Mark Mills - Downtown San Diego Condo Expert

Everyone wants a piece of San Diego real estate, including getting a condo in downtown with a great walk able lifestyle and near perfect weather. If your going to live the dream, why not buy a brand new condo in San Diego. Opportunities to buy a brand new condo are shrinking as of spring 2010.

The buildings you can still buy a brand new luxury condo in are: Aria, Bayside condos, Breeza, The Legend, The Mark, Mi Arbolito, Sapphire Tower and Se Luxe Residences. Currently there are no condominiums under construction and I don't expect any new condos to begin construction until 2012 at the earliest. Several reasons factor into that prediction, one is the difficulty in obtaining construction financing and the second is the lack of faith that developers can sell their condos once completed.

Sure the market has picked up some momentum as seen in the high volume of sale at about 80 units per month in downtown so far in 2010. In general, Bayside, Breeza, The Mark and Sapphire Tower are about 70% sold, inventory at The Legend and Mi Arbolito is down to about a dozen units each.

At the Legend all the better view units have been sold and on all the remaining two bedrooms they have for sale only have one parking space. Mi Arbolito seems to be on hold again for some reason. I know all the units are finished except for maybe flooring or finished they left for the buyer to select.

At Aria, they are down to about six high floor penthouse style units. The Bayside condos have a great selection of units across all price points. Breeza also have a wide variety of their inventory to choose from. The Mark, has mostly one bedroom left with some larger more expensive two and three bedroom condos still available on the higher floors. Sapphire Tower has a good selection of one bedrooms from the $400's to at least 5 of the almost 3,000 SF units for approx $2.5M. The Sé Luxe Residences is such a unique property that sales there seem to be slow, its also for the very discriminating condo shopper looking for the lifestyle of a full service five star hotel.

One thing to notice about all the newer condos is that none of them are located in the Gaslamp District or the Marina District as there is are only two lots left to build on between them, one will be a Marriott hotel the other a condo by Bosa in the distant future.

When we get to the upswing in the next real estate cycle new projects will be built mostly in East Village, a very limited number in Little Italy and Columbia neighborhoods. I would say all but three of the future condos will be built on less than optimal locations. The best micro locations have already been built and it will be interesting to see over time the balance of values between say an older condo in a prime location vs a new state of the art condo in a second rate location. This is what makes shopping for a condo in downtown San Diego such a fun and challenging process.

For those of you who like data, here is some year end 2009 data.

Total Number of units sold 1,164

45% Developer sales, 23% REO's, 20% Resales and 12% short sales.

Sold prices by neighborhood are Columbia $796K, Marina $619K, East Village $420K, Cortez $359K, Little Italy $351K and Gaslamp at $387K. The ranking order of price per sqaure foot is in the same order as sales prices.

In general, sales volume was up about 5% and prices were down about 11%, but vary greatly by neighborhood and price point. Lower priced units in 2008 were down more in 2009 than the higher priced units as a percentage reduction.

Here is a very popular statistic, the foreclosure sales data. Everyone wants a deal these days, here is the REO sales info. Total number sold 264, 154 were under $300K, 87 between $300K & $500K, 17 between $500 - $700K, 5 were between $700k - $1.0M, no sales between $1.0 & 1.5M and only one REO sold over $1.5M. Recap: the high quality inventory experienced very very few REO opportunities in 2009.

Between the Develpers, REO's, resales and short sales, here is who dominated the various price points.

Under $300K goes to REO's at 46%.

$300 - 500K goes to Developers at 44%.

$500 - $700K again Developers at 75%

$700K - $1.0M Developers again at 63%

$1.0 - 1.5M Developers with 53%, Resales a close second at 41%

1.5 - 2.0M - Developers at 67%

2.0M & Over Developers again at 71%.

Finally 33% of condo sales in downtown was a cash purchase.

If you have specific questions or want some micro data, just ask, glad to try and help.

Top reasons San Diego condo buyers should consider the Electra condominiums. Electra stands above all the other condos (literally) and has some features not found in other condo buildings. The Electra condos were built by the BOSA development team, which has built the better condo buildings in downtown and Electra is one of their best, in essence it’s the best product by the best developer, an unbeatable combination.

