Bella Montaña at Santa Rosa Street and Highland Drive offers discount prices from $323,000 to nearly $400,000 for its 69 units; fewer than half remain unsold.
In San Luis Obispo, even new condominiums with prices guaranteed to be lower than market rates are having a hard time selling these days.
Started in April 2005, Bella Montaña is a $24 million Cal Poly condominium subdivision that guarantees pricing discounts of 20 percent or more. It is one of the means Cal Poly uses to recruit and retain faculty and staff in the face of the area’s high housing costs, said Jim Reinhart, managing director of the Cal Poly Housing Corp.
The new 21-building condo community next to the Cal Poly campus off Highland Drive and Santa Rosa Street offers prices from $323,000 to nearly $400,000 a unit.
But in November, the date targeted by the Housing Corp. to have sold all of its units, only 30 of its 69 condominiums had sold, Reinhart said.
“Starting in late 2006, we saw some buyers, who had put up $1,000 deposits, withdrawing their offers,” Reinhart said. He believes the buyers were reluctant to move forward when the prices in the real estate market were declining.
Three months ago, the Housing Corp. added a $10,000 cash rebate and other price incentives, including a new formula that may allow homeowners to realize a greater appreciation if they sell their homes.
Initially, a homeowner’s equity appreciation was capped by a maximum resale price that was tied to the U.S. Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index, a key measure of inflation. The CPI now runs about 4 percent a year.
Under the new formula, however, an owner can resell his or her home at its appraised market value, minus a 20 percent discount to the new buyer. (The 20 percent is required so that new buyers will be guaranteed the same 20 percent discount as the original buyer.)
As a result of the new incentives, Cal Poly has sold 14 more condos, Reinhart said.
With 25 condos still available, the Housing Corp. has offered to pay down additional points on a buyer’s 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, which could lower the mortgage interest rates to below 5 percent, Reinhart said. The Housing Corp. also will continue to pay for closing costs, private mortgage insurance and homeowner’s association fees for a year, he added.
Reinhart said he believes the new, more aggressive incentives are working and the condos will sell out to Cal Poly faculty and staff by the end of the year.
“We’ve had a soft market … but the incentives are helping and Bella Montaña offers a really good product,” Reinhart said. “It’s so close to Cal Poly, it’s an owner-occupied project, and it has quality construction, developed and built by BDC Development.”
If Cal Poly employees do not buy into the project by year-end, the Housing Corp. also has the option of opening Bella Montaña to buyers outside the Cal Poly umbrella, Reinhart added. Priority would go first to San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara County educational employees, then to public service employees, and finally the public at large — if they use the condominium as their primary residence.
For more information, visit www.BellaMontanaHomes.com . —Melanie Cleveland
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Founders Community Bank recently announced promotions for three employees — Ricky Fleischer, Cindy Magliari and Cherise Long.
Fleischer, who has been with the bank since its opening in May 2005, was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer. He most recently served as executive vice president and credit administrator.
In addition to his credit administration responsibilities, Fleischer will now have expanded responsibility over the bank’s daily operating activities.
Magliari, a founding member of the bank staff, has been elevated to the position of vice president and controller. She previously served as vice president in the finance department.
Long, who joined the bank in July 2006, is now assistant vice president and residential real estate coordinator. She has more than 25 years of community-banking and mortgage-lending experience.
The full-service community bank is at 237 Higuera St. in San Luis Obispo.
—Tonya Strickland
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