Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Question Mark

I haven't personally seen any work being done on any of these buildings in several months. In the case of the trio of buildings on 65th place I haven't seen workers on the premesis since early 2008.

It goes without saying that the Living Green Lofts were never built. That's the picture of the huge vacant lot and the pile of wood that used to be the sign annoucing the development.

The question is can the 'hood (and the city for that matter) survive another round of broken promises and broken buildings?


This building's residents have been MIA. I suspected that this was going to be converted to condos but nothing has hapened to indicate which course the current owner will take.



Brand new development on 65th Place that sits empty. It's only a matter of time before squatters or a bad element take hold.



The sign for Living Green Lofts sits in pieces after the development was never built.



The vacant lot where the Living Green Lofts were supposed to be built.

1 comment:

The North Coast said...

You can forget about those vacant lots for a while, because there is so much excess inventory absolutely everywhere, coast to coast, that it would take a while to soak it up even if there were ready, credit-worthy buyers.

Now, for the unoccupied properties, could the banks that are doubtless now the owners of these places DROP THE PRICES TO WHAT THE QUALIFIED BUYERS ARE ABLE AND WILLING TO PAY? I see many list prices dropping, but I still see enough 2005 and 2006 prices on stuff to wonder just what well the sellers are living at the bottom of that they do not get that their wares are atrociously overpriced and that people will not and cannot pay the prices at which this stuff is offered, despite the best efforts of the FHA to goose the market by floating yet another wave of bad loans that are going to turn into another wave of defaults in a couple of years.

If they'd slice the prices on these units by 40%, they might find qualified buyers with good loans, and thus prevent the places from being destroyed by neglect and squatters.

The housing prices across the country are going to drop 50% from the peak of 2006 no matter what our misguided policy makers do to prop them up and to float more bad loans with the taxpayers as backup- because the fundamentals, which are rents and incomes, have not improved since 2001 and are now deteriorating.