Saturday, January 27, 2007

Down to 65%?

Read this first for some background. From the Sacramento Bee:

A second high-rise condominium developer has come hat in hand to the city of Sacramento...[Craig] Nassi's request follows a similar one last year from John Saca...
...
Despite strong sales of units in their planned buildings, both developers sought help after the residential real estate market slumped while prices for construction materials continued to climb.
...
"The demand for the units is there, it's just that construction is really expensive right now," said City Councilman Rob Fong. "If we can be helpful, we need to help these guys make investments in our city."
...
He has since collected non-refundable deposits for 65 percent of the 268 units in Aura. The city of Sacramento has issued permits for excavation, grading, foundation work and utilities, but Nassi has yet to pick them up.

According to the city staff report, he needs to pour the building's foundation by April to meet the delivery schedule for condominiums promised to his customers.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The thing with both of these projects is most of down payments were probably collected from investors who merely planned to re-sell the condos. This doesn't reflect a true market or desire to actually live in the condos. Thus demand magically dried up around the time housing went sour.

Anonymous said...

I would like to see some construction cost/supply cost facts to back up the statements by Nassi and by Councilman Fong that "construction costs are just high right now". In 2005 this guy comes up with this project; did he base his estimate of the costs on figures from 2005, or 2000, or did he pull them directly from his arse or what?
I also wish the Bee would locate and interview some of the people who put money down on these units, to see what their intentions are: live in them or sell them?
Perhaps some of those wealthy people, like the ones from Santa Barbara, really want to live in condos in downtown Sacto......

Anonymous said...

Investors did plan to resell some condos. You can see a few in the MLS, that are priced much higher than initial price.

But being in the construction industry I can tell you that costs are going DOWN now.

Anonymous said...

Fraud?

you mean,
you mean,

Craig Nassi is nothing more than a two bit Carnival Barker, Professor Harold Hill, right here in River City, where you got trouble, my friends, trouble, trouble, trouble...

Somebody has been taken by Conman Nassi,

http://www.bewarecn.com/

Anonymous said...

Those stories about Nassi are pretty terrible. I'd stay away.

Garth Farkley said...

The ship is taking on water faster than they can bail.