You're Paying for Parking, Whether You Use It or Not

Building and maintaining parking facilities is expensive, Emily Badger writes.  Often the monthly fees paid by drivers don’t cover the total cost to the building’s owners.  Instead, everyone pays a bit more rent to have a garage onsite—even those residents who don’t own a car.

But if onsite parking actually costs more than people are willing to pay in fees, why do developers keep building it?  Whether it’s a zoning issue or because the owners hope to convert the apartments to condos ultimately doesn’t matter.   “What this all points to,” one researcher said, “is an opportunity to create some buildings with little or no parking.”