From apartment homes, to condo conversion, back to apartment homes, and now trying to sell “some” of them with options like “lease to own” programs.
The Madison at Town Center, located in Valencia has been a victim of bad timing. It really is the most “interesting” condo community in the Santa Clarita Valley, however the highly anticipated condo conversion really never came to fruition, except for the fact that they nearly emptied the whole community of its renters, started converting the units to include nice upgrades, began to sell some of them, and then, well, began to sell them is about how it concluded. It’s not clear how many of the converted units were sold, but what is clear is that as soon as everyone realized the real estate market just wasn’t what it used to be, Lennar, in an attempt to capture some revenue at the community, started leasing out the units again. After-all, they were hardly selling, and frequent street sign changes with new lower prices were very visible.
The high HOA fee, of about $394 didn’t help their cause either, and still doesn’t to this day. Lennar is still trying to sell about 11 units in the community. It’s not clear why so many, or so little, but that is how many they have listed in the local Santa Clarita MLS as of today. In addition to their 11 listed for sale, and 1 that appears to be in escrow, there are also 2 for sale in the MLS that happen to be resales. One of the resales appears to be a short sale (purchased for more than their list price), and the other one is offering a carry-back loan option by the owner, and an assumable loan for the first loan.
The Main Problem: Appears to be that the community is not Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac approved. Why? Generally a community, such as The Madison at Town Center, has to be at least 2/3 owner occupied. This ensures that there isn’t a small pool of owners in any home community, versus amount of tenants or non-owner occupied units. That standard, in general, helps keep up home values, since tenants often don’t maintain their home or community as well as owners do. Also, if there was a large crash in the real estate market, and there was a huge presence of investors in any given community, they may very well walk away from their investment, ans stop paying community dues, which can obviously lead to a downturn in community maintenance…which again, can lead to lower home values.
The only way to buy one of these Madison at Town Center condos, is to get a loan through the developer’s (Lennar) lending arm called UAMC, or such as the one resale example, get a seller carry-back, or assumable loan option.
The Madison at Valencia Town Center, “Urban Living” as Lennar calls it, not quite the brightest purchase in town if your aren’t in it for the long run, and don’t mind living amongst majority renters for the time being. I expect the community will fully sell off and convert properly into individually owned condos, but not in this real estate market we are experiencing today.
Questions? Comments? Insights?
Remember…when buying or selling Santa Clarita real estate, call me 1st.
Robert Mickalson, Realtor
Vintage Sotheby’s International Realty
661.219.2260 or 661.373.2374
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