Missouri Condemnation No Longer So Imminent
Efforts by the city council of Sunset Hills, Mo. in the St. Louis suburbs to bulldoze all 254 homes in the Sunset Manor subdivision in order to make way for a shopping mall appeared to receive a boost from a June 23 Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to seize homes to make way for private commercial development projects. However, the public backlash against the controversial public domain decision was so pronounced that the bank planning to finance the proposed new mall abruptly withdrew its funding, leaving the small homes with prices in the $100,000 range safe for the time being. Three states have already passed laws in response to the decision, and Larry Morandi, an analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures, predicts a rush of new laws this winter when 44 state legislatures will be back in session. The Washington-based Institute for Justice says that hundreds of local governments around the country have also been debating new ordinances to restrict the use of public domain, and many have passed laws this summer barring any seizure of private property for commercial development. (www. Washingtonpost.com)
Washington Post (9/6/05); T.R. Reid
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Condo Conversions Leave Hole in Rental Market
The $166 million Charles Towne Condominiums at Park Central is pulling 1,081 apartment units out of the local multifamily rental market in Orlando, Fla. and bringing the city’s grand total of condo conversions to more than 15,000 since late 2003, about 10% of the rental pool. With just 2,100 new units on the books for this year, industry insiders are predicting that occupancy rates and rents will be on the rise. By the end of the year, the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Orlando will be $802, up from $747 last year, and at least one projection calls for a 10% increase next year. Between 2003 and 2004, Orlando posted a record 96 multifamily property sales, totaling more than $1.8 billion. According to Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Company’s market report for Orlando, 13 of the 20 projects sold for condo conversion so far this year have priced out at $140,000 per unit, up from $48,000 five years ago. (www.bizjournals.com)
Orlando Business Journal (8/29/05); Noelle C. Haner
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The New College Mixer
Concerned about students disappearing into their rooms to spend time on the Internet or watch television, college officials are attempting to induce a more convivial mood on campus by designing their new dormitories to encourage students to socialize with one another. The design features include: placing the elevator far from the main entrance to persuade students to take the stairs, where they are more likely to talk to one another; placing the laundry room in the public heart of the building, overlooking the lounge; nook seats and halls with a lot of natural light throughout the building; flaring the widths at the end of corridors to encourage mingling; study lounges inside bay windows looking out onto an intimate courtyard; limiting shared bathroom access to hallways; and providing exercise rooms, game areas and Starbucks cafes. According to
Boston
architect William Rawn, college officials today seem less concerned about antisocial behavior, like hurling beer bottles from windows, than about asocial behavior or “not even getting near the beer.” Colleges spent $12 billion on construction last year, according to a survey by
American
School
and University magazine. (www.nytimes.com)
New York Times (9/1/05); Bradford McKee
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A Solar-Hydrogen Home
One of 18 entries in this fall’s Solar Decathlon Competition in Washington, D.C., the “Green Machine/Blue Space” home was designed by students at the New York Institute of Technology to use both the sun and hydrogen to produce heat and electricity that is reliable, self-sufficient and free of greenhouse-gas emissions. “Instead of proposing the traditional use of batteries to convert and store solar power, our students suggested using hydrogen fuel cells, which are nonpolluting and absolutely guarantee that our solar house will be self-sufficient,” said Michele Bertomen, the institute’s associate professor of architecture. A green and blue spatial arrangement enhances the home’s energy efficiency by reducing heat transference. The green module contains the home’s mechanical components and the primary utilities in the kitchen and bathroom. The blue space is for habitation, sleeping and other activities that use relatively little heat or electricity. Other designs entered in this year’s competition use bath-water recycling technology, prefabricated rooms and material harvested from demolished buildings. (www.wfs.org/futurist)
Futurist (9/1/05); Patrick Tucker
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Raising the Quality of Orange’s Housing
The nonprofit agency known as Hands — Housing and Neighborhood Development Services, Inc. — has worked steadily with the city of Orange, N.J. for almost two decades to rehabilitate blighted homes that were frequented by vandals and drug dealers, helping to reduce the city’s list of derelict houses from 282 to 70, only a dozen of which are a real problem. The organization is now shifting its focus to rehabbing larger abandoned buildings, such as the Chronicle Building, which it last year turned into a home for itself and a thriving restaurant. Established by a group of residents, community leaders and members of the clergy who were frustrated by a seemingly unstoppable downward spiral of decline, Hands this month is undertaking the first new single-family home construction in the city in 20 years. Five modest homes will cost about $215,000 each to build, and they will be available to first-time home buyers at a subsidized price. (www.nytimes.com)
New York Times (8/28/05); Antoinette Martin
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Bottom Line: Asset Management
Allowing tenants to paint an accent wall in their apartment in a bold color to break up the monotony of off-white is the sort of minor customization that will increase the emotional attachment of residents to their homes and reduce turnover rates, according to Robert Koch, an architect in Orlando, Fla. Other popular amenities can include personal gardens in unused space on the property; low-end iPod personal music players available for residents to check out and use while they’re in the fitness center; and a cold-storage area where the management staff can accept groceries that are ordered on line by tenants, who pick up the deliveries when they get home from work. To ensure that the right amenities are chosen for the property, Koch says that the management should look at what is popular at nearby competing projects, noting that hot tubs, saunas and steam rooms may not be what the residents are looking for. Factors such as the cost of the amenity and the property manager’s ability to maintain it also need to be considered, he says. (www.housingfinance.com)
Apartment Finance Today (July/August 2005); John Zipperer
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Is the Condo Market in Las Vegas a Safe Bet?
Roughly 100 condo projects are in different stages of development in the Las Vegas market, with about a dozen actually under construction, but only about 20% of those that are on the drawing board will be completed, according to some industry observers. The most successful properties could be those attached to mainstream Las Vegas casino-hotels such as MGM Mirage, Hard Rock and the Palms Casino Resort, observers say. Donald Trump’s condominium project is also expected to do well. Hard Rock officials say they have received $20 million in initial deposits for the company’s $1.4 billion resort-condo expansion. However, 3,600 buyers have provided the deposits and there will only be 1,381 units available, so the owner will have to make decisions about who is in and who is out. (www.realestatejournal.com)
RealEstateJournal (8/30/05); Peter Sanders, Wall Street Journal
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