Eric Terran, a 39-year-old architect, is doing something that almost no one in the City of Alexandria is doing anymore: building a detached, single-family residence. Last year he purchased a lot zoned for single-family residential for $230,000, and now he’s erecting a 3,300-square-foot house on it, reports Michael Neibauer with the Washington Business Journal.
Construction of detached, single-family dwellings has almost come to an end in Alexandria, where the inventory of lots is fast disappearing. As Neibauer notes:
Alexandria ended fiscal 2016 with 9,131 single-family detached homes, the exact number it counted at the close of fiscal 2015. In fact, only 12 new homes — not including tear-downs, which do not add to the city’s inventory — have been built since 2010. Save for infill and tear downs, Alexandria is largely built out.
I have no doubt that Neibauer has done his reporting and knows what he’s talking about, but his numbers don’t quite jive with Alexandria’s building permit data, seen above, which I took from the Homefacts.com website. According to that data set, permits issued for single-family housing since 2010 numbered in the hundreds. Admittedly, the overwhelming majority of permits was for 5+ unit, multi-family dwellings, which is broadly consistent with what Neibauer is saying.
Rather than get hung up on explaining the statistical discrepancy, however, I want to focus on the larger truth, which is the transformation of development patterns in Alexandria. The overwhelming preponderance of new housing construction in the city consists of multi-family housing — apartments and condominiums. Indeed, 2013 and 2014 showed new housing construction running at a torrid pace — faster than at any time since 2001.
I’m not intimately familiar with Alexandria, but I did visit downtown several months ago and observed a lot of recent mixed-use development. My superficial impression is that Alexandria is allowing developers to build a lot of the right stuff. The new development is preserving the walkability that made Old Town Alexandria and environs such a special place.
In 2010, the city achieved an all-time population high of 140,000, and has added population since then. As the city continues to grow, new houses like Eric Terran’s will become an endangered species. Newcomers will be living in apartments and condos.
Update: Michael Neibauer contacted me to explain the discrepancy I alluded to. Eric Terran is building a detached single-family dwelling. Although there are many “single-family dwellings” being built in Alexandria, they are row houses — not detached single-family dwellings.
