[urthor]

$450 to $550 seems like the price for detached homes.

For a 2BR apartment at 850 sqft, that's $425,000. In the Bay Area I presume,

Anecdotally, from memory, the price of high quality apartment, globally, varies around the $125,000 to $200,000 USD mark. Depending as you say, on materials. The interesting fact I was told is this price scales linearly with high rise, for quite a long time.

85 stories can and will average out to the magic $200,000.

Even presumably adding a Bay Area markup, a $300,000 cost of construction is eminently affordable.

For 2BR apartments for childless couples, $300,000 is a excellent.

To me, the obstacle is purely zoning and supply side constraints for large high rises. Singapore style high rises given proper zoning would provide umpteenth $250,000 two bedroom apartments, on Singapore sized parcels of land.

Providing sufficient land, construction of high rise units would grossly improve the housing affordability situation.

It's purely a zoning/public services provisioning issue.

[lunaru]

To clarify, this math doesn't work because the price I mentioned is just labor and materials. Land is not included nor are soft costs like architects.

That 2BR apartment for $300,000 can't happen because the land and soft costs, as well as considerations like developer margin are additive to that.

[urthor]

True. Ultimately we can't know until we quantify the costs for high-rise apartments.

All I'll say is that, yes labor's an input. You have to quantify that cost per square foot.

But, given the number of property developments that have been attempted in the Bay Area and blocked, my (guess) is the economics stack up. Otherwise, developers wouldn't have attempted it.