Afforability? and Availability
☼ The first point I wanted to make about a new housing project is that it makes an entire pool of housing available. People are not faced with looking at one house up on 3rd Street and one down on 22nd Street and maybe two over on Leland.
The second part of that is usually a developer will make an arrangement with a real estate broker and the buyer winds up paying only one-half the commission they would normally pay if they were buying an existing home. The same goes for escrow and title fees. These all add up in a hurry and can save a buyer with having to come up with as much money upfront as they might normally have to do. This gets more people into homes of their own.
☼ A commenter mentioned in the "answering questions" post that people were better off buying a 10-year old condo because it would be more affordable. To that Anonymous commenter, I ask please tell me where? There are no condos that I have been able to find recently in that age bracket which are anywhere near the price range. Secondly the one or two you might find takes me back to my other point of having a pool of potential homes instead of one or two where you are forced into a bidding war to get the place.
More likely is the scenario of a 850 sq.ft. single family home with two bedrooms and one bathroom. Usually it will have been built around 1910 or so and will be listed for around $650,000. This is affordable? I think not.
In addition to the price, you buy the privilege of original electrical, plumbing and insulation. So if you want it to last for a while, you are faced with the prospect of a "gut-remodel" of the "new" home you just bought. I'll take the new construction, thank you very much. I know I won't have anything to worry about for years.
Tom Field
9 comments:
And in addition to the price of anything purchased at a non R1 Ponte Vista, you get the "priviledge" of paying homeowner association dues and other fees that go along with owning a unit in a development such as what Bob is currently planning. The guards on the gates don't work for free.
It is true that there is a one-time transfer of pre-prop 13 property tax benefits, but for most of the folks buying units at Ponte Vista, the property tax rate of residents in the area is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.7% of every $100.00 of the purchase price of the new residence. That would probably be higher than the assessed valuation of an older home, I think.
MW
A couple of comments:
1) Last time I checked commissions are the sellers' responsibility, not the buyers'.
2) I do tend to agree about the affordability of new constructions versus existing homes. It is a strange phenomenon but I think it is because developers are more interested in moving the inventory in large volumes, unlike the individual homeowners that feel their place is the greastest property on Earth and want to squeeze every penny of value out of it.
3) Mark is right about the association dues - they're not cheap. I don't remember exactly but I think the dues for my unit at the Vue will be between 500-600 per month. I've heard places in Marina del Rey and Playa Vista are well over 1000.
kris,
Technically you are correct about the commissions being the seller's responsibility. However, in practice these costs get factored in to the sales price.
Second, I do have to agree with you and Mark about HOA fees. They aren'tcheap. But then I don't want to spend my weekends mowing the lawn or fixing the roof.
Tom
Please do not call me delusional, or otherwise insult me.
I disagree with your number of 85 condos for sale in San Pedro. Anyone can go to realtor.com and put in very broad search parameters to come up with a number like this. But then actually take a look at the listings. Most of them are not even in San Pedro. Some clever Realtor added San Pedro as a search tag so his listing would pop up in a search of San Pedro condos. Then look at location. Would you want to live next to Pick-Your-Part? When I do a search of San Pedro I come up with a half dozen at most. If I am doing something incorrectly, please enlighten me.
But when you do, a more civil tone would be appreciated. Thank you.
Tom Field
May 18, 2007 10:38 AM
Realtor.com is a paid listing service. They only show a few listings. Try ZipRealty.com.
I just did a search and came up with 86 condos for sale in San Pedro, most in very nice areas. 42 of them were under $400,000.
Anonymous 5:16pm
Thank you for the referral. I'll check it out. I'll be the first one to admit if I was wrong. I was merely working with the information I had.
Hint: the way Anonymous 5:16pm presented the information in a non-aggressive, non-insulting manner, is the way to keep comments from being deleted.
you speak of all the new housing stock this will bring, but, my understanding was that this will be built in 5 phases over several years, thereby limiting the number of units avaliable for purchase to 500 or so at a time, negating any effect of so called affordability?
Anonymous 2:22 PM, you bring up a good point about phases.
What might happen that after the first few phases of a project is built and the market crashes and the developer runs into funding problems? Might that developer sell of the remaining barren land to another developer, or try to change the composition of the development to include apartments?
There are so many good questions left unanswered, but it looks like we are all getting a good lesson on what we should be looking at when it comes to the development of a large parcel of land.
Bob has allowed us to really look at his current proposal and find that there are questions we did not even know we should be asking. I guess this whole issue is a good civics and planning forum to learn more about large developments and the effects they may have on OUR community.
Just think of what might have happened if so many of us didn't look up and learn a thing or two.
Now, with Bob's "new" plan upcoming, perhaps more of us will have "eagle eyes" when looking through the proposal.
MW
MW
Mr. Wells,
Your point is a valid concern. However, I answered this type of question in a comment to another post, but I will briefly recap it here.
If there is a Specific Plan for the development, it becomes law. It cannot be changed later (e.g. more units and higher density) without a vote of the full City Council. Remaining R1 would allow someone putting up say 150 units to submit only rather minor variance request filings which do not go to the City Council.
Tom Field
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