More stock on the market, but only designed to benefit a very small number. I very much doubt your mate driving aim was to provide the housing to people and more to make a very tidy profit out of it. Would it be impossible to build, or just that they wouldn't get as high a return as they wanted? And that's the problem - it should be about making sure people have places to live, not how much money can be made from doing it.
This proves the point. It's not that the parking isn't required, it's that other developments haven't had to have them. Fuck providing what the people living there actually require, what's the minimum I can get away with providing so I can make a bigger return.
There is a limited area of land on which to build and if you have more parking there is less floor space available to build apartments as there are height restrictions. It therefore becomes uneconomic to build if you can’t utilise the area for flats rather than unnecessary parking. This is not a great area so valuations will be limited by the local market. He builds to provide rentals but if he physically can’t build a small development for a certain price to then achieve a certain valuation, he won’t be able to securing funding. The alternative is someone builds something smaller to fit planning requirements and charge more for the apartments …which will either push the local market prices up (not helping !) or they remain unsold and developer might go bust ?!! Or the land remains unbuilt on in the hope that material prices reduce and/or planning softens…again not helping housing stock issue
If someone wants a flat with two parking spaces then these wouldn’t for them but as I say, there are a large number of people that will have one or no cars who would want to live there so there is no need for 20+ spaces. This is on waste land which has now been unused for years.
If you tried to please everyone for every building, nothing would ever get built. Basic economics but price is obviously driven predominantly by supply and demand. We’ve run at high rates of net migration for years, people are living longer (so remain in properties for longer) and we’ve not had enough new housing stock built. Hence house prices have continued to rise. The nimby in some green belt areas and inconsistency of planning around the country is not helping… and it’s the younger generations who are paying and/or not able to get on the house ladder
Edit - sorry for war and peace answer