Got a few interesting stories for you today.
First up, from the Puget Sound Business Journal: Seattle, Bellevue luxury condominium towers are slow to fill up
Three-quarters of the new condos at five major buildings in Seattle and Bellevue are unsold, leaving developers in a high-stakes battle to unload millions of dollars worth of homes.
The units — at Fifteen Twenty-One, the Four Seasons Private Residences, Olive 8, Bellevue Towers and Washington Square Towers — represent the majority of large condos that have opened here in the past 18 months. In many cases, dozens of pre-sale agreements booked by developers have failed to come to fruition.
County records show just 317 units have recorded closed sales out of the 1,321 offered at these five projects, which is fewer than some of the developers had expected to sell at this point.
The monthly NWMLS stats really don’t give us a complete picture of just how over-supplied the local condo market truly is. I’m still working on compiling the Condo Sales Status Project. There’s a lot of info out there.
You may recall the free advertising given by the Seattle Times to the Thorton Creek condos back in March for their “if you lose your job we’ll pay your mortgage” promotion. Another story about the development in yesterday’s paper contained an interesting bit of information:
Seattle Public Utilities recently completed the stream-restoration channel as part of a new development that brings more than 100 condos, 278 apartments, senior housing, a 14-screen movie theater and more retail space to the North Seattle neighborhood.
Lorig and Stellar Holdings say they’ve rented about 50 of the apartments, which exceeds their goal to date. The market has been slow for the condos, however, with only one unit sold, said Stephen Holt, partner at Lorig in charge of the project.
No word on whether that one sold unit was a result of their big promotional push in March. A representative for the developer has offered to talk with me, but unfortunately I have yet to find room in my schedule.
Here’s another update. Recall the October ‘08 post Former WaMu Pres. Tries to Flip Mansion. As it turns out, he was finally successful: Ex-WaMu exec unloads Seattle mansion
Looks like former Washington Mutual President Steve Rotella has been given a lesson in lost value, sort of like the shareholders who watched their stock tank in the months before the bank collapsed last year.
Rotella and his wife, Esther, just sold their Capitol Hill mansion for $4.7 million, according to King County property records, about $1.5 million less than they listed it for after WaMu failed nine months ago.
We’ll end today’s post on an upbeat note from BusinessWeek.
Two big factors will help bolster Seattle housing prices in the next few years: stringent building restrictions and basic geography.
City officials kept a tight rein on development during the boom. … An isthmus, Seattle is hugged by the Puget Sound on the west and Lake Washington on the east.
With such constraints, Seattle doesn’t have a significant supply of homes on the market.
…
Some areas of Seattle are on the mend already, with houses even sparking bidding wars.
…
Building restrictions—and the city’s unique geography—should help lift prices.
It would appear that the writers of BusinessWeek seem to think that the city of Seattle proper is completely insulated from real estate trends in Snohomish County, the Eastside, or south of Lake Washington. Interesting theory. Good luck with that.
(Jeanne Lang Jones & Kirsten Grind, Puget Sound Business Journal, 06.19.2009)
(Michelle Ma, Seattle Times, 06.19.2009)
(Kirsten Grind, Puget Sound Business Journal, 06.18.2009)
(BusinessWeek, 06.18.2009)
