> Development may reduce the desire of a new owner to live in a single family home next to an apartment building, but now you have another developer willing to buy your land to build their own multi-unit building, and that's gonna be some good money.
A portion of a constructed apartment building on your lot may be more valuable than your current house is there, but...
A) There's no guarantee that the value of your land to the apartment developer exceeds the value of your current use... after all, they have to pay to demolish and then improve it, and...
B) You and your neighbors may have put down roots, that have a substantial value, if difficult to directly economically measure.
C) Moving, itself, has substantial economic costs.
D) If an apartment building built next-door decreases the value of your single family home by 20%... there's no guarantee that there's demand or the possibility to build another one on your lot... and even if there is, the apartment-builder's estimate of your land value will be 20% less. You'll meet in the middle between (0.8 x your previous home value) and (the apartment-builder's estimate of the value of your land to him before improvement).
I think the intangible aspects here aren't relevant because the original poster was talking about the financial investment aspect itself being a reason to oppose development. I completely agree that qualitative reasons will cause people to want to control development, and personally am fine with this, versus just letting the people with the most money dominate the market.
For (D), though, I think this is generally overblown. There are no guarantees, and situations vary, of course, but trend-wise, I don't believe "partial" in-transition up-zoning has been a value-killer overall. In parts of the US that are densifying, these sorts of things are generally radiate outward from high-demand areas. But the single family homes in the high-demand city core areas still have more value than the ones further away, and if you look at the appraisal reports, it's because of the land value, not the structure. In the long run, that development cycle creates the demand that pushes up your own land value even if yesterday vs today, it was more attractive in isolation as a single family home next to another single family home. "Location, location, location" is a cliche but a valid one.
As long as your location stays in demand - and in our current city planning paradigm that's not been something that's been threatened before potential post-COVID reorganization - you're more likely to hit a virtuous cycle for property value here than a vicious one. The types of developments/apartments that are gonna be put up are gonna be determined in part by how much it cost to get the land, so if it was already valuable land, building a slum next door won't make any sense to the developer.
E) In the USA, if it's your residence, it's a taxable event for the capital gain, which can cost 6 figures in federal and state income taxes in a place like CA. Plus, in CA, until this year, you usually lost your Prop 13 basis forever.
A portion of a constructed apartment building on your lot may be more valuable than your current house is there, but...
A) There's no guarantee that the value of your land to the apartment developer exceeds the value of your current use... after all, they have to pay to demolish and then improve it, and...
B) You and your neighbors may have put down roots, that have a substantial value, if difficult to directly economically measure.
C) Moving, itself, has substantial economic costs.
D) If an apartment building built next-door decreases the value of your single family home by 20%... there's no guarantee that there's demand or the possibility to build another one on your lot... and even if there is, the apartment-builder's estimate of your land value will be 20% less. You'll meet in the middle between (0.8 x your previous home value) and (the apartment-builder's estimate of the value of your land to him before improvement).