That has changed, at least in some urban condo communities.  I have written before about certain urban communities where lenders are not willing/or are unable to loan money for purchases.  At the time, I suspected that prices would suffer greater at those communities.  Well now, it seems that there is evidence to suggest that is the case.

Edgewater at Hayden Ferry, in Tempe is one of my favorite urban communities.  I love the location and the style, the building seems to be extremely well-built, and it seems to be very well-managed.  Unfortunately, due to several things beyond the control of management, lenders will not loan money there to condo buyers.  Because of this, prices have gotten pummeled.  A good example of this is a two bedroom condo with over 1600 square feet on the sixth floor of Edgewater, with fantastic upgrades, that just sold for $220,000.  That’s less than $140 per square foot for commercial grade construction in one of the best locations (IMO) in the Valley!  The property originally sold for $835,000 less than four years ago.  Now, I don’t typically look at previous sales prices to determine whether a deal today is great or not, but in this case I think it is significant.  While we have seen many properties sell for 40 or 50% of their original sales prices it is unusual to see a Class A property sell for 26% of the original price.  Clearly, the reason for such a significant drop is because buyers must pay cash at Edgewater….fewer Buyers leads to lower prices.  I believe that it is just a matter of time, probably very little time, before lenders will loan money to buyers at Edgewater.  When that happens, I believe that prices will begin to trend upward.  Are we at the ‘bottom’?  I don’t know.  But for those of you who have cash to spend, buying a fantastic two bedroom condo with fabulous lake views for $220,000 sure makes sense to me.

Prices have not been released yet, but we expect them to come out of the shoots at about 50% of the original prices.  If so, then we’d expect to see 1 bedroom condos starting in the very high $100k (like $190,000) to low $200k range and 2 bedroom condos starting in the low $300k range.  This would make the prices competitive if not lower than prices at One Lexington and one MIGHT guess that with the added inventory there might be some downward pressure on these prices.

The last time we featured 44 Monroe on one of our urban real estate bus tours we had over 50 attendees and the general consensus was that the building offered great floor plans, great views and pretty good amenities.  The HOA fees at 44 Monroe are higher than almost any other high rise condo building in town at $.52 per square foot BUT the fee includes satellite television, high-speed internet, local and long distance phone service, and chilled water for air conditioning (via NorthWinds, the system that cools Chase Field Ball Park, the Convention Center and Summit at Copper Square).

If you are interested in seeing 44 Monroe now, before the sales office is open and before the public can see it, then give us a call at (480) 510-8755 Ext 1.  Our offer is for clients of We Know Urban Realty only.

On April 20th a US Bankruptcy Court confirmed (approved) a Chapter 11 Reorganization Plan for the high-rise condominium project Summit at Copper Square subject to the funding of the plan next month.  This was a tough process for the owners of Summit at Copper Square as they had to present several plans to the Bankruptcy Court before one was finally found acceptable.  Assuming that the developers raise the money to “fund” the plan, and we have no reason to believe that they won’t, then within the next WEEKS the high-rise building will be essentially out of bankruptcy and up and running.  This is great news for urban fans who wondered for months what might happen to the building.

With the resolution of the bankruptcy the developer will now have the time to focus on productive things like renting and selling vacant condominiums, leasing out the commercial space on the ground floor of the building, general maintenance and more.

Once the reorganization plan is funded, people interested in living downtown can move forward at Summit at Copper Square without worrying about the financial strength of the Home Owner Association and/or the developer.  For more information about available condominiums at Summit at Copper Square contact us at (480) 510-8755.

Some listing agents are asking buyer’s agents to go to the listing agent’s real estate office to “check out” a set of keys to the condo.  The process is far from secure.  In most cases the only identification required to get the keys and a key fob is a business card, sometimes not even that.  I doubt the home owner association at Optima Biltmore Towers had this in mind when it outlawed lock boxes for security reasons.  Another problem with this system arises when more than one agent wants to show the property on the same day.  Why?  Because let’s say an agent checks out the key at 10:00 but can’t return it until 1:00 but another agent wants to show the property at 11:30.  Chances are the second agent won’t get to show the property.  Obviously this is bad for the home owner trying to sell their property.

Another thing I have seen is listing agent’s hiding lock boxes at neighboring buildings.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this but if agents are using lock boxes anyway they may as well be hanging them at Optima Biltmore Towers….make it easy for agents to show the building for goodness sakes AND control the access to boot.

Biltmore Towers could easily mount a steel bar to a concrete wall in a secure (locked) location on which all agent lock boxes would be required to be hung.  Access to the secure location could be managed via a lock box, owned by the home owner association, containing a key to wherever the security bar is located.  Modern real estate agent lock boxes record when they are accessed and by whom so building management would know which agents were in their building and when.

A set up like this would cost the home owner association about $1000 max and would provide much better security than the “check out” system mentioned above or lock boxes sitting at neighboring buildings.  Oh, and of course the easier it is to show a property the easier it is for agents to sell it.  And with the state of today’s real estate market we agents can use all the help we can get.

1. The home page now includes a section called “New Urban Listings” located in the center column of the page. Here we show the ten most recent urban condo listings to hit the MLS. Using this tool allows urban enthusiasts a super quick way to see what’s new.

2. The city pages of WeKnowUrban.com (e.g. Phoenix For Sale ) now include price ranges, lowest to highest, of condos currently for sale in each community AND the average price per foot of those condos currently for sale. We hope this provides a really quick way for urban enthusiasts to track prices in their favorite loft or high-rise building.

3. The foreclosure page now shows a table of all distressed urban condos (i.e. pre-foreclosure, short sale and lender owned). This allows urban enthusiasts to quickly see where the distressed high-rise and loft condos are and the corresponding prices.

4. The rental section of WeKnowUrban.com now shows which condos come furnished and which one’s don’t. Also, the tables are now sortable so urban fans can sort by high-rise / loft or by price, or number of bedrooms or whether the condo is furnished or not.

We hope you like these new features…we sure do