[mcculley]

I live in Orlando. I have lived in Florida for all of my life (47 years) and I also wonder how we are going to adapt. I don't see any long term planning.

A few years ago I was looking for a new office building. Considering the parking situations, I asked each developer what they were planning for electric cars, Ubers, and autonomous cars. None of them had a plan. They all said such changes were 20 years or more away. I was surprised at this because I predict it taking much less than 20 years for these changes to have a big impact.

I moved into a newly built high-rise apartment building in downtown Orlando 15 months ago. The building is less than two years old. There are not enough charging outlets in the garage to accommodate all of the electric cars. It will be an expensive refit to upgrade the garage.

I don't know how it works elsewhere, but the entire real estate industry in Florida is not capable of long term thinking.

[cplantijn]

I've worked as an intern at a commercial property company (Colliers International) several years ago. One thing I've learned is that commercial property (be it office or residential) is always being sold. They are essentially large bonds you can touch and live in.Party A develops or buys the building, gains an annuity via rent, attempts to raise rent slowly over a few years (thus increasing the value of the property), and selling it to Party B, which repeats the process. In commercial residential buildings, this process happens faster than in an office building because leases are shorter and residential tenants can accept rent raises every 2-3 years. In this business model, Long Term thinking is not in the best interest of making profit.

[pault]

Every two to three years? The apartments I've lived in raise the rent by $100 every year without fail.

[mr_overalls]

Do you live in a high-priced urban area? I'm curious what this increase is for you as a percentage of total rent.

[pault]

It's about 0.5%.

[wallace_f]

Markets are made by both buyers and sellers. Demand is ostensibly driven by consumers, and value created by meeting consumer demands.

Are consumers demanding the above with their money and not just their mouths? I doubt it.

[mcculley]

That thing that interests me is that it is a clear market failure. 30 year bonds pay a higher interest rate than 5 year bonds. So one would think there is incentive to plan better for a building that lasts for 30 years. But we are changing the climate and other things with effects that will be felt long before 30 years. The U.S. Treasury does not offer bonds beyond 30 years, so presumably the entire system can't plan for a time horizon beyond that.

[Spooky23]

Don’t forget the tax shelter aspect of it. Many real estate transactions are driven by moving tax liabilities around.

[yostrovs]

It's not expensive to install electric chargers in existing building. "Planning" for Uber involves what? Having a drive in in front of the building? How do you plan for non-existent self driving cars? Any practical advice you can share with the architects here?

[sbierwagen]

You can't install more than a handful of chargers without needing to run new circuits back to the main panel. Installing a hundred (not unreasonable for future needs!) would probably double the power consumption of the entire building, and require upgrading the utility connection, maybe even running new lines to the closest substation.

[mcculley]

Not to mention that with such an increase in overall electricity consumption in the garage, one might want to charge the residents for use of it. Doing so might require changes to architecture (e.g., putting electric cars on a different floor or section). There are lots of things to consider and real estate investors/developers are not thinking of any of them.

[mcculley]

It is certainly more expensive to install electric chargers into an existing inert concrete structure than it is to design them in from the beginning. The building I am in is working this out right now, as are many others.

Planning for Uber and autonomous cars includes architecting porticos and pickup/dropoff points in favor of garages. Many buildings are hostile to use of Uber in my daily experience.

[chii]

> Many buildings are hostile to use of Uber in my daily experience.

if there's already a taxi rank, then uber should be using that space to pick-up/drop-off. If there isn't, then the current building is _already_ unfriendly to taxis.

[mcculley]

Yes, they are already unfriendly to taxis. In Orlando and many other places we didn’t use taxis as much as we use Uber now. When we get to fully autonomous vehicles this will be an even greater problem as it will not make sense to park the car. Real estate investors should be planning for that now in the buildings they are designing that will still be standing in 30 years.

[michaelcampbell]

Except taxi ranks are a queue of fungible vehicles; uber/lyft's are "bespoke" so the exact same structure won't work quite as well.

But it wouldn't be hard to make a pickup/dropoff area. I suspect there already is one at most places, it's just a pissy, petty policy that doesn't allow ridesharing (etc) to use it.

[closeparen]

In SF planning meetings, I have seen buildings explicitly discouraged from accommodating pickup/dropoff on the theory that it would make traffic impacts worse (this is backwards) and undermine the “transit oriented” argument (harder to argue).

[mcculley]

It’s more than policy. It is architecture. As I described above, I live in a new building. I step out into traffic to get into an Uber. This was an obvious thing to consider during this building’s design.

[dredmorbius]

There's no reason why rideshare queues and car-rider assignments couldn't be fungible up to the point the passenger steps into the vehicle, special needs excepted.

[manigandham]

Those are called taxis. Even then they only line up at major locations, not residential buildings.

[JustSomeNobody]

> "Planning" for Uber involves what?

In Central Florida, this means having a safe place for people to stand and wait. That area gets frequent and often nasty thunderstorms.

[maxsilver]

> Any practical advice you can share with the architects here?

Could they at least run one regular (120v/15a) circuit + wall outlet to each parking spot? Is that too much to ask?

