Although the craze they speak of is in Albany New York, this article offers great information on why people buy condominiums and the positives and negatives of doing so. We are seeing more master planned communities offering condominiums as part of their product mix in Panama.
Builders say buyers choose
condominiums for the comfort they afford without the outdoor chores of
traditional homeownership
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By KEVIN HARLIN, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer. First published: Sunday, April 23, 2006 |
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Who wants to mow the lawn? And why not let someone else paint that hallway? Capital Region builders say baby boomers, whose grown children have moved out, are increasingly looking to condominiums for comfortable living, without the chores of homeownership. |
That has sparked a boom in conversions of commercial spaces to condos, or construction of new developments in both suburban and downtown sites, say builders. The popularity of condos is borne out by data from the state attorney general's office, which must approve each offering plan.
The state said 14 condo projects were submitted in 2005 across Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga and Schenectady counties, with a total of 599 units. The year before, five were submitted, with a total of 179 units.
As recently as 2000, the office saw just one application, with two units.
"There have been more planned-unit communities here in the last five years than in the previous 15," said Joseph Conlon, principal with Diamond Realty Management, a Colonie firm that helps set up and manage condo and neighborhood association boards.
Condos are part of a family of collaborative housing arrangements collectively referred to as planned communities.
In a condominium, residents own their own living space, and collectively own and maintain common areas such as hallways, fitness centers or green space. Condos typically resemble apartments or town houses, though they can be stand-alone homes.
Cooperatives -- a little-used arrangement in the Capital Region -- are similar to condos, though residents typically own shares of the facilities.
The last and most common planned community is one governed by a homeowners' association. There, residents typically own their houses, though they agree to abide by community-set strictures governing everything from landscaping to house colors.
Critics blast the restrictions and sometimes high fees in planned communities, though the orderly communities are what draw many of the residents. And developers say the high level of services offered make the fees a bargain.
Doug Engels, a broker and co-owner of Delmar-based Weichert Realtors Northeast Group, has represented buyers looking for the condo life. Then, in 2000, he became a condo buyer himself, picking up one of the first units in the then-new Franklin Square Center in Saratoga Springs.
"We had lived in a very nice development in Guilderland, but there was nowhere to go where you didn't have to drive," Engels said.
He and his wife picked up the three-bedroom unit for about $245,000. In 2001, when their youngest son went off to college, they sold their four-bedroom Colonial in Guilderland.
Condos aren't new.
Diamond Realty's Conlon said the region saw its first in 1971, with the Commons in East Greenbush. They were introduced initially as a lower-cost way for people to buy their first home.
"But the market has really matured," he said.
Prices can still run the gamut, although many of today's offerings are high-end, luxury dwellings. Some condos in the region are selling for $200,000; others are fetching $400,000 or more. Meanwhile, the median sale price for single-family homes in the Capital Region was $180,000 last year.
Schenectady-based Adirondack Development Group is putting large luxury bathrooms, expensive countertops and high ceilings in the 72 two- and three-bedroom units it is building on Route 7 in Niskayuna. The Vly Pointe project includes attached two-car garages; prices start at $250,000.
Adirondack has built other condo projects that it says appeal to young professionals wanting something between an apartment and a house. But it believes builders are just catching up with demand from well-to-do retirees who want simpler lives but don't want to leave the area.
"The need for this kind of space, to keep the members of the community within the community, was huge," said Bob Sandberg, sales manager with the Coldwell Banker Prime Properties Inc. office on Western Avenue in Guilderland, who is marketing Vly Pointe for Adirondack. "Most people don't like to leave their dentist, their doctors, their hairdressers, the places where they're comfortable shopping."
Condo projects also are springing up in the region's core urban areas.
Jeffrey and Deane Pfeil are converting a former oilcloth factory on Third Street in Troy into 18 condominium units called Powers Park Lofts.
The units, ranging in size from 1,200 to 2,100 square feet, will go for $161,500 to $285,000, depending on size and options.
"They (owners) go away for a few months in the winter and they don't want to worry about anything going wrong while they're gone," said Jeffrey Pfeil, president of J.W. Pfeil & Co. Inc., a Saratoga Springs-based developer and property manager.
Engels, of Weichert Realtors, said his mother bought the unit next to his own a few years ago, and sold her home on Long Island. She now spends the summer in Saratoga Springs and winters in Florida.
"I would guess about a third of our building is empty during the wintertime with people who live someplace else," Engels said.
Downtown Saratoga Springs has seen perhaps the greatest activity in condos in the region. And units there don't come cheap.
Developer Bob Israel built some of Saratoga's first high-end condos in 1999, with Franklin Square Center. The initial 20 units quickly sold for between $160,000 and $400,000, and other developers have added more.
Pfeil is a partner in Excelsior Park, a residential and commercial project in Saratoga Springs near Northway Exit 15. There, builders last year finished a hotel and dozens of condos and town homes, some fetching $500,000. For more than $1 million, buyers get a 3,430-square-foot living space with three bedrooms, 3 baths, an entertainment room, a den and a large deck.
But while the condo craze may be getting into gear in the Capital Region, it's losing steam in most of the rest of the country. Speculators bid up many units in New York City, Florida and elsewhere. But the real estate market has cooled, making it harder for them to flip the units at a profit.
For the fourth-straight month, sale prices for condos and their co-op cousins fell nationwide, according to the National Association of Realtors. The median sale price in February was $214,300, down from more than $230,000 in October.
Engels said the Capital Region condo market may have cooled slightly along with the rest of the residential real estate in the region. But he said there's still plenty of demand.
And Diamond Realty's Conlon isn't expecting a major slowdown locally either.
Many area communities had year- or 18-month-long moratoriums on new residential construction that expired last year. And demand continues to grow, he said.
"The market is going through a strong push here," Conlon said. "I think this is more of a beginning than a peak."
Kevin Harlin can be reached at 454-5442 or by e-mail at [email protected].
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