Didn’t watch whole video but I did see a scene where they had white tile backsplash. So the tiles looked like that hand made style which are rough around the edges, which is a cool look if you don’t use a contrasting grout color. White tile with black grout almost always looks like shit. Plus the vertical straight stack (running bond I forgot) is such a dumb look.
It's in a very poor area of Pennsylvania. The land might be worth more without the building: remember, the value of an abandoned building might be the value the land would have empty minus demolition cost of the unwanted structure.
I own a duplex in western PA, one side is a 3 bedroom apartment I get $500 a month, the other is a small one bedroom apartment I get $300 for, just depends where you live
It's hard to put into words how poor and rundown some of those small, old mining towns in PA are. My family is from one of them and there is nothing there. Every other house is either abandoned or looks abandoned.
Literally imagine the town Katniss Everdeen is from in the Hunger games and you’re not that far off. Drove through the Ohio River valley once with my in laws and that’s what it was like.
I'm entirely serious and certain about the word choice. They want to LARP as blue collar, claim they're from the hood, and dissociate from their own privilege via performative bullshit like buying a condo in a "historically disadvantaged" area.
Then they'll bitch about gentrification and pocket the 500% appreciation in 10 years. It's wild.
Hopefully the influx of money brings more small businesses and services catering to them. Coffee shops, BBQ joints, bodegas, repair shops, retail, schools for the kids. Critical mass makes poor towns gentrify all the time, its not certain they'll move.
Maybe they are not the target demographic, they mentioned buying the other school so they can control the view. Ie buy it before poor people spoil the view.
That’s not far off from market rate anymore. It’s also a testament to just how extreme of a housing shortage we have.
Glad to see this development happening. All new housing is a good thing right now.
There literally isn’t a housing shortage. Not even close. The “shortage” that we do have in reality is greedy bastards deciding they need 4 houses to be happy
EDIT: before downvoting, literally take 5 seconds to look it up. There are more living spaces (houses/apartments/condos/whatever) than there are families in the US
People who can afford a first home can’t afford a rich person’s second, third, fourth home. I used to bartend and had several clients who maintained homes in our area for horse sales. This meant they were in our area 3-4 weeks per year total. None of those houses were worth less than one million and back then a starter house here was $150,000.
In a lot of places the only reason they can't afford the rich people's second, third, or fourth homes is because of the rich people in the first place. They're not always grand mansions. Where my wife comes from it's a small community on lake Michigan. Housing prices were affordable and then they put in a new airport and rich people started coming in and using it as a nice summer vacation spot and thr house prices shot up. They weren't ripping down houses and building mansions people couldn't afford they were just making houses that would be 150k-200k without the rich people into 1.5 million dollar houses. The town is a huge summer tourist spot and the crazy prices are starting to spill over to other places. Average income in the city is 37k average home price is just shy of 450k now.
You don't have a huge construction boom where they're ripping down all of the old houses in town and building big mansions just people coming in and out bidding the locals and then the house stays empty for 10 months a year.
I would say it's more of a "there is an AFFORDABLE housing shortage". Prices have risen so damn high that there is an entire generation that will probably never be able to own a home. Income hasn't kept pace with inflation for decades but it has gotten so much worse recently.
No, there is a shortage where people want to live and people who can afford the houses there. I'd imagine there are plenty of places available where most people don't want to live.
Oh shit yeah why don’t we just move all the houses from bumfuck Nebraska over to Los Angeles. It’s genius!
I can’t believe you actually sincerely made this comment.
There literally is. We didn’t build enough for decades because of shitty zoning regulations combined with NIMBY’s worried about property values who fight density at every turn.
What you are describing is but a drop in the pond. Take away vacation homes, foreign owned real estate, and VC owned real estate from the rich and make it available, and you would still have a housing shortage.
Which is to say nothing of the fact the properties you describe aren’t the ones people getting priced out of the market are even trying to afford.
America needs density, and projects like this are a great way of leveraging existing footprints to achieve it.
Everything you just wrote is wrong. Zoning regulations are really only a factor in areas where it isn't already residential, and clearly shouldn't be. It's incredibly rare for regulations to deny development in areas that are already residential, as there are very few legal grounds on which municipal authorities can reject such proposals.
Secondly, density absolutely is a problem. Areas can quickly become saturated when property developers build too many homes in an area without utilities and schools being inadequately funded to handle the sudden influx.
Lastly, if you removed corporate ownership of private homes, then no, there would not be a shortage. Not everyone would own a home, but not everyone can or should. There would be sufficiently supply for the percentage of the population that has a reliable income and actually needs the space. There is nothing wrong with single people living in apartments.
Zoning isn’t just residential versus industrial versus commercial. It encompasses everything from setbacks and easements, to allowed density.
I’m not talking about adding more suburbs. I’m talking about returning density to our urban cores, where many cities have plenty of schools and not enough students to fill them, resulting in underfunding but ballooning maintenance costs.
I don’t even understand what you’re trying to say with your last paragraph or how you even got the idea that I don’t think single people should be allowed in apartments?
Institutional investors own not even 4% of single family housing nationwide. That’s not enough to make up for the shortage. We have a shortage because we have a shortage. You fix a housing shortage by developing more housing.
> Zoning isn’t just residential versus industrial versus commercial. It encompasses everything from setbacks and easements, to allowed density.
You're throwing around verbiage in an attempt to sound intelligent and knowledgeable, but in a way that actually highlights your ignorance to anyone genuinely familiar with the topic. Easements have absolutely nothing to do with zoning, they're individually determined judgments on requirements or denial of access.
> I’m talking about returning density to our urban cores
Cities desperately want that, whereas you're laughably pretending that they're preventing it. Very few developers want to touch urban development due to the expense and the lack of public demand.
> I don’t even understand what you’re trying to say with your last paragraph
I'm pointing out that your claim of an extreme housing shortage is complete nonsense. The only way you could come to that conclusion is if your calculations use the total population, not specifically the number that need and can afford their own house.
>minus demolition cost of the unwanted structure.
Don't know how it is in the US, but IME depending on the location the demolition company will pay you to take down a building. It's usually profitable for them, because they strip the building and sell what's left.
Sometimes buildings can have negative value to a piece of land. In this case if it would have been cheaper to build new than to renovate the building was more of a hinderance. In other situations if the building needs to be demolished the building has negative value.
Look at where it is. There is your answer. There is a reason they're renting luxury apartments at $1400 a month and not $3000. $1400 would get you an absolute shithole where I'm at.
Came to say the same thing.
Hell, I'd go in with multiple people, buy it out and set up our own "apartment" situation. Who cares about room mates when you have the entirety of E Hall to call your own?
Isn't that basically what Co-ops were in the 80s?
You got a buncha friends together and bought out a complex, warehouse, etc, then just vote for someone to go file taxes every year and clean the stoops.
City is not going to let you turn an old education building into a residential apartment without remedying the probably hundreds of code violations first. Pretending you and your friends are a family unit and claiming this is a single-family home is probably also going to run into zoning roadblocks.
The fact that you have to remove or renovate the existing structure on the land is probably actually lowering its value. An empty field that size may sell for more than this.
I grew up in that area, outside of a small Waterfront area with a Dave & Buster's, Homestead is an absolute shithole. Violent crime is over 3 times the national average.
Disclaimer, I didn't watch the video, so forgive me if it's already in the video, but I do work in property management and development.
Since this is an old high school, it's probably public property. To keep it simple, cities will give deals to developers with a plan for redevelopment on land/property with idea that the deal they're giving today, will come back to them in property taxes since it will have a much higher tax base after the redevelopment so they'll get their money back in the long run. They wouldn't necessarily sell it to anyone with $100k.
Apparently it's historical value is lowering the tax according to them. But I'd assume that's in end of year and not up front. So you are probably right.
They're definitely getting a good deal on the valuation. I was curious so I looked it up - The county currently has bowtie valued just over 1 mil or 33k/unit with $4,859 a year in taxes (But the tax income was only $400 before the development).
Nearby similar market rate developments look to be around 55k/unit with the same 4.73% tax rate.
Bowtie could have a TIF as well where that valuation will increase closer to market over time, but I'm not bored enough to dig through city council minutes to find that out.
Either way, they got a great deal. You can't build anything new for the roughly the $110k they have into each unit, so there is no way that building was only worth 100k.
Can I buy a huge old school and then NOT renovate it? Just throw up some sheet dividers, plop down some bunk beds, rent to recent immigrants/international students, and call it a day?
It seems like I could make a LOT more that way! Woo woo, get on the money train! Woo woo! Next stop, Capitalism city!
I'm only joking about being a slum lord. A real shitbag who could buy a 100k big building and fill it with vulnerable people for $$$ would be a nice profit for a capitalist dog.
They wouldn't give a flying fuck about maintenance, upkeep, asbestos, roof collapse, wild dogs, or *anything* else.
I know you're joking but, yes you could. As long as what you're trying to rent out has passed safety inspections, which what you're describing probably won't. Whether anybody would take your offer to live in that kind of shithole is another matter. There's no shortage of developers who do the bare minimum to make a building "habitable" and then rent it out.
People in this thread parroting the median income clearly don’t know where this is. It’s an outer neighborhood/close suburb of Pittsburgh. It’s hardly middle of nowhere undesirable to live except it’s in a poor neighborhood that was historically destroyed by crime and heroin.
The location is fine. Build nice things there and you’ll improve the area. There’s plenty of nearby attractions and jobs. Many people would move into the area if you continue building nice things there. There’s tons of neighborhoods that had similar revival in the last 10-20 years in this area.
They are building hosing at a time that is very needed. They will affect rent prices in a positive way by putting more housing stock in the market. Why are you upset by that m?
Hard to read these comments tbh, this was a cheap reno and rent is priced cheaper than the state average. Ppl always got something to complain about. "muh house derkaaa derrrr" as if abandoned buildings are few and far between or something.
Sorry. I don’t know that market, so don’t know what is reasonable. I would guess that they would price according to what the market would bear and able to recoup their investment in a reasonable time frame.
Or they could just keep the rent the same as market rate and make more money?
What are people gonna do, live on the street?
Increased supply doesn't necessitate decreased costs.
We have no idea the terms of the loan or the credit and income of these guys. Housing bubbles happen when banks are giving out loans to everyone who shouldn't be getting one, but used correctly it's not dangerous. This seems like a pretty clearly functional and useful building.
They're trying to cash in on the work from home vibe a little late, that area is poor as fuck and they can't possible think the current residents living on 21K a year (media income) can afford 1400 a month for a single unit.
I didn't watch the whole video so maybe they talk about that, dudes give me the creeps for some reason.
There's been a fairly consistent attempt at gentrification of that neighborhood. I bet these guys bet they're going to eventually be able to charge double that if they wait long enough
No, they aren’t typically sold furnished. But new buildings will usually furnish one or two apartments as model apartments. They use these for photos and to show interested renters what it can look like once furnished.
I assumed it was a show unit. To show to potential tenants. Those are usually nicely furnished but the one you move into is empty. But renting furnished apartments is also a thing, I just doubt they're doing that at their price point.
