As some longtime HP readers remember, a friend of mine bought a condo in downtown San Diego a year ago, for some ungodly sum - like $700,000 for a 2-bedroom. I ask him how he likes living there - he says the neighborhood is great - bars, restaurants, etc, but that his condo development is 'kinda dead all the time'.
Why? Nobody actually bought one of 'em to LIVE in. Just to flip. And you think SD is bad - wait 'til those thousands and thousands of new units in Miami come online. Ugh!
Here's the MSM report of the new condo ghost town San Diego:
Downtown's Dark Towers
Karen McElliott came to downtown San Diego looking for a new way of life. After 30 years living as a suburbanite in Scripps Ranch, McElliott, a widow, came looking for the bright lights of the big city.
She found a community with much of the vibrancy and energy that she hoped for. What she hasn't found are neighbors.
Of the six units on her floor in her new condo building, McElliot's is the only one that's occupied. The Pinnacle, like many of downtown's newer condo towers, is currently only 55-percent occupied by full-time residents.
"I was looking forward to meeting new neighbors, and having them over for a glass of wine or saying hello and going for walks in the morning, that kind of thing, and that hasn't happened," McElliott said.
As investors and speculators have flocked to the downtown San Diego condo market, many of the roughly 7,000 downtown units -- especially those that have come online during the last two years -- have remained empty of full-time inhabitants.
According to DataQuick, a local real estate information service, around 33 percent of all downtown homes have their tax bills sent to a separate address, indicating that they are not full-time residences. Although the empty hallways are an unexpected consequence of the recent condo boom, experts expect the buildings to fill in over time as residents replace investors.
As condo prices soared in downtown, investors from around the county, state and country saw a market where some serious money could be made and invested in condos that they never really planned to live in.
But as the real estate market in downtown San Diego cools off, London said those speculators are leaving the downtown market behind.
May 18, 2006
The New Condo Ghost Towns
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22 comments:
Hey, no neighbors might be a best case scenario for some of these developments. If they stay empty long enough, the vagrant population might start moving in.
Wow, must be me but man I hate humanoids. This marble floating through space gets dumber by the minute and I am glad to be 2 acres away from any of them. I like coming out my door and there NOT be an old ragged out humanoid staring at me from 5 feet away, just on his side of the property line.
The condos will fill in a couple years after they are taken over by the city/state and turned into Section 8 housing.
At least then she'll have neighbors.
Just who in the hell did these FB's expect to play the greater fool?
Last February, LEAP/E2020 anticipated that a global
systemic crisis was to be triggered at the end of March. Today, three
months later, LEAP/E2020 can anticipate that the initial phase of
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beginning of June 2006, the crisis will enter a phase of
acceleration. Before detailing the main features of this new phase
(described in GEAB Nr5 ), LEAP/E2020 would like to clarify the 4
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>
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>
Keith,
Condo sales are up in Orlando 135% ytd, whilst single family homes lag.
Seek the chart? Let me know.
Anyway,
Have a look at all of the High Rise Condo's that are planned or under construction Downtown Orlando, Florida.
whatdya thibk?
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/
showthread.php?t=93820
Best part of the articel :
I was looking forward to meeting new neighbors, and having them over for a glass of wine or saying hello and going for walks in the morning, that kind of thing, and that hasn't happened," McElliott said.
My god she believed those ads with the yuppies drinking wine in their new condo!!! Poor poor woman.
Ditto!! Who the hell wants neighbors? I bought the FIRST unit in my complex to come online last year and it was paradise. I could park my Corvette diagonally across 2 spots and nobody cared. I could use my wireless internet and leave my blinds open without a care in the world.
Now, I have nowhere to park, and the wireless card shows like 30 available networks that send colliding packets into my airspace.
Neighbors, Get out!#$#$
I can drive a car or walk to find people any day. Don't need to share brick and mortar.
How many singles bought into these condos thinking they were going to get laid? Like the earlier poster said, after they get converted to Section-8 there should be plenty of action for you hardbodies -- at $20 a throw.
Keith run baby run. You will lose all your proceeds from house sale in gold sell-off.
