I was talking with my mom about this the other day, following the exact same chain of reasoning, and came up with this:
This housing boom has left a huge number of McMansion developments that will soon be unsellable at any price, because there are no buyers in their demographic. The baby-boomers who built them will soon be empty-nesting and moving to Florida condos. The Millenials that are entering the workforce now seem to prefer city-living and have no desire to live in a 5000 square foot monstrosity in the suburbs. The Gen-Xers who are having kids now just don't have the numbers to fill them.
Meanwhile, firm size is decreasing, more people are working from home, and the economy is shifting from machine-intensive manufacturing to knowledge-intensive professional services. If YCombinator is right, the next decade will see an increasing number of small startups, independent consultants, and homesourcers. Many of these people are interested in coworking, because it's a lot less lonely than spending all day at home.
So, my proposal is to buy up whole developments worth of McMansions, convince the local government to convert the zoning to mixed-use (perhaps they could create a new "professional" zoning category, for businesses that don't generate much physical commercial traffic), and then rent them out en-masse to small firms. Many of the McMansions being built today have 5 (!!) bathrooms, one per bedroom, so it wouldn't be too complicated to split them up into apartments with a shared kitchen & common area. People could roll out of bed and run next door to work. We could partner with ZipCar so that transportation would be available if yoou wanted to go to the supermarket or out for a weekend. There'd be community events so you could bond with everyone in the development and not just your coworkers.
This'd solve a number of problems at once. It eats up the unused housing stock in the suburbs. It provides an alternative for young urban professionals who don't want to live in urban areas. It builds on the coworking trend, providing cozy office space to single professionals or small firms. With gas prices rising, it'd cut commuting costs to nearly zero. It lowers the trouble of finding a place to live and an office to work for all your employees, many of whom are increasingly mobile these days. And it offers a sense of community to people who are often either increasingly isolated (if they live/work alone) or increasingly alienated (if they live/work in the city) these days.
Would folks go for an arrangement like this? Personally, I hate the city and can't stand living without some greenery in my life - but I also hate having an hour commute and no young people in my area. I'd love an arrangement where I could walk to work and knew my neighbors. Other opinions?
From the article:
"Hypothesis: every boom, ever, leaves behind an infrastructure for steady, above-average growth in some other industry"
Have you considered the tulip boom that happened in the Netherlands in the 1600s? I'd be curios to find out what industry that helped after it collapsed?
In any case, I doubt that this thesis holds for housing.
My guess is that it helped financial derivatives take off. I've read about people trading puts and calls on tulips -- and then when that got boring, trading the same instruments on commodities and stocks at more legitimate exchanges.
This housing boom has left a huge number of McMansion developments that will soon be unsellable at any price, because there are no buyers in their demographic. The baby-boomers who built them will soon be empty-nesting and moving to Florida condos. The Millenials that are entering the workforce now seem to prefer city-living and have no desire to live in a 5000 square foot monstrosity in the suburbs. The Gen-Xers who are having kids now just don't have the numbers to fill them.
Meanwhile, firm size is decreasing, more people are working from home, and the economy is shifting from machine-intensive manufacturing to knowledge-intensive professional services. If YCombinator is right, the next decade will see an increasing number of small startups, independent consultants, and homesourcers. Many of these people are interested in coworking, because it's a lot less lonely than spending all day at home.
So, my proposal is to buy up whole developments worth of McMansions, convince the local government to convert the zoning to mixed-use (perhaps they could create a new "professional" zoning category, for businesses that don't generate much physical commercial traffic), and then rent them out en-masse to small firms. Many of the McMansions being built today have 5 (!!) bathrooms, one per bedroom, so it wouldn't be too complicated to split them up into apartments with a shared kitchen & common area. People could roll out of bed and run next door to work. We could partner with ZipCar so that transportation would be available if yoou wanted to go to the supermarket or out for a weekend. There'd be community events so you could bond with everyone in the development and not just your coworkers.
This'd solve a number of problems at once. It eats up the unused housing stock in the suburbs. It provides an alternative for young urban professionals who don't want to live in urban areas. It builds on the coworking trend, providing cozy office space to single professionals or small firms. With gas prices rising, it'd cut commuting costs to nearly zero. It lowers the trouble of finding a place to live and an office to work for all your employees, many of whom are increasingly mobile these days. And it offers a sense of community to people who are often either increasingly isolated (if they live/work alone) or increasingly alienated (if they live/work in the city) these days.
Would folks go for an arrangement like this? Personally, I hate the city and can't stand living without some greenery in my life - but I also hate having an hour commute and no young people in my area. I'd love an arrangement where I could walk to work and knew my neighbors. Other opinions?