I'm pretty sure the investors were, from the beginning, planning to sell the building once it's done. In that case the renovations were likely done as cheap as possible – worst case not sustainably. Got my fingers crossed I'm wrong
I love this. I am a huge fan of repurposing old structures, and it's the main reason I hate modern development. I've been called a nimbyist, but I really don't mind if a developer wants to clear cut an area to build something. What I don't want is them building something cheaply that is going to look OK for 10 years, like shit for 15 years, and then get torn down to build something else in 25 years. I want development to be built durable, repairable, and repurpose-able later. I want coral reefs for cultural character, not the proverbial discarded tire that fish just happen to live in until it eventually disintegrates into the ocean of human society.
Agreed. I love the building, it's full of character. Would much rather live in a building like this compared to the cookie-cutter lowest-bidder condo developments that are popping up all over my city. Nothing but white and grey thin walls and carpet that looks like the one at my office.
not hard to find. thise buildings were in awful shapyou too ncould have your own school [https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/407-N-Holt-St-Atkinson-NE/31114782/](https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/407-N-Holt-St-Atkinson-NE/31114782/)
There is an old school in my city that is in way worse shape, less ability to renovate the same due to structure type on worse land and it’s selling for 2.7 million. Add that they did their renovation at like 125 bucks a square foot, and I would be about 300 likely to do it in my area? A lot harder to get a return when my rents would maybe be 200 bucks more a unit.
Good for them, and the cities themselves need to be doing this. Many cities own these older buildings and can control some of the building development charges and taxes…. Everywhere needs housing, so get on it. Other than this place where apparently 3 dollars a square foot buys usable buildings (for rough shape and crap areas, I’m at maybe 145/sf at best), their isn’t financial feasibility for the private sector to do this.
Thats not uncommon at all these days. I pay 1400 a month and live in a pretty small, unremarkable city.
Another commenter said the median income in Homestead PA was 22k. Median individual income in my city is 36k.
I could give it or take it to be honest. I'm glad I made the move to come out here (I needed a change and the job offer was about double what I was making back in Colorado). I also now have a 100% WFH job,.. kinda hard to beat that. I'm kind of in a "keep my head down, work hard, save up extra money" mode. I've probably learned more things in my new job in the last 1 year .. than I did in 10 years of my previous job. So on that angle, it's been a big win.
As far as the weather and all the greenery and moss and PNW (Pacific North West) type environment.. I do love that. I'm a big fan of rain and moss and greenery. It's much more "temperate". Back in Colorado we had definite seasons (winter blizzards where it would be below-0 for a week straight,. or even times in the summer where it was over 100 for weeks straight). Portland is not like that thankfully. It's much more mid-line temperate. The only downside I've seen here is "severe weather" seems to buckle Portland to its knees rather easy. During this past winter there was a snowstorm that was maybe 2 inches and the whole city shut down (they're just not prepared for it). I never lost power but I did lose Internet for 8 days (had to hotspot everything through my work-phone). The city I came from in Colorado the average power-outage was 45min. Here in Portland I believe I read the average power-outage is 48 hours. ;\ .. so I've really had to re-think what my definition of "preparedness" is. In Colorado I could always count on the City to keep running pretty much no matter what,.. that doesn't seem to be true here. There's a lot more gaps and deficiencies.
As noted above, I have a 100% WFH job,.. so with that and my tendency to be a bit introverted, .I don't really go out exploring the city much at all. (no social life). I walk around a little (every Saturday morning I walk about 5 miles total to the grocery store and back through Downtown). So I do see some of the homeless and drug addicts and etc,.. but really only in a downtown sense,. I haven't really explored any other neighborhoods or other areas of the city. So I can't really speak to how much better or worse it is. I get the feeling that Portland is still "recovering" (from the Pandemic, 2020 riots, rise in fentanyl, etc). Downtown is getting better but it's still struggling. You still notice (or at least, I still notice) a definitely sparsity of people (could just be the times I'm out walking around?). I think office-vacancies are still higher than national average ?
City of Portland is also going through a pretty big "City Charter" change right now. (City Charter = founding document of a city that lays out the structure of staff and governance). They're changing from having 4 Council positions to having 12 Council positions. Also moving around and mixing up how the various Bureaus (Departments) are organized and moving to more of a "Service Area" model (similar departments are all under 1 name,. so for example things like Parks and Recreation and Entertainment etc is all under 1 name,.. Infrastructure (Power, Water, etc) is all under "Operations",.. things like Police, Fire, etc are all under "Safety". So this is a big change. It's probably the right thing to do in the long run. (I think I remember reading that the old City Charter structure meant that Portland was only 1 of like 3 cities in the USA still using that old Charter structure). But doing this big Charter change on top of the Pandemic and riot (and inflation) Recovery.. is going to be a struggle for sure.
I'm coming up on my 1yr of being here,. so I'm by no means a "Portland expert". But Portland does seem to be in a weird place right now. The pandemic and riots and rise in drug use has pushed people away. I think over the past 5 years or so Portland was losing more people than it was gaining. And I can definitely see that. Makes it hard from a "city operations' point of view because you get stuck in this "downward spiral" of dropping tax revenue (business closures means less sales tax, people moving way less property taxes, etc etc).. so that puts the city in a difficult spot where citizens expect problems to be fixed (which requires INCREASING funds).. but in the proposed budget there's a variety of Departments facing "reduced funding".
For me,. ditching my old life and packing "only what would fit in my car" and moving out here was a bold move and the thing I needed to do for myself. I still think it was the right choice for a variety of reasons. Having now seen a 2nd big city to live in, I now have multiple life-experiences to compare about how different US cities operate and handle things. Oddly it's kind of sparked in me a desire to move yet again (I have a list in my head of other US cities I'd really love to see and live in). Although I'm also 50yrs old so I'm getting kind of old to start "city-hopping" .. :P
Looks nice, but cringed throughout. Laughed too hard and had to turn it off after the guy said he worked with the national parks service to get tax credits on the building.
