Category — Condo Conversions

Here’s something you don’t hear about everyday in Seattle, but the planned Domaine condos on West Lake Union are being shopped around to investors as apartments.

I was checking out Seattle City Councilmember Sally Clark’s ‘blog’ today (I put ‘blog’ in quotes because she doesn’t allow comments to be posted), and came across her thoughts on rental to condo conversions. The numbers she posts are very interesting, and clearly show that year-over-year rental units are being converted to condos at an increasing rate. I’m really happy to see Clark focus on this, but c’mon Sally, you’ve been on the Council for awhile, can’t you give us your specific recommendations for how we protect affordable housing in Seattle instead of just keeping the debate going? The risk is, if you don’t do something, there won’t be any affordable housing protect once the debate is over.

Perhaps you’re interested in how condominium conversions are measuring up this year compared to last. Conversion requests are tracked by the City’s department of Planning & Development as owner/developers come in for permits. In 2004 we saw 430 apartment units convert to condominiums. In 2005 that number jumped to 1,551. Last year the number jumped again to 2,352. So far in 2007? Through the end of September 1,550 units have converted from rental to ownership. I have to imagine we’ll exceed the 2005 total. The real estate economists say this shrinking of the rental base creates unmet demand for rentals and, after a little lag time, production of rental units. The tightening of home mortgage rules probably also keeps more people looking for rentals rather than stretching to buy.

Interesting information and useful as we debate how to create more opportunities for people to find housing they can afford in the city.

Councilmember Sally Clark roasting something

There was a really good article in the Seattle PI today about the efforts of a group of renters at the Lock Vista apartments in Ballard to prevent their affordable apartments (it seems they are paying roughly $750 a month) from turning into condos.

What was interesting for me to find out was that ‘the state retains the power to impose temporary moratoriums on conversions or limit their numbers’. This is a very interesting law because it allows industry groups such as developers, real estate agents to block this authority being handed over to cities by simpy focusing their lobbying efforts towards the state. It really begs the question of how interested the cities are in gaining this power back from the state.

Unfortunately this is just another example of how Seattle really doesn’t have a clear strategy for affordable housing. However, it may also be fair to say that even if it did there are quite a number of legislative roadblocks like this that would need to be resolved first.