Long Beach Real Estate-Long Beach Condos

A friend sent me a link to this video.  I just wanted to share it. 

"My Dogs greeting me after returning from 14 months in Iraq".

Breaking Long Beach Real Estate News:

Long Beach Own Your Own (OYO) Owners Are Organizing for Condo Conversion.  Back in May the Long Beach Real Estate Home Blog published an article on OYO's.  So many buyers were inquiring about this form of ownership it made sense to publish an article, explaining this form of ownership, to be found on the Internet.  Well it has been found, by several thousand Long Beach and potential Long Beach residents who have indeed read it, including many frustrated Long Beach OYO owners.  Several days ago I was contacted by the lovely Deb Dobias, a Long Beach OYO owner who is a major contributing force in the quest to organize OYO owners to push state and local officials to loosen the reigns and convert the last of the existing Long Beach OYO's to condos.  Deb went on to explain what these owners have been up against and the efforts they have put forth.  We invited her to write an article here and are very pleased that she accepted our offer. 

It is our sincere hope that the District Weekly, Curbed LA, the Grunion and Downtown Gazettes, the Press Telegram, the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register will also pick up this article or will contact Deb and assist in this noble effort with an article of their own to help these troubled OYO owners. It is our further hope that both California state and local officials will get out of the box and make this happen. 

Please understand that many of these owners are in deep trouble.  They cannot sell their Own Your Own (OYO) homes because there is little or no financing available.  Due to the problems plaguing this form of ownership many owners have rented their units out and have moved on.  In doing so they have decreased the level of owner occupied units in the remaining OYOs which has eliminated any chance for a Long Beach buyer to obtain financing to purchase. 

In July 2008 the Long Beach Real Estate Blog offered the communities of Long Beach a place to be published.  This is another in a series of articles by Long Beach residents.  Do You Want to be Published?

OYO Conversions - An untapped resource for Affordable Housing

Author:  Deb Dobias

The City of Long Beach Housing is under-served in providing affordable housing to "first-time home buyers" and seniors on fixed incomes. "While Long Beach Housing Trust" continues to build new projects for affordable housing, low income or fixed income buyers are still unable to have enough funding to pay the down payment. Building costs keep the price of these "Affordable" Long Beach homes high.

Purchasing Own Your Own Apartments (OYO) in Long Beach is a means to becoming stakeholders and being able to afford to buy apartment homes for reasonable sums.  OYOs were the pre-cursors to Condos, usually built before the 1960s.  Long Beach has a large number of these charming, well-kept, usually small buildings.  Most Long Beach OYOs, even after Condo Conversion, would sell for less than newer "Affordable Housing"; this could significantly add to the City's Affordable Housing.  Best of all, making it possible for people to buy these affordable Long Beach homes would leave the Housing Trust funds for more housing in Long Beach.

Little Problem...

Someone who wants to buy a Long Beach OYO usually cannot get financing like Condos can.  When a bank does offer loans, it usually requires a high owner-occupancy in the OYO complex.  For the past few years, only Long Beach investors could cough up the cash to buy these places, so owner-occupancy is often low.

Which causes more problems...

• One lady in our building got sick and couldn't work for a while.  Our building, a Long Beach OYO, had some serious maintenance issues so we had to levy some special assessments, which she couldn't pay.  The City of Long Beach has Rehab Loans for low-income owners of houses or Condos, but not for OYOs.  This poor lady wound up having to sell her OYO home for a very low price and move in with family.  Had we been able to convert, she could have kept her home.

• Many Long Beach OYO owners are elderly.  Reverse mortgages are not available to OYOs in Long Beach.

• No home equity loans are available to OYOs.  This often causes owners to vote against maintenance assessments or to avoid maintaining their own units.  These are older buildings, so this affects Long Beach neighborhoods and tenants as well as owners.

• A lady who lived in her OYO home told me that she wanted to take out an equity loan so she could invest in another property.   Renting that property would help her to pay bills when she retires.  She has excellent credit and owes nothing on her OYO.   She cannot do this simply because her OYO complex can't prove who lived there in 1982! 

