Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Great Deal or "Get Real"?
Condos go for half-price in a unique Mindtown neighborhood.
Posted by John Branston on Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 11:26 AM
Burned in stocks and bonds and bored by alternatives that pay 1 percent interest, I paid off my home mortgage last week, locking in a 5 percent return and assuring that the Deal of the Year would materialize the minute I wired my check.
Sure enough, the stock market rallied, shares of FedEx went up nearly 10 percent in two days, and 18 new condos in Cooper-Young, a one-of-a-kind neighborhood in Midtown, were auctioned off last weekend for as little as $50,000. When the 32 units were built in 2007, they were listed at $125,000 and up.
The two-story Pie Factory, named for the old Keathley Pie Company that opened in 1932, is two blocks west of the fairgrounds and four blocks east of the Cooper-Young business district. The units have big windows, secure parking, fancy floors and kitchens, and 11-foot ceilings. The neighborhood boasts an active residents' association, a festival, a farmer's market, a better-than-average public elementary school, a bank, Burke's Book Store, and restaurants such as Celtic Crossing, Java Cabana, Sweet Grass, Grace, the Beauty Shop, Young Avenue Deli, Tsunami, and Au Fond. Bike lanes are slated for Southern Avenue and Cooper.
The fairgrounds is about to get a Salvation Army Kroc Center for indoor fitness and youth sports, outdoor playing fields, and $16 million in publicly funded improvements to "Tiger Lane," the entrance to the football stadium off of East Parkway. Young Avenue is being extended into the former Libertyland site. If you're so inclined, you can walk from the Pie Factory to nine football games a year.
So how come the Pie Factory didn't take off? Was the auction a great deal or just getting real?
Emily Bishop, communications director for the Cooper-Young Community Association, has lived in the neighborhood since 1987. The Pie Factory, she said, was "an idea ahead of its time." She is disappointed that the commercial spaces on the ground floor are empty and wary of the units auctioned off to investors who may plan to rent them.
"One of our concerns when this project was proposed was that if they didn't sell well, it might become a bigger problem of rentals that were not maintained," she said.
Linda Sowell, a realtor whose office is in Midtown, said the auction prices "were lower than I would have thought." She thinks one problem with the condos is the lack of outdoor space. "People want a balcony or a courtyard or something." Meredith Smith, 25, an art teacher with Memphis City Schools who came here four years ago with Teach For America, said she loves living in Cooper-Young. She rents a small house near Cooper and likes the neighbors of different ages, the restaurants, and the funky ambience. She was not surprised, however, that the condos didn't sell out when they were listed for more than $100,000.
"Why would you buy a condo, when you can get a house here for the same price?" she said.
James Rasberry, co-developer of the Pie Factory, said that after 10 units initially sold for $125,000 to $150,000, sales "stopped cold" when the recession hit. The auction prices, he said, ranged from $50,000 to $82,000, with half the buyers being investors and half people who plan to live in their units.
Rasberry also represented the group that wanted to put a grocery store in Overton Square in Midtown but withdrew in the face of community opposition.
"The problem with Midtown is household income," he said. "A national company or developer looks at it as a fourth-tier or fifth-tier site compared to the Poplar and Perkins intersection in East Memphis or Germantown or Collierville."
My theory is that the Pie Factory looked good on paper. At half-price, it may pan out, especially if the fairgrounds achieves its potential. But it goes against the grain. Pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods or New Urbanism or whatever you call it is one of those things, like supporting public education and reducing your carbon footprint, that is more praised in theory than in action. Good for someone else but not you. Until gas goes to $5 a gallon, most of us aren't going green, and we'll keep our cars and houses.
And as Sowell says about the current real estate market, the glass is not half-empty or half-full; the glass is too big. Even when bargains abound, Memphis needs more people with the ability to make a down payment, whatever and wherever they buy.
