Seattle Real Estate: Too much money, Good investment, Progress, Poor Planning
So I just read in the Seattle PI about Children’s Hospital looking at buying out an entire condo complex for possible future expansion. According to the PI, Laurelon Terrace condominiums is a six acre complex with 136 units. Children’s reported price according to this article?
93 million dollars!
A jaw dropping 2.8 times the current value according to the PI! It isn’t a surprise that the majority of residents in the condo complex are willing to sell, but what does surprise me? There are some that don’t! I wish I had bought a couple of those condos a few years back – don’t you?
So how does this happen? In 1990 the state of Washington passed a measure which allows a condo to sell itself if at least 80% of the owners approve. That was not put in place for complexes built prior to that time, which are still under the 100% approval rule. So the neighbors at Laurelon who don’t want to sell still have a fighting chance of keeping their homes for now, but it seems according to the article that the condo board is looking at legal ways around that, too.
I understand someone not wanting to leave their home – take Edith Macefield for instance – the lovely woman in Ballard that refused to sell her home when she was offered something like a million dollars. I adore this woman, but driving by now and seeing her house swallowed up by giant concrete walls make me extremely sad. My favorite book as a child was The Little House and Ms. Macefield is the little house in real life. I wish the developer could have convinced her to let him move her house out to the country or somewhere with a lovely little view instead of the giant dark walls outside her kitchen window now. I lived in Ballard for a long time and I remember seeing her house in the middle of a parking lot for years and thinking how she must have lived there forever, but never did I think that Seattle would allow an older lady to have to finish out her long life in a house smothered by construction. I truly fault the city for what happened to Edith Macefield – I have no idea how it happened, but that building should have never gone up around her house.
So, progress happens in Seattle and although I love old Seattle and one of my favorite sites is www.VintageSeattle.org, I would much rather sell my home to an organization such as Children’s Hospital than a developer putting in a Trader Joe’s or whatever else is going in there. But then, we do love our Trader Joe’s too….hmmmm.
Seattle Washington Real Estate, Seattle seller news, seattle neighborhoods, seattle real estate 2008
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