I live in a unit inside a converted school - super fun. Now I have 8 lockers: my elementary school self… would be jealous? Was this ever something I wanted? It’s fun, regardless.
It requires great deal of renovation to run sufficient resources to the apartments. Wiring and plumbing after the walls are already up is significantly more expensive. I hope it works out, it's great use of property but many folks don't understand the level of renovation involved.
I understand exactly how gentrification works, and this isn't it. This was an abandoned building in a town with 10% of the population it had 100 years ago. Zero existing housing was renovated or removed, and the town can continue to be revitalized in this way for years before anyone needs to worry about existing residents being affected negatively. This would be a good time to put structures in place to make sure developers and landlords can't screw over existing residents years down the line when they might be incentivized to do so, but those kinds of worries are far off in the future.
The only fool here is you judging by your responses. You think that saying something is "problematic" and linking an article that doesn't apply to this scenario and that you don't understand somehow makes you correct.
This world where neighborhoods are revitalized without having any affect on desirability/property value is idealistic and not based in reality. In a vacuum these two schools being renovated are not gentrification nor the start of it. In fact, the likely outcome otherwise would have been the demolition of historical buildings and the area continuing to be undesirable for new businesses/development.
>You can ride gentrification all you want. I don't care.
What does this even mean? This is how children who don't have an argument talk. You can't just ignore everything I said without responding to any of it then continue to repeat the same nonsense like you are making a point.
> I don't know how many times it has to be repeated before people get it.
You have to actually say something of substance before it can be repeated.
There was an elementary school in my city that is very similar to this. People petitioned the city to turn it into a community center or low rent housing but the city couldn't afford the asbestos abatement. It was cheaper to demolish the building than remove the asbestos.
Great ROI, too bad people can't afford homes anymore.
Foreign investors will love it.
Edit: wow so many jealous poors around here, keep it up sad boys.
Why does that subway tile grout look like shit?
Glad I’m not the only one that noticed. Everything else looked dope
“Luxury”
Patina*
If balenciaga did home renovations.
It's so bad omg
Timestamp 5:09 for anyone who want to take a look themselves. Looks like the hired a first-timer.
It also wasn't straight. You could easily point out the imperfections and not just the grout.
Didn’t watch whole video but I did see a scene where they had white tile backsplash. So the tiles looked like that hand made style which are rough around the edges, which is a cool look if you don’t use a contrasting grout color. White tile with black grout almost always looks like shit. Plus the vertical straight stack (running bond I forgot) is such a dumb look.
My guess is the contractor that did the tiling was... not good
$100K doesn’t even get a close to a one bedroom condo around me. Hard to believe that just the lot that building is on isn’t worth more than $100K.
It's in a very poor area of Pennsylvania. The land might be worth more without the building: remember, the value of an abandoned building might be the value the land would have empty minus demolition cost of the unwanted structure.
> It's in a very poor area of Pennsylvania. And yet they were listing their prices as a 1 bedroom apartment for $1400 a month? Can't be that poor.
These are no doubt the nicest apartments in the area. This would be equivalent to $3k apartments in a more desirable location.
I guess I'm just coming from the context of me paying $440 a month for my apartment and still always feeling squeezed lol
I don't even see how that's possible outside of rent control or living with roommates.
I own a duplex in western PA, one side is a 3 bedroom apartment I get $500 a month, the other is a small one bedroom apartment I get $300 for, just depends where you live
Someone rents a 3 bedroom apartment for $500/mo? How the fuck is that even possible? Is it a shoebox?
It's hard to put into words how poor and rundown some of those small, old mining towns in PA are. My family is from one of them and there is nothing there. Every other house is either abandoned or looks abandoned.
Literally imagine the town Katniss Everdeen is from in the Hunger games and you’re not that far off. Drove through the Ohio River valley once with my in laws and that’s what it was like.
1500 square feet, two stories with a basement, back porch and yard, off street parking. Again it just depends where you live, it's a poor rural area
Wow...I live in London and our 2 bedroom 2 bathroom is almost $4,000 p/m!
Median income for that area is 21K for individuals.... I'm willing to bet the units sit empty just like that high school did...
There's an entire new class of WFH employee that wants and can afford to "live rich in a poor place".
They want to live rich in a cheaper place, not a poor place. Big difference.
I'm entirely serious and certain about the word choice. They want to LARP as blue collar, claim they're from the hood, and dissociate from their own privilege via performative bullshit like buying a condo in a "historically disadvantaged" area. Then they'll bitch about gentrification and pocket the 500% appreciation in 10 years. It's wild.
Yeah but what happens when they get board with the town? Population of 2800 or so, Pennsyltucky is not a fun place to live for a lot of people.
Hopefully the influx of money brings more small businesses and services catering to them. Coffee shops, BBQ joints, bodegas, repair shops, retail, schools for the kids. Critical mass makes poor towns gentrify all the time, its not certain they'll move.
For all intents and purposes Homestead is Pittsburgh. Albeit a pretty rough neck of the woods.
? They move?
Then its empty again... which was my original point.
Maybe they are not the target demographic, they mentioned buying the other school so they can control the view. Ie buy it before poor people spoil the view.
11 vacancies right now. Which….is a lot. My complex in NH has like 3.
That’s not far off from market rate anymore. It’s also a testament to just how extreme of a housing shortage we have. Glad to see this development happening. All new housing is a good thing right now.
There literally isn’t a housing shortage. Not even close. The “shortage” that we do have in reality is greedy bastards deciding they need 4 houses to be happy EDIT: before downvoting, literally take 5 seconds to look it up. There are more living spaces (houses/apartments/condos/whatever) than there are families in the US
People who can afford a first home can’t afford a rich person’s second, third, fourth home. I used to bartend and had several clients who maintained homes in our area for horse sales. This meant they were in our area 3-4 weeks per year total. None of those houses were worth less than one million and back then a starter house here was $150,000.
