Condoville

The volume of construction and demolition in the City of Santa Monica has been astounding for the last several years.  In letters to the editor in local newspapers like the Santa Monica Mirror and the Santa Monica Daily Press, casual chitchat with strangers, and other scuttlebutt, there’s sometimes been discontent when one hears from developers and would-be owners of large homes.  The City, they say, is development unfriendly, laden with excessive permitting requirements and zoning requirements.  And yet in some neighborhoods there are construction trucks and lunch trucks (often with airhorns that announce their arrival, or some similar means of playing the Mexican Hat Dance at random intervals between 10 am and 2 pm) on every block, sometimes more than one crew per block.  Gigantic piles of dirt sit for weeks at a time in front of a soon-to-be McMansion that takes up 70% of its lot, or so it appears.  In my neighborhood, where single family homes are rare, bungalows and older apartment buildings are becoming endangered species, all prospects for the chopping block in favor of new condominiums.

 

If I sound annoyed, it’s not just because I’m somewhat of a traditionalist.  I’ll admit that I have considered storming a City Council meeting when beautiful, modest-sized Craftsman bungalows (like the ones that used to exist on 19th Street near Montana) suddenly have a sign on the lawn announcing their pending demolition.  But between having little faith in protesting and just too little time to take up the cause of historic preservation, I have only shown up at one City Council meeting.  That meeting was the one about four years ago discussing the pending demolition and planned (surprise!) 5-unit condo building just behind my unit.  Yes, I did feel bad about the low-to-middle income families that were displaced from the modest, low-rise apartments.  And I nearly cried when the bushy ficus tree that drooped from the next-door property was ripped down during the demolition.  But the biggest reason I didn’t enjoy the building boom was a selfish one: I am a writer who works at home, and I’ve been raising an infant or toddler for the entire time that this particular, incredibly loud and dirty construction project has been going on.

 

The ever-smiling family that owns the parcel of land behind me assured my neighbors and me that our own home values would rise as a result of their first foray into property development.  Of course, they had no way of knowing that three years after they broke ground there would be a recession that depressed real estate and made mortgages much harder to obtain than during the recent boom years.  But my family was never gullible enough to think that a new building a few feet away that blotted out much of our light would somehow “add” to our property values, promised comps be damned.  And now, lo and behold, the 5 units are finally on the market, with asking prices between $1.3 and $1.5 million each.

 

I used to think members of my family who expressed incredulity when they heard what condos and townhouses sold for in Santa Monica were showing their ignorance of the California real estate market.  Just because they couldn’t understand why plenty of apartment-like homes with no yard and shared wall sold for $1 million and up on a regular basis, I reasoned, didn’t mean that the trend was illogical.  But now as I look on the glut just finished and nearly finished townhouses and condos that command these healthy prices, I wonder which sectors of the Los Angeles economy still offer job security and salaries to match the prices, and whether the volume of buyers approaches the well-stocked inventory level.

Here’s a related Yahoo! story that ran today on the decline of McMansions in this economy:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090106/ts_csm/amcmansions