The owners at the Electra condos in downtown San Diego just rated their building 4.5 stars! The Electra condos were completed in January 2008. The condo owners at Electra were recently surveyed and asked to rate and review their building in over a dozen categories. Electra is one of the highest rated condos in San Diego.

The Electra condos scored five out of five starts in the following categories: views, concierge and security. A lot of praise was given to the quality of construction all throughout the building including the common areas. Electra has the best “social lounge” of any condo in San Diego and perhaps the best on the West Coast. The social lounge is often referred to as the conservatory, its seven stories tall with a glass dome at the top. This space is formed by the framework of an earlier structure on the site (75+ years ago) that was restored to encompass a library, full caterers kitchen, grand piano, lots of art and separate seating areas for use by multiple residents at the same time. It’s a very impressive room with no interior walls and a glass dome at the top.

The staff at the Electra condominiums received more praise than the staff at any other condo in downtown. Another common response in the survey results were how the owners selected this building after looking at all the competition downtown. Its easy to see why so many people love living at Electra, its quality is top notch, has great views and is a very unique building rising from where an old SDG&E plant once stood.

Electra’s lowest rating was for the swimming pool. Its not a lap pool like some of the competing building, but has a nice pool deck that wraps around to “Electra Park” a tropical grass park with an outdoor fireplace and BBQ area. The pool was rated a 4 out of 5. The biggest complaint about living in the Electra condos was the noise from the freight train. Residents are looking forward to the implementation of the “quiet zone” which will greatly reduce the train noise by eliminating the requirement that the train sound the horn so many times before every train crossing.

The Electra condos are located in the Columbia District of Downtown San Diego. Electra is the tallest condo in downtown at 43 stories tall. There are 248 residences in either one or two bedroom single level floor plans or several townhomes around the base of the tower. Amenities include atrium styled social lounge with 60 foot ceiling & skylight, business center, private meeting room, gym, 24-hour concierge pool, spa, sauna, steam room barbeque, 5th floor roof deck outdoor fireplace lounge & garden. Prices range from $400,000 - $2,000,000.

If your like me when you shopped for your last car you looked online for reviews of the car and maybe even went to the book store and looked at magazines such as Car and Driver to find out what cars other drivers like and why.  For most people a car is a big purchase and they want to make sure they know what they are buying in terms of the quality of the car, how it handles on the road and what to expect when owing one.   

When I became a Realtor with the goal of helping condo buyers pick the perfect condo for them I thought to myself I can only know so much not having lived in the buildings I was selling.  I thought my condo buying clients would appreciate and value being able to hear directly from the condo owners what it was like to live in their building.   So the idea was born, figure out a way to get San Diego condos ratings and reviews.

The only way I could get the condo owners to provide a review of their building was to survey them.  As much as I wanted to do this on line, there is no way to know how to contact the owners via email and a website function where people can add comments could not limit the comments exclusively to owners.  Its very important to ensure the people providing these condo reviews were in fact the owners.  This meant the direct mail method was the best method of ensuring only the owners would be providing condo rating and review information.   

So many years ago when I started by real estate career at RE/MAX Real Estate Consultants I decided to provide clients with the most educational information I could about the condos they were thinking of buying.  To date about 7,000 surveys have been mailed out to owners of condos in downtown San Diego, with 1,500 of them going out this week to condos that were sold out about a year or so ago.  I thoroughly enjoy reading the survey results that come back as it enlightens me and helps me and my condo shopping clients pick the building that's best for them.  

 

 

It seems like only a month or two ago I tweeted about the inventory of condos for sale in downtown San Diego had dropped below 500. I checked it today and were at 459. Its becoming clearer and clearer that the bottom of the market is behind us. The market for condos under $350K is the most competitive right now with multiple offers on all the good units, often selling for more than the asking price.
There are some who predict we will have a W shaped recovery. Maybe I dont know. What I do know is that the developers have stopped building condos in downtown and even when they start there are very view prime lots left to build on. There are a lot of lots to build on, but what we have seen is that a bad location can kill the sales of a decent quality building. Just look at Vantage Pointe condos and Smart Corner condos, both high rises, moderately priced, but very few buyers prefer these locations. Because of that, Smart Corner is soon to be holding an auction to sell their units. You know the old saying in real estate, its all about location, location, location.