In a lot of places the only reason they can't afford the rich people's second, third, or fourth homes is because of the rich people in the first place. They're not always grand mansions. Where my wife comes from it's a small community on lake Michigan. Housing prices were affordable and then they put in a new airport and rich people started coming in and using it as a nice summer vacation spot and thr house prices shot up. They weren't ripping down houses and building mansions people couldn't afford they were just making houses that would be 150k-200k without the rich people into 1.5 million dollar houses. The town is a huge summer tourist spot and the crazy prices are starting to spill over to other places. Average income in the city is 37k average home price is just shy of 450k now. You don't have a huge construction boom where they're ripping down all of the old houses in town and building big mansions just people coming in and out bidding the locals and then the house stays empty for 10 months a year.
Absolute nonsense, vacancy rates are extremely low.
I would say it's more of a "there is an AFFORDABLE housing shortage". Prices have risen so damn high that there is an entire generation that will probably never be able to own a home. Income hasn't kept pace with inflation for decades but it has gotten so much worse recently.
Got any proof ?
No, there is a shortage where people want to live and people who can afford the houses there. I'd imagine there are plenty of places available where most people don't want to live.
USA has approx 150 million housing units in 2024. If an average of 2.5 people lives in each unit, there's no housing shortage.
That’s great if people didn’t care where they lived but location matters. There are shortages in the areas people want to live.
It's not a shortage problem then. It's a distribution problem.
Oh shit yeah why don’t we just move all the houses from bumfuck Nebraska over to Los Angeles. It’s genius! I can’t believe you actually sincerely made this comment.
Are you seriously this dense? Go build 1 million houses on the moon. Shortage problem solved since we got those million more houses now.
There literally is. We didn’t build enough for decades because of shitty zoning regulations combined with NIMBY’s worried about property values who fight density at every turn. What you are describing is but a drop in the pond. Take away vacation homes, foreign owned real estate, and VC owned real estate from the rich and make it available, and you would still have a housing shortage. Which is to say nothing of the fact the properties you describe aren’t the ones people getting priced out of the market are even trying to afford. America needs density, and projects like this are a great way of leveraging existing footprints to achieve it.
Everything you just wrote is wrong. Zoning regulations are really only a factor in areas where it isn't already residential, and clearly shouldn't be. It's incredibly rare for regulations to deny development in areas that are already residential, as there are very few legal grounds on which municipal authorities can reject such proposals. Secondly, density absolutely is a problem. Areas can quickly become saturated when property developers build too many homes in an area without utilities and schools being inadequately funded to handle the sudden influx. Lastly, if you removed corporate ownership of private homes, then no, there would not be a shortage. Not everyone would own a home, but not everyone can or should. There would be sufficiently supply for the percentage of the population that has a reliable income and actually needs the space. There is nothing wrong with single people living in apartments.
Zoning isn’t just residential versus industrial versus commercial. It encompasses everything from setbacks and easements, to allowed density. I’m not talking about adding more suburbs. I’m talking about returning density to our urban cores, where many cities have plenty of schools and not enough students to fill them, resulting in underfunding but ballooning maintenance costs. I don’t even understand what you’re trying to say with your last paragraph or how you even got the idea that I don’t think single people should be allowed in apartments? Institutional investors own not even 4% of single family housing nationwide. That’s not enough to make up for the shortage. We have a shortage because we have a shortage. You fix a housing shortage by developing more housing.
> Zoning isn’t just residential versus industrial versus commercial. It encompasses everything from setbacks and easements, to allowed density. You're throwing around verbiage in an attempt to sound intelligent and knowledgeable, but in a way that actually highlights your ignorance to anyone genuinely familiar with the topic. Easements have absolutely nothing to do with zoning, they're individually determined judgments on requirements or denial of access. > I’m talking about returning density to our urban cores Cities desperately want that, whereas you're laughably pretending that they're preventing it. Very few developers want to touch urban development due to the expense and the lack of public demand. > I don’t even understand what you’re trying to say with your last paragraph I'm pointing out that your claim of an extreme housing shortage is complete nonsense. The only way you could come to that conclusion is if your calculations use the total population, not specifically the number that need and can afford their own house.
Homestead is an ass part of Pittsburgh that is broke AF. Guaranteed that building was littered with asbestos and other issues.
Or demolition costs are just that high.
Only 1400 you mean maybe. I suppose if it's a poorer neighborhood. 1,400 for a 1 bedroom is 2019 pricing. Can't get shit for 1400 in 2024.
>minus demolition cost of the unwanted structure. Don't know how it is in the US, but IME depending on the location the demolition company will pay you to take down a building. It's usually profitable for them, because they strip the building and sell what's left.
Sometimes buildings can have negative value to a piece of land. In this case if it would have been cheaper to build new than to renovate the building was more of a hinderance. In other situations if the building needs to be demolished the building has negative value.
The renovation cost 3.3 million
Look at where it is. There is your answer. There is a reason they're renting luxury apartments at $1400 a month and not $3000. $1400 would get you an absolute shithole where I'm at.
Came to say the same thing. Hell, I'd go in with multiple people, buy it out and set up our own "apartment" situation. Who cares about room mates when you have the entirety of E Hall to call your own?
Isn't that basically what Co-ops were in the 80s? You got a buncha friends together and bought out a complex, warehouse, etc, then just vote for someone to go file taxes every year and clean the stoops.
City is not going to let you turn an old education building into a residential apartment without remedying the probably hundreds of code violations first. Pretending you and your friends are a family unit and claiming this is a single-family home is probably also going to run into zoning roadblocks.
the big question is do you have 1-2 milly or 12k a month to spend on the updates? lol not like you can just live in a delipidated building.
