You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2008.
Brilliant. This must happen, or Parking Lot Scene should be done away with altogether.
Yes, it’s absolutely a few days of inconvenience, miserable traffic, and invariably a few versions of the universal nuisance that is ‘drunk guy’ - but hey, we’ll take the good with the bad.
East Village entry level condos – those 699 square feet and under are off of their 2005 high by approximately 15%. Additionally, the price per square foot has dipped from $662 (2004) to $510 (2007) – the average unit size that has sold in this timeframe has gone from 588 (2005) to 641 (2007).
Market times are still higher than the 2005 levels. The average market time in 2005 was 45 days – but it rose 85 days in 2006 and has subsequently dipped in 2007 to 75 days. After a drop in 2006 to 95%, the list price to sold price percentage has returned to 2005 levels in 2007 at 97%.
As a broker, I am seeing a lot of folks that sat on the sidelines for the last year and half and watched the market starting to jump in. As distressed sellers and foreclosures push prices to a critical low, investors are seeing the bottom of the market – at least from their perspective. Other buyers are still holding out hope for additional price reductions – but it is safe to say with current market dynamics that anything under the $326,371.00 of at least 641 square feet can be considered a good value.
Merlone Geier Partners is proposing to build 475,000 square feet of retail space on 6.5 acres of an undeveloped site that lies close to the border of East Village and Barrio Logan. The plans call for two anchor tenants, possibly a Lowes and Target that cater to urban consumers.The land/ lots of the surrounding area is currently made up of vagrants, industrial lots, dirt, weeds and some gravel. Oh, I can’t forget the graffiti.
This is a huge victory for Downtown residents, most notably East Village residents in walking distance or easy trolley access. Currently, we are pretty starved for some of the essentials offered by a Target or some of the specialty items from a home improvement store like Lowes (hopefully Lowes, see: service). The opening of the second grocery store Downtown – the Albertson’s on 14th and Market – has made a positive impact on the community. The big box retailers would further establish Downtown as residential friendly and help it get closer to realizing the vision of becoming a true urban community where we can leave the cars in the garage in favor of walking and public transportation.
More to read here.
Interesting article published on the voiceofsandiego.org by Scott Lewis regarding the government mandating affordable housing being set aside by developers in new projects. It does raise the question, who is more efficient in creating affordable housing (for sale) in our not-so-affordable community – the market or the government?
Whether it is right or wrong, if you give a developer the option of paying a fee to support government affordable housing agencies, or to set aside units in a project for affordable housing, more often than not the developer pays the fees, builds the cost into their budgets and passes the cost right back to the buyers, inflating the price of those new units. When they set aside they set aside the affordable units…well, just read what Scott has to say.
