Parking lots are becoming less significant in some regions while taking up expensive and limited property while city governments throughout the world aim to reduce the number of cars in city centers. Therefore, they have been selling very quickly, especially in the city,” claims a recent piece in The Investor.
Brandon Roth, senior director of JLL (Jones Lang La Salle) in San Francisco, is cited for his opinion that redeveloping parking spaces into multi-family dwellings are one option for communities to address housing shortages. Roth argues that redevelopment opportunities in urban cores are limited to parking lots in some cases.
In accordance with the numbers, Roth is correct in his assertion that “Sales of parking lots have increased significantly in the United States over the past five years, exceeding 200 transactions in 2016.” That’s more than twice as many as were sold each year from 2006 to 2014 when fewer than 100 surface lots were available. In places like Brooklyn, Boston, and the United Kingdom, once-vacant areas have been transformed into thriving neighborhoods. Cities like London, Madrid, and New York are implementing policies to reduce their reliance on cars, which might pave the way for the repurposing of parking lots.