That's enough electricity to give every EV car an extra 60 miles of EV range overnight. And would be plenty for any other use (ebikes and the like)

[enraged_camel]

>>I don't know how it works elsewhere, but the entire real estate industry in Florida is not capable of long term thinking.

They aren't incentivized to think long-term, because they are making money hand-over-fist. Whatever they build gets sold at very high margins because consumers aren't educated (thanks to things like Florida banning the term "climate change" from school textbooks) and don't have modern expectations.

[Klathmon]

I know this is getting a little off topic, but I'm as surprised as you that electric charging isn't taking on at parking lots and structures much as I expected.

I mean even Disney only has like 2-6 charging spots in each of their parking lots designed to hold over 12,000 cars per lot!

And then you look at other parking structures and see that they have a token charger or 2 and the few I've reached out to never have any plans on increasing the number of them.

[hodgesrm]

Market penetration by electric vehicle just isn't very high. It's in the very low single digits in the US as of 2018 and was far lower before. [1] Most parking structures were built well before it got near 1%. I doubt the availability will change very quickly without legislation to encourage retrofitting.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_t...

[steelframe]

People don't like to spend money until they're in real pain. If you don't go to Disney because you have purchased a car that can't go there unless there are electric charge stations, I don't think that's painful for them yet.

[mcculley]

I think we all agree that some investors won’t spend capital until it is too late. The thing that interests me is that there is apparently no incentive for real estate investors to plan for the long term.

[steelframe]

If I were a real estate investor, I'd be wondering about all sorts of variables. How cheap will car batteries get? How will that impact the range that EVs will have? What charge standard will people prefer? What rapid charging infrastructure will exist?

It could be that nearly every EV will have plenty of range from just charging at home, and for those few who need to charge to make the trip, they will be able to get enough charge with a 5-minute stop at one of the dozens of 350kW chargers nearby.

Given all this uncertainty, why would I, as a real estate investor, pay for the increased utility capacity, the installation of the electrical lines plus permitting, the charging hardware (plus unbounded maintenance), and the hassle of additional policing of which stalls customers are allowed to park in and for what reasons?

[fencepost]

Disney doesn't want you coming in and taking up a premium parking space and expensive charger for a full day while you're at the park. That's a money loser for them.

As a counter on a much smaller scale, if I was setting up or redoing a midrange or better fast food place I'd absolutely be looking into the costs of having public paid charging stations in my lot. Drive in, plug in, come inside (and don't blink at the price of our current run of premium sandwich meals), order, eat, head out 20-30 minutes later having paid a few dollars for a fast charge plus $8-12 for a meal with a great profit margin. Not something you'd do every day, but I see people just sitting in their cars at the Tesla chargers in the parking lot of my local Meijer.

At least right now people with plugin EVs or hybrids are people with disposable income. If I have a business that I'd like those people to come to for 20-60 minutes a few times a week then chargers make a ton of sense.

[mcculley]

I get that some savvy investors may take all of the factors into account and decide to do nothing. That is not what I am seeing. They are not thinking about it at all. The entire real estate industry does not do long term planning, at least where I have lived for 47 years. Just as the article describes, it is a problem for some future entity.

You, as the hypothetical real estate investor, might care that the building you built two years ago is not the ideal place for affluent residents today. But as the entire local market is failing at long term planning, I guess there is no competitive incentive.

[praneshp]

qq: why is an expectation that there must be charging spots for electric cars? Dedicated parking lots for green vehicles, sure I can see some logic behind cities enforcing that. But I don't show up at your parking lot and expect a mini gas pump at my spot.

[Klathmon]

It's not an expectation in any sense of the word, but it is a "nice to have" which makes both the owner of the location and owners of electric cars happier. Dedicated parking spots for "green" vehicles are worthless, and I'd be against any city enforcing that at all. I'm not quite sure if i'm for or against mandated charging spots yet, but regardless...

I'm simply wondering why it's not taking off more. It seems to be a win-win. Places like Disney where many will drive from far away and spend whole days there seem like a perfect fit for a ton of charging spots, especially since EV owners PAY to use the electricity there. EV owners win because they can get there easier and with less range anxiety, and the business owners win because EV owners come to their location more frequently and in many cases are required to spend time there!

A response of "qq" when all I did was say i'm surprised it's not catching on more is weirdly aggressive. I don't think businesses should have to install them, just that i'm surprised that they don't have more of them, especially in new-construction where it seems like a no-brainer to increase the number by 3 times or more just seeing the increasing percentage of plug-in vehicles on the road.

[praneshp]

Ha, I added the qq so you would interpret my comment as the question it was, rather than an attack.

I didn't realize that EV vehicles paid for the charging, I thought it was free. If paid then it's a nice to have that leverages the long time you spend at the park anyway.

[Klathmon]

Oh shit I'm sorry, "qq" has a meaning similar to "cry about it" or "just quit if you don't like it" in some gaming circles, and I completely misinterpreted it!

"quick question" completely changes the tone of that comment!

