Housing Affordability Strategies: Housing Development Feasibility & Costs

Created by SF Planning

In 2020 San Francisco’s Planning Department released this Housing Development Feasibility and Costs whitepaper as part of its Housing Affordability Strategies initiative.

The paper examines the cost of housing development in different San Francisco sub-markets and at different scales of development to determine where and when the development value exceeds the cost of developing plus expected developer return (i.e., when it becomes economically feasible to build). 

It includes a discussion of small-scale infill development in neighborhoods (aka “missing middle”), summarizing key trends and patterns since 2010.