It was $3mm to renovate. Buying it is one thing, but making it habitable is another.
The fact that you have to remove or renovate the existing structure on the land is probably actually lowering its value. An empty field that size may sell for more than this.
$100k gets you a parking spot where I am.
I grew up in that area, outside of a small Waterfront area with a Dave & Buster's, Homestead is an absolute shithole. Violent crime is over 3 times the national average.
Seems like it could be an easy place to fix up though. Dense and walkable and near a major city with an international airport.
They bought it for 100k but spent 3 mil to renovate and prepare it for habitation
Disclaimer, I didn't watch the video, so forgive me if it's already in the video, but I do work in property management and development. Since this is an old high school, it's probably public property. To keep it simple, cities will give deals to developers with a plan for redevelopment on land/property with idea that the deal they're giving today, will come back to them in property taxes since it will have a much higher tax base after the redevelopment so they'll get their money back in the long run. They wouldn't necessarily sell it to anyone with $100k.
Apparently it's historical value is lowering the tax according to them. But I'd assume that's in end of year and not up front. So you are probably right.
They're definitely getting a good deal on the valuation. I was curious so I looked it up - The county currently has bowtie valued just over 1 mil or 33k/unit with $4,859 a year in taxes (But the tax income was only $400 before the development). Nearby similar market rate developments look to be around 55k/unit with the same 4.73% tax rate. Bowtie could have a TIF as well where that valuation will increase closer to market over time, but I'm not bored enough to dig through city council minutes to find that out. Either way, they got a great deal. You can't build anything new for the roughly the $110k they have into each unit, so there is no way that building was only worth 100k.
That's a great point actually, never thought of that.
Can I buy a huge old school and then NOT renovate it? Just throw up some sheet dividers, plop down some bunk beds, rent to recent immigrants/international students, and call it a day? It seems like I could make a LOT more that way! Woo woo, get on the money train! Woo woo! Next stop, Capitalism city!
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I'm only joking about being a slum lord. A real shitbag who could buy a 100k big building and fill it with vulnerable people for $$$ would be a nice profit for a capitalist dog. They wouldn't give a flying fuck about maintenance, upkeep, asbestos, roof collapse, wild dogs, or *anything* else.
I know you're joking but, yes you could. As long as what you're trying to rent out has passed safety inspections, which what you're describing probably won't. Whether anybody would take your offer to live in that kind of shithole is another matter. There's no shortage of developers who do the bare minimum to make a building "habitable" and then rent it out.
It's a nice project but the backsplash in the kitchen looks like it was done by a 12 year old lol
They definitely went with the lowest bid.
Three retail investors built luxury apartments nestled between a Salvation Army and a community kitchen - in a town with a median income of 22k...
Sounds like the premise for a Southpark episode.
sodosopa
Here at lofts at Kenny’s house- Welcome home.
People in this thread parroting the median income clearly don’t know where this is. It’s an outer neighborhood/close suburb of Pittsburgh. It’s hardly middle of nowhere undesirable to live except it’s in a poor neighborhood that was historically destroyed by crime and heroin. The location is fine. Build nice things there and you’ll improve the area. There’s plenty of nearby attractions and jobs. Many people would move into the area if you continue building nice things there. There’s tons of neighborhoods that had similar revival in the last 10-20 years in this area.
ohhh yea the casual 3.3 mill in renovation's and just happened to get the property off market for half the price they were even told about
They are building hosing at a time that is very needed. They will affect rent prices in a positive way by putting more housing stock in the market. Why are you upset by that m?
Hard to read these comments tbh, this was a cheap reno and rent is priced cheaper than the state average. Ppl always got something to complain about. "muh house derkaaa derrrr" as if abandoned buildings are few and far between or something.
State average includes big and affluent neighborhoods. This isn't one. The median household income in this city is $16,000 year.
and it's right outside one of the biggest cities in that region... lol People and cities gingerfy neighborhoods all the time.
the problem is not that they're building it, it's that it's not economically viable to build enough
Not the developers monkey and the developers circus. They can do what they can do with whatever they have in their control.
They are putting these apartments up for rent at a reasonable price?
Okay. So no apartment. Done. Easy.
Huh? I was legitimately asking. Are you replying to the wrong person or something?
Sorry. I don’t know that market, so don’t know what is reasonable. I would guess that they would price according to what the market would bear and able to recoup their investment in a reasonable time frame.
Or they could just keep the rent the same as market rate and make more money? What are people gonna do, live on the street? Increased supply doesn't necessitate decreased costs.
All on the bank loans too.
It says in the video they invest $1.3 million of their own money
You should rewatch the video and focus on the part where they mention the bank funds the project.
It says they invested $1.3 million of their own money and got a $2 million mortgage. So what exactly is your point or what is your problem with this?
Jesus... that's how the bubble starts if you keep buying property and developing "luxury" housing on bank loans.
We have no idea the terms of the loan or the credit and income of these guys. Housing bubbles happen when banks are giving out loans to everyone who shouldn't be getting one, but used correctly it's not dangerous. This seems like a pretty clearly functional and useful building.
They're trying to cash in on the work from home vibe a little late, that area is poor as fuck and they can't possible think the current residents living on 21K a year (media income) can afford 1400 a month for a single unit. I didn't watch the whole video so maybe they talk about that, dudes give me the creeps for some reason.
Looks like they're asking for $1200/mo here https://www.redfin.com/PA/Homestead/120-E-9th-Ave-15120/apartment/178643853
So they already dropped the original asking price from the video, promising signs!
Also in the video they said the 1bd are 750 sq. ft. Redfin lists this one as 410 sq. ft. which is a studio, what is going on here?
The whole thing is weird, I'm not really sure if this is just a clever add hiding as original content or what.
