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| 11/23 |
| 2008/2/21-25 [Reference/RealEstate] UID:49205 Activity:kinda low |
2/20 Suburbs, The Next Slum?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime
\_ Well let me tell ya, city living SUCKS if you're having kids.
The baby crying, the constant buying of baby/boy/girl things
requiring lots of trips to/from the elevator, waiting for
the elevator, people knocking your wall to shut your baby up,
etc etc. As long as people have kids, there will be demand
for suburbia.
\_ I personally would rather live within walking distance of
all my shopping than drive. Do you really think using the
elevator is more inconvenient than having to strap your
kid into a carseat, drive to the mall, find parking, etc?
I have a kid in The City and I have had none of the problems
you describe. Did you actually try it, or are you imagining
what it might be like?
\_ How do you take all of your stuff home with you when
you walk? When I lived in Berkeley I had to call a cab
to drive me home after I walked to the store. At that
point I may as well drive.
\_ It depends. Mostly we just shop every day, since there
is a produce store 1/2 block away and a butcher 1 block
away. Safeway is only three blocks away, and I have a
push cart that will hold 3 bags. Twice a month or so,
we go to Costco and take a car for that. I gotta tell
you having a 24 hour/day grocery store three blocks
away is very convenient.
\_ Uh, no. As dollar devaluate, tons of wealthy foreigners will
start buying up properties again. Remember when the Japs owned
25% of NYC's buildings in the 80s? The rollercoaster goes up,
and goes down, and up, and down...
\_ Friend of Kunstler?
\_ Seems like a good article, but a surplus of 22 million large
lot homes? On what planet? Certainly not in urban CA. The
article admits much of what it says applies to newly built
suburbs on the fringes far from central cities. Is 40% of the
housing stock really accounted for in such a way? I doubt it. What
they call "lifestyle centers" in the article is really mixed
use. It is popular now. Eventually it will go out of style and
then be popular again. This is cyclical, not some long-term trend.
\_ Mixed use has been how most cities have been arranged for most
of history, actually.
\_ Most wealthy people have been trying to get as
far from the noise and the filth of cities throughout
most of history, actually.
\_ Ultimately growth will be financially driven. Right now urban
developers have a tougher time selling and making new homes
while suburban developers have reaped huge profits during the
housing boom.
\_ Developers react to the demands of the public or else they
go out of business.
\_ "Right now"? You mean a few years ago, right? Right now,
suburban developers are facing massive write offs and are
dumping inventory like mad in auctions. Some of them are
even going out of business. Meanwhile, the luxury high-rise
condo construction business in SF is booming.
\_ Doubtful. Bust is bust, regardless of suburb or hi-rise.
Got URL to support your claim, or you're just talking
outa your ass?
\_ link:www.csua.org/u/kuo (PDF)
Note condo price per sq foot graph.
Or check out http://socketsite.com for more details.
\_ Note the rate of change of condo inventory over time
compared to that of SFR. It looks like the condo
curve is getting steeper.
\_ That is because literally thousands of new luxury
condos are coming onto the market. This has not
\_ And are not being sold judging by the rate of
change of inventory. Inventory doesn't mean
"units in existence". It means "units on the
market". With all of those units coming
online what do you think will happen to
prices?
\_ Are you familiar with the concept of
gentrification? I personally think that
prices will stay more or less steady.
SF is more like Manhattan than it is
like Las Vegas.
\_ 1. I think prices in Manhattan will
fall short-term, too.
2. SF is how many million people short
of Manhattan?
lowered prices, either. Just drive through SOMA
sometime, they are building them like mad. I think
10k new units are projected to come onto the market
in the next three years. Will this crash the market?
I dunno, but it certainly has not yet...
\_ Do you think 10-20K new people are going to move
into SF and buy one of these units? They are
still building them like mad because the
projects have been in the works since the
market was hot. Remember when commercial was
hot in SF and how there was a lot of new
construction which led to vacant buildings
for years after that? And then <DEAD>dot.com<DEAD>
happened and those places along Market and in
SOMA were finally leased? And then <DEAD>dot.com<DEAD>
busted and they were vacant again? And now
they are building "lofts" in the same place
which were snapped up? What happens next in
this cycle?
\_ To answer your question, yes I remember and
I remember that home prices never really went
down, even during the bust. I do expect
10-20k people to move into SF to fill those
units. Why wouldn't they?
\_ Home prices didn't go down, but prices
for commercial space went way down. Why
do you expect the population of SF to
increase so much in the next 3 years?
The population is 33,000 smaller now than
it was in 2000 according to the US Census.
\_ SF lost a lot of people after the dot
com bust. The population has been going
up for the last three years. Remember
1/4M commute into SF every day to work.
It would not be surprising if 1/10th of
them ditched the commute if given the
chance.
