However ugly Vertigo is, it's much better than almost any new condo building.

One of the neighbor kids a block over from my townhouse in Fremont, who had grown up in the apartment building one block west of 39th and Francis (never remember the street name) had his family given 30 days to leave or come up with money to buy the apartment.

His family had lived there for about 16 years ...

Good thing the King County Dems and 43rd Dems, among others, have resolutions saying the State Legislature needs to do something about this.

I dunno... I just read a story on MSN detailing how condo-conversion sales are crashing around the rest of the country, forcing owners to turn them back into rental units.

So, maybe there's hope for Seattle yet!

and, i recall a friend of mine telling me about these vacation rental properties that don't pay city sales taxes, but are basically hotels, being put up in buildings such The Electra by the convention center. I think the DPD is investigating it - how come the Stranger isn't looking into it? The association there is from one of the guys who is doing these conversions.

Regarding your second to last sentence, I'm guessing any elected city official who would support this idea would be looking at a one-way ticket out of office.

Don't fuck with the single-family neighborhoods--they'll tear up the streets!

The sales sign is still up at the Vertigo about a year after its conversion, and it looks half-empty.

Shitty, and half-empty.

What kind of a name for a HOME is "Vertigo"?!!

I have a conversion-to-homeownership story.

Couple lives in great old 1920's building. Owner decides to convert building into condos and offers all tenants the option to buy their units at a price well below market value. Couple purchases said unit (thank you, sub-prime mortgage market) and lives happily ever after, realizing that they would have never had the opportunity to buy their place had it been for sale on the open market.

So there.

Sounds like a great rental house, but speaking of mortgage bubble burst effects, NY Times reported house-renters all over the country are getting surprised by foreclosure notices to vacate being tacked to the front door. While we wait to see if dems’ draft legislation on that actually goes anywhere, best get those protections (i.e., landlord required to immediately disclose preforeclosure lender activity) inserted into your lease before signing on an SFH or condo rental. With more unsaleable—and possibly unrealistically financed—SFH’s and condos coming available for rent in Seattle over the next couple years, that’s a piece of renter protection that could mean a lot.

As for rezoning SFH neighborhoods, that’s difficult for elected officials to get behind. Those neighborhoods are where all the electeds’ most untouchable constituents live, and they like living there precisely because of the SFH character. Spot zoning could fly, but only if SFH neighborhood voters can be sold on a tight system for reviewing applications. They’ve grown justifiably jaded on City Hall’s ability to design and run a system that could do that, so a tough sell.

As the market continues to shift and crush condo developer dreams all over town, apartments will get built. More conversion plans will revert back to apartments also. Finally, there’s also a decent chance rental rates will slide back down too, since they’re tied to income pretty closely.

Well, the part about decreasing rents is probably correct.

The population isn't rising that quickly. People aren't going to be packed into rental houses while condos lie vacant.

Condo conversions will flip back to rentals either by the developers, or by people looking to own/manage individual rental properties.

As the profit motive leaches out of the housing market, hopefully people will start remembering that Seattle is cold, wet, and dismal nine months out of the year.

Not the idiots that buy into condos named after inner-ear disorders, of course.

@ 11

Um, re-read your first two sentences.
Then ram your head into a wall for being retarded.

No, the population isn't growing that fast, BUT - the number of people needing immediate rental housing IS growing. It's growing much more quickly than both the availability of replacement housing and the rate of those condos going back to rentals.

We were converted and scooted out; we left before eviction because we could.

I would get a second job cleaning toilets, pawn and sell my stuff, bag groceries, bus tables, telemarket, short-order cook, wear the sandwich board advertising a mattress sale, go to a temporary service, work fast food, pretty much anything to pay my way to move before I let some developer put me out on my ass.

I walk by the building we used to live in and wonder if the conversion was able to fix the recurring problem from the antique sewer that reliably bubbled up pools of feces and piss in the basement behind the laundry room.

Also, the developers bought the lot next door and put a corrugated steel and glass high-rise next to a turn of the (20th) century brick and wrought iron gem. Not exactly aesthetically consistent.

Nobody of authority seriously cares if there are people too poor to stay in the city limits. They honestly do not care for the sob stories. They are only concerned with proving that they built for projected growth. Any place light rail puts a station is a guarantee that rents will skyrocket and apartments will be converted. Put a call in to the city and ask them to define ‘affordable housing’—no one has a working definition. Affordable housing is an idea not a policy. Everyone in the DON, DPD, Executive Office—they all know this.

