Morning File: It's a condo boom!

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Morning File: It's a condo boom!

Monday, December 26, 2005

By Gary Rotstein, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Condo shortage? What condo shortage?
OK, is there anyone not already constructing or planning to build condominiums Downtown? I think we see hands of a few Candy-Rama employees and some squatters from beneath the Fort Pitt Bridge, but other than that, there's the PNC developers, the new arena developers, the Lazarus developers, the First Avenue developers, the Union National Bank developers, and probably lofts more -- whoops, lots more -- we're forgetting. They've all gone condo-crazy! All those people from the suburbs who for years viewed Downtown as a bleak, scary place they wanted to be nowhere near? ("Careful down at Saks, Edna -- I heard they've got some foreign-looking people behind the perfume counter.") Apparently, they moved to Charlotte long ago, as developers are planning to build condos at a rate of about 2.3 units for every man, woman and child now living between Aleppo and Zelienople. People must really hate their longtime homes, which is kind of odd considering Pittsburghers are known to stay in the same dwelling longer than residents of any other metropolitan area.

We're ahead of Wichita . . . possibly
The condo-mania sounds kind of surprising until you realize that, yes, this is just one more party to which Pittsburgh is late in arriving. Scan headlines around the country, and there are plenty of other cities large and small already on the developers' dance card.

From the Providence, R.I., newspaper on Oct. 21: "Condos, condos everywhere."

From Boulder, Colo., on Sept. 13: "Condo boom continues."

From Starkville, Miss., on Aug. 29: "Mississippi State alums, fans fueling condo boom."

When the national urban trends are hitting Starkville before Pittsburgh, it's a sign that things may be progressing just a little tooooo slowwwwly here at the rivers' confluence. Around the country, more and more people are living in some kind of planned, collective community instead of independent, single-family homes. As they say in Ho Chi Minh City, "Socialism rocks, dude." The U.S. Community Associations Institute says 22.1 million housing units today are part of some condominium community, homeowners association or similar cooperative. That's about twice the number that existed in 1990, and they house 54.6 million Americans. In shared-ownership housing such as a condominium, people typically pay a monthly fee for services and for upkeep of common areas, and they agree to abide by legally binding restrictions on use and appearance of their own housing units. If you like to keep a large reptile collection and play Black Sabbath at full volume, your neighbors on the condo board may be only too happy to remind you such rights were sacrificed when you signed your covenant.

Bud Selig must live in one
For a comparison more apt than Starkville, one need only look to the Midwest to Milwaukee. The Business Journal in that city wrote that from 2002 to 2005, 2,352 condos valued at $739.4 million were built or planned in or around Downtown. The growth got real estate executives to discuss the saturation point they'd hit, with the housing volume exceeding job growth. "There are simply too many projects about to go forward," said one architect. "The area is not big enough to support all the projects because there aren't that many people interested in moving Downtown." One executive noted that Milwaukee was itself tardy to embrace the condo movement, trailing Midwestern trend-setters Cleveland, Minneapolis, Columbus and Indianapolis. Oh, how they must be snickering in Milwaukee now (and Starkville), to hear that Pittsburghers feel they've discovered some new-fangled style of living.

Anti-condo word of caution
Liz Pulliam Weston, a personal finance columnist for MSN Money, thinks the condo market is a bit out of control. She wrote of it being like "the tech-stock bubble," with too many speculators involved attempting to make quick profits. She's talking about "hot" markets like Las Vegas and Miami, rather than dowdy Downtown Pittsburgh, but notes that the rise in condo values nationally has begun slowing down after shooting past that of single-family homes in 2004. Yes, she agrees that some upscale baby boomers becoming empty nesters are willing to pay to avoid shoveling the sidewalk, to have a building fix-it man at their beck and call, and to be within walking distance of a city's cultural center. "But anyone who expects vast numbers of boomers to shift to condos is delusional," Ms. Weston wrote this fall. "Like their parents, 80 percent of whom age in place, most boomers will stay in the houses where they retire. Familiarity, and family ties, will, for most, trump Arizona golf courses and Florida early-bird specials."

Can't we all just get along?
Actually, a Pittsburgher is at the forefront of the condo movement in one respect. Virgil Rizzo, who grew up in the Steel City, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1959, and taught in the city's public schools for several years, is the first condominium ombudsman in the United States. He has filled that new role in the state of Florida for the past year. The Fort Lauderdale condo-owner, who became both a lawyer and doctor in his later years, was appointed by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to help reduce disputes between condo-dwellers and condo boards, which are made up of neighbors elected to run things. "He will strive to achieve harmony among those who reside in the many condominiums in the state of Florida," said the press release announcing Mr. Rizzo's appointment. He had practice in working out problems among his own condo's board and owners. He was in fact involved in some personal litigation of that sort, which is what he's trying to help other others avoid. "What happens in these communities is that they get polarized," the ombudsman told the (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel. "You get a 50-50 split and you have discontent. They shouldn't be fighting amongst each other. They should be together and the board should keep them unified."

A role model for us
It took Florida long enough to find a Western Pennsylvanian to straighten things out. Way back in 1989, about the time that tepees and log cabins were being replaced in Downtown Pittsburgh, the Los Angeles Times was writing about the name-calling, back-biting and political shenanigans that marked condo life among the Sunshine State's older population. "Some of them sit around and read the Condo Act all day," said Alex Knight, then the chief of Florida's Bureau of Condominiums. "They have time to fight. Condo politics is like a hobby." Some condo developments were already like small cities, with 8,000 dwellers in 75 buildings at Century Village in Pembroke Pines. At the latter, the article noted such volatile board meetings that "people have dropped dead" and, during elections, "they fight for proxies like piranhas." The leaders of the condo board and the activists taking them on had nothing but vile things to say about one another, concerning such issues as mowing of lawns and consumption of electricity. "There are people around here who've never accomplished anything in life and this is their last guttural gasp to make something of themselves," said the beleaguered condo board president, Kitty Thibault. Now there's something that ex-City Council members and former row officers can look forward to, finally, in Downtown Pittsburgh.