That condo with the view is “pending,” so unless the current sale does not consummate, you could not buy that one. Other than the pending sale, I agree with your basic premise.

Whoops. Looks like the sale didn’t go through after all. The $390k condo with a view is back on the market.

Listing Price History
Date Price Jan 30, 2008 $799,950
Feb 27, 2008 $789,950
Mar 04, 2008 $749,950
Mar 17, 2008 $729,900
Mar 26, 2008 $725,000
Apr 03, 2008 $689,000
Apr 12, 2008 $669,000
Apr 17, 2008 $629,000
Apr 22, 2008 $599,000

I guess the seller was hoping the potential buyers wouldn’t notice the freeway out front.
http://www.redfin.com/stingray/do/printable-listing?listing-id=1438945

Seriously, though: A $200K price drop in two months? That’s what I call panicky.

Note: There were two seemingly identical units for sale here, so I might have the MLS for the one that didn’t sell.

Also, I got a kick out of the description, especially this little bit: “Perfect location near Cal Anderson park (and future light rail station), vibrant Pike/Pine Corridor, and rejuvenated Broadway areas.”

I’d like to find this rejuvenated part of Broadway, because all I see are nail salons, cheap clothing stores and addled street junkies. And that vibrant Pike/Pine Corridor? It’s being torn down to build condos.

Thursday April 24, 10:16 am ET
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sales of new homes plunged in March to the lowest level in 16 1/2 years as housing slumped further at the start of the spring sales season. The median price of a new home in March compared to a year ago fell by the largest amount in nearly four decades.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that sales of new homes dropped by 8.5 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 526,000 units, the slowest sales pace since October 1991.

The median price of a home sold in March dropped by 13.3 percent compared to March 2007, the biggest year-over-year price decline since a 14.6 percent plunge in July 1970.

The dismal news on new home sales followed earlier reports showing that sales of existing homes fell by 2 percent in March. Housing, which boomed for five years, has been in a prolonged slump for the past two years with sales and home prices falling at especially sharp rates in formerly boom areas of the country.

For March, sales were down in all regions of the country, dropping the most in the Northeast, a decline of 19.4 percent. Sales fell by 12.9 percent in the Midwest, 12.5 percent in the Midwest and 4.6 percent in the South.

In other economic news, orders to factories for big-ticket manufactured goods fell for a third straight month in March, the longest string of declines since the 2001 recession, while applications for unemployment benefits fell by 33,000 to 342,000.

Living in apartment type living next to someone with super good hearing is a total curse.

Its like working next to them in a cubicle office, all they do is complain about innocuos noise levels and drive you nuts. As a manger, how do I tell that type of total nuisance to go to Hades?

Buying get a bit easier in this market if you are informed. You know things are going down. As the news spreads that prices are going down and the media can not longer spin it, it becomes self feeding. The exact reverse of “buy now or you’ll be priced out forever” takes over. It becomes “wait, it will go lower”, so nobody buys and prices drop even lower.

Lack of cheap money, etc, accelerates the decrease.

I guess that last drop finally snagged a buyer. If it sold at or near the list price of $390,000, that really sucks for the person trying to sell unit #B2 upstairs. They’re asking $35k more, have slightly less square feet and one less bedroom, plus they lack the large garden patio of the downstairs unit.

The view 1 story up can’t be that much ($35k) better than at the ground floor (which is pretty stunning, even from the street).

It just sucks to buy (or sell) in this environment, because both parties will have a bad taste in their mouths, thinking they didn’t make as good a deal as it could have been.

Second set of paragraphs were how Town Houses were supposed to be a buffer between large towers of condo/apartment buildings with retail on the main level.

So I edited to this set of points, but this comment really had good information when I started.

Yes the prices will come down on town houses. The fire chief in the day said a fire in these, and this is where it all went sideways, in these clusters of town houses is indefensible. The police said they could not adequately patrol these neighborhoods if the city allowed these high concentrations of town houses. It’s a rat’s maze of driveways.
The idea in the beginning is that these would be Condo Associations for some in house controls, but that got shot down pretty quick.
OK dangerous circumstances, packed in housing, cheap construction; cause if you think it’s easy to be a Real Estate agent, what classes do you have to take to be a builder/developer? All of this adds up to shoddy construction on tiny pieces of dirt with no over sight, no board to decide to paint, or maintain. Now how much would you pay?