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Builders pose another threat to neighborhood pricing:

With resale inventory so limited in the coastal region, we could sure use some new product:

Today’s home buyers want bang-for-the-buck, and don’t want to compromise.

This new-home tract in Carlsbad is feeling it – three houses sold over $1 million this past weekend, while six others are sitting unsold from $769,000 to the low-$800,000s:

(This was taped last Sunday)

We stopped at the Pardee tract in Carmel Valley called Manzanita Trail a few months back, and a reader asked for an update - here is a link to our first visit: Link to original post

Here is the follow-up:

Pattie is a great salesperson, and has a lot to do with their success. The enthusiasm for pitching the product over and over usually wanes quickly for most tract salespeople, but not with Pattie – you get the feeling she still enjoys coming to work every day.

From our friends at the voice:

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2009/09/20/government/237park092009.txt

An excerpt:

They moved into the unfinished, developing community expecting that as it grew, public facilities like schools, parks and libraries would follow. With reason: it says so in the community plan.

But the city’s budget woes haven’t been any more sparing on unfinished communities than the rest of the city. So while neighborhoods citywide worry over mayoral warnings that their parks and libraries could become casualties of future budget cuts, residents here would be satisfied if only they had a park to worry about, too.

Plans for a 5-acre neighborhood park, which residents say is overdue and sorely needed because of the community’s density, have languished.  They say the city has reneged on its obligations to provide basic services as a tradeoff for higher density.

Public facilities for new developments like Pacific Highlands Ranch are financed with special assessments on developers. The city collects a facilities benefit assessment for each parcel granted a building permit, and those assessments are reflected in homes’ purchase prices. This year, the FBA for a single family unit parcel is almost $80,000.

You gotta feel for the guy in the second clip:

Vacant commercial space is everywhere – especially with office condos around North SD County:

CR scooped me again with my own video – it had been a couple of months!

This Carlsbad tract is pretty well hidden – I didn’t know it was there until last weekend, and when I first drove by I didn’t see it. 

Builder K. Hovnanian started on these models in June 2007, just as the easy money dried up – and that’s as far as they got.  Here’s the youtube video: