one that is especially annoying, for me. I'd love to be near Austin, and there's an entire massive subdivision of hundreds of vacant lots called Tahitian Villages. The land is cheap and plentiful but includes onerous building rules. I'm frustrated that developers seem to come into cities, acquire huge swaths of land, get special treatment by the city to impose additional usage rules, and then they end up going bankrupt or abandoning the development (presumably after cheating people who bought property in the neighborhood at retail prices based on promises of a completed development), leaving a bunch of prime land that can't be used in any way except for McMansions. Lago Vista seems to have an almost identical story. It's frustrating that there's so much vacant land, in a region where housing prices have doubled in the past few years.
- pnathan 9y ago
  > Nearly all of the sub-cities around Austin and Dallas, and Austin and Dallas themselves, for instance, have minimum interior area requirements spanning from 1200 to 2000 square feet. Red Oak, just south of Dallas, is particularly egregious. Whoa. That's pretty crazy. Why can't you just build a cottage on your land and live quietly?
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    On further research, it's a new phenomenon in many of these places. Just in the past ~10 years or so. Red Oak (among the most ridiculous examples I've found) changed their zoning in 2009. Which may explain why there are so many mobile homes in these places...maybe they've been there since 2009 (though several look much newer than that). One of the scarier bits, to me, is that people who are already living in a mobile or manufactured home in Red Oak could stay. But, if they ever needed to do major work on their home, they'd have to get a new permit, and there are several seemingly arbitrary conditions under which the city could force them to remove their home from their property. Worse, if they wanted to replace their mobile or manufactured home with a newer/bigger/whatever one, they would by denied a permit. This kind of clause is pretty common across the country (though most of the actual examples I've found were in the south, including Texas); there have been lawsuits alleging discrimination (unsurprisingly, the rules are seemingly occasionally used against black and brown families to force them out), but I don't think anything good has really come of those suits. The laws are still on the books, so I guess they're still pretty confident they'll win lawsuits. I've never really been all that interested in zoning and the like; it's just such a dry topic. And, while I've owned a house in the past, I just bought it the traditional way...got a realtor, looked at a bunch of houses, and bought the wrong one for too much money. Now that I'm really digging in and wanting to have more direct involvement in my home, I'm just amazed at how crassly classist (and only slightly more subtly racist) housing is in most major municipalities. On a more positive note, Austin has added "granny cottage" rules to some areas of the city, so a secondary tiny home can be added to properties that are large enough and in some parts of the city. And, there are several efforts to enable natural building. Unfortunately, there's so little land available in Austin, and so much demand for housing, that it's not reasonable for me to buy there ($120k is about the cheapest suitable lot I've come across). And, even more positive, I've been studying the Dallas zoning and code tonight, and I can't find anything prohibiting small houses or even manufactured houses. So...I think Dallas might actually be kinda OK. Their building code appears to be the ICC code with minor amendments, which recently has evolved to make tiny houses plausible (there used to be some minimum room size requirements that made houses smaller than ~240 sq ft impossible). I plan to drive over and talk to the city and look at some properties next week, so I'll hopefully have more firm answers on the question of whether I can buy property there and be able to build a house without needing to fight the city for years. I may be a little ranty since it's been a bit frustrating (though the maps are still fun to play with, even when I'm pissed off at certainly classist and probably racist Texas cities).

