What was a two-story commercial building has been razed and in its place a five-story mixed-use building with 1,150 square feet of ground floor commercial space, seven off-street parking spaces (access from Hemlock), and eight “dwelling units” will soon be rising up at 1151 Sutter Street.
As far as we know, the eight units will be apartments rather than condos. And we haven’t yet seen any designs. Tipsters?
Did anyone figure out what happened to 1158 Post, which is across the street, and suddenly disappeared from the market?
[Editor’s Note: Apparently they decided to go the rental route.]
If the builder goes rental first, then at a later time sells off the apartments as condos, do they avoid the BMR restrictions (i.e. being forced to build some minimum number of below-market rate units) on new developments?
Jimmy –
No, they do not avoid BMR requirements at all. The BMR requirements apply to all forms of housing – rental and for-sale. However, I believe the affordability/income rules are different for rental and for-sale. My recollection is that the rental BMRs must be affordable to those making 60% of AMI, for-sale must be affordable to those making 100% of AMI, or something to that effect. I would imagine that if they change tenure type that the corresponding rules would apply. And by the way, no one is “forced to build” anything. A developer can always pay the in-lieu fee and not build anything. One Rincon paid the in-lieu fee, for instance.
city resident – That’s interesting. Since market rate rental fees are not nearly as out of line as market rate home prices, the difference between rental market and below market rates will also be lower percentage-wise.
So a developer opting to switch to rental absorbs less of BMR penalty.
When housing prices get back in line with reality the developer could start selling units and won’t need to pay nearly as high of a BMR penalty since the BMR prices will be more in line with the market rate.
SocketSite, can you please change the “posted by” wording in the gray bar at the bottom of each post to say “on” instead of “at”?
thanks!