With the asking price for its sister project at 430 Eddy Street having just been reduced 27 percent, the Tenderloin parcel at 519 Ellis Street, which was recently entitled for an eight-story building as well, with 21 condos averaging around 600 square feet apiece and two retail spaces, is now on the market for $2.95 million.
As with the 430 Eddy Street project, the building permits for the 519 Ellis Street project have been requested and are expected to be approved within the next four to five weeks.
And as with the Eddy Street site, the Ellis Street parcel was originally entitled for the development of affordable housing a little over a decade ago.
That so-called “affordable” project never had funding and was promoted by someone with no experience building affordable housing. I got the Planning Commission to revoke the entitlement because he had no real plans to build.
“We used to make sh*t in this country, build sh*t. Now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket.”
-Frank Sobotka
Are people really doing well financially by acquiring rights to land, going through the process of obtaining entitlements and then selling the resulting package to someone else for more than the accumulated acquisition and carrying costs? Nice work if you can get it.
Money can be made in entitling land but one has to be careful and in particular engage such projects in appreciating markets. Now is a bad time to be putting entitled projects up for sale in SF.
There is one developer who has done a number of Bay Area entitlements in recent years that I know of. He stopped building homes in California because of the tax situation and shifted to all entailments. He had great success in Dublin and in Pleasant Hill where I was involved in an entitlement.
This person got out of the Bay Area entitlement market 2 years ago because he saw a slowing of appreciation and growth here compared to other areas. He’s shifted to the Reno area and is actually building homes again, not just entitling, there because of the less oppressive Nevada state tax situation.
Just another example that “the Market” alone cannot meet the critical Societal need for housing.
This comes to 140K/unit. Significantly less than the 152K/unit being asked for the 430 Eddy entitlement. It is unlikely 430 Eddy will get 3.5 million while this nearby project is asking 2.95 million. The other thing that makes 519 Ellis a relative “bargain” is the almost 3 year duration of its entitlement while Eddy has just about a year left on its entitlement.
Whether either of these ever gets built as envioned is doubtful though this project has the better chance. Both designs are actually nice and fit in/complement their surroundings. In that sense it will be a loss to see these projects not move forward.
Add another 44 units to the growing number of entitled units put up for sale rather than being built out. The total number of such units is probably approaching 1000 and odds are will go higher. .
unbelievably mundane architecture…
if you only have a façade to design, and you cannot even make it interesting, add some kind of alternating detail…
At least make the ground floor taller so it works with the thin design motif…