Marquee Park Place has its first forclosure.

NEW -> Contingent Buyer Assistance Program
What residential high rise project has ever made economic sense in SoCal? Ever?

Without the aid of a BK, nobody would ever put one up. And even then, they get started in the bubbliest of the bubble times.

I spoke with a guy who's losing the lease on his business location in the Platinum Triangle today. He has to be out by December. I don't understand why. They'll never develop it for another decade. It'll stay an open hole. And the developer knows it. They have to.

Just flat nuts.
 
"It sounds like the builders should have spent a little more upfront funds on market research."

The developers certainly got lucky at the Marquee. They sold all these units to complete idiots and made a fortune. Now we have two empty high rises occupied only by the broken dreams of the foolish speculators who paid 5-10 times the cashflow value for their "investment."
 
Actually the Wilshire Corridor high rises in Westwood are pretty successful with real people living there, right? Some areas make sense for high rise living. I think there are very expensive highrises going up in Century City (or being planned). I think Irvine misfired on the highrises, making them as expensive as Westwood or Century City highrises, when they should be about half as much as the current asking prices.
 
"Actually the Wilshire Corridor high rises in Westwood are pretty successful with real people living there, right?"

Those all got built in the '70's and were for sale (by 1982) for fourty cents on the dollar. In 2001 the median home price in Chino Hills and Beverly Hills was almost the same.

You can't build a new high rise for residential and make it pencil in So Cal. I love the line I hear about all the land restrictions. Whatever. How about all that cost accountant stuff I used to do? Nobody cares about that anymore?

It is impossible to bring a business plan to a lender today with a high rise that cash flows positive in OC for residential unless you use what somebody on the OC Regester site called "magic". And even if it did - you'd be hard pressed to get it funded.
 
The office building next to it, the empty one, was supposed to be the New Century building, named after the prime tenant.
 
IR

You are correct on the sell out to investors. I ment the current verticals being constructed or planned. Back when Bolsa built Marquee they were somewhat leading the wave and "investors" were buying anything. If you want to see high rise hell take a look at the downtown San Diego market.

fumbling

Irvine isn't Wilshire Corridore. In comparing product remember-location,location,location. I know it is basic but still functional.

Regards
 
I think mid-rises work in some parts of OC, but we're not dense enough to make high-rise work. If they had planned mass transit better, maybe we'd see some decent urban developments in OC. But not yet.

Los Angeles is more urban and many places are good for high-rises. The Solair Wilshire, for example, is 22 stories tall and holds 185 condos, plus 40,000+ sq ft of commercial space:

http://www.solairwilshire.com/

http://www.angelenic.com/first-look-solair-wilshire/

Pricing starts at $800k, but it's a lot bigger and better than the office building conversions like The Mercury (23 stories) being offered at maybe half the price, for a smaller 1 bed pad.
 
I took the downtown tour of all the highrises for sale about a year ago. L.A. downtown is a terrible place to walk around unless you're in that small area near Staples. Otherwise it's terribly depressing to step out of your $1 million highrise. I couldn't wait to get out of there. There was a high rise going up in San Pedro, I saw that too. Also depressing to walk around, plus the water view would almost certainly be blocked by a future highrise across the street. I haven't checked the Long Beach highrises yet though. I'll have to go back to San Diego to see how those highrises are doing. I remember the neighborhoods surrounding the San Diego highrises were pretty iffy too (this was pre-bubble a few years ago).
 
the Long Beach high rises are all in trouble. The first tower sold out but is already seeing REO business before the others can sell out. Stuff that was going for 700M last year is asking 499M now and falling. HOAs there are running in the 900 zone also so that isn't helping much.
 
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