‘Rough Sailing’ For Wisconsin Condos
The Capital Times reports on the condo boom in Wisconsin. “With lots of seniors ready to give up their homes, Monona seemed the ideal place for a condominium boom. Now, developers of a string of condo projects are either retooling or dropping their plans. Blamed are a sagging demand for such housing and rising construction costs.”
“Projects being rethought include Bert Slinde’s Watertower Plaza; Kevin Metcalfe’s Riverfront Condos and Metcalfe’s Water Crest Condominiums; and Robert Niebauer’s redevelopment of the Garden Circle apartments. In May, the Monona Plan Commission voted to allow owner Wes Crawford to temporarily rent out the remaining units through January 2008.”
“Crawford’s Landing, where 11 condominiums sit atop a retail center at Broadway and Monona Drive, also has seen rough sailing. Dane County property records show that just two of the 11 condominiums have sold since they became available last fall.”
“‘There’s no question we are very concerned about the slowdown in the market,’ Metcalfe said. ‘Construction costs are up and sales and down; the two are working against you.’”
“‘We’ve been hearing that from everybody, that the condo market’s gone soft,’ agreed Monona City Administrator David Berner.”
“John Deininger, executive vice president of the Realtors Association of South Central Wisconsin, said ‘we are certainly in a changing market. It has become more of a buyer’s market,’ Deininger added. ‘Inventories are up. It’s taking people longer to sell a house.’”
“Tonight, the Monona City Council will be asked to consider changes to Slinde’s Watertower Plaza. It was to have first-floor retail shops and 13 condominiums on the second floor. Slinde’s new plans call for the elimination of the condominiums and underground parking. Instead, the second floor will be office space. ‘The residential real estate market has really slowed down in our area,’ Slinde said.”
“Slinde said The Monona Woodlands, his condominium project adjacent to the Watertower Plaza site, is only one-third sold. That project has 47 one and two-bedroom units.”
“Metcalfe said construction of the Water Crest condominiums, which was slated to begin in October, has been put off until 2007. And the start of construction is dependent on the pre-sale of some of the 46 units over the winter. Metcalfe said no pre-sales have yet occurred.”
“On Broadway, where Metcalfe has proposed a controversial plan to redevelop a mobile home park into a mix of housing, retail and office space, the wind also is shifting. ‘We are reevaluating that project,’ Metcalfe said.”
“He said ithe said will include fewer condominiums and possibly less retail space. This is the second time that Metcalfe has changed the Broadway plans. Originally, the two-phase project included 202 condominiums. In February, he scaled that back to 116.”
Runway is too short for a soft landing:
http://bakersfieldbubble.blogspot.com
why would there be a condon in WI or Asheville NC
why ? to hear your neighbor flush
We don’t hear much about it now, but in 2005 condo-mania spread to the most unlikely of places. Montana, Brownsville, TX, etc. It happens at the tail end of most housing cycles, usually ending with a spurt of apartment-to-condo conversions.
Why do apartment-condo conversions come at the end of a boom, and not in the middle?
Asheville is finally on the conversion bandwagon, with crap like this:
http://asheville.craigslist.org/rfs/208702368.html.
You gotta understand, Asheville is still a town where quite a high percentage of the housing stock is still trailer homes.
I saw a trailer stacked arrangement there= wierd
you mean these:
http://www.glazerarchitecture.com/lexingtonstation.html
yes !
manhattan/broklyn maybe,but Asheville
holy crap the interlocking trailers are going for 700K !!!!
Ben, I just saw some being built in….Springerville!
What’s next…Fredonia??
I saw it happen in the late 1970s also. Just as a number of old dumpy apartment buildings were getting ready to convert to condo, the economy tanked.
I remember an article from the Dallas Morning News in 2005 about speculators buying parched desert land in South Texas that had no water or electricity for miles and miles away and were not even incorporated into a municipality. The fools were basically buying a plot of hell that could not be used for farming, ranching or even building a home, unless you used solar power or a generator along with buying water from somebody and having it delivered to your home. I’d like to see a follow-up story on how those investments are going
If you google around a bit looking for Hudspeth County and land sales and scams, you’ll see this! Some bloke (can’t remember his name or website) has documented the woes of some of the ignorant buyers. I’ve been in that area a couple of times, and boy, is it bleak.
