We knew that an increase in construction costs was sending home prices through the roof (so to speak), and developers are definitely building smaller units to keep prices down, according to Alan Lev of the Belgravia Group. Lev tells Yo that the cost of construction has increased by about 10 percent in the last year.
Watch as your one-bedroom condo shrinks and shrinks. Lev says Belgravia, which is marketing 600 N Lake Shore Drive, hasn’t resorted to building smaller units, but many developers have. He notes that it the cost of building a unit can be as much as $400 per square foot, and no one wants to try and sell a 1,000-square-foot one-bedroom condo for $400,000.
So what do developers do? They chop the home down to size and sell it for $300,000. Some of the smaller units have bedrooms puhsed to the back, with no access to direct sunlight, he says. Designing deeper, rectangular units makes the permiter of the building smaller and saves on the cost of glass, he says.