[ianai]

I’m similarly perplexed at RE. For one, I make a good living and yet I can’t find decent, affordable homes near me. They’re all dated and much too expensive/soft. Dated in that they almost never have AC despite climate change making it necessary in the area - and rampant lead paint/asbestos.

Apartment buildings are similarly dated. Last I looked, in a big city apartment complexes were rare if they had one or two charging spots. They don’t exist in smaller or less affluent towns.

I think RE suffers from a similar situation as infrastructure regarding retrofitting and upkeep in the US. Once it’s built, there’s almost no inherent market mechanism for keeping structures up to date.

[bluntfang]

>they almost never have AC despite climate change making it necessary in the area

I'm really sorry but this isn't how climate change works. Climate change is a slow increase in average temperature over 100+ years that has dramatic impact on lots of things, but probably not the "need" for AC.

[desdiv]

Climate change is both:

1. A slow and steady increase in the average temperature.

2. A rapid increase in the frequency of extreme weather events.

Point 1 doesn't force people to buy ACs, but Point 2 will. For example, you generally don't need AC in San Francisco, but a heat wave in 2017 killed 14 people[0]. As the frequency of heatwaves increases, people will need to equip themselves against the temperature _extremes_, even though the _average_ temperature hasn't changed much.

[0] https://www.kqed.org/science/1932692/climate-change-dishes-u...

>As the world has warmed, that warming has triggered many other changes to the Earth’s climate. Changes in extreme weather and climate events, such as heat waves and droughts, are the primary way that most people experience climate change. Human-induced climate change has already increased the number and strength of some of these extreme events. Over the last 50 years, much of the U.S. has seen increases in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, heavy downpours, and in some regions, severe floods and droughts.

[1] https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-findings/...

>One of the most visible consequences of a warming world is an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. The National Climate Assessment finds that the number of heat waves, heavy downpours, and major hurricanes has increased in the United States, and the strength of these events has increased, too.

[2] https://www.c2es.org/content/extreme-weather-and-climate-cha...

[ianai]

I’ve definitely personally seen the affects of climate change. Many people should be able to same the same who have lived decades in the Southwest US. Fires are more common, they’re more often extremely damaging, record setting summers year after year, and so on.

As a side note, I’m offended by the commenter above you. As if someone else is going to be able to tell me what I’ve witnessed over the course of my life.

[nkurz]

As a side note, I’m offended by the commenter above you.

Rather than being offended, I think it would be more persuasive to others if you were able to quantify what you've witnessed.

You imply that there are buildings that did not need air-conditioning when constructed, but do need it now because of climate change. I don't know what the answers are, but let's consider what statistics would be useful to defend your statement.

First, since you are talking about air-conditioning, we can probably restrict to summer temperatures. It's not clear if we can look only at daytime highs, since higher temperatures at night are also uncomfortable. Since we're talking about a threshold, we can probably restrict to the single hottest month. For Phoenix (and I'd guess the rest of the Southwest?) this looks to be July.

So to tell a compelling story, you'd probably want to show that the average high or average low for July has increased significantly since the time the building was built. How much is significant? I don't know, but if the claim was that it didn't need AC when built (as opposed to saying that it needs it more often now) I'd think we'd want to see a change of about 5F (2C). There might be a good argument for a lower number (perhaps humidity has also increased?), but it likely would be less convincing than a large jump in temperature.

Finally, you'd want to show that the increase in temperature is due to climate change, rather than the effects of urbanization. More blacktop, more buildings, and more air conditioners (!) will increase the number on the thermometer in an urban environment even if the climate hasn't changed. On the bright side, most published temperature records have already been adjusted to remove these Urban Heat Island effects. But do realize that your perception that it is hotter might be affected by the build up of the environment, so the temperature either needs to be measured outside of urban areas, or adjusted for the non-climatic changes.

So instead of taking offense, could you perhaps point to a historical chart of July temperatures for where you live, showing that the temperature (adjusted for urbanization) has increased significantly since the buildings were built?

[sosborn]

Just an anecdote from Hawaii. We used to have steady and regular trade winds that would keep the humidity at bay, thus making AC a "nice to have" rather than a "really want to have." That's changed as the climate change has shifted the trade wind patterns and given us plenty of more days in the year without this natural air conditioning.

I suspect the time will come when trade wind days are the exceptions.

[kaitai]

Depends on your age; heat-related deaths among the elderly and other vulnerable populations are up in several areas. Is RE Reunion? If so, in a place like that if nighttime temps start failing to drop humans start experiencing heat stress.

[ianai]

RE = real estate. Modernizing real estate isn’t common anywhere I’ve lived/visited. Modern RE almost exclusively exists in recent developments.

[alvalentini]

Well, I won't die from a heatwave but without AC the impact on my wellbeing, not to mention productivity, will be considerable.

[dredmorbius]

Location / metro area?

[cobookman]

Most buildings last more than 20 years. I get you can make rennovations...however if you plan for the future during construction those rennovations can be much cheaper.

For example making their be excess circuit breaker capacity during construction doesn't cost much and enables ev charging to be added at a later date for less money than if that spare electrical capacity wasn't installed

[mcculley]

This is not the conclusion reached by the people spending money currently trying to retrofit the garages.