I used to live in downtown San Diego before gentrifacation it was a mixture of artist,working people,and homeless.When the boom started rents got jacked up pricing out all the artist and blue collar workers.The homeless still remain.It must be nice walking out of your $300,000+ rats nest and be hassled and harrased by the increasing number of homeless people living in downtown San Diego.
It will get much worse!!
Yes Bush did Benefit.
His Blind Trust is managed by Richard Rainwater.
Richard has said he's been holding Oil companies for the last several years.
He's also in cash in his fund big time. He said he's waiting for the crash.
I've lived in downtown SD for many years and it's just a toilet now. San Diego has a very pretty and very thin veneer. Once the ooh aah "look at the palm trees and sunshine" thing wears off you're really left with very little except a totally bankrupt city in a totally bankrupt state, massive corruption, an insanely uncontrolled homeless problem, loads of gangs and WT and clueless bimbos, and has anyone noticed that there is a NEW murder reported every night on the news?! I'm not even kidding. Watch for soaring road rage and other crime in coming years as the housing market and the overall economy unwinds. Take a look at the crime stats for 1980-81 and 1990-91. We'll have a repeat; nothing is ever new, the world is just a college of repeating cycles within cycles.
I'll give ten US dollars for that wagon. It has rustic charm and would look good in front of the farm. Alternately those wheels would look cool flanking the driveway intrance.
Chemtrails up in the sky. Run for cover! Don the bird flu masks.
Or are those commercial jet contrails?
"Wow, must be me but man I hate humanoids. This marble floating through space gets dumber by the minute and I am glad to be 2 acres away from any of them."
How about 1/2 mile with a rolling terrain view, except for the woods in back?
2 acres is just too close. How do you shoot guns or fly airplanes from that small of a yard?
London's Real Estate Boomlet By
Stanley Reed
Wed May 17, 9:47 AM ET
Americans who are lying awake at night worrying that the prices of their homes will fall off a wall like Humpty Dumpty can take some comfort in the experience of Londoners. After house prices in the British capital racked up double-digit gains seven years in a row through 2003, most forecasters predicted a nasty snapback. So far it hasn't happened. In fact, there are signs that prices are beginning to resume their upward climb.
Sure, last year London's real estate market saw a sharp slowdown. Buyers, no doubt influenced by all the crashonomics, kept their powder dry. But that only caused demand to build up, and now the spark is back. First-quarter sales grew 41% from a year earlier, and prices are on track to grow 6% or more this year.
Not-So-Humble Abodes.
It's starting to feel like the feeding frenzies of three or four years ago. Instead of seeing houses languishing on the market, brokers -- or estate agents, as they are called in England -- say they can't find enough to sell. "There is an incredible shortage of property," says Lisianne Newman, director of Goldschmidt & Howland estate agents in Hampstead, a tiny North London neighborhood. "That has led to price rises of about 10% in the last three months throughout the entire market."
Newman says the action is hottest for houses priced at around 1 million pounds, or about $1.9 million, or higher. Each of those houses and well-appointed apartments attracts such a crowd that the agency is seeing multiple would-be buyers submitting sealed bids in envelopes.
Brokers and economists attribute the change in psychology to several factors. With private equity and M&A in high gear, the City, London's financial center, had a strong year in 2005. That led to big bonuses in early 2006 from banks and other financial institutions. Russians and other newly wealthy foreigners consider a London house an ideal place to stash some spare cash. And when you consider that Brits themselves like nothing better than to put money into property and that London will host the summer Olympics in 2012, you have the key planks in a possible floor under the city's prices.
Rate Cut.
It also helped that in August the Bank of England cut rates to 4.5%, down from 4.75%. Potential buyers had been spooked by Bank of England Governor Mervyn King's earlier warnings that the market looked dangerously frothy. But the bank's trim suddenly took the worry out of the rate outlook. "That removed a lot of uncertainty from the market," says Ed Stansfield, property economist at Capital Economics in London.
