One of the things you’ll often hear people deride at cocktail parties is the trend toward smaller urban dwellings. They get called “shoeboxes” and “cubby holes in the sky.” So let’s unpack that a bit today and try and better understand the economics behind it all.

When a new building is being developed, pretty much everything gets normalized to a per square foot (or square meter) number. 

This is important because saying that building X cost $50 million to build and building Y cost $100 million to build doesn’t tell you much if the buildings are completely different. 

However, saying that building X cost $500 per square foot to build and building Y cost $475 per square foot to build, tells you that building Y, despite being more expensive in absolute terms, was actually cheaper and/or more efficient.

The same is true on the revenue side. And typically, developers are looking (struggling) to meet a certain per square foot number in order to make the project financially feasible. 

For instance, let’s say you’re building a 100,000 sf condo building. Once you subtract the non revenue generating spaces, you might determine that you need 85,000 sf x $600 per square foot in revenue in order to make the project feasible.

But there’s a back and forth game that needs to be played here. You have to ask yourself: for the product that I’m hoping to build, does $600 psf translate into something that people can actually afford?

You might think: everyone keeps telling me at cocktail parties that condos in this city are too small. So I’m going to build a bunch of 1,800 sf, 3 bedroom condos. Based on the above, these homes would be priced at around $1.08 million (1,800 sf x $600 psf). Your on-site signage would read: 

One of the things you’ll often hear people deride at cocktail parties is the trend toward smaller urban dwellings. They get called “shoeboxes” and “cubby holes in the sky.” So let’s unpack that a bit today and try and better understand the economics behind it all.

When a new building is being developed, pretty much everything gets normalized to a per square foot (or square meter) number. 

This is important because saying that building X cost $50 million to build and building Y cost $100 million to build doesn’t tell you much if the buildings are completely different. 

However, saying that building X cost $500 per square foot to build and building Y cost $475 per square foot to build, tells you that building Y, despite being more expensive in absolute terms, was actually cheaper and/or more efficient.

The same is true on the revenue side. And typically, developers are looking (struggling) to meet a certain per square foot number in order to make the project financially feasible. 

For instance, let’s say you’re building a 100,000 sf condo building. Once you subtract the non revenue generating spaces, you might determine that you need 85,000 sf x $600 per square foot in revenue in order to make the project feasible.

But there’s a back and forth game that needs to be played here. You have to ask yourself: for the product that I’m hoping to build, does $600 psf translate into something that people can actually afford?

You might think: everyone keeps telling me at cocktail parties that condos in this city are too small. So I’m going to build a bunch of 1,800 sf, 3 bedroom condos. Based on the above, these homes would be priced at around $1.08 million (1,800 sf x $600 psf). Your on-site signage would read: