By The Tim on April 28th, 2009 at 3:23 PM · 30 Comments
I received an email tip from a reader that Vulcan’s Rollin Street Flats, a 197-unit condo building in South Lake Union is officially going apartment.
Just four days ago, the Seattle Times reported that Vulcan had “pushed back the start of closings on its nearly finished Rollin Street Flats project.”
An email being sent to buyers who had pre-sale agreements at Rollin indicates that Rollin Street was only 25% pre-sold, well below 70% threshold required for Fannie Mae backing (the threshold was previously 51%, and was raised to 70% on March 1):
Market conditions tell us we will not achieve the required minimum 50% pre‐sales in a short timeframe. As a result, we have decided to convert Rollin Street into a rental apartment building. We will refund your earnest money deposit (currently safely held in an escrow account) and any deposits you made for upgrade finish options.
We had expected to be able to communicate this decision earlier, but the process of getting permission from our construction lender took much longer than we had hoped.
I have an email out to Vulcan for confirmation on this, and will update this post if/when I hear back from them.
[Update @ 3:45 PM]
Over at Urbnlivn, Matt has posted the full email from Vulcan.
[Update @ 3:55 PM]
Confirmed by a representative from Vulcan:
Yes, we did send out a buyer communication today that confirmed our intention to convert Rollin Street into an apartment building.
Categories: News
Tags: apartments, condos, repartment, South Lake Union, Vulcan
By The Tim on August 13th, 2008 at 11:50 AM · 124 Comments
Lots of local real estate news hitting today.
Here’s another short one: Moda Condos in Belltown goes rental.
When Moda Condominiums started accepting reservations in September 2006, prospective buyers lined up hours early and quickly locked up all 251 units.
Now, with the Belltown building two months from completion, Moda’s developers have changed it to rental apartments.
“The market and the financing conditions for condominiums have really taken a drastic turn,” said developer G. David Hoy, head of HMI Real Estate Inc. “The vast majority of (Moda’s) buyers decided not to proceed with the purchase of their unit.”
Some buyers found they could no longer get a loan, particularly for second homes or investment units, while others just got cold feet, Hoy said. “Because the vast majority have bailed out on us, we have no choice now but to turn it into a rental.”
Dang. The “vast majority.” I wonder how many of the other condo projects coming online in Seattle over the next couple years will meet the same fate.
(Aubrey Cohen, Seattle P-I, 08.12.2008)
Categories: News
Tags: apartments, Cohen, condos, Moda, repartment, Seattle_PI
By The Tim on December 11th, 2007 at 10:09 AM · 119 Comments
It looks like the picture for renters may not be quite as bleak as we have been led to believe in recent articles. Turns out that new apartments are being built, and even some condo projects are becoming apartments instead.
Apartments have been the poor stepchild to condominium towers over the past few years in downtown Seattle. They’re back in vogue now, but the national housing storm may dampen their return to prominence.
“Isn’t it always this way?” Seattle’s Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors asked in a December report on the apartment market. “Apartment development picks up just as our economy slows down.”
Los Angeles developer Urban Partners announced Monday that it had broken ground on Aspira, a 37-story apartment tower on a former church parking lot at the southwest corner of Stewart Street and Terry Avenue. The Hanover Co., of Houston, is already building the Olivian, a 27-story luxury apartment building at Eighth Avenue and Olive Way, and several other towers are in the works.
Aspira was originally slated for condos. Julie Benezet, managing director of the Urban Partners’ Seattle office, attributed the change to a glut of announced condominium projects, skittishness among the investors who fund condo towers because of condo speculation in other parts of the country, an apartment supply that has shrunk because of a lack of new construction since the dot-com meltdown in 2001 and conversion of existing apartments to condos in recent years.
The article goes on to quote predictions (by Matthew Gardner, amazingly enough) of slowing job growth, rising vacancy rates, a “complete stop” of condo conversions, and stabilizing rents (i.e. tracking with salaries). Now where have we seen this pattern before? Hmm… Oh yeah, pretty much every other bubble city that has seen their market deflate before us.
So much for all the anti-rent scare tactics to keep up the flow of suckers buying overpriced homes.
(Aubrey Cohen, Seattle Times, 12.10.2007)
Categories: News
Tags: apartments, Cohen, condos, Gardner, rent, repartment, Seattle_PI