Capital Economics counted among the many real estate bears, forecasting a steep drop of 20% in British house prices -- but the dreaded bust has yet to materialize. According to the Halifax Index, kept by mortgage lender HBOS, prices in Greater London rose by an average of 2.1% in 2005. That may have been disappointing to sellers following the 16.6% pyrotechnic gains of 2002 and a 12.8% rise for an encore in 2003, but it was far from a plunge off a cliff. Now Capital Economics is forecasting 6% average price increases this year for London and 3% to 4% for 2007.
Brokers say the current boomlet began last fall after the Bank of England cut rates. It is too soon to tell whether it will last, but posher neighborhoods are showing signs of gathering strength. In the verdant west London borough of Richmond upon Thames, for instance, the average selling price of a stand-alone house was 29% higher than a year ago in the first quarter, or $1.89 million, according to the Land Registry, the official recorder of property transactions.
Riskiness Lurking?
In Camden, where Hampstead is located, the average selling price of a residence rose 18% -- to $943,000 -- from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the first of 2006. Sales volumes in greater London rose 41% year on year in the first quarter. With price increases in the less swanky neighborhoods more restrained, the Halifax says overall London prices have risen 7.2% over the last 12 months.
Of course, London house prices can and do fall. They did it for four years in a row in the early 1990s, and some homeowners didn't match the prices they paid in the 1980s property boom until near the end of the last century.
There's cause for caution today, too. Stansfield of Capital Economics, for instance, says it now costs 53% of an average Londoner's income to finance a home purchase. That's well above the 30-year average of 45%.
Looking Healthy.
"The risks are strongly biased to the downside. You obviously couldn't rule out fairly significant falls in prices," says David Miles, a Morgan Stanley economist specializing in Britain.
One reason: The new boom has caught Mervyn King's attention and helped make it likely the next move on interest rates will be upward. "The level of house prices still seems remarkably high," said King recently. But today's British economy, with its relatively low rates and robust employment numbers, still looks healthy. It will take more than a few cautionary words from King to scare off house-mad Londoners.
Here is SD we call them the Taco Towers becuase eventually all the Mexico drug dealers living there will be able to keep an eye on thier suppliers in Mexico from thier balcony.
and all the original development companies were from Vancouver which have also all now gotten 100% out of downtown San Diego from experiences in Vancouver's previous condo boom when 1/2 of Hong Kong put down deposists on Vancouver condos site unseen prior to China's takeover of the city.
Search "Leaky Condo Vancouver"
One condo tower in Vancouver is actually leaning over! Yes as in Pizza. Foundation was not build correct so the tower sank to on side before being stabilized on a slight tilt! ha ha ha ha.
I can't wait until about 2-3 years as in Vancouver when all these condos start leaking and falling to pieces, I guess you stil hvae you slab of granite counter top in the kitchen to sell! ha ha ha
I predict that San Diego country will go bankrupt by 2010.
The county is run "by the developers for the developers" with a little military defense corruption thrown in.
London's Real Estate Boomlet
here's the bottom line (from london of course)
the bankers got paid. like 5000 of 'em got over $1 million bonuses for christmas. so they're all out buying houses (like mine here in chelsea)
but outside of london - prices are falling
it's a london thing. this is the most expensive city in the world and the home of M&A and banking.
location, location, location, and that massive bonus money is looking for a place to go.
temporary blip - the bank of england is rumored to raise rates as their next meeting
Demaand in London is bottomless. Only a major economic recession would bring pricces down. London is basically diferent from any American market because London is the city in the UK -- no coompetition, no second city, no west coast... It is a great international capital and lots of buyers from other countries.
The Military has so corrupted this town. You never hear about things like aircraft carrier's nuclear reactors about to go critical in San Diego Harbor, but its happened to two reactors. San Diegans are more concerned with home prices then a nuclear ship wiping out their lovely condos.
Oh wait, there is a CROSS to save on a a mountain! Lets keep dumping MORE AND MORE money fighting to keep it. Its been going on for decades and millions of dollars. Yet the city is in financial ruin and they are STILL trying to keep the cross.
I don't care if the cross goes or stays, I am just sick and tired of paying for a decade of court costs fighting for it. Someone solve the problem! Mayor, President I don't care, just solve the problem or else I am going to go up there with some dynamite and "fix the problem" myself.
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