Infill is an Opportunity Building for Generations X, Y, and Boomers

Build your house and start this year.

Reducing cost of construction of homes begins with eliminating and to begin eliminating, everything is up for review. Everything adds cost. Where to begin this process of elimination? Roof? Walls? Windows? Basement? No. Begin where construction begins--from the restrictive covenants.

No part of the home construction process is more appropriately named than Restrictive Covenants. The compact created by parties to ensure the minimal size, style, colors, appearance of homes in a neighborhood might be more effective in restricting access to new construction and in driving up costs than whatever is their stated intention. Restrictive covenants restrict creativity, diversity, and free trade. But much of that's another topic. This is about building in the new economy and to get building moving we could be looking at infill lots.

Infill is a simple concept--consider a block in a neighborhood where you've often walked past a wide open space between two homes which have stood for decades. That space may be a buildable lot. If a house were built on the lot we would be "filling in" the space...infill. Other streets may contain a house in total disrepair. For whatever reason the property is an eyesore and if not abandoned, the value may be next to zero for habitation, but the lot is fully improved with driveway, utilities, and except for the run down building, the lot would be an ideal location for a home. The tear down operation quick, and less costly than you might imagine.

Restrictive covenants typically lose their teeth over years by neglect or intent. Some older neighborhoods never had minimum size restrictions. Own where you can build smaller, not be restricted by style, and use materials where you are free to obtain competitive bids, you have freedom to trade in an open market. Competition favors the consumer and that's good. When we require the property owner to build more space than he/she needs we are forcing waste waste and expense.
Next is an idea where I may be more wrong than right.  If you can avoid getting caught in the"consider resale" idea, you have more opportunity to keep cost down. In 20 plus years I have yet to find a person who successfully built a house just right for the person he has not yet met and who may not be in the market when he goes to sell that house which he built "for himself". Is it possible that we build rooms we rarely use and pay for them everyday? Yes. Then why build them?

I found a dozen or more good infill lot opportunities around Dane County. Middleton builder, Design Shelters is perfectly set up to explore this idea. To prove its worth I'm building a house in the Town of Verona on an infill lot. Follow along. I'll let you know what I learn.