Comments (28)
Showing 1-28 of 28
I had actually looked at these when I was considering buying a place (before the market crashed) and even then, there were no ammenities, no outdoor space and no community gathering space. It just wasnt worth it.
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I was house-hunting in 2008 and I briefly considered condos (I ended up with a house).
I remember seeing these online and being aghast at the price. Besides no amenities (come on - how hard would it have been to put in a pool and patio area), the units are very small.
Maybe they should have gone with less expensive finishes and put them on the market for $100k in the first place.
Not only are the condos lacking in amenities, but the building itself is the ugliest thing in Cooper/Young. Could they not have tried a LITTLE to maintain the distinctive aesthetic of the neighborhood? It's an eyesore.
I like the looks of that building, to each his/her own. You would think that at a purchase price of around $60k you could rent it out and make it on cash flow pretty well.
The place is infested with kooky liberals. What do you expect? You guys don't want progress, and instead promote regression. 60% price reduction giveaways STILL can't attract interest. Who wants ot live among that?
The pie-hole could offer football field size balconies and nobody would buy into them.
Here is the deal, when one or two of these old whores get turned into apartments and condos, they sell out. They sell out because all the liberal idiots who have no common sense snap them right up. HOWEVER, when you have these turds EVERYWHERE on virtually every street corner, the charm that you liberals shiver for is quickly lost because of overkill.
Perhaps June West can declare them historical properties, then lardasses Oprah and Angelou can bless them and then Oblow-me can send illegal immigrants from Arizona to occupy them?
See? See the hope you liberals have? Carry on with the give aways and all cheer Chooch the chooch for overlaying death and desolation on Midtown.
Bravo liberals, bravo!
The funniest part of this is that Emily Bishop, who has just jumped up onto the Tommy V dartboard, is on record scratching her ass and calling this turd bucket " ahead of it's time"
ROTFLMFUAO.................... HILLARIOUS........................
You guys are got-damned hillariousl Nobody wants your cozy crap and it's why? Because it is too cool for the rest of the world to understand? Oh, man, PRICELESS!
The author says UNTIL GAS GOES TO $5 per gallon.......?
NO JOHN, Transportation will NEVER, EVER get to where Americans will denegrate themselves and live in depressing crap holes like this. Christians are taught to take risk with their resources and blessings and build for the future. This is why people like big SUV's, urban sprawl, convienience, ammentities and technology. That is the spirit that creates jobs and makes life better for the next generation.
While liberals do their best to kill the American way of life, the majority of us will indeed seek technologies that make things even more convenient and easy on us. Personal transportation, energy comsumption and capitalism, despite the efforts of this cancer called Obama will move forward to bigger, flashier and better manifestations.
Electric cars? 40 whopping miles MAX? WOW! (IF you use air conditioning make it 25 miles) Then a gasoline motor that drives an electrical generator and delivers worse gas milage than a comperable gas engine car does... for BACK UP? YES YES YES you geniuses, go green, please. We need the laughs.
\
And just like Solar nonsense, the electric car needs a whopping $7,500 government check/rebate to even bring it close to being competitive. LOL
Funee.
But hey, you liberal vermin just keep on celebrating your delapidated and empty buildings and looking to relics like June West, Michael Cromer and this new dartboard target for your future.
Go ahead, do it. You know you want to. Go ahead, blame this Midtown flop on George Bush!
Hey, I was just thinking, can we get the Congressional Black Caucus to pressure banks to make $50,000 mortgage loans to idiots who can only afford $20,000, as long as they buy a pie hole?
Seriously, that's how you guys work. You blackmail the taxpayer to fund all the crap in your world that NOBODY would choose for themselves given the chance.
Man, you guys are twisted.
I glanced at your post, TV. Nobody reads your junk. I know your type: you're often wrong but never in doubt.
Every heat beat comes close to dislodging a wad of fat that is barely clinging to an artery wall. If only he would do some side straddle hops or something.
