马萨诸塞州萨福克唐斯的 10,000 套住房开发项目无限期搁置
【中美创新时报2024 年 7 月7 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）位于波士顿-里维尔边境的前赛马场拥有 10,000 个单元住房项目无限期搁置，施工暂停证明了高利率和材料成本阻碍了开发商建设急需的项目。《波士顿环球报》记者安德鲁·布林克（Andrew Brinker ）对此作了下述报道。
如果用一张图片来概括大波士顿目前的住房建设状况，那可能就是萨福克唐斯 (Suffolk Downs) 的广阔空地。
这座位于波士顿-里维尔边境的前赛马场拥有 10,000 个单元，建成后将成为该地区历史上最大的单一住房开发项目。第一栋建筑将于今年夏天开放，这是一栋八层楼、475 个单元的蓝红相间的公寓楼，外观现代，靠近 Beachmont 蓝线站。
但这里没有更多的住房在建。没有锤子叮当作响的声音，也没有水泥车隆隆作响的声音，只有一片空地，一堆堆泥土、材料和设备闲置着。
在 Suffolk Downs 获得市政府批准三年后，原本应该有更多的事情要做，到现在为止，这片 161 英亩的土地上最终将有近四十栋其他建筑拔地而起。但该地点的住房建设被搁置，直到开发商 HYM Investment Group 能够达成一项复杂的融资协议，而该协议因失衡的经济而失衡。
过去两年来，这种停滞是困扰大波士顿地区住房开发商的现实。我们这个住房匮乏的地区的需求量非常大。而像 HYM 的汤姆·奥布莱恩（Tom O’Brien ）这样的开发商已经获得了他们所需的所有来之不易的许可证。但是，尽管最近人们对分区和其他地方批准的争斗给予了高度关注，但获得建筑许可甚至还不是目前最困难的部分。在高利率和材料成本的情况下，筹集足够的资金才是真正的问题。
“住房融资的整个动态已经发生了变化，”奥布莱恩（O’Brien）说。“让这些项目顺利进行变得更加困难。”
事实上，公寓楼的每个主要组成部分——从木材到钢材再到电气元件——的成本都比新冠疫情之前高。自 2020 年初以来，整体材料成本上涨了 43%。建筑贷款的利率上涨了两倍多。通常为住房开发提供资金的投资者也要求更高的回报。五年前，在马萨诸塞州为新住房融资是一项复杂的任务；现在似乎是不可能的。
大波士顿地区数十个社区中，没有未在建的获准单元的确切统计数据。但郊区城镇的官员谈到，由于开发商无法完成融资，建筑许可证被搁置。例如，在波士顿，该市规划和开发机构的研究人员去年估计，有近 23,000 套住房滞留在管道中。（相比之下，根据市长住房办公室 2022 年的报告，从 2017 年到 2021 年，波士顿建造了略多于 20,000 套住房。）
积压量的一个替代指标是根据该州 40B 法案开发的住房，该法案允许开发商绕过经济适用房数量不足的城镇的当地分区。准政府机构 MassHousing 的官员表示，他们知道目前有大约 20,000 套住房处于暂停状态。这些混合收入项目通常依靠市场价公寓的收入来资助经济适用房，因此它们特别容易受到经济变化的影响。
整个地区的情况都差不多。今年前五个月，大波士顿地区发放的建筑许可证不到 5,000 套。这比 2023 年同期略有下降，而 2023 年本身就是十多年来新房生产速度最慢的一年。
在大波士顿这样的地区，住房和公寓已经极度短缺，这将在未来几年产生影响，供应将继续远远落后于需求。
波士顿大学经济学家亚当·古伦 (Adam Guren) 表示：“我们需要新建筑的压力来降低租金。因此，如果建筑业出现低迷，我会感到担忧。这很简单：如果几年后建筑业出现滞后，而波士顿地区的需求仍然强劲，那么从机制上讲，租金就必须上涨。”
奥布莱恩 (O’Brien) 多年来一直致力于萨福克唐斯 (Suffolk Downs) 的许可工作，他将原因归咎于两个关键因素：利率上升和建筑成本上升。
由于国际供应链中断，木材和钢铁（住房建筑的主要原料）的价格在疫情期间飙升。它们的价格此后已稳定下来，但尚未回到疫情前的水平。
随着美联储采取行动应对通胀，利率也大幅上升，这使得开发商获得建筑贷款的成本更高。建筑贷款的利率比 2022 年高出约 5 个百分点。
