Condopocalypse Now: Auction at Brazos Place

Sources? Living in a condo where you can hear every word your neighbor is speaking with a not particularily loud phone conversation. Living in a condo where you can hear your other neighbors not necessarily athletic, inspiring, or noisy sex.

Then because you're wondering how the fuck this kind of dividing wall is legal in a supposedly civilized city you check up on what your possible actions are. Then you discover everything is 'up to code' because there is no fucking code. As long as they put in studs and drywall between dividing walls its up to code!

Good enough for you asshole? Many if not most new condos are built to the same shit standards because it saves the scumbag developers a few hundred grand less in a large development.

That sounds more like a faulty generalization based on life in a shitty condo. But judging from your unprovoked anger towards a stranger, I think a shitty condo is the least of your troubles.

Good luck, dude.

The sad thing about the whole thing is just how badly built a lot of these condos downtown are.

Many if not most of these high rises went into a death spiral the moment they were built because they're such poorly built noise traps.

As bad as some of the 80's developments were the ones built in the latest boom are much much worse. Unliveable by any sane persons standards.

Shame on the city for omitting the noise code in the International Building Code. They've caused a lot of people a lot of misery with their poor stewardship and corruption.

Care to cite any sources?

One other crucial note - it is a reserve price auction, so the developers get to cherry pick which bids they accept or reject - thus, it is a way to sell a portion of their inventory immediately and grab a lot of PR for the building in the process. I'd guess they'll probably accept anything that's 85-88% or more of their current asking price and turn most others away.

What will be most interesting is the fact that the next batch of condos (The Spring, The Austonian, the Four Seasons, and eventually the W) are priced far higher than 360, Brazos Place, or The Shore...so will Austin support them? And if not, what happens next?

If you were going to buy a condo, the Brown Building is the place to buy. Sure, this place is closer to the capital, but let me direct your attention to this hilarious yelp review:

"Oh if only you were lucky enough to live in The Brown Building.

But you're not.

Not only is it about as centrally located as you can get downtown (8th and Colorado), but it has the best fancy cajun restaurant in Austin (Gumbos) and a cool martini bar (The Brown Bar) in its lobby. Some might tell you that you can get a much more modern and updated place at one of the many new high rises that are being built as I type, but it will never have the personality of this 60+ year old 'high rise'. And just when you thought it couldn't get much better, you find out it's registered on THE MOTHER FUCKING NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES. What's that? I live in a national monument? Yes I do. Wait...that means that if I own the place, I save THOUSANDS on my property taxes every year? Affirmative. And you're telling me that someone just put a WINE VAULT in the basement of the building??? Well I'm actually not enough of a pimp to rent out a seperate space for bottles of wine, BUT I LIKE THE IDEA THAT I COULD.

The Brown Building. You'll probably never live there. You should just kill yourself."

Ah, if only I was so lucky. But yes, you people looking for condos- go with the Brown Building or one similar to it- lower taxes, established, and a true loft, not a fabricated new one.

That said, the Commodore Perry lofts do seem pretty legit and are hella close to the capital. You just know their prices will bounce back because of location location location.

Outstanding.

If any of the existing tenants are upset that prices have been supposedly 'slashed' since they bought at list, at least they can use the reduced sales numbers when they go into combat with the Travis County Appraisal Review Board.

Please, if you have been approved for a >$300,000 mortgage, go to this auction and buy a condo. Stay away from McMansions. Avoid looking on the Eastside. Downtown is where you want to be.

Seth

I am always right and I say this is just the beginning - a small leak in the boat before the whole ocean rushes in.

I hadn't seen the Austin Towers post, but that is interesting. My expectation here is that we will see something similar - these condos selling for around 80% of the original asking price. I would like to see bigger reductions, but I think you are right that there haven't been nearly enough condos built downtown for that to happen. That said, "Condo Market Off Slightly" isn't nearly as exciting a headline as "Condopocalypse Now."

Umm... last time I checked there were almost no downtown condos on the market, and the prices are holding up quite nicely. We didn't overbuild downtown. We overbuilt Buda, Manor, Round Rock, and Cedar Park.

This explains why not only are the prices probably not going to be "affordable", but that this doesn't signify a crash:

http://www.austintowers.net/Austin_Downtown/files/brazos_place_auction_analysis.html

It's baffling why so many people want to live downtown and complain about how high the cost of housing is there, and in the same breath talk about how we could have a housing crash downtown. How would that even be possible? If you and everyone you know would be willing to buy a condo downtown if they got below $x dollars, then there's not going to be a development glut anytime soon and the more they build the better for everyone.

Downtown condo sales - and sales of all condos across the Austin region - have slowed down dramatically from two years ago while at the same time the amount of inventory has increased by more than 50 % in the same period. There is a lot of excess inventory. If the developer's best case scenario is to receive 80 percent of list price at auction for each of those units, how can you say prices are holding nicely? In the last year prices have fallen 20 percent based on price per square foot. Downtown condos sure aren't immune...in fact anyone who's trying to sell a condo for above $500k has probably given up and taken it off the market because there's almost nothing moving in that price range. The longer they can afford to wait the better but the fact is interest rates are about as low as they'll ever go and the buyers still haven't materialized. Anyone thinking about buying a condo for investment purposes only ought to think long and hard about their decision because a likely future onslaught of higher priced units will drive down prices across the board.

A coworker of mine asked me yesterday whether I planned on attending this auction, and I laughed at him. Sure, the starting bid price is $80k, but that is for a 1 bedroom and that is just the starting price. Austin Towers hit the nail on the head by stating the obvious: who cares what the starting bid is when it is the winning bid that really matters.

Plus, I don't want to live in a condo....