Why can't OYOs just convert to Condominiums?

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The California Heights Historic District has decided to cancel this years 12th annual Home and Garden Show and postpone it until October 2009. 

Few are unaffected by the events leading to the current condition of our economy, this wonderful event is no exception.  Homeowners have postponed projects that would otherwise have been completed before placing their homes on the tour.  Attendees who would normally take the tour for improvement and restoration ideas are placing home improvements on hold and are finding themselves on restricted budgets due to inflating gas and food costs as well as, in some cases, large overhead costs due to increased mortgage payments, none of which bode well for anticipated attendance. 

The event has traditionally provided funds for projects in and around the California Heights Historic District and will be sorely missed. 

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Long Beach Real Estate News

Long Beach California Real Estate Sales Update

The Long Beach Real Estate Market has been shifting a bit this year. After a very slow start in January, Long Beach home sales are up by over 100% on a monthly basis as of August. Long Beach Condo sales, still very weak, have been increasing on a monthly basis, almost doubling by August.  Downtown Long Beach is home to a great many condominium complexes; clearly 25% of all Long Beach condo sales this year have been in the Downtown area.  This makes sense, Downtown is still very affordable and affordable sells in this market.  The redevelopment in Downtown Long Beach has made living there very desirable. 

While residential real estate sales in Long Beach are down a bit from the same time in 2007; sales of income properties are down substantially. The Long Beach income property sector has been extremely hard hit with large decreases in annual sales 2006 through 2007.  2008 has not offered a reprieve for owners of these investment properties.  Prospective buyers of income properties are learning that large down payments are now necessary to purchase units whether they are owner occupied or not.  The banks, hard pressed to cover these loans, have raised the bar on qualifying.  It is not unusual for a bank to demand a 40% down payment and excellent credit before even considering a loan for apartments. Still, some sellers need to sell and there have been a few very sweet deals that have closed this year, some all cash, the rest with large down payments or seller financing. 

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Long Beach Community News

Long Beach Parking Solutions

Last month the Long Beach Real Estate Home Blog published an article on Downtown Long Beach Parking.  The article discussed the escalating parking problems caused by the re-development in the Downtown Long Beach area.  One of the potential parking solutions addressed was Vertical Parking.  The article went on and examined an assortment of related potential issues and raised a whole bunch of questions for which there were no immediate solutions.  

Shortly after publishing this article I was contacted by the owner of Apex Skypark.  They are a Robotic Parking Solution company located right here in Anaheim.  He took the time to address the concerns and informed me that they are currently working with the City of Long Beach in an attempt to bring these solutions to the Downtown Long Beach and Belmont Shore neighborhoods.  Well, both communities can certainly use more parking - he piqued my interest. 

An invitation to contribute to the Long Beach Real Estate Home Blog was extended to Apex in an effort to better explain this to Long Beach residents.  We are pleased to welcome Harold W Ashworth, a Long Beach Peninsula resident and Vice President of Apex Skypark.

By:  Harold W Ashworth

I have become intimately involved with The City of Long Beach and their Parking Issues. Working with the Long Beach Re-Development Agency has shown me just how critical parking is in the Downtown Long Beach area. As a Long Beach Resident (The Peninsula) I have experienced many of the same issues everyone else faces as they try and Park on 2^nd Street in Belmont Shore for dinner in the evenings and or dinner on the waterfront at Shoreline Village. Whether it is waiting for the Valet to bring your car or running out to re-fill the meter has become quite the challenge.

That being said - The Automated Robotic Car Garages hits close to home for me as I am involved with a local company right here in our own backyard. Apex Skypark®, Inc., located in Anaheim, builds the Robotics and Systems for this new Technology - New to the USA only. Presently there are only 4-5 Garages operating in the USA but many are either under construction or they are in the design phases. We are currently working with Developers and the City of Long Beach on a couple of locations for this very thing. Long Beach will become the first on the West Coast for an Automated Robotic Garage.

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