例如，奥布莱恩指出，HYM 是政府中心车库重建项目的一部分，建造了一座住宅大楼。HYM 于 2017 年破土动工时，每套公寓的建造成本约为 68 万美元。他说，今天，这个数字将更接近 100 万美元。
更重要的是，考虑到他们现在只需将现金存入银行就能赚到的钱，通常为住房开发提供资金的投资者要求更高的回报。因此，为了吸引这笔投资，开发商必须从他们的建筑中赚取更多的钱。这可能意味着更高的租金，但租金也有其限度。
“想象一下，你有一栋建筑，之前的投资回报率为 6%，”古伦说。“由于建筑成本较高，你的回报率可能只有 4%。那栋建筑曾经的收入是建造所需收入的两倍。现在这还不够。”
奥布莱恩说，这最终阻碍了萨福克唐斯的更多建设。HYM 正在努力在场地的里维尔一侧建造第二栋公寓楼，但目前每套公寓的成本约为 40 万美元。他认为，他需要将成本降至 35 万美元才能与投资者达成交易。因此，HYM 一直在努力简化建筑结构并削减一些便利设施，以平衡成本。
“股权就像一个开关，”奥布莱恩说。“要么获得 6.5% 的成本回报率，要么就没有项目。”
但是，虽然将生产开关切换到“关闭”很容易，但将其重新打开需要更多时间。
从构思到盛大开业，开发商大约需要五年时间才能在这里建造一栋公寓楼。即使是获得许可的项目也需要数年时间才能真正为人们提供住房。在利率飙升之前启动的项目仍在进行中，但一旦这些项目完工，就会进入一个低谷。
“如果融资市场（希望）到 2025 年中期有所缓解，我们预计新房将在 2030 年上市，而这几年几乎没有新房供应，”开发公司 Cabot Cabot 和《福布斯》在最近的一份白皮书中表示。
当地开发商和公寓业主 Princeton Properties 的首席执行官安德鲁·查班 (Andrew Chaban) 对此解释道：从购买土地到获得建筑贷款，再到吸引股权，融资过程的几乎每一步都变得更加复杂和昂贵，从而推高了项目成本。当项目成本上升时，这些费用就会转嫁给租户。
“如果我们想建造住房，这些成本就没有其他地方可去，”查班说。
一些经验丰富的开发商仍在郊区推进项目，但即使是一些大型郊区开发项目，包括 2018 年首次提出的位于牛顿河滨 MBTA 站的住房和生命科学综合体，也陷入了困境。
开发商之一 Beacon Communities 董事会主席霍华德·科恩 (Howard Cohen) 表示，拥有近 600 个单元的河滨项目自 2022 年底以来一直处于暂停状态，推动该项目向前发展的方案“已经行不通”了。
科恩说，部分问题在于实验室开发市场已经崩溃，而实验室开发原本应该是河滨项目第一阶段的重点。
近年来，建筑商成功地将实验室和住房捆绑在一个项目中，因为实验室空间可以帮助补贴住房。现在双方都很难获得资金。科恩说，开发商正在与投资者谈判，但可能需要加快住房进入第一阶段，这将需要更多的城市许可。
他警告说，推翻河滨市的经济力量可能还需要几年时间才能纠正。
“从根本上讲，我们现在有一个不成立的等式，”科恩说。“从长远来看，这个等式会被理顺。但我们不知道这需要多长时间，同时我们需要继续建设。”
无论经济是否很快稳定下来，科恩和其他开发商都迫切需要让事情再次运转起来。
一些人支持 MassHousing 的一个想法，即创建一个“动力基金”，可用于填补混合收入住房的融资缺口，以便他们能够破土动工。该提案包含在目前提交立法机构的住房债券法案中，众议院提议 2.5 亿美元，参议院提议 5000 万美元；具体金额可能在未来几周内协商确定。
“我们需要找到继续建设的方法，”MassHousing 首席执行官 Chrystal Kornegay 表示。“如果我们现在不开始，我们需要的住房上线的日子就会越来越远。”
题图：萨福克唐斯 (Suffolk Downs) 大规模重建的现场，背景中是该现场的第一栋新公寓楼 Amaya。DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF
附英文报道：
A 10,000-unit housing development at Suffolk Downs is on hold indefinitely. Here’s why.
