Allowing a SFH to be knocked down to build 10 units is a good thing where additional housing is needed and it will reduce the cost of housing.
Corporations are holding these homes because they are such a safe investment because they know there is so much pushback to building new housing. Those corporate owners will sell housing just as quickly if there is downside risk, look at what happened in Austin.
If it's a ten unit building, how can it be anything but corporate ownership? I suppose we could pretend that all ten of the residents could create a co-op and that would be more like a single-family, owner-occupied home. But really, there's got to be a corporation there somewhere.
I lived in a 15-unit one in L.A. that I don't think was corporate-owned. They put it on the market for something like $8 million.
It was in a pretty good neighborhood on the west side, so I though hm, this price seems pretty low when a glorified garage in Culver City was selling for $1.4 million. But when I looked at the financials, it wasn't a good deal.
Even if we don't pretend, and those ten residents pool their money in some way, what sort of legal vehicle would they choose to use to structure the deal? Forming a corporation is gonna be on that list.
No, it is not. First of all, those areas are already residential. Meanwhile, nearby malls sit with boarded-up anchor stores and vast parking lots growing weeds. Those tracts have already suffered the costs of "density:" trees wiped out, the ground paved over with asphalt and unable to absorb water, and "heat islands" exacerbated. Plus they already have ingress & egress routes.
After that there are the disused and blighted former commercial or light-industrial areas. See the above.
After that there are large traffic conduits that are near SFH neighborhoods but underutilized and underdeveloped. Want to get rid of some shitty strip mall and build mixed-use structures instead? Go for it!
And beyond all that: "Downtowns" are rarely "full." Downtown L.A., for example. Density is available for those who want it. There's no excuse for trying to force it on those who specifically chose something different. They didn't demand that apartments be wiped out to create yards and houses; they moved to an area set up that way.
One approach to the "housing crisis" is to tax the shit out of empty rental properties.
Corporations are holding these homes because they are such a safe investment because they know there is so much pushback to building new housing. Those corporate owners will sell housing just as quickly if there is downside risk, look at what happened in Austin.