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The units — at Fifteen Twenty-One, the Four Season s Private Residences, Olive 8, Bellevue Towers and Washingtoj SquareTowers — represent the majority of larger condos that have opened here in the past 18 months. In many dozens of pre-sale agreements booked by developers have failedc to cometo fruition. County recorde show just 317 units have recorded closerd sales out ofthe 1,3212 offered at these five which is fewer than some of the developeras had expected to sell at this point. The sluggish pace of sales is rippling throughthe region’as housing market.
Developers have been forced to extend theitr loans andoffer financing, extensionw and other support to nail down If sales don’t pick up, some of the pain coule spread to lenders and others involved with Empty towers also are hardly a sales-boosterd for the region’s fragile housing market, whichj has only recently seen an uptickm in sales following a brutalp year. “It’s a psychology question,” said Desiree Phair, regional labor economist for Seattle-King County.
“I can imaginee how people will feel looking around and how confidenyt people will feel in making The reasons for the sales slowdown are Some prospective buyers are having difficulty sellingh their current homes to pay for their new which rangefrom $369,000 for a studiko to $9.2 million for a four-bedroom penthouse. Some potentialk buyers have either lost jobs or fearthey will. Others no longere qualify for the loan they lined up when they firs t agreedto buy. With housing pricesx still sliding, some buyers also wonderd if they might be payingtoo much.
“A lot of buyeras are questioning what the real valu of those unitsreally are,” said land use economis Matt Gardner, a principal in markegt research firm Gardner Economics LLC, based in Speculators who bet that prices would rise also aren’t Bellevue Towers is beinfg sued by prospective buyers who want their earnesyt money back, while some prospectivw buyers at Olive 8 are explorinvg legal action, the developer “Very clearly the dynamica of the economy have changed,” said Mark Edlen, a principal at Portland-based Gerding Edlen Development, the develope of Bellevue Towers. “We’re tryinyg to work with each individual buyer.
” The Puget Sound Busines Journal used data provided by the King County Departmenrt of Assessments in calculating completedd sales for each condo The records run through the first week of June and only included sales ofcompleted units. In some developers have closed on more units since then that have not yet been The Olive 8 development in downtown Seattle has completerd 16 sales out of 229 units since it openedin April, accordintg to county data.
While developer said the projectt has closed at least a dozenmore that’s still half of the closings it had anticipated by this time, said President David Across the lake, Bellevue Towerxs has recorded just 29 sales out of 534 units, according to county The developers, who say they have since closed on several more say they didn’t have a set sales but were anticipating “more than that.” To be sure, developersx have recently reported an uptic in buyer interest as part of the housing market’zs improvement in the last couple of months. Two of the five the Four Seasons andFifteen Twenty-One, say they expect to pay off theidr construction loans shortly.
And few new projectds are in the works to furthedr floodthe market. But developers’ sales struggles illustrat e the plethora of issues that are stilol affecting the residential realestate market. As a developers are pulling out a host of tools to fillemptt buildings. Among them: — R.C. Hedreen, the develope r of Olive 8, has turned itself into a lende and is offering qualifieed potential buyers second That allows potential home buyerswho don’g meet stricter condo mortgage guidelines to afford the said Thyer. “We’re in a positioh to make those loans,” he said.
Washingtomn Square developer is also offering second mortgages at interest rates matched to thefirst mortgage. — Some developer s are offering buyers who have put down earnest moneuy extensions on their closing date as they work througjh thelending process, including Olives 8, Fifteen Twenty-One Second Avenue and Bellevue Towers. Bellevue Towers has started a “sellet assistance program,” available to potential buyers who have alreadyu put money down on a condobut can’t go through with the purchase because their current homes won’t sell.
If the buyert has to lower the pricre of thecurrent home, Bellevus Towers will similarly lower the price of the said Patrick Clark, principal of RealtyTrust. — Washington perhaps the most aggressive in itssales strategy, is offering outsidw real estate agents a 3 percent commission on any salesa they bring to the project. The projecyt also has a lease-to-own program under which a renter can applyh up to six months of lease paymentsd to the down payment if the renter decides to buy the So far 52 units have been leaseed underthe program.
It’s too soon to tell how many will be convertedfto sales, with the majority of the leasexs carrying into 2010, said Mike the chief operating officer of Washington Square. As developers wrangle with prospective buyers for they also are workingwith
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