The problem is that some people do make money off these bubbles. And usually only one person (Quattrone, Lay, Mozilo) or a small few (Ebbers, Case) takes the heat.

Was that the “Timber Ridge” complex on 140th Ave, by any chance?

How about the 3rd option, renting a nice house close by for the same price?

I’ve never understood condo’s for most people. When your tired of owning a home then it’s time to enjoy the savings and freedom of the rental market. If too many things break, move :-)

At the end of the day it is just an apartment. The likelyhood of making any money on a condo in the next decade around here is about as likely as bats flying out of my…

You can also slow the rent increases with a good counter-offer. Just subtract the cost of having the apartment vacant for one or perhaps two months, plus any needed cosmetic improvements from the proposed increase.

That said, my previous converted Apt. building had sat basically unsold until last month. All of a sudden all but one are “sold?” The listing price never went down more than 5K for any unit. Gotta wonder if it is a case where someone thinks that the “scale” of buying in bulk, then renting–at a higher than market rate, but less than the initial mortgage, will be overcome by inflation.

Just wild speculation on a puzzling situation. Conversions are no better in most cases than the previous use. You end up paying more for way out of proportion to what you get, from what I have seen.

Are banks shying away from lending on those?

I was always under the impression that there was a threshold to the % of units that could be rented out in a complex in order to get financing for it.

After owning a home in the past I’m fine with the condo lock-n-go lifestyle myself. However…with all the deee-licious rentals out there now (and more to come!)…who on earth would consider buying a condo in Seattle?

And don’t forget to NEGOTIATE NEGOTIATE NEGOTIATE on those rental prices!

Just a week after dumping Expo 62 (Seattle PI article on it for a different spin) The DJC reports that Intracorp is now trying to dump the 91 unit and ill situated Domaine. From the broker’s site:

Moran & Company is pleased to announce that it has been retained as the exclusive listing agent for the sale of Lake Union View Apartments, a 91-unit pre-sale apartment community located in Seattle’s downtown/Lake Union.

From urbanlivn.com

that being said, most of the condos in seattle are trash and i would never buy one. most of them are stick-built instead of concrete and steel and have terrible noise problems.

the new $500-600k condos in Ballard are concrete on the ground floor and stick-built the rest of the way up. this ensures they’ll have higher maintenance costs and more noise problems.

• Rent Increases Likely to Taper Off Soon
• Rents Reverting to Mean

Rents increasing 8% in 2007 was entirely expected, and predicted in my July post above. If they continue shooting up faster than 5-6% later this year, then we’ll have something interesting to talk about.

That’s my two cents, anyway.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2004159180_rentals03.html

I’m not bringing this up to restart the argument of “buying vs. renting” — I just find it curious that the inset box is highlighted but the main article was not mentioned.

Not a realtor, not a landlord, not a bitter anything except bitter renter/wanna-be buyer.

Many of those are on the market….too bad they are trying to rent them out at a rate that covers their full mortgage (which I’m assuming is 0 down IO given some of the rents I’ve seen on CL)

“the belief then was that living in a condo was the ‘new paradigm’”

Kind of like dot-com companies circa-1997. Losing money was the new paradigm. If I sell furniture below my cost and offer free shipping I’ll be hugely successful! “But how will you make money?” “We’ll scale it up!”

Umm…..

Actually, maybe I should say could have been a viable option for some. While many of the shortcomings of condos are inherent in the basic concept, I think that execution has been a major shortcoming, at least locally. Why so many studios and one-bedroom units? Without the bubble fever, who could consider signing a 30-year obligation to live in a small space with little or no outdoor area and one (or no) bedroom? Yes, I know that the average buyer doesn’t live one place for 30 years, but the obligation is still there (at leastif you have a sense of integrity and won’t just walk out on debts).

Buying real estate is always going to limit one’s flexibility to some extent (such as making moving for a job more difficult) but even a small house at least offers a second bedroom and maybe a garage. What is the owner of a 500 or 600 square foot condo supposed to do if (s)he gets married or wants to live with someone else? What if they have a kid? Will they make the toddler live in the coat closet? If 2-br units with usable decks, storage lockers, etc were the norm then at least there would be a little room to breathe and grow, while still allowing for much higher residential densities than detached SFRs.

So why do they build so many tiny units? “Affordability”, I guess. But affordability pretty much went out the window with the real estate craze. It’s not just absolute prices that are ridiculous, it’s also prices relative to other options. Larger units exist but they seem to cost very nearly as much as houses of equivalent size. Even the 1BR units seem to be offered at a much lower discount from house prices than I would have imagined possible 5 or 6 years ago. I just don’t get it.

I’m looking to buy right now (well, “soon”) and I’m only looking at places with 0.25 acres or more and some privacy (trees, etc). I cannot stand sharing any common walls/floors with anyone and love my peace and quiet.

Condo/townhouse living is not for everyone…

To Ira’s point, I think I too must be an old fashioned freak as the idea of a little house (even with a little yard) sounds much better than a condo. The idea of high HOA dues makes me want to puke.

How much more home could you buy for ~$250 per month? Especially at 5.5%?

Hmm. But I thought that the condo market was still hot, hot, hot. What about the “strong condominium price growth” this very paper was telling us about just last month?

Simple, the strong condo growth story was written by Elizabeth Rhodes, while this story was not. The Seattle Times should seriously look at dumping Rhodes in my opinion. She is such a blatant example of biased reporting.

I think what drove much of the decrease in occupancy was rental units being purchased for conversion. They are off the market for , 12 or even 18 months while being “rehabbed”.

What you have in the middle is the number of available rentals being squeezed. Rent’s had stubbornly remained low until last year – when they shot back up to where one would expect them to be based on income growth.

Given the weakness in the resale market, I expect you’ll see many of these units coming back onto the market as rentals/failed flips soon, and reversion to mean on the % owner occupied/occupied units.