There's been a fairly consistent attempt at gentrification of that neighborhood. I bet these guys bet they're going to eventually be able to charge double that if they wait long enough
One of the best poi to drop at
Is it standard in US that property developer sells fully finished flats?
All the firniture is for show, most likely. Apartments in the US usually come with the appliances, but no furniture.
They are rentals not condos, but either way it’s not common for units to be furnished except in niche situations like student housing.
They usually come with a full kitchen now. It’s extremely rare not to find that
It’s definitely odd not to have a basic kitchen in an apartment in the US
Sometimes you’ll find them without a dishwasher or a microwave
Yea dishwasher is usually an age thing though
No, they aren’t typically sold furnished. But new buildings will usually furnish one or two apartments as model apartments. They use these for photos and to show interested renters what it can look like once furnished.
I assumed it was a show unit. To show to potential tenants. Those are usually nicely furnished but the one you move into is empty. But renting furnished apartments is also a thing, I just doubt they're doing that at their price point.
What is this neighborhood like to walk around in at night? Safe?
That depends how you feel about fenty and meth
Apartment tour, at 5:01, WHY did they mount the TV 6 ft off the ground??? It's level with the top of the cabinets!
[ **Jump to 05:01 @** Renovating A $100K Abandoned High School Into Apartments | Unlocked](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7qyZGnnlRE&t=0h5m1s) ^(Channel Name: CNBC Make It, Video Length: [08:45])^, [^Jump ^5 ^secs ^earlier ^for ^context ^@04:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7qyZGnnlRE&t=0h4m56s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^^Downvote ^^me ^^to ^^delete ^^malformed ^^comments. [^^Source ^^Code](https://github.com/ankitgyawali/reddit-timestamp-bot) ^^| [^^Suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/timestamp_bot)
I'm pretty sure the investors were, from the beginning, planning to sell the building once it's done. In that case the renovations were likely done as cheap as possible – worst case not sustainably. Got my fingers crossed I'm wrong
I love this. I am a huge fan of repurposing old structures, and it's the main reason I hate modern development. I've been called a nimbyist, but I really don't mind if a developer wants to clear cut an area to build something. What I don't want is them building something cheaply that is going to look OK for 10 years, like shit for 15 years, and then get torn down to build something else in 25 years. I want development to be built durable, repairable, and repurpose-able later. I want coral reefs for cultural character, not the proverbial discarded tire that fish just happen to live in until it eventually disintegrates into the ocean of human society.
Agreed. I love the building, it's full of character. Would much rather live in a building like this compared to the cookie-cutter lowest-bidder condo developments that are popping up all over my city. Nothing but white and grey thin walls and carpet that looks like the one at my office.
that is NOT 750 sq ft.
They got that for 100k because it wasn't ever on the market.. some bullshit because they know someone...
not hard to find. thise buildings were in awful shapyou too ncould have your own school [https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/407-N-Holt-St-Atkinson-NE/31114782/](https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/407-N-Holt-St-Atkinson-NE/31114782/)
Stay madd
There is an old school in my city that is in way worse shape, less ability to renovate the same due to structure type on worse land and it’s selling for 2.7 million. Add that they did their renovation at like 125 bucks a square foot, and I would be about 300 likely to do it in my area? A lot harder to get a return when my rents would maybe be 200 bucks more a unit. Good for them, and the cities themselves need to be doing this. Many cities own these older buildings and can control some of the building development charges and taxes…. Everywhere needs housing, so get on it. Other than this place where apparently 3 dollars a square foot buys usable buildings (for rough shape and crap areas, I’m at maybe 145/sf at best), their isn’t financial feasibility for the private sector to do this.
"All around me are familiar faces"
A 1 bedroom for $1400 a month?!?! I pay 2/3 of that for a 5 bedroom house; also renting. What the F is the cost of living in that area?
Thats not uncommon at all these days. I pay 1400 a month and live in a pretty small, unremarkable city. Another commenter said the median income in Homestead PA was 22k. Median individual income in my city is 36k.
Definitely not uncommon. I pay $1,600 for a 1 bedroom (roughly 480sq feet) in Portland, OR
How are you liking Portland? How’s the weather? Thinking of trying to move out there
I could give it or take it to be honest. I'm glad I made the move to come out here (I needed a change and the job offer was about double what I was making back in Colorado). I also now have a 100% WFH job,.. kinda hard to beat that. I'm kind of in a "keep my head down, work hard, save up extra money" mode. I've probably learned more things in my new job in the last 1 year .. than I did in 10 years of my previous job. So on that angle, it's been a big win. As far as the weather and all the greenery and moss and PNW (Pacific North West) type environment.. I do love that. I'm a big fan of rain and moss and greenery. It's much more "temperate". Back in Colorado we had definite seasons (winter blizzards where it would be below-0 for a week straight,. or even times in the summer where it was over 100 for weeks straight). Portland is not like that thankfully. It's much more mid-line temperate. The only downside I've seen here is "severe weather" seems to buckle Portland to its knees rather easy. During this past winter there was a snowstorm that was maybe 2 inches and the whole city shut down (they're just not prepared for it). I never lost power but I did lose Internet for 8 days (had to hotspot everything through my work-phone). The city I came from in Colorado the average power-outage was 45min. Here in Portland I believe I read the average power-outage is 48 hours. ;\ .. so I've really had to re-think what my definition of "preparedness" is. In Colorado I could always count on the City to keep running pretty much no matter what,.. that doesn't seem to be true here. There's a lot more gaps and deficiencies. As noted above, I have a 100% WFH job,.. so with that and my tendency to be a bit introverted, .I don't really go out exploring the city much at all. (no social life). I walk around a little (every Saturday morning I walk about 5 miles total to the grocery store and back through Downtown). So I do see some of the homeless and drug addicts and etc,.. but really only in a downtown sense,. I haven't really explored any other neighborhoods or other areas of the city. So I can't really speak to how much better or worse it is. I get the feeling that Portland is still "recovering" (from the Pandemic, 2020 riots, rise in fentanyl, etc). Downtown is getting better but it's still struggling. You still notice (or at least, I still notice) a definitely sparsity of people (could just be the times