I'm seriously worried about our boy, judging from these comments and the one he posted on the Lorenzen Wright announcement. He's in danger of spontaneous human combustion. Whatever we do, we must avoid providing him any source of ignition.
He is, however, demonstrating many of the classic symptoms of narcissistic AND borderline personality disorders (not to mention that his third grade spelling teacher is rolling over in her grave).
Did I hear someone say intervention?
Actually, Tommy, there was much skepticism about the viability of the Pie-Hole project when it was conceived--Cooper-Young is attractive to residential buyers that want a little house with a garden--but there was no convincing the E Memphis minded developers of this fact. The building would have been a success if it had been converted into studio/one bedroom apartments mixed with art studios. Emily Bishop is a very talented association executive and one would do well to score her as a bullseye when targeting neighborhood organization.
Tommy V., shut your pie hole and crawl back under your rock from whence you came.
You are one crazy mofo!
Someone, please light a match and put that bag of hot gas, Tommyboy outta his misery.
Zip: Congrats, bud. You knocked me completely off my office chair with that one. Cardiac arrest as a comedy device. Man, I flat missed the boat.
Side straddle hops?? Whoa, dude...that's some throw back. Do you also use dork and groovy?
I'll tell you what I think is groovy. Seeing you liberal crack pots wrong time after time after time. But all clinging together as if the cancerous section of midtown and downtown pagans represent anything mroe than a Green Acres episode.
But hey, you guys have lived how long without having to hear contrary opinion.
The problem you have is that you can't ever best me with facts and are reduced to having to sit among yourselves and concur about something that doesn't reflect reality.
You are like the polesmokers who sit against the wall at the prom, concuring that the chick going out with a jock isn't that hot. Meanwhile none of you have dates.
Speaking of which, Marty, I understand that your GF left you quite awhile ago and you haven't been anywhere near a sniff of a replacement.
Honestly, my liberal pied-piper rats, I understand your frustration.
Whew Tommy Boy. That's some fetid scrib. Bro, Cialis is for popping. When you stop snorting it, you'll feel lots better. Promise.
Well.... Tommy Chickenhawk has finally said something that is incontrovertibly true.
No one can ever beat him with facts.... he is impervious to them.
Remember folks, this is the guy that said he was the only poster on the entire site man enough to use his real name.. i.e. that Bruce, Chris, Tom Guleff and so forth were all hiding behind aliases.
The same 'ultra patriot' who calls veterans and cops cowards and traitors, but who ran away when there was a chance of getting shot at himself.
The one caught in the forged Jefferson quotes and phony 'writings of Jesus' who claims he never lied.
The people who developed the pie factory weren't liberals, Tommy. They were conservative biz types who made a bad bet. Just like all the dozens of formerly high-flying homebuilders and developers in east Shelby County and other burbs who have declared bankruptcy b/c they made bad bets. And the ones who didn't have to have their wives co-sign the bank loans might actually have some assets left.
Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy...
Neon Drag Queen has a runner in his pantyhose.
I am still waiting for you to show me where I ever called veterans traitors or cowards.
You blab on and on and on, but never show proof af your claims.
Your military fantasies noted, they were bringing troops home in 1973 and not drafting anyone, and not enlisting man. Why don't you buy Marty a new dress and take her out to one of those trendy Midtown pickle parks?
"...they were bringing troops home in 1973 and not drafting anyone, and not enlisting man."
Really Tommy Chickenhawk? They didn't enlist anyone in 1973?
Bull.
That's an even bigger whopper than the one about your own words never being looked up and quoted back to you.
TV: you mean you're willing to share me? I could never be unfaithful to you, sweetie, no matter how many times you troll Overton Park. By the way, don't forget to pick up some Trojans for yourself on the way home, honey bunch; you know, the pint-sized ones.
Tommy, we all know the nano-second you faced an enemy shooting at you you'd be a blubbering, pissing in your pants yellow coward. And you know it too.
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