One case sticks with me: He encountered a couple, wife crying beside the road, who “found” their land, or at least were close, since I don’t think it even had road access, but had earlier discovered that their stretch of desert wasteland, aka investment and retirement property, was purchases with a ton of liens on it.
He goes on to talk about one of the major industries there being sewage sludge drying, which on windy days makes for nasty dust storms and chronic cases of pink eye. Niiiiiice.
So instead they build more commercial real estate, just because its still a hot market. What will happen when it inevitably slows down also?
“Tonight, the Monona City Council will be asked to consider changes to Slinde’s Watertower Plaza. It was to have first-floor retail shops and 13 condominiums on the second floor. Slinde’s new plans call for the elimination of the condominiums and underground parking. Instead, the second floor will be office space. ‘The residential real estate market has really slowed down in our area,’ Slinde said.”
Mixed-use, New Urbanism, NeoTrad, Smart Growth. These are all the first to fall as they are the least desireable in the true marketplace. The very fact that the City Council is involved says that they cannot even exist in the best of times without subsidy.
It’s not true that they must be subsidized to get City Council approval. In many places, the planning board or commission is advisory, and actual approval of zoning changes, etc. must be done by the City Council.
Irrelevant. They are subsidized and that is all that matters.
These condominiums are targeted for older people who are selling their traditional single family homes. I don’t get that. Very few people want to move into town in their late middle age/early old age. And it would be more expensive for them as there’s the cost to move, new furniture, real estate commissions on the sale of their house, a cost for parking the car, and so on.
There is nothing to “get.” This is planner fantasy nothing more.
I know some families who moved out into the suburbs to have a SFH to raise their children in. Now, the children have moved out, the house is too big (to clean :-)) and the parents think about moving back into town into smaller space. I don’t know, however, how prevalent such cases are.
Classic “aging out” scenario. The truth is that they don’t move back because of crime and taxes and such even if the other factors seem attractive.
Take it from me. You keep the bigger home when retired because the children move back home. Jobless, divorced, etc they move back home.
“Mixed-use, New Urbanism, NeoTrad, Smart Growth. These are all the first to fall as they are the least desireable in the true marketplace. The very fact that the City Council is involved says that they cannot even exist in the best of times without subsidy.”
most likely the city council is probably also involved because the developers want a handout.
“Mixed-use, New Urbanism, NeoTrad, Smart Growth. These are all the first to fall as they are the least desireable in the true marketplace.”
C’mon you’re really reaching.
The least desireable are crappy conversions from rentals to condos. Those offer nothing in better planning. Fifth avenue & Gramercy park and nice areas of Paris & London sell well.
“The very fact that the City Council is involved says that they cannot even exist in the best of times without subsidy.” Again, confusing correlation with causation.
It is easier as a developer to get a big chunk of land and spew faceless clones across them. Hence things with more moving parts to satisfy more people take longer and then you have a time delay.
“Mixed-use, New Urbanism, NeoTrad, Smart Growth. These are all the first to fall as they are the least desireable in the true marketplace.” CIte please. Otherwise it’s just neo-con, Republican sermonizing.
Better a citeless neo-con Republican sermon than a blatant attempt at trolling. You want honestly want a cite and or several thousand lines of supprting data you ask nice.
Research by Shiller and Case showed that in past RE cycles, bubbles hit the coasts very hard and Wisconsin, not at all. Stories about the demise of Wisconsin’s condo boom show exactly how different it is this time.
in 1990 downturn oil patch was off in 84-85 and mid west never boomed
thats 40% of all pop, not in the game
it is different this time !
The Garden Circle apartments are/were low income housing for many, many years. They were going to convert these into condos? That is unbelievable. Who was the genius behind that idea?