The construction pause is a testament to how high interest rates and materials costs are preventing developers from building much-needed projects
By Andrew Brinker Globe Staff,Updated July 5, 2024
The site of the massive Suffolk Downs redevelopment, with the first new apartment building at the site, Amaya, pictured in the background.DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF
REVERE — If one image could summarize the state of housing construction in Greater Boston right now, it might be the vast open space at Suffolk Downs.
At 10,000 units, the former horse racing track on the Boston-Revere border will be the single largest housing development in the region’s history when it’s done. The first building will open this summer, an eight-story, 475-unit blue-and-red apartment building with a modern look near the Beachmont Blue Line station.
But no more housing is underway here. There are no hammers clanging or cement trucks rumbling, just a sea of open land, mounds of dirt, materials, and equipment sitting unused.
Three years after Suffolk Downs won city approvals, there was supposed to be a lot more going on by now on the nearly four dozen other buildings that will eventually rise at the 161-acre property. But housing construction at the site is on hold until developer HYM Investment Group can hash out a complicated financing deal that has been pushed out of balance by an out-of-whack economy.
The holdup is a reality plaguing housing developers across Greater Boston over the last two years. Demand in our housing-starved region is sky high. And developers such as HYM’s Tom O’Brien have all the hard-won permits they need. But for all the attention paid lately to fights over zoning and other local approvals, securing permits to build isn’t even the hard part right now. Amid high interest rates and materials costs, raising enough money is the real problem.
“The whole dynamic of housing finance has shifted,” said O’Brien. “It has become so much harder to make these projects work.”
Indeed, every major ingredient of an apartment building — from wood to steel to electrical components — costs more than it did before COVID. Overall materials costs have jumped 43 percent since the start of 2020. Interest rates for construction loans have more than tripled. The investors who typically fund housing development are demanding higher returns, too. Financing new housing in Massachusetts was a complex undertaking five years ago; now it seems impossible.
There’s no hard-and-fast tally of permitted units that are not under construction across dozens of Greater Boston communities. But officials in suburban towns talk about construction permits sitting on the shelf because developers can’t close on financing. In Boston, for example, researchers at the city’s planning and development agency last year estimated there were nearly 23,000 units stuck in the pipeline. (For comparison, from 2017 through 2021, a little more than 20,000 units were built in Boston, according to a 2022 report from the Mayor’s Office of Housing.)
One proxy measure of the backlog comes from the housing developed under the state’s 40B law, which allows developers to bypass local zoning in towns that have insufficient levels of affordable housing. Officials at the quasi-state agency MassHousing say they know of some 20,000 units on pause right now. Those mixed-income projects typically rely on revenues from market-rate apartments to finance the affordable units, making them particularly vulnerable to economic shifts.
The story is much the same all over the region. Through the first five months of the year, fewer than 5,000 units worth of building permits were issued across Greater Boston. That’s down a bit from the same time in 2023, which itself was the slowest year for new housing production in more than a decade.
In a region like Greater Boston, where homes and apartments are already in extremely short supply, that will have consequences for years to come, with supply continuing to fall even further behind demand.
“We need that pressure of new construction to bring down rents,” said Adam Guren, an economist at Boston University. “So I would find it worrisome if there’s going to be a lull in building. It’s pretty simple: If there’s a construction lag hitting us in several years and demand remains strong for the Boston area, mechanically, rents have to go up.”
