Tucked into today’s busy agenda for the Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability (PLUS) is a presentation from local real estate expert Mike Scott of Dupre and Scott Apartment Advisors. Scott has for years provided data for developers and others trying to figure out trends in multifamily housing in the city. His charts and data are an important window into how the real estate market works. It will be very interesting to see what Scott has to say about how the many decisions Council will making that might impact innovative trends in the housing market.

Here for example is a chart showing apartment size in the city over the last 100 years or so. Scott also mentions this trend in the video I’ve included as well.

Scott points out that apartment sizes have been getting smaller over the last decade especially. Part of this, he suggests, is a trend of going to models from the past to solve problems in todays housing market. Smaller apartments functioned quite well for many people in the 1950s and with demand pressures on the region’s housing supply, smaller units mean an increase in the number of units possible.

Parking is another trend shifting away from more to less.

Part of this is policy decisions by leaders at all levels of government in the region to pull back on parking requirements. Parking is really expensive and adds costs to apartment rents. By not requiring so much of it developers can better respond to the market. As transit has improved in the region, parking is getting less important to people who can find other ways to get around. And it’s a big reason why we need to pass Prop 1 later this month.

But these two things, unit size and less required parking, are often the trends opponents of growth point out as a sign that things are getting worse for people moving to the region not getting better. The truth is that smaller units and fewer parking spots per unit is reflects in large part what people are asking for and what government is allowing by requiring less. This is how sometimes the right intervention by government is to to less intervening and let developers respond to what people are asking for: smaller, less expensive apartments without the added costs of parking.