5 Barriers To Infill Housing That Have Little To Do With Design
Authors: Dominique Davison AIA and Jeffrey Williams AICP
Housing prototypes, pattern books, and pre-approved plans can be powerful tools for encouraging infill development. They help first-time and small-scale developers visualize what is possible and can streamline the design and approval process.
But after 25 years working on infill housing across the country, we’ve found that the biggest barriers, particularly in economically distressed neighborhoods, often have little to do with picking the right design.
The challenges we hear repeatedly from neighborhood stakeholders, builders, and small-scale developers are:
- Clear title to the land
- The cost of utility connections
- Unknown site conditions
- The permitting process
- Finding qualified contractors who can build at a price the market and financing can support
In areas where new construction economics are strong and utilities, builders, and infrastructure are already established, these challenges are easier to overcome. In neighborhoods with vacant lots, historic structures, disinvestment, and aging infrastructure, they become significant barriers to investment.
And yet, these neighborhoods can offer some of the greatest benefits of infill: walkability, established character, existing infrastructure, and proximity to amenities.
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Clear Title
Vacant urban lots frequently have complicated ownership histories. Probate, foreclosure, liens, and incomplete transfers can create clouded titles that are expensive and time-consuming to resolve.
As a former Land Bank Commissioner for Kansas City, Missouri, Dominique saw this firsthand. Clearing title became an important part of preparing properties for community developers.
A focused program that partners with legal aid organizations to clear titles on groups of properties could remove one of the first barriers to infill development.
Potential cost: $2,000-$5,000 per lot
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Utility Connections
The hidden cost of old infrastructure can add tens of thousands of dollars to a project. Water and sewer connections may require street excavation, new taps, and significant fees.
Greenfield development often benefits from infrastructure investments because municipalities anticipate increased property tax revenue. Infill development deserves similar consideration.
Reimbursement or financing programs for utility connections could substantially reduce the upfront risk of building in established neighborhoods.
Potential cost: $15,000-$20,000
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Unknown Site Conditions
Urban lots can contain remnants of what was there before: foundations, buried tanks, wells, abandoned infrastructure, or contaminated soils. These conditions can quickly turn an otherwise viable project into an expensive one.
New homeowners should not necessarily bear the cost of decades-old demolition practices or environmental contamination.
Kansas City, for example, has worked with the EPA to address contamination on land bank properties in several first-ring suburbs, helping reduce development costs and protect future residents.
Potential cost: $5,000-$20,000+, depending on site conditions
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Permitting and Pre-Approved Plans
This is where housing prototypes, pattern books, and especially pre-approved house plans can make a real difference.
Community engagement can happen upfront, establishing expectations around scale, massing, materials, and neighborhood character. Once those parameters are established, developers and homeowners have greater confidence moving forward.
Pre-approved plans can then reduce the time and expense associated with architectural detailing, structural engineering, site planning, energy-code compliance, and permitting.
There is another benefit that is easy to overlook: certainty has value. The more of the building design that has already been resolved, the less likely a developer is to draw down contingency funds for non-site-related building issues. Those contingency dollars can instead remain available for the things we cannot predict, particularly unknown site conditions.
Potential savings: potentially tens of thousands of dollars per project
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Qualified Builders and the Economics of Construction
Finally, there needs to be a pipeline of qualified builders willing to work in these neighborhoods.
Many suburban builders don’t work in the urban core because the projects are harder to manage, harder to scale, and often don’t pencil financially.
Consider a 1,200-square-foot home costing $250-$300 per square foot to construct. At $275 per square foot, the construction cost is approximately $330,000. Add 15% for contingency and profit, and the required sale price approaches $380,000, before accounting for realtor fees and other costs.
The surrounding neighborhood must support that value through comparable sales. If it doesn’t, some form of subsidy is needed to bring the sale price within a level that both the market and lenders can support.
In parts of Kansas City, that gap can approach $120,000 per home.
That is not a problem the private market can solve alone.
Building the Ecosystem Around Infill
If we want infill housing to succeed, we need to think beyond the individual house and build the ecosystem around it.
First, we need more qualified local builders.
The local construction workforce could be expanded through partnerships among existing trade unions, Career Technical Education programs, city government, and utility providers. Coursework, apprenticeships, and certification programs could prepare residents for the specific skills needed to build and maintain homes in their own communities.
Ideally, these programs would recruit from the neighborhoods where infill development is planned. The result is more than a construction workforce. It creates an opportunity for residents to earn income from the physical transformation of their own neighborhoods, keeping more construction-related economic activity within the community.
Second, we should look at who the natural buyers are.
Municipal employees represent one potentially overlooked customer base for new infill and affordable housing. Cities are large employers with a workforce that often understands and values the community they serve.
Jeffrey’s first-time homeownership experience came through an affordable housing program offered by the City of Yonkers, New York, while he was working for the city. Programs that connect public-sector employees with newly created housing could provide a ready-made market for infill development while helping municipal employees become homeowners in the communities they serve.
Third, we can make each home work harder.
New infill homes can incorporate secondary units or ADUs that provide rental income to help offset a homeowner’s mortgage. This can make homeownership more attainable while adding rental housing to the neighborhood.
But this strategy only works if the cost of producing the secondary unit is kept low. Again, standardized and pre-approved plans can help reduce design, permitting, and construction costs.
Finally, we need to be strategic about subsidy.
Grant programs that provide assistance toward the purchase price, with forgiveness occurring over time through a sliding scale, can help close the gap between construction cost and what a neighborhood can support. These programs can also protect the affordability of the home for a defined period.
That matters because creating a single affordable housing unit is such a significant lift. If public investment makes that unit possible, we should think carefully about how to preserve the benefit rather than allowing the affordability created by the subsidy to disappear at the first resale.
The math is straightforward: to incentivize construction, the finished home generally needs to be worth more than the total cost of development. And time is money.
Each of these five challenges introduces uncertainty, extends schedules, increases carrying costs, and adds risk. Collectively, they can make an otherwise desirable infill project financially impossible.
This is why housing prototypes and pattern books, while valuable, are only one piece of the solution.
If we want to meaningfully increase affordable and attainable infill housing, we need a systemic approach that addresses land, infrastructure, site conditions, permitting, builders, financing, and homeownership together.
Good design can show us what is possible. But making infill housing possible requires building the ecosystem that allows that design to become a home, and allows that home to become part of a healthy, economically resilient neighborhood.
