It is bad and yet is one of the only housing types that satisfies a lot of needs.
Multi-unit housing has the following list of annoyances:
1. Far more available to rent than to own. Some states such as CO have some weird insurance related laws that makes selling condos more of a liability than leasing apartments.
2. Often not cheaper on a sqft basis so you are paying more for less.
3. If it is for sale, there is often a hefty monthly HOA or Condo fee that increases with inflation/time.
4. Small parking lots*
5. Often up a few stories which make even moving groceries a hassle and moving furniture a real pain.
6. Noise from neighbors and rules/limitations when you can do noise generating things.
7. No garage/workshop area means repairing bikes and cars is a real hassle or you are paying someone else a lot of money to do it for you.
8. Dramatically less privacy and legal rights as far as what you are allowed to do to your property.
9. Almost always closer to roads and other noise producing things.
10. Neighbors are a far greater presence/annoyance in your life than even just living in the suburb. This has the added effect of reinforcing affluence/poor areas; buying a house in a poor/bad area is not nearly as risky as living in an apartment in a poor/bad area.
Really the only advantage of living in higher density housing is the access to public transport, city centers, and the lack of maintenance you have to do to maintain the property. The good news is that a lot of people don't mind the above annoyances so building more high density housing has the benefit of making every type of housing cheaper. Its also possible that in large enough cities, apartments can be found larger & more noise insulated than in suburb/low density areas (at least I sure hope so).
Essentially, does a single family home replacement exist? Town-homes are pretty close to satisfying the above list and are a lot more dense than SFH but are they dense enough to solve the scarcity problem?
* Convincing those who can afford vehicles to get rid of them seems really difficult. e.g Anyone know how people travel for ski trips in Europe? I really can't imagine using American public transport when I need to transport luggage. Sure flying and trains are OK for traveling large distances but buses and local rail systems are difficult to use with luggage. It would be a comical attempt for a family of 4 to transport themselves & their stuff on a local bus yet an SUV makes this an (bi)weekly occurrence for people near ski resorts.
I don't know that townhomes really satisfy that -- not any of the ones I've seen built recently. The ones I'm thinking of are those 10-to-a-lot townhomes that get squeezed into previously unused spaces or a handful of parcels that the developer managed to buy up next to each other. They usually have little to no land (no front yard and a meager backyard), restricted parking (I have seen two-car garages where you would need to go out through the sunroof if you actually parked two small cars in there.) and are often built as cheaply as possible at the lowest cost.
Basically, a lot of the townhomes that I see being built here are effectively apartments and share many of the same annoyances you mentioned. With that said, it could very well be due to the same single family zoning issues -- it's very possible that getting permits for an apartment building in a predominantly SFH zone would be difficult. Getting permits for townhomes (which end up functionally apartments) is likely far more doable.
To the question you pose about the SFH replacement -- I don't think that there is one. Even if homes weren't an investment vehicle, I think to a lot of people the appeal of a SFH is the whole package; By the time you satisfy all the desires with something else, you've arrived back to a SFH.
It is bad and yet is one of the only housing types that satisfies a lot of needs.
Multi-unit housing has the following list of annoyances:
1. Far more available to rent than to own. Some states such as CO have some weird insurance related laws that makes selling condos more of a liability than leasing apartments.
2. Often not cheaper on a sqft basis so you are paying more for less.
3. If it is for sale, there is often a hefty monthly HOA or Condo fee that increases with inflation/time.
4. Small parking lots*
5. Often up a few stories which make even moving groceries a hassle and moving furniture a real pain.
6. Noise from neighbors and rules/limitations when you can do noise generating things.
7. No garage/workshop area means repairing bikes and cars is a real hassle or you are paying someone else a lot of money to do it for you.
8. Dramatically less privacy and legal rights as far as what you are allowed to do to your property.
9. Almost always closer to roads and other noise producing things.
10. Neighbors are a far greater presence/annoyance in your life than even just living in the suburb. This has the added effect of reinforcing affluence/poor areas; buying a house in a poor/bad area is not nearly as risky as living in an apartment in a poor/bad area.
Really the only advantage of living in higher density housing is the access to public transport, city centers, and the lack of maintenance you have to do to maintain the property. The good news is that a lot of people don't mind the above annoyances so building more high density housing has the benefit of making every type of housing cheaper. Its also possible that in large enough cities, apartments can be found larger & more noise insulated than in suburb/low density areas (at least I sure hope so).
Essentially, does a single family home replacement exist? Town-homes are pretty close to satisfying the above list and are a lot more dense than SFH but are they dense enough to solve the scarcity problem?
* Convincing those who can afford vehicles to get rid of them seems really difficult. e.g Anyone know how people travel for ski trips in Europe? I really can't imagine using American public transport when I need to transport luggage. Sure flying and trains are OK for traveling large distances but buses and local rail systems are difficult to use with luggage. It would be a comical attempt for a family of 4 to transport themselves & their stuff on a local bus yet an SUV makes this an (bi)weekly occurrence for people near ski resorts.