The Daily Briefing

DOWNTOWN L.A. CONDO SLUMP: PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS?

Theo DouglasThu. March 13
 

This isn’t about Long Beach, but it’s interesting.

Seems the long-hyped condominium boom in downtown Los Angeles is over, at least for now–the boom is off the rose, you might say (though, clearly, I never would). But the top story on the Los Angeles Times website now covers just that.

According to DataQuick, which monitors real estate prices and just released its fourth quarter 2007 figures, the median home price in downtown L.A. (and in downtown, almost all homes are condos) fell 16 percent from its peak, reached in early 2007, to $497,360.

County-wide, fourth quarter condominum prices dipped only 7 percent–though down in Orange County, the fall was more pronounced: condo prices fell 11 percent.

What does that downtown drop say about downtown Los Angeles’s turnaround–about its vaunted reinvention as a place to live and play? Some real estate industry watchers the Times talked to say it’s inevitable that we’ll have to return to live in our traditional downtowns as we’re priced out of the housing market–and as the population swells.

One man, though, says that the industry simply believed its own hype and overreached.

“People said downtown was the future, and young people bought into it,” Fred Sands, a longtime real estate broker, told the Times. “Some of those buildings should not have been built.”

And what does this say about Long Beach, where our waterfront thoroughfare is lined with condominiums; where apartments are being converted to condominiums as I write this–and where, if they’re not being converted to condominiums, they’re being converted to lofts?

I’m not sure, but I don’t think this is good news for Long Beach either. Two buildings I have some connection with–the old Press-Telegram building, and the Pine@Sixth building, where I once re-interviewed for my job as a P-T reporter–are being transformed into lofts and condos respectively.

I hope they finish and sell; in Los Angeles, the condo people are settling in for a long period of high vacancies.

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  • lbresident
    I think the condo market in LB will struggle along with the entire real estate market. But downtown LA has much bigger challenges than LB. For example, LB is cleaner, nicer, already has some restaraunts and nightlife and has a beach. We've also got less of a homeless problem. We'd like a cleaner beach,less homeless, and we'd like more retail, but we're miles ahead of downtown LA.
  • Jonathan
    That doom and gloom L.A. Times article was such a joke. Where are these vacancies and depressed condo owners they talk about? I live in a downtown condo in South Park, our property prices are fine, I haven't noticed any huge dips in condos at all, or rises in condos for sale in our building or the neighboring buildings. Furthermore, nobody wants to leave their condos for the 'burbs. We came here for a reason -- we believe in downtown and it's a heck of a lot more exciting than some boring suburb with lousy, crappy houses selling for $600,000 still. I'll take my half-million-dollar condo near Staples thank you very much! We have the most exciting, culturally relevant developments down here and this is going to be the most vibrant neighborhood in Los Angeles and the best downtown on the West Coast. That's not the hype, that's the reality. We have new bars and restaurants opening monthly, and while condo construction has slowed, we are still experiencing more growth here than anywhere else in Los Angeles! The article even pointed that out, almost as a side note, that downtown has grown at a 20% clip over the last 8 years or so! That's remarkable numbers. Downtown is very much alive and well, and it's a great place to live. I don't even work here and I chose to live here.
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