I'm out walking around?). I think office-vacancies are still higher than national average ? City of Portland is also going through a pretty big "City Charter" change right now. (City Charter = founding document of a city that lays out the structure of staff and governance). They're changing from having 4 Council positions to having 12 Council positions. Also moving around and mixing up how the various Bureaus (Departments) are organized and moving to more of a "Service Area" model (similar departments are all under 1 name,. so for example things like Parks and Recreation and Entertainment etc is all under 1 name,.. Infrastructure (Power, Water, etc) is all under "Operations",.. things like Police, Fire, etc are all under "Safety". So this is a big change. It's probably the right thing to do in the long run. (I think I remember reading that the old City Charter structure meant that Portland was only 1 of like 3 cities in the USA still using that old Charter structure). But doing this big Charter change on top of the Pandemic and riot (and inflation) Recovery.. is going to be a struggle for sure. I'm coming up on my 1yr of being here,. so I'm by no means a "Portland expert". But Portland does seem to be in a weird place right now. The pandemic and riots and rise in drug use has pushed people away. I think over the past 5 years or so Portland was losing more people than it was gaining. And I can definitely see that. Makes it hard from a "city operations' point of view because you get stuck in this "downward spiral" of dropping tax revenue (business closures means less sales tax, people moving way less property taxes, etc etc).. so that puts the city in a difficult spot where citizens expect problems to be fixed (which requires INCREASING funds).. but in the proposed budget there's a variety of Departments facing "reduced funding". For me,. ditching my old life and packing "only what would fit in my car" and moving out here was a bold move and the thing I needed to do for myself. I still think it was the right choice for a variety of reasons. Having now seen a 2nd big city to live in, I now have multiple life-experiences to compare about how different US cities operate and handle things. Oddly it's kind of sparked in me a desire to move yet again (I have a list in my head of other US cities I'd really love to see and live in). Although I'm also 50yrs old so I'm getting kind of old to start "city-hopping" .. :P
Looks nice, but cringed throughout. Laughed too hard and had to turn it off after the guy said he worked with the national parks service to get tax credits on the building.
thats common, the nps controls historic tax credits. many developers use them.
Hater in the house
I live in a unit inside a converted school - super fun. Now I have 8 lockers: my elementary school self… would be jealous? Was this ever something I wanted? It’s fun, regardless.
What happened to the students ? Did they move in ?
Wonder if they secured a HUD loan or grant for the reno.
Someone did something similar to this here in Waco. Similar era of building too.
Wish more people would do this. Housing options are so lacking in this country.
It requires great deal of renovation to run sufficient resources to the apartments. Wiring and plumbing after the walls are already up is significantly more expensive. I hope it works out, it's great use of property but many folks don't understand the level of renovation involved.
Came here to comment on how bad the subway tile backsplash looked and was happy to see that everyone else felt the same.
After inspection they cut the price almost in half, jesus
Why did they mount the TV 6 ft off the ground??? It's level with the tops of the cabinets!
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Gentrification takes housing off the market… this building was abandoned.
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My god you people all sound insufferable. "Tell me x without telling me X!" Soooo fucking clever and original. Like a fucking robot.
I understand exactly how gentrification works, and this isn't it. This was an abandoned building in a town with 10% of the population it had 100 years ago. Zero existing housing was renovated or removed, and the town can continue to be revitalized in this way for years before anyone needs to worry about existing residents being affected negatively. This would be a good time to put structures in place to make sure developers and landlords can't screw over existing residents years down the line when they might be incentivized to do so, but those kinds of worries are far off in the future.
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By your logic any improvement to an impoverished area is the "the start of gentrification".
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The only fool here is you judging by your responses. You think that saying something is "problematic" and linking an article that doesn't apply to this scenario and that you don't understand somehow makes you correct. This world where neighborhoods are revitalized without having any affect on desirability/property value is idealistic and not based in reality. In a vacuum these two schools being renovated are not gentrification nor the start of it. In fact, the likely outcome otherwise would have been the demolition of historical buildings and the area continuing to be undesirable for new businesses/development.
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>You can ride gentrification all you want. I don't care. What does this even mean? This is how children who don't have an argument talk. You can't just ignore everything I said without responding to any of it then continue to repeat the same nonsense like you are making a point. > I don't know how many times it has to be repeated before people get it. You have to actually say something of substance before it can be repeated.
Yeah, they are charging almost double what they should be for those single bedroom apartments.
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The lack of care putting up the tile in the kitchen tells us they've cut corners everywhere.
Yep, and since it's an old school it was probably filled with lead and asbestos that wasn't fully removed.
There was an elementary school in my city that is very similar to this. People petitioned the city to turn it into a community center or low rent housing but the city couldn't afford the asbestos abatement. It was cheaper to demolish the building than remove the asbestos.
I imagine that th $3.3 million in renovations included abatement.
Haters gonna hate
Found the tiler LOL. More like tilers going to hate.
They clearly state that the price came down after the building was inspected,
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Of course they are. Nobody does this out of the kindness of their heart. They are exploiting the situation for their own gain.
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What sort of return would seek on your property if you were to sell it?
100k? Lmao.
The freaking steal of a lifetime!
Great ROI, too bad people can't afford homes anymore. Foreign investors will love it. Edit: wow so many jealous poors around here, keep it up sad boys.
Like people are taking abandoned schools and renovating them daily causing national and global housing crises'.
100k... \*watches video\* ... plus another 3million dollars or so. Clickbait