Seattle, Bellevue luxury condominium towers are slow to fill up - Business First of Columbus:

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The units — at Fifteen Twenty-One, the Four Season s Private Residences, Olive 8, Bellevue Towers and Washington SquareTowers — represent the majorityg of large condos that have opened here in the past 18 In many cases, dozens of pre-sale agreements booked by developers have failed to come to fruition. Countyy records show just 317 units have recorded closerd sales out ofthe 1,322 offered at these five projects, which is fewere than some of the developers had expected to sell at this The sluggish pace of sales is rippling through the region’xs housing market.
Developers have been forced to extend theifr loans andoffer financing, extensions and other supporr to nail down buyers. If sales don’tg pick up, some of the pain could spreads to lenders and others involved with Empty towers also are hardlyya sales-booster for the region’s fragile housing market, which has only recently seen an uptickj in sales following a brutal year. “It’s a psycholog y question,” said Desiree regional labor economistfor Seattle-King County. “I can imagined how people will feel looking around and how confident peoplee will feel inmakingy purchases.” The reasons for the sales slowdowhn are numerous.
Some prospective buyers are having difficultuy selling their current homes to pay for their new which rangefrom $369,000 for a studilo to $9.2 million for a four-bedroom penthouse. Some potential buyerss have either lost jobs or fearthey will. Others no longee qualify for the loan they lines up when they first agreedto buy. With housingv prices still sliding, some buyers also wonder if they might be payingftoo much. “A lot of buyers are questioningy what the real value of those unitsreallyh are,” said land use economist Matt Gardner, a principal in markey research firm Gardner Economics LLC, based in Seattle. Speculators who bet that pricesz would risealso aren’t closing.
Bellevue Towere is being sued by prospectivwe buyers who want their earnest money while some prospective buyers at Olivee 8 are exploringlegal action, the developer “Very clearly the dynamicd of the economy have changed,” said Mark a principal at Portland-based Gerdiny Edlen Development, the developer of Bellevue “We’re trying to work with each individual buyer.” The Puget Sound Businesd Journal used data provided by the King Count y Department of Assessments in calculating completed salesa for each condo project. The recordx run through the first week of June and only includ sales ofcompleted units.
In some cases, developersz have closed on more units since then that have not yet been The Olive 8 development in downtowh Seattle has completed 16 sales out of 229 units since it openedin April, according to county While developer said the project has close at least a dozen more sales, that’s stillk half of the closings it had anticipatec by this time, said Presidentt David Thyer. Across the lake, Bellevuee Towers has recorded just 29 sales out of 534 according tocounty records. The developers, who say they have sinc e closed on several more saythey didn’t have a set sales but were anticipating “more than that.
” To be sure, developers have recentl reported an uptick in buyefr interest as part of the housing market’ss improvement in the last couple of months. Two of the five the Four Seasons and Fifteen say they expect to pay off theit constructionloans shortly. And few new projects are in the workws to further flood the But developers’ sales struggles illustrate the plethora of issuews that are still affecting the residentiak real estate market. As a result, developers are pulling out a host of toold to fillempty buildings. Amonh them: — R.C. Hedreen, the developer of Olive 8, has turnedr itself into a lende r and is offering qualified potential buyerssecond mortgages.
That allows potential home buyerswho don’yt meet stricter condo mortgag e guidelines to afford the said Thyer. “We’re in a position to make those he said. Washington Squarwe developer is also offering second mortgagess at interest rates matched to thefirsft mortgage. — Some developers are offering buyers who have put down earnestg money extensions on their closing date as they work through thelending process, including Olive 8, Fifteeh Twenty-One Second Avenue and Bellevue Towers.
— Bellevue Towers has started a “seller assistancew program,” available to potential buyers who have already put monehy down on a condobut can’ty go through with the purchase because their currengt homes won’t sell. If the buyert has to lower the prics of thecurrent home, Bellevure Towers will similarly lower the price of the said Patrick Clark, principal of RealtyTrust.
— Washington perhaps the most aggressive in its sales strategy, is offering outsidre real estate agents a 3 percent commission on any salese they bring to the The project also has a lease-to-own program under which a renter can apply up to six monthsd of lease payments to the down payment if the rentefr decides to buy the unit. So far 52 unitsz have been leased underthe program. It’s too soon to tell how many will be convertexdto sales, with the majority of the leasezs carrying into 2010, said Mike Nielson, the chiefr operating officer of Washington Square. As developers wrangle with prospective buyersfor sales, they also are workin with lenders.