SwellJoe 9y ago

Nearly all of the sub-cities around Austin and Dallas, and Austin and Dallas themselves, for instance, have minimum interior area requirements spanning from 1200 to 2000 square feet. Red Oak, just south of Dallas, is particularly egregious. The smallest house you can build anywhere in the city of Red Oak is 1650 square feet (and there are only a couple of small pockets where even that is OK). The other zoning areas mandate 1800 and 2000 square feet. It's a nice area, with some nice property for sale, but the rules are absurd. Here's the zoning categories in Red Oak (left menu allows choosing the various zoning categories; notice that even agricultural land requires a 2000 sq ft house, and prohibits all "temporary" structures, like mobile and manufactured homes): http://www.redoaktx.org/380/Generally http://www.redoaktx.org/380/Generally There's also a huge amount of (cheap) land in Bastrop and Lago Vista, to the east and west of Austin, respectively. Same basic story; mandates a very large traditional house, no mobile homes, no manufactured homes (ruling out a "tiny house on wheels", which is how some folks get around zoning or at least evade code enforcement for a while). Even worse, natural building techniques are ruled out by the aesthetic requirements; they'll often mandate brick/stone/stucco, etc. front. Houston seems like it should be a breath of fresh air, as the city itself has no zoning laws. But, there are often deed restrictions that convey with the property. And, because the deed restrictions are effectively private zoning laws, enforced by the city, they can be harder to track down if the seller doesn't tell you about them in their ad. In some ways, Houston is nicer; deed restrictions often date back before the McMansion phenomenon, and so they very rarely mandate large houses (though I've seen 800 sq ft minimums, quite a bit, which is still pretty big), but may impose other restrictions that are onerous. On the plus side, the enforcement in Houston is reportedly complaint driven, so I think one could probably get away with building small in Houston, as long as you're up to safety codes and on good terms with your neighbors. But, more research would be needed; I've mostly settled on either being near Dallas or Austin if I end up buying in Texas, as I have more friends in both of those cities than Houston. What's interesting about a lot of places with these rules in Texas is that people seem to buy the land and stick mobile homes on them anyway. I guess they do it without getting a permit (the land I'm looking at is somewhat isolated, so I can see how one might get away with that for a while). Browsing Google maps reveals tons of examples of mobile homes in neighborhoods that clearly aren't zoned for them. The Bastrop example is one that is especially annoying, for me. I'd love to be near Austin, and there's an entire massive subdivision of hundreds of vacant lots called Tahitian Villages. The land is cheap and plentiful but includes onerous building rules. I'm frustrated that developers seem to come into cities, acquire huge swaths of land, get special treatment by the city to impose additional usage rules, and then they end up going bankrupt or abandoning the development (presumably after cheating people who bought property in the neighborhood at retail prices based on promises of a completed development), leaving a bunch of prime land that can't be used in any way except for McMansions. Lago Vista seems to have an almost identical story. It's frustrating that there's so much vacant land, in a region where housing prices have doubled in the past few years.

pnathan 9y ago
> Nearly all of the sub-cities around Austin and Dallas, and Austin and Dallas themselves, for instance, have minimum interior area requirements spanning from 1200 to 2000 square feet. Red Oak, just south of Dallas, is particularly egregious. Whoa. That's pretty crazy. Why can't you just build a cottage on your land and live quietly?
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  On further research, it's a new phenomenon in many of these places. Just in the past ~10 years or so. Red Oak (among the most ridiculous examples I've found) changed their zoning in 2009. Which may explain why there are so many mobile homes in these places...maybe they've been there since 2009 (though several look much newer than that). One of the scarier bits, to me, is that people who are already living in a mobile or manufactured home in Red Oak could stay. But, if they ever needed to do major work on their home, they'd have to get a new permit, and there are several seemingly arbitrary conditions under which the city could force them to remove their home from their property. Worse, if they wanted to replace their mobile or manufactured home with a newer/bigger/whatever one, they would by denied a permit. This kind of clause is pretty common across the country (though most of the actual examples I've found were in the south, including Texas); there have been lawsuits alleging discrimination (unsurprisingly, the rules are seemingly occasionally used against black and brown families to force them out), but I don't think anything good has really come of those suits. The laws are still on the books, so I guess they're still pretty confident they'll win lawsuits. I've never really been all that interested in zoning and the like; it's just such a dry topic. And, while I've owned a house in the past, I just bought it the traditional way...got a realtor, looked at a bunch of houses, and bought the wrong one for too much money. Now that I'm really digging in and wanting to have more direct involvement in my home, I'm just amazed at how crassly classist (and only slightly more subtly racist) housing is in most major municipalities. On a more positive note, Austin has added "granny cottage" rules to some areas of the city, so a secondary tiny home can be added to properties that are large enough and in some parts of the city. And, there are several efforts to enable natural building. Unfortunately, there's so little land available in Austin, and so much demand for housing, that it's not reasonable for me to buy there ($120k is about the cheapest suitable lot I've come across). And, even more positive, I've been studying the Dallas zoning and code tonight, and I can't find anything prohibiting small houses or even manufactured houses. So...I think Dallas might actually be kinda OK. Their building code appears to be the ICC code with minor amendments, which recently has evolved to make tiny houses plausible (there used to be some minimum room size requirements that made houses smaller than ~240 sq ft impossible). I plan to drive over and talk to the city and look at some properties next week, so I'll hopefully have more firm answers on the question of whether I can buy property there and be able to build a house without needing to fight the city for years. I may be a little ranty since it's been a bit frustrating (though the maps are still fun to play with, even when I'm pissed off at certainly classist and probably racist Texas cities).