Jake Wegmann

Jake Wegmann has been on the faculty of the Community and Regional Planning program at the University of Texas at Austin since 2014. Jake completed his doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation entitled "'We Just Built It:' Code Enforcement, Local Politics, and the Informal Housing Market in Southeast Los Angeles County." His research lies at the nexus of housing, real estate development, and planning.

• Let’s take a minute to define informal ADUs. 

• Please speak about some of your previous research on informal ADUs in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. 

• What are some of your findings about the presence of informal ADUs relative to permitted ADUs

• As ADU regulations get more permissive, what do you think is the likely outcome on the relative proportion of permitted vs unpermitted ADUs

• What role did you find that mobile dwellings play in the catalog of informal ADU types. 

• Given the new codes allowing for THOWs to serve as ADUs in 5 major jurisdictions including in LA, what observations do you have about this?
  What issues do you foresee arising in allowing for mobile dwellings on residential properties?

• We’re going to be talking about middle house and lot partitioning with some of the people most intimately involved in the implementation of the rulemaking for Oregon’s middle housing zoning overhauls. What are some general insights that you would offer to attendees about the policy motivations for allowing for smaller lot partitions. 

• Are you aware of useful precedent for small lot partitioning that may be illustrative in terms of understanding best practices?

• Tell us about ADUs in Austin. Roughly how many ADUs are there in Austin and how many are being permitted each year?

• So, it’s a big market. Land is super expensive. And, I’ve heard that property taxes are also quite high in Austin. How much do ADUs tend to increase the annual property taxes in Austin?

• Given that ADUs increase property taxes, does this impact the motivation for people building them?

• Let’s talk about some of the most promising ADU financing approaches that we’ve been seeing lately. 

• Are you aware of any new financing products or methods that are gaining traction?
  What are the most promising opportunities to improve existing loan GSE products to enable ADUs to be more easily financed through lending institutions that conduct renovation loan financing?

• I’m adding this question late, but I wondered if you could help illuminate why we’re seeing such escalated construction costs as of late, and if you would be able to predict if and when and why prices may drop again.