For every major 'public works project'--whether it is Olympic stadiums, dams on rivers, mass transit, philanthropy or biogen 'campuses', etc.--there are scores of people uprooted.

the interesting thing that is resulting from the credit crunch is that people cant afford to buy new homes. not because they dont have the income, but because lenders are not providing loans to just anyone like they were 2003-2005.

it deserves the questions: who is actually buying these converted condos, how long are conversions on the market, what is the income gap from conversions if sales slow?

if a 25 unit place pulls in 1000 from each unit you're looking at 25000 a month, 300,000 a year.

so basically to make the same income over the lifetime of the investment you would need 25 years simply renting them out.

advanced:

imagine you have 25 units, rent them for 1000 a month and increase rent 5% each year. assume full capacity at all times.

imagine you sell 13 units for 300k plus you charge 200 a month in home owner fees that you increase at 5% per year.

it would take roughly 11 years for them to be equal.

as a building owner what would you do? even if you sold HALF the units at an inflated price you would still be ahead for a hair over 11 years. selling less units for a higher price is more lucrative than renting out more units at a lower price. it doesnt really matter to the building owner if units sit, especially if they plan on selling the building/stake within a 10 year window.

if they even reduced the price of the conversion to 250k and filled all units they would only have 16 years of being ahead instead of renting.

Meanwhile in 2006, Seattle did see a net gain of 5383 units constructed. But, as we know, the vast majority of those new units are condos.

Do we? Are the figures on that actually available?

The re-conversion to rental housing phenomenon discoutns the fact that King County's not seeing the housing crash that the rest of the country is.

Don't count on seeing too many converted condos go back onto the rental market anytime soon.

15. Who?

- People moving from more expensive markets, like SF, Chicago and NYC. Home in Seattle are comparitively cheaper and these people have the money to burn.
- People with high paying jobs and/or vast amounts of savings.

The prices will continue to jack up, and people will continue to come here and pay them. Seattle is a nice place to live and the job market's rich.

It isnt seeing the crash as much as other places because there are some valid financial fundamentals. but when the entire mortgage lending system is based on being able to resell those mortgages all chopped up on the market and then no-one is buying them, well you have to change how you lend and who you lend to. i hardly believe that many people are really qualified to secure loans in the amount that would provide a pathway to owning a condo in the 300k range, but we are a more prosperous and hospitable place than others.

i believe that while we wont have 10% or 20% shift in values downward like some areas, we also wont be seeing median prices rising at 8% YoY on average over the next 5, and we wont be seeing sales increases like that either.

remember that housing prices arent efficiently priced for purely human reasons.

Gomez, no lie. The few Seattle re-conversions already happening may or may not signal that we're following the rest of the country, but it doesn't matter. Not enough would happen soon enough anyway to keep more Miss Stereos from getting tossed around next year. That would take quick legislation or citizen activism or both. As for me, I'm busy working through my netflix queue.

@18,

Chicago's home prices are much cheaper than Seattle's, around 50 percent less. Chicagoans might be moving here for the views, but not for the housing prices.

I'd like to see you guys do a significant, feature length story on the status of the rental market in this town. I hear a lot of anecdotal stuff, and participated in a very anecdotal piece in the Stranger -- but wouldn't it benefit us all to take a real and serious look at whether average people are getting forced out of the city? Has someone done this and I've missed it?

Gomez you trot out the same tired "rah-rah king county housing market!" bullshit every time slog posts something related to condos or rentals. It's the same garbage that's spat out by the local newspapers and the NAR with absolutely no evidence behind it.

Seattle is a great place to live but the market has flatlined. You can't ignore that. Is it to the same degree as the rest of the country? No. Not yet. Interestingly enough, when offset by 17 months the Seattle market tracks *very* closely to everyone else. We're not immune, we're just late to the party.

You can't really be forced out of any area if you are willing to live with a roommate. Now, you have twice the renting power.

The conversion craze will pass as the developers start to have problems selling the units.

well, to be fair Gomez didnt reference NAR which would be an automatic own goal.

The same group who owns lock vista (just turned into condos) owns the park manor on 13th & Mercer in CapHill.

I'm starting to get edgy because a group of suits was touring the building a couple weeks ago and the conversation was obviously leaning towards how easy a conversion would be.

Seems like only a matter of time before Park Manor goes the way of the condo.

easy, maybe, but the question is would they sell.

even if they started now, my guess is by the time those units are ready they'd sit on the market for a long long time. I think we've seen the last of the condo conversions.