{"id":399,"date":"2011-10-26T09:13:27","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T14:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.jpfco.com\/dir\/?p=399"},"modified":"2013-07-23T12:43:07","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T12:43:07","slug":"to-zone-or-to-not-to-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/to-zone-or-to-not-to-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"To zone or to not to zone&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The use of real estate zoning has been a heated debate from its existence. On one hand, proponents of it say you need it to protect integrity of real estate districts-do you want a nuclear power plant next to an elementary school, a brothel next to a church? On the other hand, opponents say, among other things, let the invisible hand of economics do its job and the highest and best use of the property will be determined-if housing is in shortage, should only single-family dwellings be allowed or should a developer be allowed to build an apartment building to fill the demand? So, does zoning help or hurt real estate values? I&#8217;m under the belief, and maybe I am biased because I live on Nantucket, that if utilized properly, zoning increases property values. There is a fine line how restrictive zoning should be. It should be just restrictive enough to protect the integrity of districts. This protection creates demand and a strong market because owners, buyers and sellers expectations are clear. Would someone want to live in or buy a home where they did not know what could go on around them? For a certain price, yes, but not as high of a price if the people knew a chemical plant couldn&#8217;t be built next to them. Zoning should not be too restrictive. For instance in a commercial district, zoning should not dictate that only an ice cream shop could be in a certain space-that would tremendously distort supply and demand economics. What happens if the existing ice cream shop goes bust and there isn&#8217;t another one to take its space, but there are five jewelers to take the space. That restriction creates a huge inefficiency in the economy. The debate will continue, but I&#8217;ll take Nantucket&#8217;s 300% appreciation over the last 20 years to Houston&#8217;s, which has no zoning, 95% appreciation over the last 20 years any day of the week. I know, not fair of me to compare Houston to Nantucket&#8230;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The use of real estate zoning has been a heated debate from its existence. On one hand, proponents of it say you need it to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-estate-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":859,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpfco.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}