The Planning Board has proposed rules for allowing Senior Housing in the Lyme Common District. Despite the attractiveness of this plan, requiring the project be in the center of Lyme imposes significant costs on such a project.
The analysis below shows that 10 units of 900sf each, when considering the land acquisition, architect, engineering, water, septic, site, financing, and other costs will come in over $400,000 each.
A significant portion of the cost is land acquisition (average of $627,000 for the Lyme Common District) and the limit of 10 homes.
Simply changing those two variables: moving the development into a less expensive part of town (where the acquisition cost might be closer to $100,000) and allowing 20 homes to share the fixed costs drops each home to $307,000.
While these are not inexpensive homes, this simple change takes out almost $100,000 from their price.
Feel free to share this post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or email. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own, and not those of any public body, such as the Lyme Planning Board, Budget Committee, or Trustees of the Trust Funds where I volunteer. I would be interested to hear your thoughts – you can reach me at richb.lyme@gmail.com.
(Can’t read the PDF above? Download it at
https://richb-lyme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Cost-of-a-Senior-Housing-Development.pdf)