My sister lives in Asheville (folksy small College town populated by boomer hippies and morphed with Medford rednecks). Great place for manufactured homes.
Wow, I spent 5 years in Madison and visited friends this past March. I saw a ton of “for sale” signs up but was constantly reassured that this was normal for March (perhaps it was, but not for September?).
Of course, Madisonians (including my friends) truely believe that “everyone wants to live here” therefore the Madison RE market can never go down. Isn’t it amazing how many places everyone wants to live? Madison is a nice college town. But there are a lot of nice college towns in this country and a lot of nice towns without colleges. And of course, some folks could only live in a major city or out in the country with a bit of land.
Part of the psychology of this bubble has been that most people in most towns live where they want to live–good job, good friends, family nearby, affordable, lots to do, relaxing, not too warm, not too cold, etc… When real estate prices started going up this became a positive feedback loop–rising prices supported the local belief that “everyone wants to live here”. Which in turn supported continually rising home prices.
How many people do you know that don’t think they live in a great place?
This is a good point. An additional problem with college towns is that the afforadability scale becomes very skewed. Wages are kept low for many professionals due to the fact that you have a pool of highly educated people that will work for lower wages because they are stuck there while their spouse finishes Ph.D, law school, etc, or got a tenure track job there. You have this high end of medical, law professors, etc, who make excellent incomes, and from there it tends to drop off rapidly. Software engineers, for example, why should the company pay big city wages when they can snag a continuous supply of fresh graduates that want to hang around town for a couple of years until their girlfriend graduates or whatever? Iowa City, a somewhat similar town, is a classic case-a friend of mine applied to be a health inspector, inspecting restaurants for cleanliness and so forth, pay was about 32,000 a year, and he found out he didn’t even make the final cut because all of the serious candidates had at least an MS in biology or other science. Most people that would have the income to afford condos like this soon get wise and bail for a city like Chicago or further afield where their skills are at much more of a premium-this is part of the Brain Drain often lamented in Midwestern newspapers-and the college towns are actually better off than places like Milwaukee in keeping these young people with high income potential.
Agree,
One of the key factors making college towns desirable places to live was that they generally offered quite a bit to do with a low cost of living. As a professor, I can promise you that outside of the professional schools faculty do not generally have high salaries. If college towns become unaffordable, then are they still attractive places to live? The low-cost, low-pay tradeoff has been lost for many of these places.
The taxes in Madison, by the way, are excessive to say the least.
“With lots of seniors ready to give up their homes, Monona seemed the ideal place for a condominium boom.
But I don’t understand. I thought all those seniors were supposed to buy in Florida. Suzanne said so. She researched this.
I live in Madison, and while the areas in question have seen somewhat of a resurgence over the past couple of years, they aren’t THAT great. Broadway is a high-traffic area that runs parallel to our Beltline, if you want your kids to go to the park about 1/2 mile down you have to drive them, you sure as hell wouldn’t send them to cross the street themselves. I’m guessing that the two units that sold were flippers…
Also, Monona actually has HIGHER property taxes than Madison (and we’re pretty insane). The seniors are moving because they can’t afford to live there, why would they buy condos in the same location?
I was actually hoping to hear about an apartment complex that went condo while we were living there - we decided not to take them up on thier offer to buy. Nice enough townhouses build around the 60’s, but paper thin walls and you had a MAJOR road less than 25 feet away for your backyard. Nice enough to rent, but buy?
http://www.wisconsinhomes.com/search/search.php?step=quicksearch&search=1&listnum=1380629
We live in Madsion as well and were out recently looking at open houses (great Sunday afternoon sport). The realtor was really trying to qualify if we were buyers or tire kickers (renters hahahaha) I told him we would definately buy when the time was right. He asked when that would be and I told him “when blood was running in the streets”. He laughed and said well then you will be priced out forever. Prices may flatten but they NEVER decline…
These guys are still spewing this stuff.
Go Pack
Do you know what these condos are priced at, and what comparable rents may be?