O’Brien, who spent years working on the permits for Suffolk Downs, blames two key factors: the rise of interest rates and construction costs.
The price of lumber and steel — major ingredients in housing construction — shot up during the pandemic thanks to international supply chain disruptions. They’ve since stabilized, but have not come back down to prepandemic levels.
Interest rates, too, shot up as the Federal Reserve moved to tackle inflation, which has made it more expensive for developers to secure construction loans. Interest rates on construction loans are roughly 5 percentage points higher than in 2022.
For an example, O’Brien points to a residential tower HYM built as part of the redevelopment of the Government Center Garage. When HYM broke ground in 2017, it cost the company around $680,000 per unit to build. Today, he said, that figure would be more like $1 million.
What’s more, given what they can earn by simply stashing cash in a bank right now, the investors who normally finance housing development are demanding higher returns. So to draw that investment, developers have to make even more money off of their buildings. This can translate to higher rents, but rents have their limits too.
“Imagine you had a building that was before returning 6 percent” on an investment, said Guren. “With a higher construction cost you’re returning maybe 4 percent. That building used to make twice as much income as was necessary to build. Now it’s not enough.”
That is ultimately what O’Brien says is preventing more construction at Suffolk Downs. HYM is working on a deal to build a second apartment building on the Revere side of the site, but right now it would cost roughly $400,000 a unit. He figures he needs to get that down to $350,000 to secure a deal with investors. So HYM has been working to simplify the architecture of the building and cut back some amenities to make the costs balance.
“The equity is literally like an on-off switch,” O’Brien said. “Either you get to the six and a half percent return on cost, or you don’t have a project.”
But while it’s easy to flip the production switch to “off,” turning it back on takes a lot more time.
From conception to grand opening, it takes about five years for a developer to build an apartment building around here. Even permitted projects will need years before they actually house people. There are still projects underway that launched before interest rates spiked, but a lull is coming once those are finished.
“If financing markets (hopefully) ease by mid-2025, we would expect new units to be available in 2030, with the intervening years providing little new production,” development firm Cabot Cabot and Forbes put it in a recent white paper.
Andrew Chaban, chief executive of Princeton Properties, a local developer and apartment owner, explains it like this: Nearly every step of the financing process — from buying the land, to securing a construction loan, to attracting equity — has become more complicated and expensive, driving project costs up. When project costs go up, those expenses get passed on to renters.
“There’s nowhere else for those costs to go, if we want the housing to get built,” said Chaban.
Some experienced developers are still moving projects along in the suburbs, But even some major suburban developments, including a housing and life sciences complex at the Riverside MBTA stop in Newton that was first proposed in 2018, are stuck.
The nearly 600-unit Riverside project has been paused since late 2022, and the formula for moving it forward “just doesn’t work” anymore, said Howard Cohen, board chair of Beacon Communities, one of the developers.
Part of the problem, said Cohen, is that the market for lab development, which was supposed to be the focus of the first phase of the Riverside project, has cratered.
In recent years, builders have had success bundling labs and housing in one project because the lab space could help subsidize the housing. Now both sides of the deal are hard to finance. Cohen said the developers are talking with investors, but may need to accelerate housing into the first phase, which will require more city permits.
The economic forces that have thrown off Riverside, he warned, could still take several years to correct.
“Fundamentally, we’ve got an equation right now that doesn’t work,” said Cohen. “Over the long run the equation will get straightened out. But we don’t know how long that’s going to take, and in the meantime we need to keep building.”
Cohen and other developers see an urgent need to get things moving again, whether the economy stabilizes soon or not.
Some are backing an idea from MassHousing to create a “momentum fund” that could be used to plug financing gaps for mixed-income housing so they can break ground. The proposal is included in the housing bond bill currently before the Legislature, where the House proposed $250 million and the Senate offered $50 million; the precise amount could be negotiated in the coming weeks.
“We need to find a way to keep building,” said MassHousing CEO Chrystal Kornegay. “And if we don’t start now, the day when we have the housing we need coming online moves further and further away.”