\_ They will only do that if prices
fall to a level they can afford
or else those so inclined likely
would have already. |
| 11/23 |
|
| www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime com banner March 2008 Atlantic Monthly The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today's McMansions into tomorrow's tenements. Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community's 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son's bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who'd moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, "I thought I'd bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen." In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south of Sacramento, the houses are nicer than those at Windy Ridge--many once sold for well over $500,000--but the phenomenon is the same. At the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four years. Graffiti, broken windows, and other markers of decay have multiplied. Susan McDonald, president of the local residents' association and an executive at a local bank, told the Associated Press, "There's been gang activity. In the first half of last year, residential burglaries rose by 35 percent and robberies by 58 percent in suburban Lee County, Florida, where one in four houses stands empty. Charlotte's crime rates have stayed flat overall in recent years--but from 2003 to 2006, in the 10 suburbs of the city that have experienced the highest foreclosure rates, crime rose 33 percent. Civic organizations in some suburbs have begun to mow the lawns around empty houses to keep up the appearance of stability. Police departments are mapping foreclosures in an effort to identify emerging criminal hot spots. The decline of places like Windy Ridge and Franklin Reserve is usually attributed to the subprime-mortgage crisis, with its wave of foreclosures. And the crisis has indeed catalyzed or intensified social problems in many communities. But the story of vacant suburban homes and declining suburban neighborhoods did not begin with the crisis, and will not end with it. A structural change is under way in the housing market--a major shift in the way many Americans want to live and work. It has shaped the current downturn, steering some of the worst problems away from the cities and toward the suburban fringes. And its effects will be felt more strongly, and more broadly, as the years pass. Its ultimate impact on the suburbs, and the cities, will be profound. Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025--that's roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today. For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and '70s--slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay. The suburban dream began, arguably, at the New York World's Fair of 1939 and '40. "Highways and Horizons," better known as "Futurama," was overwhelmingly the fair's most popular exhibit; At the heart of the exhibit was a scale model, covering an area about the size of a football field, that showed what American cities and towns might look like in 1960. Visitors watched matchbox-sized cars zip down wide highways. The exhibit would not impress us today, but at the time, it inspired wonder. E B White wrote in Harper's, "A ride on the Futurama ... induces approximately the same emotional response as a trip through the Cathedral of St. The suburban transformation that began in 1946, as GIs returned home, took almost half a century to complete, as first people, then retail, then jobs moved out of cities and into new subdivisions, malls, and office parks. As families decamped for the suburbs, they left behind out-of-fashion real estate, a poorer residential base, and rising crime. Once-thriving central-city retail districts were killed off by the combination of regional suburban malls and the 1960s riots. By the end of the 1970s, people seeking safety and good schools generally had little alternative but to move to the suburbs. In 1981, Escape From New York, starring Kurt Russell, depicted a near future in which Manhattan had been abandoned, fenced off, and turned into an unsupervised penitentiary. Cities, of course, have made a long climb back since then. Just nine years after Russell escaped from the wreck of New York, Seinfeld--followed by Friends, then Sex and the City--began advertising the city's renewed urban allure to Gen-Xers and Millennials. Many Americans, meanwhile, became disillusioned with the sprawl and stupor that sometimes characterize suburban life. These days, when Hollywood wants to portray soullessness, despair, or moral decay, it often looks to the suburbs--as The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives attest--for inspiration. In the past decade, as cities have gentrified, the suburbs have continued to grow at a breakneck pace. and Los Angeles has swung a leg over the 10,000-foot San Gabriel Mountains into the Mojave Desert. Some experts expect conventional suburbs to continue to sprawl ever outward. Yet today, American metropolitan residential patterns and cultural preferences are mirror opposites of those in the 1940s. Most Americans now live in single-family suburban houses that are segregated from work, shopping, and entertainment; but it is urban life, almost exclusively, that is culturally associated with excitement, freedom, and diverse daily life. And as in the 1940s, the real-estate market has begun to react. Pent-up demand for urban living is evident in housing prices. Twenty years ago, urban housing was a bargain in most central cities. Per square foot, urban residential neighborhood space goes for 40 percent to 200 percent more than traditional suburban space in areas as diverse as New York City; and Washington, DC It's crucial to note that these premiums have arisen not only in central cities, but also in suburban towns that have walkable urban centers offering a mix of residential and commercial development. For instance, luxury single-family homes in suburban Westchester County, just north of New York City, sell for $375 a square foot. A luxury condo in downtown White Plains, the county's biggest suburban city, can cost you $750 a square foot. This same pattern can be seen in the suburbs of Detroit, or outside Seattle. People are being drawn to the convenience and culture of walkable urban neighborhoods across the country--even when those neighborhoods are small. next> Christopher B Leinberger is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, a professor of urban planning at the University of Michigan, and a real-estate developer. His most recent book, The Option of Urbanism, was published by Island Press in November. What Main Street Can Learn From the Mall (November 1995) A guided tour with a landscape architect and retailing specialist who believes that shopping malls--vilify them though we might--can offer moribund cities what they desperately need: practical lessons in the psychology of commerce. How Business is Reshaping America (November 1995) The rapid growth of office space in suburbs is creating "urban villages," which are confronting local governments with new kinds of urban-planning problems. A Good ... |