Ben,
In Madison a 2br 2bath duplex in a decent area goes for $1100 to $1300/month. Asking price for a the same unit would be in the $225K range…
JMS
I sent a long reply, not sure what happened to it. Long story short, for Crawford’s Landing, putting 20% down with 7% fixed interest, comes to about $800/month not including property taxes. Average rent for a 1-bedroom is between 550-700. There WAS a 1-bedroom listed for rent for $800 (which would push it to 900-950), but that was on the water. I’m guessing this would rent for maybe 650-700.
Just wanted to make clear that the above numbers are based on the 1-bedroom condo for 148,900 at Crawford’s Landing:
http://www.firstweber.com/vp/ListingServlet?SITE=FIRSTWEBER&ScreenID=LISTING_DETAIL_P&cd_MLS=689605
….Just on CNBC was an interesting quote from the guest that more
was lost from the Amaranth meltdown than LTCM.? I thought that interesting ,and even more amazing that the market just walked over the body with nary a mis-step. …what’s a few Billion here or there eh?
The condo “boom” in these smal towns is going to fall flat on its face. It’s true that downtown housing is needed and convenient for a lot of cities, but developers roll out these plans that only doctors and lawyers can afford. The media then interviews the developers and hypes up the incredible demand for urban housing. Boise’s first “big” condo project is under construction; demand is so “big” that 29 of the 42 units are for sale on the MLS! Developers have announced other high priced projects in downtown Boise with prices ranging from 250k for a 600 sq ft 1b/1ba to $4 million for a penthouse- in a town where the average person makes $16 an hour. Good luck with these white elephants!
I am seeing the same insanity in my hometown of Pensacola, Florida. Some yuppy types decided that condos in downtown P’cola would be a great idea as part of the re-birth or gentrification of the downtown area. There are condos listed for $2.6 million that are not even on the water. Hey guys this is not Miami!
What gets me is that there is no local historical precedent for “downtown living” in Pensacola. Its not like in the 1920’s or 1870’s or whatever people lived downtown like in New York, New Orleans, etc. Madness.
didn’t know there was a downtown
I blinked the last time I went through
You stumbled onto a good one there PP- no precedent for downtown living.
There’s no precedent for it in Jacksonville, either. Not really in Miami. Not even in Los Angeles, if not mistaken. Nor in Richmond, Charlotte, Nashville, Louisville - most medium-sized cities in the south - downtown all paved and urbanized by the middle of the last century. Who in their right mind would want to live downtown in any of those cities?
Actually has greater historical precedent and makes more sense in places like Roanoke, Asheville or Charlottesville.
Exactly the same thing happening here in Bozeman, MT. Luxury downtown condos at $500k to $1mill (and many for shell only). Who in the heck moves to Bozeman, MT for the downtown nightlife? You have to wonder what kind of peanut head thought this through.
A few very stupid flippers bought early, but almost all of the units remain unoccupied moving into year 2 of the development. I’ll bet that the whole project will fold within the next year.
Not only Madison, this condo boom has infected the whole state. Here in Milwaukee in the last 4 years condos have sprung up all along the river, in marginal neighborhoods, old wharehouses, everywhere. I have been preaching a bubble for a long time now and everyone I knew said, “that only happens on the coasts, not here in the Midwest the bastion of stability”. Well we’ll see….. There are two highrises, set to be the some of the tallest builidings here in Milw. with condos starting at $500,000 and going upwards of $2 M. Milwaukee? You got to be kiding… I knew there was trouble when last year about this time, on a whim I had a mortgage broker run my approval…. $400,000 he came back with. Just because you can, does not mean you should. It pretty much vindicated my thinking at that time, I am glad I am still renting… I’ll sit this out another year and maybe snap one of those downtown highise 2 bedrooms up at a bargain.
I don’t know, with the Great Depression 2 that a lot of people on this blog are predicting, affordability will only get worse. Better just focus on ammo and gold
Anyone that has ever owned a condo (I have) knows that it’s like renting with all of the hassles of owning. I will never live in a condo ever again; learned my lesson pre-bubble, thank god.