There is a common myth that "out of state" developers, generally from "Wall Street", are hoovering up Single Family Units (SFU). And in the era of free-money-for-those-with-money [interest rates sub-3%] this phenomenon did occur in some places where various other economic factors were in play. That's not in dispute. But, did it happen in Grand Rapids? And is it happening in Grand Rapids? To the data!
On the fourth Tuesday of this month (2024-04-23) the City Commission will be voting on the suite of zoning reforms which have been in development since the joint meeting of the Planning Commission and the City Commission in July of last year (2023).
The ZORI is the Zillow Observed Rent Index from, you guessed it, Zillow, Zillow provides a variety of data at their Data page. We periodically check in on the ZORI to see what it says about rents in Grand Rapids.
At the Economic Development Team Meeting the topic of permit-ready plans for infill development was discussed/presented. This also included the conversation of potential financial assistance from the city and/or county for small and new developers. The discussion on this topic begins at ~7 (seven) minutes.
On November 1st and 4th of 2023 the Heritage Hill neighborhood association hosted two (2) hour sessions related to the Housing "Crisis" and the current round of proposed Zoning reforms. Roughly the first hour of the session was a presentation, by a Heritage Hill resident, on zoning, Heritage Hills' current density, and the current housing market. The second hour was Q&A and the type of table based work-shopping typical of these events.
UPDATE 2023-09-29: The conversation was interesting. 👉The meeting can be viewed on Youtube.👈. Text corresponding to these proposals are expected to come back to the Planning Commission in November. If the Planning Commissions supports that edition of the change text then the texts will go to the City Commission. The City Commission will hear them ... in December? ... then schedule a public hearing in ~30 days after hearing them.