| socketsite.com reader in contract at Infinity needs a new lender ("my loan provider citibank is dropping Infinity as an approved project") and seeks some other readers' thoughts on choosing between Wells, Chase or Countrywide. SocketSite Readers Report JustQuotes: Get Past The Politics, What's It Mean For Permitting? "Debra Walker, a tenant advocate and artist who was active in the fight against dot-com boom era live-work loft development, lost her position as president of the San Francisco Building Inspection Commission on Wednesday, as commissioners appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom voted her out. The commission voted 4-3 to replace Walker with Frank Lee, a Newsom appointee and the assistant to the director of the city Department of Public Works. The vote divided along lines of commissioners appointed by Newsom and those chosen by Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin. The commission sets policy for the Building Inspection Department, which enforces building-related and housing codes and issues permits for virtually all construction activity in the city." Seemingly Random The Proposed Design For 1355 Pacific (And Request For That Of 1536) 1355 Pacific: Proposed Currently a two-story industrial building (and former home to LeeMAH Electronics), developers have their sights set on razing and rebuilding 1355 Pacific as a four-story, 23 unit building with 24 parking spaces. been demolished and will be reborn as a four-story, six-unit mixed-use building. "No photo available" according to our reader's map, but perhaps a plugged-in tipster can keep the community karma flowing by passing along a rendering (or at the very least a lead on the architects). Bernard Maybeck (think Palace of Fine Arts) from offering these words: The house is our attempt to suggest the idea of an English character in California. Although this house would never happen in England, it yet has an English feeling. The lower wing is a chapel form living room greatly used in an early period, the ceiling of this room is very similar to one in Sainesbury Hill Lancashire. The second story windows are of iron like their English prototypes. The building and its setting among the trees loudly proclaims the good taste of Mrs and Mr Erlanger from whom the suggestions came. A proposed merger of two surface parking lots (1622-1650 Broadway), the new building would rise eight stories and a little over 80 feet into the air and consist of 34 condos (1 1-bedroom, 25 2-bedroom, 8 3-bedroom; There are no existing street trees along Broadway in front of the project site. There are two poplar trees at the rear of the project site and one large tree on an adjacent property to the north, which would not be categorized as protected trees as defined by the Public Works Code Article 16 Sections 802-811. The proposed project would, however, retain and protect these trees during construction, as well as add up to four street trees to the front of the property. The Broadway faade would be set back four to ten feet from the property line with landscaping in the intervening area. Exterior finishes would consist of a combination of stone cladding, cement plaster, and darkened zinc. the Giants have it tied up -- And the Giants are encouraging this perception in order to keep down the competition. For a project of this size the experience and talent brought to the table so far is very modest - both on the lead-developer side and on the architect side. Having a small cast of bidders with some weak members will also greater depress the potential land value offered. others have to hope the Port understands this dynamic, and can get the value the city deserves." voted unanimously to approve a route change for the proposed 17-mile Central Subway, which would act as an extension to the newly constructed T-Third line. Under the route change, the subway line would go underground after the Fourth and Brannan streets station. Previously, the plan called for the train to go below ground a few blocks south at Fourth and King streets, but MTA officials said residents in the South of Market neighborhood lobbied for the change. The subway will run below ground all the way to its destination in Chinatown, an area with comparatively few transit options. Officials hope to begin construction in 2010 and have the line running by 2016. The new route is expected to reduce what is now a 20-minute bus trip from Muni's station at Fourth and King streets to Chinatown down to seven minutes. At its peak, the line could carry as many 80,000 riders a day, said Nathaniel Ford, the MTA's executive director." on Friday: Higher balance loans which are now temporarily eligible for Federal Housing Authority (FHA) and GSE guarantee programs under HR 5140, the Stimulus Package, will not be eligible for inclusion in TBA-eligible pools. They are instead expected to be securitized under unique pool codes for trading on a "specified pool" basis or inclusion in Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit (REMIC) transactions. will be locked out of the market where trading helps lower rates to consumers... Including jumbo loans in TBA pools would have had the unintended effect of raising rates on traditional conforming loans since investors assume they will receive the larger loans when they take delivery of the bonds, according to Freddie Mac In TBA, the loans must be deemed fungible, so investors buy without knowing attributes. But today the land's still empty, and there's no telling when that might change. Those fenced-off lots are in limbo - victims of a larger process in which everyone has his own utopian demands, and nobody's shy about gumming up the works if he doesn't get what he wants." |